Good morning, and welcome to the PAVmed's Fourth Quarter 2025 Business Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Monday, March 30, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Riley, PAVmed's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's business update call. Joining me today on the call are Dr. Lishan Aklog, Chairman and CEO of PAVmed; along with Dennis McGrath, Chief Financial Officer. The press release announcing our business update and financial results is available on PAVmed's website. Please take a moment to read the disclaimers about forward-looking statements in the press release. The business update press release and the conference call all include forward-looking statements, and these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are described in the disclaimer and in our filings with the SEC. For a list and description of these and other important risks and uncertainties that may affect future operations, see Part 1, Item 1A entitled Risk Factors in PAVmed's most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC and any subsequent updates filed in quarterly reports on Forms 10-Q and subsequent Forms 8-K. Except as required by law, PAVmed disclaims any intentions or obligations to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect changes in expectations or events, conditions or circumstances on which the expectations may be based or that may affect the likelihood that actual results will differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. I would now like to turn the call over to Dr. Lishan Aklog, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PAVmed. Lishan?

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our quarterly update call. Before we get into our recent operational highlights, I'd like to kind of frame where PAVmed is today. On our last quarterly call, I described how over the past now 2 years, we've undertaken a series of very deliberate and systematic actions to effectively permanently fix PAVmed's legacy capital structure and ultimately strengthen its balance sheet and improve our ability to execute on our strategic plan. I had mentioned that time, we have one more step to go, and that step was completed in February with the completion of a restructuring recapitalization and financing. The toxic convertible securities that had held down -- have held us down for a while were removed. And we -- upon completion of this financing exercise, we'll have a very clean cap table. So with PAVmed now fixed, we believe we are now very well positioned -- exceptionally well positioned to execute on our founding mission. What's that mission? It's to operate as a high-growth, diversified commercial life sciences company with multiple independently financed subsidiaries that are operating under a shared services model. With that work now complete, we're executing that model across our core businesses, which you can see here in 3 different buckets. The most prominent one, of course, is Lucid, which is a publicly traded diagnostic company. Lucid continues to succeed at raising its own capital. It's obviously our strongest and most advanced asset. As we discussed in the Lucid earnings call, and we'll highlight later today, Lucid is on the cusp of transformative milestones, which include a very important recent VA win and a pending Medicare coverage. A reminder that PAVmed remains Lucid's largest shareholder, holding approximately 31 million shares of Lucid common stock. And as…

Thanks, Lishan, and good morning, everyone. Our summary financial results for the fourth quarter and the year were reported in our press release that has been distributed. On the next 4 slides, I'll emphasize a few key highlights from the fourth quarter and the year, but I encourage you to consider those remarks in the context of the full disclosures covered in our annual report on Form 10-K as filed with the SEC. A couple of reminders as our financials, particularly the income statement with year-over-year comparisons will for this last annual report, illustrate periods before September 10, 2024, with Lucid's operating results being consolidated into the presented PAVmed results versus the 2025 periods without Lucid's operating results being consolidated into the PAVmed financials. We do present some supplementary information in Footnote 4 of the 10-K that will provide some help in the comparisons. So with regard to the balance sheet, you'll recall from our investor update call since this time last year that the company has engaged in a multistep process to regain compliance with the NASDAQ listing standard for minimum equity, which it did in February of last year and again this year in January for compliance with the minimum bid price standard. Our focus throughout was to position the company for longer-term financial stability. This was a multistep process that Lishan highlighted that spanned nearly 18 months with 3 key recapitalization steps landing PAVmed on firm financial footing with its recent financing that closed on February 3rd. The steps included deconsolidating Lucid from PAVmed's consolidated financial statements in September 2024 and an interim phase of restructuring our convertible debt in January 2025 whereby we exchanged about 80% of our outstanding convertible debt for a new Series C preferred equity. And lastly, just recently in February, redeeming the…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Jeremy Pearlman with Maxim Group.

So just first, I wanted to focus on the commercial relationship with OSU. You said you're well underway. What are some of the key metrics you're trying to keep track of and learn before you feel comfortable rolling this out to other large institutions? Is there a time frame for that? Maybe help us understand how -- what you hope the current commercial relationship to become before you roll it out to other institutions.

Yes. That's great. Thanks for the question. Happy to elaborate on that a bit. So in terms of the clinical value of the Veris platform, we established that during a pilot that occurred, and that's actually last year, and that was what led to the commercial engagement. The commercial engagement has fairly high expectations. It involves a target of 1,000 -- a minimum of 1,000 patients within the first year. And we are in a very structured plan on rolling out the platform across various departments, starting with the 3 departments that were under the pilot program and then expanding to new departments along the way. So our internal engagement with OSU as to how that's proceeding as it really relates to executing on that project plan, bringing on the new departments and according to that plan and also the trajectory towards that goal of 1,000 patients during the first year. We call this a strategic partnership because beyond just simply utilizing the platform in a commercial setting, it's also -- we've also developed a registry. So those patients will be enrolled and data will be collected, and we'll be able to provide future target -- commercial targets data on this adoption during the commercial phase beyond the pilot phase. So that's -- we're not -- we haven't been reporting sort of month-to-month numbers with regard to that, but I can tell you at a high level that we're on track and on schedule to do so. The planning on that was, in fact, based on when we completed EHR integration. So it should be clear to everybody being integrated, EHR is really a central depot for the flow of information within -- particularly within large medical centers. And so now that we are on the platform, there's a full…

Yes. That was really helpful. Great information. Then maybe just one more question related to the -- you said you mentioned there's new risk stratification tools and other tools that you could integrate into the system to the Veris platform. Is that -- are those -- I don't know, whenever they -- whenever these tools -- when they're ready, are they -- as part of the contract with OSU to allow them you to integrate them into already the patients that are using the device? Or do you have to amend or you're planning on finalizing those and then rolling those out maybe further down the line?

Yes. So there's -- I think there's two aspects to your question. One is kind of the development work, and that's not trivial. So I don't want to give the impression that we have these tools ready to go and to implement and to integrate within our platform. Those AI-based tools require data -- extensive data, and we are in discussions with OSU on how exactly to utilize the data that we're collecting as well as legacy data they have to inform the development of these technologies. And part of our strategic engagement with them contemplated a partnership on the development of these kinds of tools. So the way I would view this perspective is really a broader kind of strategic vision to evolve Veris from its original vision of being primarily focused on remote patient monitoring, which is really just serving as a conduit for important physiologic and symptomatic data from the patient to the clinicians to do so in a very timely way to bring up -- to highlight potential risks that may arise. And we know from our experience to date that Veris works extraordinarily well at doing that. But we believe that in this era, the value added from going beyond just as being a conduit for information, but to provide truly sophisticated AI-based clinical decision support tools are really becoming standard practice when it comes to digital health offerings, and that's what we're seeking to do. That requires time and that does require resources and capital. And so we're in the early stages of that. So I would view that as articulating sort of a near-term and medium-term vision, partnership with OSU on the development of that. Certainly, at the time we would launch that, whether it's in a preliminary phase on the research side, any patient that was already on the platform would be obviously -- we would integrate it within the platform, and they would have -- their care could be impacted by those additional support tools.

Okay. Understood. Great. And then just maybe just last question, jumping to the new imaging technology that you licensed from Duke. I know you mentioned you're going to provide some more information shortly, but maybe you could just right now on the call, is there anything clinically that needs to be done with that technology? And then what -- before you could roll it out? And then maybe what type of commercial plans you might have for that?

Yes. That's still in the early phases. So let's be clear about that. That's a technology as we described in the sort of the press release when we entered into the letter of intent, we will provide a full press release announcing the full license agreement that was executed and Joe Virgilio's role in overseeing [ Arcteris ] falls under that. But just as a reminder, that's a little bit more detail on our technology. The technology is an optical technology that combines well-established technology called OSC with newer technology called a/LCI. And the combination of the two implemented at the end of an endoscope, a tool that can be deployed through an endoscope can at the time of an endoscopy of the lower esophagus can image abnormal tissue, tissue that has -- that appears to be -- to have Barrett's esophagus, the precancerous condition in order to discriminate between early and late precancer. So non-dysplastic Barrett's esophagus, which is the earliest precancer to dysplastic Barrett's esophagus, which is the later precancer that requires intervention to prevent cancer. Obviously, those of you who follow along on Lucid understand how an important part of the paradigm of the management of esophageal precancer that distinction is that when someone has this precancerous condition. So it's critical to distinguish in early and late because late is where we intervene. Right now, that distinction is made purely on a biopsy. And so the patient gets a biopsy and then they come back. If the biopsy comes back for dysplasia for the late-stage precancer, they undergo a definitive ablation or eradication therapy to prevent cancer. The promise of this technology is that it's capable with a very, very high sensitivity in their early clinical experience as a part of a partnership between Duke and UNC…

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Ed Woo with Ascendiant Capital.

Yes. Congratulations on all the progress. I had a quick question. You mentioned that you guys are now ready to kind of engage in expanding your medical device portfolio with new technology. Is there any particular areas or products that you might be interested in?

Yes. Thanks, Ed. Glad you gave me a chance to kind of maybe flesh out my previous comment about that. It's been -- it was really quite remarkable, honestly, after we closed the last restructuring and financing frankly, within days, we were getting calls. And I'll actually highlight something that wasn't clear in my prepared remarks. It's not just in the medical device side, it's actually across the board. We've gotten inquiries on really interesting diagnostic companies, molecular diagnostic companies, medical devices as well as pharma assets. So a good number. And just -- I believe it's just been a month since we completed that transaction. And it's really because this really goes back to the roots of PAVmed where we were also in a position where people contacted us as possible partners. That's what led to Lucid and Veris of us having access to those technologies. And it's really exciting that folks now view us in a position to be able to continue that legacy that brought those other assets into the fold. I would say on the medical device side, we are -- there's obviously interest in technologies that align with the GI space, right? So our interest in [ Arcteris ] and the interest of the folks at Duke in inquiring about that obviously has to do with the fact that we have in Lucid extensive experience with esophageal disease, with Barrett's esophagus and otherwise. And so I would say we're open for inquiries across the board. PortIO is in the vascular access space. There's been activity in a broader sense. So we're not limiting ourselves to any particular specialty, but certainly, GI things related to gastroesophageal reflux to Barrett's esophagus and so forth, obviously capture our attention because we have obviously a substantial amount of internal expertise there.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Dr. Lishan Aklog for closing remarks.

Great. Thanks, operator, and thank you all for taking the time and for your attention this morning. We appreciate, as always, the thoughtful and informed comments and questions from our covering analysts. And hopefully, you found those -- that discussion useful as well. Really, I hope my goal and our hope is that you leave today with a pretty clear set of takeaways here that PAVmed's corporate structure and balance sheet is now fixed. It was a long and somewhat painful process to get here, but we're here. It's two subsidiaries, commercial subsidiaries are both making strong commercial progress and approaching key milestones. Obviously, they're at different points in their corporate life cycles, but really good progress on both of those. Both of them have been also capable of showing their ability to raise capital independent of PAVmed over time. The new -- obviously, news that we're focused on today is that our medical device portfolio is relaunching. We're really excited to have Joe on board and his leadership not only to move [ Arcteris ] and PortIO forward, but also puts us in a really good position to evaluate the inflow of opportunities that have been brought to us already in hardly a month after we've been in a position to do so. And so the fact that we're getting those inquiries both from banks and from innovators and from academic medical centers, I think, is a testament to the hard work that's gone into fixing the structure and the balance sheet and the sort of sense of confidence that we're in a good position to go back to our roots there. So all I can say is that we believe PAVmed the back that our founding mission and our structure of subsidiaries and our shared services model and the economies of scale that go with that, that we really feel like we're now in a really good position to take advantage of that structure of that history and of the opportunities that are coming before us. So with that, as always, we encourage you to continue to keep abreast of our progress. And please follow our news releases, our quarterly updates and calls in the future as well as through our website and social media. And of course, always feel free to reach out to us if you have any specific questions. So with that, I hope everyone has a great day. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.