Evolva Announces Oliver Walker to Succeed Simon Waddington as CEO

Evolva (SIX: EVE) announces today that, as part of entering the next phase of its evolution, the current Evolva CEO Simon Waddington steps down as CEO with immediate effect. Until he will leave the company towards the end of 2018, he will support the new CEO in completing work on Evolva’s technology base. This will include the building of a framework for an innovation pipeline that will deliver commercially attractive new products.

Our current CFO, Oliver Walker, who has co-led the company’s strategic development, will be Evolva’s new CEO. He will retain his financial responsibilities with the current VP Finance Alessandro Del Fabro leading the financial operations. Scott Fabro, Evolva’s Chief Commercial Officer, will additionally assume the role of Chief Operating Officer as he will be taking responsibility also for the supply chain. There are no near-term plans to expand the executive management team as Evolva’s R&D activities in Reinach will be led by Astrid Schäfer. She joined Evolva in 2010 and held several critical research roles.

Simon, Oliver and Scott have led the planning and execution of the Company's corporate restructuring and transformation from July 2017. The important achievements have been raising CHF 86M in equity in November 2017, significantly reducing the cash burn rate, centralizing most R&D activities in the Swiss headquarters and building a strong commercial organization. In addition, during the past 12 months Evolva has filed for registration of its breakthrough, next-generation pest control product nootkatone and restructured the Cargill-stevia commercial agreement to maximize shareholder value with reduced financial commitments.

As the major parts of restructuring are completed, Evolva now enters the next phase of its development with a strong focus on commercial and operational activities. This will also include expanding the current product range with "ready-to-go-to-market” products and exploiting Evolva’s ability to rapidly go from product concept to commercial reality. The new CEO will be physically located at Evolva’s headquarters in Reinach, Switzerland, with the COO being located in the USA, the main market for Evolva’s innovative products.

Gerard Hoetmer, Chairman of Evolva’s Board of Directors, said: "On behalf of the whole Board, I would like to thank Simon for all his efforts in building Evolva during the last seven years and especially to carry out the transformation during the last twelve months. We are confident that under Oliver’s leadership Evolva will further accelerate its activities to build the business and reach its true potential.”

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About Evolva

Evolva solves the supply chain issues of nature through a 21st century mix of biotechnology and fermentation. We develop, make and sell ingredients that provide significant health, wellness and nutrition benefits to people in their daily life, but whose supply chain issues have limited their use until now. Our flagship ingredients are stevia, nootkatone and resveratrol. To make our world sustainable requires nature and technology to work together as one, and our aim is to play a (small) part in achieving this transformation. For more information see www.evolva.com.

This press release contains specific forward-looking statements, e.g. statements including terms like believe, assume, expect or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may result in a substantial divergence between the actual results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and those explicitly or implicitly presumed in these statements. Against the background of these uncertainties readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The company assumes no responsibility to update forward-looking statements or to adapt them to future events or developments.

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