Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Achieve Life Sciences Second Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Ashley and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference to Jaime Welch, Executive Vice President of Commercial at Achieve. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ashley and thanks everyone for joining us. With me today from Achieve are Rick Stewart, Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Anthony Clarke, Chief Scientific Officer; and John Bencich, Chief Financial and Operating Officer. Dr. Cindy Jacobs, our Chief Medical Officer is unable to join today's call. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that today’s conference call contains forward-looking statements based on current expectations. These statements are only predictions, and actual results may vary materially from those projected. Please refer to Achieve documents filed with the SEC concerning factors that could affect the company, copies of which are available on the website. I’ll now turn the call over to Rick.

Thank you, Jaime. On today's call we will provide an update on the tremendous progress of the cytosine clinical development program. We'll also discuss the near-term milestones that we believe have the potential to create significant value for the company over the next 12 months. We will additionally look at the smoking cessation market opportunity in the U.S. and globally, provide additional information on the history of cytosine and provide a summary on the nonclinical and clinical activities to date. Following on cytosine program updates, John will discuss our recent financing and second quarter 2018 financial results. I'd like to begin by first providing an overview of the status of smoking and nicotine addiction and why we believe cytosine is well positioned to address this critical need. Globally there are over 1 billion smokers. In the U.S. alone there are an estimated 36.5 million smokers and nearly half a million die every year as a direct result of smoking related illness, that's one person every minute. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death and approximately 30% of all cancer deaths are attributed to smoking. The CDC estimates that more people are addicted to nicotine than any other drug and reports that nearly 70% of all smokers desire to quit and 55% make a quit attempt each year. Despite this high number of attempts, only between 4% and 7% of people are successful in quitting smoking a year. While a majority of biotech companies are dedicating efforts to cancer treatments our focus at Achieve is to advance cytosine to help people quit smoking and reduce not just cancer prevalence, but other diseases including pulmonary, cardiovascular and diabetes. It is worth taking a moment to review the long history of cytosine as a smoking cessation aid. Cytosine is a well established…

Thanks Rick. As Rick highlighted earlier we were pleased to announce in June the closing of an underwritten public offering of common stock, preferred stock, and warrants that resulted in gross proceeds of $13.8 million which included the full exercise of the underwriter's overallotment option. After deducting underwriting discounts, commissions and offering expenses, the offering resulted in net cash of approximately $12.2 million. Importantly, full exercise of the warrants issued in the offering has the potential to generate additional proceeds of $13.8 million. We plan to use the net proceeds from the financing for working capital and other general corporate purposes including funding ongoing operations and to continue the development of cytosine in the clinic including the initiation of the Phase 2b trial in the fourth quarter of this year. Details of the offering include Class A units priced at $4 per unit with each unit consisting of one share of common stock and a five-year warrant to purchase one share of common stock with an exercise price of $4 per share and Class B units priced at $1000 per unit with each unit comprised of one share Series A preferred stock which is convertible into 250 shares of common stock and a five-year warrant to purchase 250 shares of common stock also with an exercise price of $4 per share. The conversion price of the preferred stock issued in the transaction as well as the exercise price of the warrants are fixed and do not contain any variable pricing features or any price based anti-dilutive features. The preferred stock issued in the transaction includes a beneficial ownership blocker, but has no dividend rights except when also paid on common stock, no liquidation preference or other preferences over common stock and with certain limited exception has no voting rights. As of June 30, 2018 our cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments were $15.3 million compared with $4.4 million as of March 31, 2018. In addition to the net proceeds from the June financing, our June 30 cash balance also includes $428,000 in proceeds resulting from the exercise of warrants issued in the June financing. Total operating expenses and net loss for the three months and six months ended June 30, 2018 were $2.8 million and $5.8 million respectively. That concludes the summary of our second quarter financial results. I would now like to turn the call back over to Rick.

Thank you, John. In conclusion, a substantial market and patient need exists in the U.S. and globally for a safe and effective smoking cessation treatment. We believe cytosine can address this need as an alternative to existing treatments. Cytosine has the potential for better efficacy than NRTs at potentially superior side effect profile than existing prescription drugs. Over the next few months we have several anticipated key milestone that we believe will continue to propel the cytosine development program forward, including the initiation of our Phase 2b optimization trial later this year and completion of our new food effect study. We look forward to providing you with an update on these and additional advancements in the near future. Thank you again for your continued interest in Achieve.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may all disconnect and everybody have a great day.