Press Releases

Rehovot, Israel – May 17, 2011 – Evogene Ltd. (TASE: EVGN) announced today its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2011.

Ofer Haviv, Evogene's president and CEO, stated: "This past quarter saw substantial efforts directed in three primary areas as we continue our rapid progress. First, and foremost, we continued to meet our obligations under our on-going collaborations with world leading seed companies, including Bayer CropScience, Biogemma, Monsanto, Pioneer/Dupont, and Syngenta. Secondly, very substantial efforts were devoted to establishing our new wheat collaboration with Bayer, signed during December of last year, and which is targeted at improving wheat varieties utilizing a combination of advanced breeding and genetic modification methods. And lastly, we continued to build our infrastructure for the future, including ongoing construction programs to increase our research capacity by more than 50%, including facilities for expanded gene validation, data experiments and plant growth. This increased capacity will allow us to both significantly increase the number of research programs we can support and enable the introduction of new technologies now under development.”

Mr. Haviv continued: “With respect to our financial results, we are of course pleased to see the substantial increase in both current revenues and financial strength in order to support our continued growth.”

Revenues for the first quarter of 2011 were $3.4 million, representing an increase of approximately 26% compared to $2.7 million reported for the same period in 2010. Revenues consist of research and licensing revenues generated under the company's various collaboration agreements with seed companies.

Research & Development expenses for the first quarter of 2011 were $1.2 million, including non-cash financial expenses of $205 thousand for amortization of deferred compensation. This compares with $0.94 million for the same period in 2010, including such non-cash financial expenses of $97 thousand. These increases in Research & Development expenses relate to the development of new genomic technologies, expansion of the company's internal projects and to support our biofuel program.

Loss from ordinary operations for the first quarter of 2011 was $399 thousand, including non-cash financial expenses of $665 thousand for amortization of deferred compensation. This compares to a profit from ordinary operations of $181 thousand for the same period in 2010, including such non-cash financial expenses of $370 thousand.

Financial expenses due to publicly traded warrants: As of March 31, 2011, Evogene had approximately 3.5 million publicly traded series 2 warrants outstanding which were issued in 2007 as part of its IPO on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. These warrants will expire, if not previously exercised, at the end of this month (May 31, 2011). Although not impacting the actual financial status of the Company or its cash balances, any change as of the end of a reporting period in the market price of the Company’s ordinary shares results in non-cash financial income (expense) due to revaluation of warrants on our statements of comprehensive income and a corresponding decrease or increase in the non-cash liability related to traded warrants on our balance sheets, which has an effect on Evogene's comprehensive profit as detailed hereunder.

Comprehensive profit for the first quarter of 2011 was $1.1 million, which includes $1.0 million of non-cash financial revenues due to publicly traded warrants, as described above, compared to a total comprehensive loss of $3.7 million, including $3.6 million of such non-cash financial expenses for the same period in 2010.

Cash Status: As of March 31, 2011, Evogene had $50.1 million in cash, cash equivalents, cash deposits and short-term marketable securities, including $12 million received in January 2011 pursuant to the Bayer CropScience agreement signed in late 2010, compared to $35.8 million as of December 31, 2010.

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