Grainnet

Rehovot, Israel—Evogene Ltd. (TASE: EVGN) announced today its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2010.

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Ofer Haviv, Evogene's president and CEO, stated: "During the past quarter, we continued to progress under our current collaborations with world leading seed companies, including Bayer CropScience, Monsanto, Pioneer/Dupont and Syngenta.

"In addition, during the past quarter, we announced a continuation agreement with Biogemma, a company in the Limagrain group, for development and commercialization by Biogemma of Evogene's yield and drought tolerance genes in corn.

"This new agreement follows results of a joint evaluation of the genes in corn field trials in both the United States and Israel."

Mr. Haviv continued: "In addition, during the past quarter, we continued to enhance our R&D capabilities, primarily with new computational techniques and tools being developed for the ATHLETE core technology for gene discovery -- which is the basis for most of our current activities; the RePack core technology under development for prediction of biological regulatory features of genes; and the EvoBreed core technology under development for significantly accelerating breeding processes through the incorporation of advanced computational tools.

"We also achieved progress in our biofuel program, which is currently focused on the development of castor as feedstock for biodiesel and biojet fuels.

"This progress included expanding the field evaluation of the castor lines under development to the target locations for future commercialization -- Texas and Brazil -- and demonstrating the sustainability of castor growth through the completion of a Life Cycle Analysis."

Revenues for the first quarter of 2010 were $2.7 million, compared to $2.4 million reported for the same period in 2009.

Loss from ordinary operations for the first quarter of 2010 was $181 thousand, compared to a profit from ordinary operations of $624 thousand in the same period in 2009.

The loss from ordinary operations in the first quarter of 2010 is mainly due to increase in Research & Development expenses, which totaled $939 thousand in the first quarter of the year compared to $340 thousand in the first quarter last year.

Such increase in Research & Development expenses is due to the expansion of the company's internal projects, mainly development of new core computational technologies and resulting increase in staff to support these projects.

Total comprehensive loss for the first quarter of 2010 was $3.7 million, or $0.14 per share, compared to $1.4 million, or $0.06 per share, in the same period in 2009.

The comprehensive loss for the first quarter of 2010 includes $3.6 million of non-cash financial expenses, compared to $1.5 million for the same period in 2009.

These non-cash charges are due primarily to the revaluation for accounting purposes of the publicly traded options issued in the 2007 IPO due to the increase in market price of the Company's ordinary shares during such time periods.

As of December 31, 2009, Evogene had $37.8 million in cash, cash equivalents, cash deposits and short-term marketable securities, compared to $38.2 million as of December 31, 2009.

For more information, call +972-8-931-1933.

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