La Jolla, Calif.--March 24, 2006--Senomyx, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNMX), a leading company focused on using proprietary technologies to discover and develop novel flavor ingredients for the packaged food and beverage industry, announced today the expansion and amendment of its agreement with Nestle SA, the world's largest food company.
The agreement, which covers the discovery and commercialization of novel flavors and flavor enhancers in the dehydrated and culinary food, frozen food, and wet soup product categories, has been expanded to include commercialization of novel flavors and flavor enhancers in the pet food category on a co-exclusive basis. Upon commercialization, Senomyx will receive royalty payments based on sales of products containing its flavors and flavor enhancers developed under the amended agreement. The amendment also allows Senomyx to reacquire specified rights from Nestle in certain areas.
"We are extremely pleased to expand our agreement with Nestle into a large, new category," said Kent Snyder, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company.
In addition to the expansion, the agreement has been amended to allow Senomyx to reacquire rights to certain of its flavor ingredients in certain geographic regions. As a result of the amendment, Nestle now has rights to flavor ingredients in Europe, Asia, Israel, Oceania, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America in specified product categories within the dehydrated and culinary food, frozen food, and/or wet soup product categories, as well as worldwide rights for the pet food category, while Senomyx has certain rights in North America and specified product categories in other geographic regions.
"Senomyx seeks to maximize the value of our assets by granting license rights in specified geographies to the flavor ingredients resulting from our discovery and development programs based on the strengths and needs of our partners," Snyder explained. "The strategy of granting either worldwide or selected regional rights is intended to enable Senomyx to optimize potential royalties that could be received from commercialization of products containing the Company's flavor ingredients," Snyder added.
"We look forward to continuing our work with Nestle," Snyder said. "Senomyx now has eight product discovery and development collaborations with six of the world's foremost packaged food and beverage companies: Ajinomoto, Cadbury Schweppes, Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, and Nestle. We believe that these collaborations provide further validation of Senomyx's technology and business model, and are consistent with our goal of maximizing Senomyx's economic value by continuing to leverage our unique capabilities."