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<\/dt>\n- Royal Dutch Shell<\/dd>\n
- Making microbes, Codexis style.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n
Earlier this week, Codexis Inc. filed for a $100 million initial public offering on Nasdaq. The short press release is here<\/a> and we\u0092ve uploaded the entire 841-page file for your reading pleasure here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Codexis, as you may recall, is a San Francisco-based company developing the microbes to chew up plants and turn them into sugars, which are then turned into ethanol and diesel. Shell owns a 20% stake in the company and is pumping about $15 million a quarter into research and development. It filed for an IPO before, but then pulled back in September 2008 citing \u0093current public market conditions.<\/a>\u0094<\/p>\n
That was good timing. Two weeks later, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Within three weeks, American International Group was bailed out and Bank of America had bought Merrill Lynch.<\/p>\n
An alternative energy, U.S.-listed IPO is something of a novelty. The last biofuels IPO was way back in December 2007, when Chinese biodiesel maker Gushan Environmental Energy Ltd. debuted. After that there have only been three IPOs \u0096 solar outfits Real Goods Solar, GT Solar and STR Holdings. (Hat tip to Dealogic for the data.) Battery maker A123 began trading a couple months ago also. <\/p>\n
Will Codexis timing be any better this time around? There are still plenty of potholes.<\/p>\n
The beauty of an IPO filing is that the company must file all sorts of risk factors laying out exactly what can go wrong. And in the biofuels business, that\u0092s quite a lengthy list. Codexis (and its lawyers) cite: its sugar daddy Shell could decide it wants to stop bankrolling R&D efforts; \u0093the development of technology for converting sugar derived from non-food renewable biomass sources into a commercially viable biofuel is still in its early stages, and we do not know whether this can be done commercially or at all\u0094; \u0093there are no commercial scale cellulosic biofuel production plants in operation. There can be no assurance that anyone will be able or willing to develop and operate biofuel production plants at commercial scale or that any biofuel facilities can be profitable\u0094; new infrastructure is needed, such as rail lines; tax credits and other government subsidies could disappear; falling oil prices will pole axe revenue; fears of genetic engineering could pinch the company; and there might not be enough feedstock to turn into biofuels.<\/p>\n
Take a deep breathe. There\u0092s one more, although it\u0092s really only applicable to Codexis: \u0093Our headquarters is located in the San Francisco Bay Area near known earthquake fault zones and is vulnerable to significant damage from earthquakes.\u0094<\/p>\n
A swarm of locusts is not mentioned.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Biofuels investing is not for the faint of heart. Royal Dutch Shell Making microbes, Codexis style. Earlier this week, Codexis Inc. filed for a $100 million initial public offering on Nasdaq. The short press release is here and we\u0092ve uploaded the entire 841-page file for your reading pleasure here. Codexis, as you may recall, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":934,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/934"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111969\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Making microbes, Codexis style.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n