Facing delisting, Roseville-based Calyxt to merge with California agtech firm

Roseville-based Calyxt Inc., a plant-based synthetic biology company, will merge with San Diego-based Cibus.

Calyxt will be folded into Cibus and headquartered in southern California. The Minnesota company, which specializes in gene editing plants, was facing the threat of delisting.

With poor stock performance, Calyxt began looking for a lifeline in September, announcing it was exploring "potential strategic alternatives". Cibus is also an agriculture technology firm specializing in gene editing.

After the closing of the all-stock deal, Calyxt shareholders will own approximately 5% of the combined company called Cibus Inc. Calyxt's offices, laboratories and breeding facilities in Roseville will remain operational and serve as a "key site" for the combined company.

Cibus's management team will lead the combined company with Rory Riggs as CEO.

"We believe the majority of the [40] employees will stay on," said Bill Koschak, Calyxt's chief financial officer.

Calyxt is the commercial offshoot of research work done at the University of Minnesota. In 2018, researchers at the university turned off genes in soybeans that make trans fats in soybean oil. It was among the first gene-edited crop recognized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In October 2021, the firm changed its business model from focusing solely on its own product pipeline to licensing its synthetic biology technology to other companies. This opened Calyxt to a wider range of industries, including cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

Calyxt reported just $42,000 in third quarter revenue, a drop of more than 99% from the $7.8 million it had reported in third quarter sales in 2021.

The sharp revenue drop was attributed to the wind-down of the company's soybean product line in late 2021.

Paris-based bio-technology company Cellectis is its largest shareholder, owning 56% of Calyxt's shares, according to its most recent proxy statement.

Calyxt ended 2021 with $26 million in annual sales and a net loss of $29.2 million.

It closed at 19 cents per share last Friday before spiking 90% to close at 35 cents a share Tuesday.

The Nasdaq exchange notified the company last May that it was at risk for being delisted because its stock had been below $1 per share for 30 consecutive days. In November, the company announced that the exchange had granted it a 180-day extension to try to regain compliance.