- S2383 first commercial scale sales by Firmenich were in early 1q2011, so will book royalties in 2q2011
- Many customers completing S2383 product prototype evaluations in many product categories including beverages, cereals, dairy, bakes goods, and confectionaries
- There are 5000 retail products that incorporate sucralose (aka Splenda)
- 2010 world market for sucrose was $98 billion, for MSG was > $5 billion, for cooling ingredients was $1.2-1.6 billion
- Expect first sales of S6973 sucrose enhancer by Firmenich is 2011- have now scaled up to commercial quantities
- Evaluating new sucrose enhancers that are better suited for beverages (ie, Pepsi PEP collaboration), still seeing ability to reduce up to 50% of sucrose- product prototype evaluation is ongoing, could see development candidate selected in 2011
- Fructose enhancers have successfully demonstrated taste proof of concept, now optimizing and evaluating in taste tests
- Renewed efforts on identifying natural sweeteners began summer 2010
- S6821 bitter blocker is under evaluation by at least 2 undisclosed partners (one is clearly Solae for soy products), hope to have more to say as go thru 2011
- Cool flavor program- hope to have more news in 2011- have candidates that overcome limitations of current ingredients such as menthol
- $74m of committed revenue on books ($38m in deferred recognition of upfront, $36m more research funding coming from partners, especially PEP)
- Continued new savory product launches including reformulations of existing products by Nestle and Ajinomoto
- Salt program- continue to try to identify the salt receptor protein, and then would seek taste POC
- "Always have irons in the fire" regarding new and expanded collaborations
- Sweet program not really open to additional collaborations (and therefore new development funding), with the exception of natural high potency sweeteners (other rights locked up by Pepsi and Firmenich)
- 2011 guiding for $4m in commercial revenue, up from $2.6m in 2010
- Have been approached to develop enhancers or bitter blockers for Stevia/RebA products
- A question was asked regarding statements by Pepsi that they are very close to a break-through in launching new beverage products with reduced sugar and new flavor ingredients. SNMX wouldn't confirm or deny that this referred to a potential SNMX molecule, "too early to say" whether this means SNMX candidate or could arise from some other part of Pepsi's overall technology platform. Pepsi has also stated a goal of reducing added sugar in beverages by 25% by 2020. This clearly sounds like it could involve SNMX, but they haven't given timing of when sucrose or fructose enhancers could receive GRAS status (but I think they can't be so coy as to not announce the selection of a development candidate since it triggers a material milestone. But they could submit more than one ingredient for GRAS, like they did with the bitter blockers- and then just out of the blue announced that GRAS had been received, ahead of the forcasted schedule)