Boston-based Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings Inc. announced that it's granted nearly 10 million stock options to 139 former Bayer AG employees who work at the campus and labs in West Sacramento that Ginkgo bought from Bayer.
In October, Ginkgo (NYSE: DNA) completed an $83 million deal with Bayer to take over its West Sacramento Bayer Crop Science biologics research and development site and to take on its employees.
Ginkgo announced today that it granted 9.87 million restricted stock units to 139 new employees.
The former Bayer employees will vest 25% of their shares a year after the acquisition, and then they will gain portions of the rest of their shares monthly over four years.
The options are likely an incentive to help keep the employees, especially in this region where there are multiple life sciences, biotechnology and biologics employers.
Ginkgo representatives could not immediately be reached to discuss the options.
Ginkgo shares rose 1 cent today to $1.99 a share. The company has a stock market capitalization of $3.86 billion.
The two companies came to an agreement in July for Ginkgo to buy Bayer’s 175,000-square-foot West Sacramento main building with its employees, and for the companies to work together on new technologies in agriculture.
The West Sacramento deal also included 25,000 square feet of scientific greenhouses in the same office park in West Sacramento.
Ginkgo Bioworks uses genetic engineering to create microbes with agricultural or industrial applications. As part of the deal, Bayer and Ginkgo will partner to develop biologics for agriculture.
Joyn Bio, a joint venture created by Bayer and Ginkgo Bioworks in 2017 and seeded with $100 million, will be integrated into Ginkgo Bioworks.
As part of the agreement, Bayer retains the right to commercialize Joyn’s nitrogen fixing technology. Nitrogen is a powerful fertilizer, but synthetic nitrogen is expensive and can run off fields into water systems. Having biological organisms that are able to capture free nitrogen from the air and soil to make nitrogen compounds is seen as a breakthrough for biologics research. Nitrogen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere, but plants alone cannot access it without outside biological reactions.
Ginkgo also announced that it granted 8.3 million options to 179 new employees in connection with its acquisition in October of Zymergen based in Emeryville.
Last month, Ginkgo reported a loss of $1.93 billion for the first nine months of 2022, compared to a loss of $231.6 million in the year-earlier period. The company's revenue more than doubled in the first three quarters to $379.4 million.
