New Lumber
Some stuff on Amyris & Ginkgo Timeline :
June 28 --- The Partnership
Amyris and Ginkgo Bioworks enter into a Strategic Partnership Agreement. A PR and Form 8-K were released the following day.
June 29 --- The PR
The two Companies announced a new partnership, which will enable the Companies to jointly develop products more efficiently and cost effectively, accelerating time to market. The partnership is expected to generate over $300 Million in incremental value for both Companies over the next 5 years.
June 29 --- The SEC Form 8-K
This Form 8-K stated some of the terms. Like how Amyris was going to transfer certain intellectual property over to Ginkgo by June 30 in exchange for a fee of $20 Million Dollars to be paid by Ginkgo to Amyris in two installments, plus a 10% royalty --- Remember, these money transactions always correspond to the transferring of proprietary intellectual property from one company to the other.
Also mentioned in this Form 8-K, was that Amyris would also issue to Ginkgo an option to purchase about 5 Million shares of common stock at an exercise price of 50 cents --- This was the warrant issued a few weeks ago (current Form D) in exchange for and in connection with the transfer of certain information technology... but this time from Ginkgo to Amyris.
So it sounds typical... like the mutual swapping of intellectual information in exchange for some form of money, from both sides of the table, as being part of the consummation process of the agreement.
July --- The $20 Million Dollars
The $15 Million first payment to Amyris was received around this time and will be accounted for as revenue in this current July-Sept quarter. The remaining $5 Million second payment will be made to Amyris by March 31, 2017.
August 6 - Warrant Issued
The warrant that was suggested in the June 29 Form 8-K is issued to Ginkgo from Amyris, as per the agreement.
August 9 --- The SEC Form 10-Q
On page 54 they state that the warrant was officially issued to Ginkgo on August 6, and is in connection with the transfer of certain information technology from Ginkgo to Amyris.
August 19 --- The SEC Form D
Since the warrant/shares were a small amount and are not registered, a Form-D (notice of exempt offering) is to be filed within 15 days. For example, this same form was used when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation bought that 5 Million shares or so, not that long ago.
My Take
If you read between the lines it sounds like they are telling you that by issuing the warrant it finalizes the definitive partnership agreement, by now allowing the transfer of proprietary info-technology from Ginkgo to Amyris (Amyris had already transferred to Ginkgo their own info-tech for $20M). This may have been the last step in completely consummating the relationship. Maybe that's just one of the reasons that started the build-up in the stock's activity.
Analogy
This may be a close analogy, but let's say you have all of these big Contractors and Companies that build homes and buildings that require lumber. They all rely on lumber yards for their material. So now a new Lumber Company comes along that provides a new type of lumber that is made from a new disruptive and less expensive material and process. So one-by-one all of those big Building Companies start switching over to this new type of lumber. Or... a new computer-chip manufacturing Company comes up with a better and less expensive chip manufacturing material and process, for supplying chips for all of those end user products. Maybe that's not a good analogy, but Amyris is something like that. A buyout is always a possibility, especially if they keep building their base interest with big-named Companies and Organizations like they have been doing.
Will be interested to see what Amyris has lined up next.
GLTA
