Good morning. This is Betsy from Chorus Call. I will be assisting with your conference call this morning. To get things started, let me ask Joe Diaz to open up the call.

Thank you, Betsy. Good morning, and welcome to everyone. As Betsy indicated, my name is Joe Diaz. I'm with Lytham Partners, we're the Investor Relations consulting firm for ImmuCell. I thank all of you for joining us today to discuss the unaudited financial results for the third quarter of 2021. I would like to preface this discussion today with a caution regarding forward-looking statements. Listeners are reminded that statements made by management during the course of this call include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties is available under the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements or better known as the safe harbor statement provided with last night's press release and the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q. With that, let me turn the call over to Michael Brigham, President and CEO of ImmuCell Corporation, after which we will open the call for your questions. Michael?

Thanks, Joe, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to provide some updates on what is going on at ImmuCell. The press release and the quarterly report on Form 10-Q that disclosed last night, cover all the financial details. Since you have that information, I will not take your time here to review all the line item detail. But I would like to review some highlights and -- after I make a few strategic comments about where I see our business today. First Defense continues to generate strong cash flow. We are grateful for the interest that our customers have in protecting their newborn calves using our antibody technology rather than scours vaccines. The First Defense product line is the only veterinary biologic with our breadth of claims that can remove the unpredictability associated with scours production that results from a variable vaccine response. This benefit is being realized in the field, and we aim to continue our market share gain with more great work by our production and sales teams. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization increased to $852,000 during the 3-month period ended September 30, 2021, compared to $354,000 during the third quarter of 2020. EBITDA increased to just under $2 million during the 9-month period ended September 30, 2021, compared to approximately $1 million during the 9-month period ended September 30, 2020. These non-GAAP financial measures of our cash flow should be considered in context with our statement of cash flows that is presented in the financial statements included in our quarterly report. We are completing our most recent investment in First Defense production capacity, which will increase our annual production capacity from about $16.5 million to approximately $23 million. The production required to achieve our third quarter sales of First Defense when annualized is…

[Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from Scott Billeadeau with Walrus Partners.

Just wondering, as you bring on the new capacity for First Defense is -- last time you had a little dip. Any issues with as you bring that capacity on? I think you mentioned by Q3 of next year or into Q3, you'll have up to $30 million of capacity maybe kind of the staging of that. Will that scale up or maybe give us a little sense of that?

Sure. Scott, I'm not sure about the -- which dip or a dip that you might be referring to, but let me see if this answers your question. So pre-expansion, we were running capacity of about $16.5 million. So this first investment was to get it up to $23 million. I look at -- right now, basically, everything we make, we're shipping. So basically, sales kind of reflects production. So when I annualized the third quarter, we're at $20 million, $20.1 million. So you can see us stepping right in the middle of the path from $16.5 million to $23 million, we're at $20 million. I think in the fourth quarter, we'll finish that. The last pieces of this project are being plugged in. So that gets us to $23 million. What we did on -- for that next level that you referred to as we started that investment really as part of the first phase. We made the space for the equipment at that time so that construction work is done. But we didn't buy the equipment yet because we wanted to see the first phase equipment work and actually make sure we are confident with it. So something like a month to 6 weeks ago, maybe it's almost 2 months now, we did order that piece of equipment. It is a long lead, and it's a complex piece of equipment and a big installation, and that's the one that will be in place third quarter of next year. So the order is placed, the fabrication is started in third quarter, that's what gets us up to that $30 million level. Does that answer the question, Scott? Yes.

Yes, it does. Great. And I know -- have you had pretty much worked through backlog at this point? And how are -- are customers still ordering in advance? Or maybe give us a little view of that. That would be great.

Yes. That's a really good question. The way -- I want to see the backlog go away. But there's 2 ways it goes away. One is demand goes away and we're not seeing that at all. So I'm seeing this backlog turning a little bit into the good news. It's not -- I don't mean that truly. It's not good news. I got a customer who wants product, he wants to pay for it. I want to close that sale. But it is better than the alternative. So the backlog is persisting, but it's persisting with this increase in sales. So we're chasing both. We're chasing it right off the ladder, and we will catch it. But as long as the sales are increasing, I see the backlog as a little bit of a good sign, but something nonetheless, that we've got to fill. And that ladder we talked about $16.5 million, $20 million, $23 million to $30 million, we're going to catch it in that step up.

Yes. Great. I think that's all I had. I mean, so Re-Tain kind of is what it is. I guess you submit, and it's 6 months before you really get the result. Anything you're doing for pre-marketing in advance of that or what you need to do or how you're situated at this point?

Yes. So that is something that our Director of Sales and Marketing, Bobbi Brockmann is getting more and more active in. Splitting -- she splits her time between First Defense initiatives and Re-Tain. One of the positive things we've done lately is hired veterinarian, Raffael Lichdi on to our staff. He's very involved with that Re-Tain launch. So yes, as we hope that approaches, say, we submit here yet in the fourth quarter, so 6 months later, we get to a response, if it's positive. That's what the team is working on right now. So yes, we're starting that work, working with some very influential veterinarians, very well-experienced veterinarians, some other consultants and some large dairy producers. And yes, you start to see the end of this 20-year development and start to anticipate commercial sales.

[Operator Instructions]. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Joe Diaz for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Betsy, and thanks to all of you for participating in today's call. We look forward to talking with you again to review the results of the full year ending December 31, 2021, sometime around the end of March. Have a great week, stay safe and well. Thanks.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.