The Four Horsemen of the Financials: Gevo, Solazyme, Amyris Report for Q3
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) In years gone by, it was not too hard to write up a summary of Gevo, Solazyme and Amyris — all aimed at fuels, all in the development stage, all used synthetic biology in closed fermenters, all had big backers ranging from brand-name equity partners to big-time strategics, all went public in the same 2010-11 IPO window.
These days, much more complex. It’s a jungle of production costs, average selling prices, offtake deals, LOIs, and MOUs. Following them requires just a certain mastering of the markets in farnesene, dielectric acid, paraxylene, oleic oil, erucic acid, squalane, fragrance oils, skin cream. Oh, and fuels like renewable diesel, biodiesel, isobutanol and jet fuel, too.
But we need not look only at the complications, friend. All you have to do is locate and measure the four horsemen of the financials — the items that are critical for industrial biotechnology at scale..
As Grantland Rice was moved to observe, you might know the Four Horsemen by aliases. In industrial biotech, you might have heard them described as Revenues, Strength, Capacity and Mix. But they are the Pale Horse, the Black Horse, the Red Horse and the White Horse.
They deliver the company from the high-value, small-market products at the top end of the price curve to the lower-value, high-volume products (where fuels reside, for example). So, the Q3 results are in and what have we learned? READ MORE and MORE (Solazyme) and MORE (Biomass Magazine)