Rehovot, Israel
May 15, 2012

Evogene Ltd. (TASE: EVGN) announced today its financial results for the first quarter, ended March 31, 2012.

Ofer Haviv, Evogene's president and CEO, stated: "I am pleased to report that during the past quarter, we continued to successfully meet the targets under our various collaborations with multinational seed companies, including Monsanto, Bayer CropScience and Dupont. These collaborations focus on improving key plant traits for the world's major food crops through the application of Evogene's computational genomics technologies. With respect to our on-going extensions and enhancements of our genomics technologies, during the past quarter we launched an advanced version of ATHLETE TM 4.0 and continued to invest in further development of our Gene2ProductTM and EvoBreedTM platforms.

Also, in order to provide the required infrastructure for our continuing growth, we completed a greater than 50% expansion of our R&D facilities, primarily laboratories and plant growth facilities; along with a greater than 30% increase in our professional staff, from 115 people as of the end of 2010 to 150 today. With respect to data generation, capture and analysis, we continued to make substantial investments. These investments are largely focused on establishment of multiple field experiments, automated data collection directly from the field and further enhancing Evogene's capabilities as one of the world leading companies in 'big-data' management of plants genomics."

Mr. Haviv continued "In addition, we are continuing to create value through additional growth engines, leveraging Evogene's unique plant genomics capabilities - in the past quarter, we announced the creation of Evofuel as a wholly owned subsidiary. In light of the promising business and scientific viability that this activity has shown, all of Evogene’s biofuel program currently focused on Brazil as a main market for the development and commercialization of our castor bean varieties, have now been transferred to this new subsidiary.”

Revenues for the first quarter of 2012 increased approximately 24% to $4.2 million, compared to $3.4 million for the same period in 2011. Evogene’s current revenues consist primarily of research and licensing revenues generated under the company's various collaboration agreements with seed companies.

Cost of Revenues include expenses related to the support of our on-going activities under our collaborations with seed companies, all of which provide for future milestone and royalties revenues. Cost of Revenues for the first quarter of 2012 was $2.1 million, compared to $1.7 million for the same period in 2011. This increase in Cost of Revenues primarily relates to the extension of our collaboration with Monsanto.

Research & Development expenses for the first quarter of 2012, which do not include expenses incurred in support of on-going collaborations which, as stated above, are accounted for as Cost of Revenues, were $1.5 million. This compared to $1.2 million for the same period in 2011. Research & Development expenses mainly relate to the development of new computational technology platforms, expansion of internal research projects and to support our wholly owned subsidiary, Evofuel.

Loss from ordinary operations for the first quarter of 2012 was $0.1 million, compared to a loss from ordinary operations of $0.4 million for the same period in 2011.

Financial expenses during 2011 due to publicly traded warrants: During the first two quarters of calendar 2011, Evogene had approximately 4.5 million publicly traded warrants outstanding, which were issued as part of its IPO on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in May 2007. As of May 31, 2011, the date of expiration of these warrants, over 99.9% of which had been exercised. While these warrants were outstanding, any change as of the end of a reporting period in the market price of the Company’s ordinary shares resulted in non-cash financial income/expense due to their revaluation on our statements of comprehensive profit or loss. These non-cash financial income/expense due to publicly traded warrants were no longer applicable after the second quarter of 2011.

Total Comprehensive profit for the first quarter of 2012 was $0.5 million, compared to a total comprehensive profit of $1.1 million for the same period in 2011. Total comprehensive profit for the first quarter of 2012 does not include any non-cash financial affects due to exercise of most of the publicly traded warrants as stated above, while the comprehensive profit for the first quarter of 2011 includes $1.0 million of such non-cash financial revenues.

As of March 31, 2012, Evogene had approximately $57 million in cash, cash equivalents, cash deposits and short-term marketable securities, compared to approximately $59 million, as of December 31, 2011.

Financial tables

Website: http://www.evogene.com

Published: May 15, 2012