Leonard Osser
Analyst · Maxim. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Natalya, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. I am pleased to report that our revenue for the fourth quarter of 2020 increased sequentially by approximately $1 million, or 78% versus the third quarter of 2020. We achieved this result despite the impact of COVID-19, which indicates that we are successfully navigating the pandemic and remain on a growth trajectory for this quarter. Importantly, we continue to carefully manage our operating expenses, reducing our net loss for the year. With COVID-19 infections declining in certain regions and several hospitals reopening to outside vendors, we have made progress over the past year advancing our commercial efforts around the CompuFlo Epidural instrument and the CathCheck system. Specifically, we have added several new hospitals that are purchasing our disposables with prospects of increased business in the coming months. Most notably, in the first three months of 2021, we began selling CompuFlo Epidural and CathCheck disposables to three premier medical centers: Regional Medical Center, a premier regional health care system in South Carolina; the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, an institution of the University of Texas system and agency of the state of Texas; the nationally recognized Medical University of South Carolina; and the leading German hospital, the University Hospital of Wurzburg. The purchase orders received from these three U.S. medical centers and one European hospital further reinforces our confidence in the outlook for both CathCheck and the CompuFlo and the value proposition to other healthcare systems across Europe and North America as we strive to become the new standard of care in epidural procedures in labor and delivery. Additionally, we enter into an agreement with Bitmedical AG to distribute the CompuFlo Epidural instrument and CathCheck system as well as related disposables in both Switzerland and Austria. Penetrating the sizable Austrian and Swiss markets is an important step forward in our commercial launch of the CompuFlo Epidural system in Europe. In October 2020, we were awarded a group purchasing agreement for CompuFlo and CathCheck with Premier, a leading group purchasing organization with approximately 4,100 U.S. hospitals and 200,000 other providers within their network. At the same time, given the sales to these hospitals, we are now expanding our medical sales force. Now that new protocols are in place at hospitals, we are better able to enter the hospitals and have commenced a number of new pilot programs. The results of our clinical trials have also been published in leading medical journals, which aids in driving market awareness and further validation of our technology. Importantly, the CompuFlo Epidural system is validated in terms of safety, efficacy and economics. Similarly, the CathCheck technology has the potential to transform the monitoring of catheter replacement following an epidural procedure by confirming the placement of a catheter within two minutes versus 20 to 40 minutes using conventional methods. Our unique computer control real-time pressure sensing technology provides anesthesiologists an objective and quantifiable technique to build confidence and success. For these reasons, we are further encouraged that our technology will become the new standard of care in labor and delivery anesthesia, replacing the present standard of care, which is the 1860 hypodermic syringe. As we are consistently evolving our injection and drug delivery systems, we recently received two notices of allowance for a key patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the notice of allowance from the European Patent Office. The first patent relates to the disposable component of Milestone’s CompuFlo instrument and covers the unique interactions of the disposable assembly and the microchip security verification feature embedded in the disposables, which provides clinical and safety benefits for the patient and practitioner. The second patent relates to our new CompuPulse System, which integrates the CompuWave technology with a manual syringe. This new technology provides an efficient and low-cost alternative for procedures where a manual syringe may suffice, while still providing the ability to verify needle and subsequent catheter placement, which opens up a number of exciting new markets and applications for our technology. The third patent from the European Patent Office combines minimum intensity of nerve stimulation and real-time injection pressure monitoring, utilizing Milestone’s CompuFlo instrument and associated DPS, Dynamic Pressure Sensing technology to optimize needle tip location in ultrasound-guided peripheral nerve block procedures, thus helping to reduce the risk of needle injury during PNB procedures. This is a large market opportunity given that the direction of the industry is to regional anesthesia. In summary, we have been successful in commencing the first phase of our commercial rollout of the CompuFlo Epidural instrument, a key element of our sales strategy focuses on the disposable components of our system, which we believe will contribute to high margins and recurring revenue. Overall, the response from both hospitals and physicians has been positive, and we are in a few trials across the country that have the potential to convert to additional commercial orders. Our sales pipeline is more robust than ever, and we look forward to finalizing additional agreements with several premier hospitals soon. At this time, we are actively engaged in hiring sales professionals to enhance the rollout in the U.S. At this point, I’d like to turn the call over to Arjan Haverhals, our President of Milestone and Chief Executive Officer of Wand Dental, to describe the sales and marketing activities around the Wand instrument in more detail. Please go ahead, Arjan.