Greetings, and welcome to the ClearPoint Neuro, Inc. Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Comments made on this call may include statements that are forward-looking within the meaning of securities laws. These forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements related to anticipated industry trends, the company's plans, prospects and strategies, both preliminary and projected, the size of total addressable markets or the market opportunity for the company's products and services and management's expectations, beliefs, estimates or projections regarding future revenue, results of operations or the adequacy of cash and cash equivalent balances to support operations and meet future obligations. Actual results or trends could differ materially. The company undertakes no obligation to revise forward-looking statements for new information or future events. For more information, please refer to the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, and the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended June 30, 2024, both of which have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended September 30, 2024, which the company attempts to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission on or before November 14, 2024. All the company's filings may be obtained from the SEC or the company's website at www.clearpointneuro.com. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Joe Burnett, President and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. And thank you to all of the investors and analysts on today's call for being a part of the ClearPoint Neuro vision and journey. Our mission and our priority is to help restore quality of life to patients and their families who are suffering from some of the most debilitating neurological disorders imaginable. In the third quarter of 2024, the entire ClearPoint Neuro team contributed to a record revenue quarter of $8.1 million and, in our view, the strongest financial and strategic performance in our history. We made significant progress across all four of our growth pillars, including: number one, biologics and drug delivery; number two, neurosurgery navigation; number three, therapy and access products; and number four, in achieving global scale. As we commented on our last earnings call, we are beginning to see the return on the investments we made over the past three years in the form of growth across all four of our pillars and not only biologics and drug delivery. We are thrilled to report that all four of our growth pillars grew more than 20% in the third quarter, with each segment contributing to the overall top-line results, while at the same time achieving scale and continuing our reduction in operational cash burn. And as continued from the second quarter, we believe we have entered an exciting next phase at ClearPoint Neuro. We have gone beyond being just an MRI navigation focused company. We have added operating room navigation with SmartFrame OR, we have added our own laser therapy solution with Prism, we have added significant preclinical services to support early partnership with biopharma, and we continue to see progress with our cell and gene therapy partners through the clinical and regulatory pathways to commercial approval on a global basis. The first of such gene therapy approvals has the potential of FDA clearance in the months ahead. We are very excited about how these new products and initiatives are performing in the field as well. I will now turn the call over to Danilo, our CFO, to review our financial performance in the quarter, after which, I will add some details to our four pillar growth strategy. Danilo?

Thank you, Joe, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us today. Looking at the third quarter 2024 results. Total revenue was $8.1 million for the three months ended September 30, 2024, in comparison to $5.8 million for the three months ended September 30, 2023, which represents an acceleration to 41% growth versus the third quarter of 2023 and the fourth quarter in a row of growth above 30%. As a reminder, our revenue is made up of three components: Biologics and Drug Delivery, Neurosurgery Navigation and Therapy, and Capital Equipment and Software. Biologics and Drug Delivery revenue includes the sales of disposable products and services related to customer-sponsored preclinical and clinical trials utilizing our products. Biologics and Drug Delivery revenue grew 27% or $4.4 million in the third quarter, up from $3.5 million in 2023. This increase was fueled by a 353% increase in Biologics and Drug Delivery product revenue as our pharmaceutical customers progressed in their preclinical and clinical trials. The Biologics and Drug Delivery product growth was partially offset by $0.7 million decrease in service revenue. Neurosurgery Navigation and Therapy revenue consists of commercial sales of disposable products related to ClearPoint Navigation System, our SmartFrame OR product, and PRISM Laser Therapy disposables. This revenue segment grew 49% to $2.9 million for the third quarter as we activated new accounts and expanded the introduction of SmartFrame OR and the PRISM Laser Therapy. Capital Equipment and Software revenue, consists of sales of ClearPoint Neuro Navigation hardware and software and the PRISM Laser System and of related services, increased 133% to $0.8 million in the third quarter from $0.4 million for the same period in 2023. Gross margin for the third quarter of 2024 was 60% as compared to gross margin of 57% for the third quarter of 2023.…

Thanks, Danilo. As mentioned previously, 2024 continues to be a great year of execution with a 38% year-over-year-to-date increase in revenue, a 39% reduction in operational cash burn, multiple new product launches, additional long-term pharma partnerships, global expansion of our portfolio and a strong cash position with a debt-free balance sheet. As always, let's break that progress down into our four growth pillars. Starting with pillar number one, Biologics and Drug Delivery. We had a terrific quarter on numerous fronts. Let's talk about four recent key milestones in our gene and cell therapy business. First, as Danilo mentioned, we saw a significant increase in actual product sales to pharma partners. This is very important as it shows the progression of our partners who are advancing along the regulatory pathway. Our early engagement with pharma is normally heavily weighted towards service revenue. We begin with strategy discussions, discovery consultancy, pilot studies and benchtop testing, which generally have limited product sales and higher service sales. Later in the engagement, we generally move into supporting non-clinical studies, clinical trials, post-procedural data analysis, and eventually commercialization where the partners or the hospital is purchasing actual navigation and infusion products. This is where we see product sales to biopharma generally outpace service sales and demonstrates that continued progression of our partners through this regulatory process. Second, we have now seen multiple partners selected for various accelerated FDA pathways designed to speed the clinical trial execution and eventual regulatory approval of these new-to-world cell and gene therapies, often referred to as regenerative therapies. We now have seven partnered programs that have been designated as either Fast Track, Priority Review or RMAT, which highlights the importance that the FDA has placed on the entire cell and gene therapy market and the recognition of the life-altering impact that…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Matt Blackman with Stifel. Your line is open.

Hi, this is Emily on for Matt. Congrats on a great quarter again.

Thanks, Emily.

Just looking to 2025, and I understand there's no guidance today, but can you just call out some of the general headwinds/tailwinds that should be on our radar? Maybe any inflection points with the GLP or what have you?

Yeah. I mean, we're not quite prepared to get too far into 2025, Emily, as I think you pointed out, but there's certainly some factors that I think are making us feel pretty good about our growth prospects. From a practical standpoint, we don't see any reason or any headwinds relative to market development or growth of the underlying surgeries. If anything, we expect more surgeries to take place next year related to continued use of deep brain stimulation. The fact that, as I mentioned earlier on the call, Medtronic now has clearance to be able to promote sleep DBS. There's a number of studies and publications that have shown that one of the primary reasons that patients are indicated for DBS, but don't go through with the procedure is because they find out that they would be awake during the procedure. And quite frankly, that's scary to many, many patients. With this new indication, companies like Medtronic as well as the surgeons themselves can promote and educate these patients that there is in fact another option, which we believe is going to drive more patients to go through with the procedure coupled with the fact that there are a number of new indications for DBS around epilepsy, around OCD, and new studied indications, like I mentioned, for severe depression that I think will grow those underlying markets. We've also heard positive results relative to demand for laser therapy, particular on the tumor side of things, where hospitals have realized that if they do a number of laser procedures for tumor, the patients are generally discharged from the hospital in under 24 hours compared to two or even three days sometimes with an open resection. So, cleaning up these past procedures, if you will, including radiation necrosis and getting the…

Okay, great. And just a follow-up, if I could. Up to 20 new placements today year-to-date, is that a new normal? I mean, it has been six, eight, 10 maybe, but should we be thinking more in 2025 going forward?

I would expect that the new normal for us is certainly in the double digits. I don't see us returning to a six to eight number. I'd say, we're probably in very advanced conversations with at least 50 additional hospitals today and we're at least in some level of conversation with more than 100. So, I think there's plenty of room for us to grow, especially as we start to do more and more in the operating room. One of the -- really one of the biggest things that held us back in the past was that so many hospitals would like to work with ClearPoint that they simply did not have access to an MRI magnet, maybe the magnet was owned by radiology or maybe certain certifications at the hospital would not allow a surgery to take place in the MRI. So, we were completely shut out of those hospitals. And that's simply not the case anymore now that we can launch our technology into just an everyday operating room with equipment like CT scanners and interoperative CTs that are readily available for any one of those centers.

All right. Great. Okay. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Thanks, Emily.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Frank Takkinen with Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Congrats on all the progress. I'm going to follow-up on the last line of questioning a little bit on the new system activations. Can you maybe parse out which or how many of those or how many year-to--date are just SmartFrame OR activations and just how much -- I know you touched on that a little bit in the tail end, but just how much that has contributed to the new activation and then where that disposable revenue can go?

Yeah, happy to give you a couple of examples there. So, I would say, I have to think of the exact number, it might be a little off, but the magnitude will be there. I believe of those 19 activations this year, I think only two or three of those we would count as new activations from SmartFrame OR. And it doesn't mean that we're only using the OR product at three centers. What it means is that, we do not count a new activation if they were already using ClearPoint in the MRI and then they also added SmartFrame OR, we don't count that as a new activation. That's an existing customer that we're going deeper into that customer because we have additional complimentary technology. So, to directly answer your question, Frank, of those 19, I think it's three that the operating room enabled for us. So, it shows you we really have quite a long way to go. We're absolutely just getting started, but I think that's also the nature of a limited market release. You generally go to customers that are familiar with ClearPoint first to make sure that the product is doing exactly what it's supposed to before you go into sites that have had no experience if you will. The second part of your question, it's kind of meaningful and a really, really important part is to where the disposables can go. We had a webcast that was performed by Dr. Conner at the University of Oklahoma recently, and I think he's a very good example of what the potential here is. This is a surgeon whose hospital -- the surgery group did not own the MRI magnet. It was owned by radiology. So, he had been able to negotiate about one day of magnet use every month. So, even if he had 50 or 60 DBS procedures he wanted to do each year, he could only do about 10 to 12 with us because that's what he got the magnet time for. Now that we've enabled him to use ClearPoint in any environment either the MRI or the operating room, we're routinely doing maybe four or even five a month with Dr. Conner. So, you can put in perspective, now we're not leaving 80% of his volume on the table because we were not in the operating room. We're now able to actually win and earn his business for that other 80% because he and the team have gotten familiar with the ClearPoint system in the MRI as well as the ClearPoint OR. So, if we can replicate that experience at a number of different centers, this is not -- this technology is not only about going to new hospitals, but it's actually increasing utilization and same store sales at existing hospitals as well.

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe one follow-up directly on that again. How many smart -- or how many of your 19 accounts have SmartFrame OR today?

I would say there's maybe six or seven or so in that order of magnitude, and then I'd say there's another 10 or so accounts where we're -- what I would say is in advanced conversations in front of the VAC committee. So, for those who are not familiar, the Value Analysis Committee is a standard process of any hospital. Once -- anytime you have a new technology, you have to establish pricing, you have to show that it's got legs and benefit to the hospital, to the surgeon and certainly to the patient. So, there's a review process that takes place. Sometimes the VAC committee meets every week, sometimes it meets once every three months. So, you have to really get in line, get on the schedule and get going, but we have at least 10 of those committee meetings that are going on as we speak.

Got it. And then last one for me. Gross margins have trended favorably. How should we think about where gross margins can go with some of the new products in the bay?

From a disposable standpoint, if we get to any meaningful scale at our Carlsbad facility, there's no reason we can't be at 70% gross margin on the disposable side. And that includes cannulas as well for drug delivery trials. That certainly involves cannulas where they're not using our navigation at all. In some cases there might be one pharma customer that doesn't want to use our navigation, but they're going to use five or six of our cannulas. That's a very profitable procedure for us, because the cannulas is easier to make than the navigation frames. The drag that sometimes we get quarter to quarter on the margin standpoint is really, if we have a really good capital quarter for example, our capital margins of selling the head frames, some components, for example, we don't make any money on, they're just a necessary piece of equipment that the hospital needs to do the procedure from another vendor. So, our margins are in that 35% to 45% range there. So, it's not a bad deal for us. We actually still make money on that transaction. However, if you happen to have one quarter where we sell three or four systems like we did in the first quarter of this year, I think our overall capital revenues are around $1.3 million or $1.4 million, that can actually drag the total margin down a little bit just from a mix standpoint. But when we get to scale and you can imagine us doing $50 million, $60 million, $70 million of disposable revenue each year and capital revenue kind of staying flat, our margin should be comfortably in the 70%s at that point.

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Frank.

There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Joe Burnett, President and CEO of ClearPoint Neuro, for any closing remarks.

Once again, thank you to everyone interested in being a part of this team's journey here at ClearPoint. This is an exciting time as we plan for new product and service launches across all four of our growth pillars. We have worked hard to get to the spot and we are incredibly excited for our team, but also for the patients that we hope to treat with these new devices and therapies in the near future. The patient and their family is why we are here and ultimately who we are working for. Thank you, and please have a good night.

This concludes the ClearPoint Neuro third quarter 2024 financial results conference call. Thank you for attending, and have a wonderful rest of your day.