Thank you, Brad. Hi, good afternoon, everybody, especially to our shareholders. Just a few months ago, we spoke about how 2022 was a reset year for cbdMD. The calendar year culminated with us predominantly completing that process. This reset was critical for us to get the business healthy and reestablish a foundation for what we feel best positions us for growth. We made great strides in rightsizing our cost structure, along with making sure we have the talent and proper outside relationships to drive that growth. We made a lot of hard organizational decisions and we had to unwind from past initiatives and sponsorships that never delivered on the promise. That is behind us. We have now segue to an all-out focus on revenue, our approach is purposeful. We expect to grow the top line while holding our expenses relatively flat, accelerating along the path to profitability.
I want to stress that this was not about shrinking cost to manage a smaller revenue base, but about creating a flexible company with the right cost structure and preparation for sustainable and profitable growth. No longer are we burdened by [ unwell ] overhead and unproductive spend. Saving our way to profitability doesn't excite anyone but getting our cost structure right, getting the operation in order and making sure our primary focus is having the right products at the right price point, supported by the right message has been our sole focus over the past few quarters. Those components are in place. A year ago, our SG&A was approximately $12 million in the first quarter of 2022. And now with the benefit of our transformational initiatives taking hold we anticipate it will be approximately $6 million for the second quarter and will represent a much lower cost to revenue ratio.
As you can see, pending top line gains will translate into a much improved bottom line. Have we met [ yours ] and for that matter, our own expectations on top line growth, certainly not, revenue trends have been disappointing, but our operating income continues to improve. Ronan will speak to our overall financials. But as you see, we have thoughtfully addressed our overall SG&A. And in terms of marketing going forward, we've made sure that our spend on marketing has an acceptable return.
On our December call, I stated that we would begin our marketing push at the end of the year and entering into January. Here's what we've done in that regard. We announced our new CMO, Shannon Charles, Shannon brings to us a fresh perspective in positioning brands and wellness products to consumers and retailers. Our digital and direct marketing experience and relationships will be a nice boost to our go-forward strategy as well as our bottom line, for a proven track record in helping brands turn around messaging, packaging and position as well as to expand as a welcome addition to our team. We've engaged with REQ, a leader in the direct-to-consumer digital marketing field to support our marketing efforts. We have entered into an advertising and marketing engagement with a360 Media. These steps not only augment our capabilities but gains us access to a print and digital subscriber base to which we will share our proposition. That's a significant set of eyeballs and demographics that we haven't reached in the past.
With this, we are confident that our message and brand will be introduced to a broader range of segments in the immediate future, creating interest in the category that wasn't there before and exposing those who are existing CBD consumers for the value of our proposition as well as sharing our planned product line extensions, resulting into a larger [ cat ] size later in 2023.
These key steps, along with better retargeting and an increase to our social and other media diversification efforts will move the revenue needle in a positive direction. We believe in the highest-rank products we launched at the end of September 2022, we believe those products are priced affordably to make them part of consumers' daily wellness regimen. We know that the quality of our products are among the best in the market. We have many reasons to be optimistic, though as mentioned, we are disappointed on revenue, but with the improvements that we put in place and are now executing on, we expect to generate results. The CBD market is a multibillion-dollar market and is expected to grow. We expect to gain more share as well as being part of that growth. I look forward to sharing with you the progress on our next call.
On a final note, before I turn it over to Ronan. Recently, the FDA Principal Deputy Director, Janet Woodcock, issued a statement on behalf of that agency stating that the FDA does not have the tools to properly regulate, CBD needs congressional action to direct them. Despite the comprehensive set of regulations in place since the FDA started specifically regulating dietary supplements in 1994, the FDA is delaying in their responsibilities. As leaders in our industry, we are disappointed the agency continues to disregard the efforts that we have put into complying with the existing regulatory framework to prove our products as safe and efficacious for our customers.
Look, we have demonstrated ethical and responsible provider of CBD products. We have shared on our previous calls, we have invested heavily into science with our extensive toxicity studies demonstrating the safety of our products and our clinical trials proving their efficacy. As the industry leader, we look forward to working with other responsible brands and industry trade groups to best address this issue ensuring that our customers in the broader CBD market continue to have access to products that are safe and to help address their health and wellness needs.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to Ronan. Ronan?
