Earnings Labs

Aethlon Medical, Inc. (AEMD)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 13, 2015

$2.19

+0.92%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-7.05%

1 Week

-12.50%

1 Month

+12.10%

vs S&P

+16.99%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. And welcome to the Aethlon Medical First Quarter Fiscal 2016 Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brad Edwards with Brainerd Communications (sic) [Communicators]. Please go ahead, sir.

Brad Edwards

Analyst

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to Aethlon Medical’s fiscal 2016 first quarter conference call. Hosting the call today are Aethlon’s Chairman and CEO, Jim Joyce, as well as the company’s CFO, Jim Frakes. Mr. Joyce will provide an overview of Aethlon strategy, clinical testing status and recent developments. Mr. Frakes will then make some brief remarks on Aethlon’s financials. We will then open up the call for the Q&A session. Before I hand the call over to Mr. Joyce, please note that the news release today and this call contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Securities Act of 1933, and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or suggested by such forward-looking statements. Statements containing words such as, may, believe, anticipate, expect, intend, plan, project, will, projections, estimate, or similar expressions constitute forward-looking statements. Factors that may contribute to such differences include without limitation risks related to the company's ability to develop and commercialize its products, the ability to fund and complete clinical testing of the company's products, the company's ability to raise working capital if and when needed, the company's ability to protect its intellectual property, the impact of changing government regulations on biomedical devices, the ability of the company to meet the milestones contemplated in its contract with DARPA and other risk factors. The foregoing list of risks and uncertainties is illustrative, but is not exhaustive. Additional risk factors can be found under the caption Risk Factors in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2015 and in the company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For a more detail discussion of the risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements, please see the company’s public filings, all available on Aethlon’s website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Mr. Joyce.

Jim Joyce

Analyst

Thank you, Brad, and good afternoon, everyone. It’s been a busy summer, so let’s get started by recapping some recent corporate milestones. On June 25th, we reported a completion of the $6 million financing, the following day we incorporated the net proceeds of this offering into a pro forma balance sheet that was submitted to the SEC through our annual 10-K report. The pro forma balance sheet reported that the proceeds and offering contributed to an overall $21 million positive shift in our shareholders equity as compared to our previous 3/31/14 fiscal year end report. More importantly, the proceeds allowed us to meet the final threshold requirement to list our securities on the Nasdaq Capital Market. Nasdaq approved our listing on July 8th, on July 13th our shares began formal trading on Nasdaq and on July 24th, we rang the Nasdaq closing bells as part of the ceremony to celebrate this milestone event. I want to thank the members of our team, our Board, and long-term shareholders, who are all instrumental on this achievement. As a result of the financing, we secured the necessary capital resources to advance the FDA-approved feasibility study of Hemopurifier therapy that we previously initiated to support a broad spectrum of viral indications. And by listing on Nasdaq, we broaden our assets to the capital market. More specifically, we are now able to list the support of institutional healthcare investors that previously restricted from owning our shares. We believe that our graduation in Nasdaq will also strengthen our profile within the medical community and with candidate partners. In culmination, these factors provide a realistic backdrop for us to expand our therapeutic pipeline to include clinical opportunities to treat cancer, which could become a contributor of the long-term value and partnering opportunities. Going forward, our primary focus…

Jim Frakes

Analyst

Thanks, Jim. Given our strategy and the stage of our development as a US clinical progression story, we are not focused on the generation of revenues at this time. However, with that said, in the first quarter we generated revenue of approximately $193,000, which was related to work performed under our government contracts with DARPA. We have worked with DARPA since September 2011 and our agreement runs through September 2015, with DARPA holding an option to extend it to September 2016. We have an excellent relationship with DARPA over the past four years and are pleased with discussions for DARPA to pick up the option for the final year of the contract. Our operating expenses in the quarter were approximately $1.3 million, compared to $1.2 million in the June 2014 quarter. This increase of approximately $60,000, or 4.8%, was due to increases in professional fees of $136,000 and in general and administration expenses of $85,000, which were partially offset by a decrease in payroll and related expenses of $163,000. The increase in professional fees was due to increases in legal fees and accounting fees, primarily related to work on several registration statements in turn related to our financings. For a more detailed review of the movements in our operating expenses, I’d like to refer you to the earnings release that we put out after the close today or to our Form 10-Q, which we expect to file later on today. And finally, as of June 30, 2015, we have $4.9 million of working capital and $5.6 million of cash. Our cash position reflects the successful financing we completed in June which raised over $5.6 million in net proceeds, and we continue to believe we have sufficient cash and expected revenues to fund our operations, including current clinical trials through fiscal 2016. And now Jim Joyce and I would be happy to take any questions that you may have.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from Marc Robins of Catalyst Research.

Marc Robins

Analyst

Hey, thank you. Jim, Jim, congratulations on your first conference call.

Jim Joyce

Analyst

Thank you, Marc.

Marc Robins

Analyst

Help me to understand a little more about your objective, number one. You said that you have a proven performance with DARPA and the focus has been sepsis that we understand. You build and received $4.9 million of revenues. You hope that -- you’ve got another $200,000 to collect. You hope they approve year five of the sepsis project. They also allowed you to shift about $1.5 million from research activity to production activity. And I was just wondering is there an opportunity to here where DARPA might be interested in expanding their research development efforts into other areas that would benefit the company?

Jim Joyce

Analyst

Mark, I appreciate your question. The DARPA program -- first, I want to point out that the goal of the DARPA program is to complete the development of the device through a combination of multiple team players that is ready to be submitted through an IDE to FDA at the end of year five. Along the way, different performers have achieved different milestones. Along the way in our case, we have collected human data which is very valuable. I think as a result of our increasing collection of human data and the increasing knowledge that latent viral pathogens contribute primarily to mortality in sepsis patients. There is the possibility that we could rearrange some of our milestone developments. And certainly, we’d like to talk to DARPA about other programs in the future. But we've appreciated their ability to rearrange revenues to help support our manufacturing. Some of that support actually contributed to a most recent GMP manufacturing run of Hemopurifiers that were shipped to our clinical site in Houston. So, I appreciate the question. We’ve enjoyed our relationship with DARPA and other participants in the program.

Mark Robbins

Analyst

Thank you.

Jim Joyce

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes our question-and-answer Session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any cleansing remarks.

Jim Joyce

Analyst

I appreciate everyone's participation. I hope everybody will tune-in in approximately 90 days when we have our next quarterly call. And we’ll discuss the milestone objectives that we laid out and assess our progress.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.