NewLeaf Symbiotics, a St. Louis-based agricultural biotechnology company, remains several years away from an exit after closing a USD 45m Series D round in December, said Brent Smith, president and CEO.

Founded in 2015, NewLeaf has raised USD 122m to date, most recently a USD 45m Series D led by new investor Gullspång Re:food and joined by Otter Capital Partners LP, S2G Ventures, Leaps by Bayer and others.

NewLeaf announced 1 March 2023 that Smith had joined the company as president; in July he was elevated to CEO and president. The company’s co-founder and former CEO, Steve Kahn, is now chairman of the board. The other co-founder has left the business but remains an investor, Smith said. Smith previously served as a vice president at Nutrien Ag Solutions, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The goal of the recent capital raise is to advance the company’s technology around pink-pigmented facultative methylotrophs (PPFM)s, Smith said. The company commercialized its first product in 2022, using it on 800,000 acres of corn and soybeans. It now has two commercial products and three others to be launched this year.

Once it is ready to exit, NewLeaf could look at options from a strategic sale to a private equity deal to an IPO, said Smith, though he acknowledged there haven’t been many successful public debuts in the ag biotechnology sector. He also said the company could continue to be “run for cash” and return dividends to shareholders.

As for exit timing, he said “we haven’t gotten to that point. In the next three to five years, there will be opportunities. We are driving environmental and climate impact. If we do that well, the exit will become self-evident.” Smith said the company talked to close to 50 firms when it was raising the Series D.

NewLeaf has a Likely to Exit score of 14 out of 100. Mergermarket’s LTE predictive analytics assign a score to sponsor-backed companies to help track and predict when an exit could occur through M&A, an IPO, a direct listing or a deSPAC transaction.

“This funding gets us to profitability and (being) self-sustaining,” he said. The company’s margins are high and its cost base is low, Smith said, without giving figures. “We will be a very profitable business.” Smith said revenue doubled from 2022 to 2023 and the company is on track to be profitable this year, assuming it hits its goal of reaching 11 million acres in the US. In 2023, its products were used on 3.5 million acres, he said.

Its plans for this year include a new US Environmental Protection Agency-registered biopesticide technology shown to repel corn rootworm in corn plants, new biostimulant technologies for peanuts and cotton, and continued research and development around rice yield, nitrogen efficiency and methane reduction impact, according to a press release.

The company is interested in developing more partnerships. “We are in about 50 commercial development conversations today,” Smith said. Its five-year plan is to have a segmented go to market strategy globally, by crop, region, technology platform and how it is applied, he said. Partnerships can take the form of licensing, royalty agreements, revenue-sharing and other structures, Smith said.

The company also has agreements to use products in nine countries outside the US – Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ukraine and China – which are awaiting regulatory approval. It has 50 projects in its pipeline, of which 15 are resourced for this year, Smith said.

Down the road, he said the company could look at making acquisitions to broaden its portfolio, but this probably won’t happen for several years.

Polsinelli is the company’s law firm.