About Ceres (adapted from Ceres prospectus):
Ceres is an agricultural biotechnology company selling seeds to produce renewable biomass feedstocks that can enable the large-scale replacement of petroleum and other fossil fuels. Ceres uses a combination of advanced plant breeding and biotechnology to develop new crops, known as dedicated energy crops, that they believe address the limitations of first-generation bioenergy feedstocks, such as corn and sugarcane, increase biomass productivity, reduce crop inputs and improve cultivation on marginal land.
Their first large-scale commercial products are proprietary sweet sorghum varieties that can be used as a "drop-in" feedstock to extend the operating season of Brazilian sugarcane-to-ethanol mills, the operating days of which are currently limited due to the inherent limitations of sugarcane physiology and growth patterns. Ceres' dedicated energy crops can also be used for the production of second-generation biofuels and bio-based chemicals, including cellulosic ethanol, butanol, jet fuel, diesel-like molecules and gasoline-like molecules, from non-food biomass. Finally, baseload utility-scale electric power can also be generated from the biomass feedstocks grown from Ceres seeds.
The seed industry has historically required very little capital to manufacture seeds, and seeds have typically been sold at prices that generate high gross margins. As a producer of proprietary seeds, Ceres believes they are in the most attractive segment of the bioenergy value chain — upstream from the capital intensive refining and conversion of biomass.
Ceres believes that, "the strength of our technology has been validated by the receipt of multiple competitive grants and collaborations, including a United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, grant and one of the U.S. Department of Energy's first Advanced Research Project Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E, grants in 2009, as well as a $137 million multi-year collaboration with Monsanto Company signed in 2002."
This description is adapted from Ceres prospectus. This description is not intended to be a recommendation to buy stock from this company. We do not claim that all of the statements above were researched and found to be true. We present them as a general description based on what the company has said about itself at the time that they submitted their prospectus for an IPO offering. To see the company's full description, view their prospectus.. 
