Asensus Surgical, Inc.

First Quarter 2021 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Mark Klausner of Westwick. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. On the call with me today are Anthony Fernando, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Shamiz Rampertap, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to caution listeners that certain information discussed by management during this conference call, including any guidance provided, are forward-looking statements covered under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by our forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with the company's business, including any impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. The company undertakes no obligation to update the information provided on this call. For discussion of risks and uncertainties associated with the Census Surgical's business, I encourage you to review the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including the 2020 Form 10-K filed in March 2021 and the Form 10-Q expected to be filed later today and other filings we make with the SEC. During this call, we will also present certain non-GAAP financial information related to adjusted net loss attributable to common shareholders and adjusted net loss per common share attributable to common stockholders. Management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures taken in conjunction with U.S. GAAP financial measures provide useful information for both management and investors by excluding certain non-cash and other expenses that are not indicative of the company's core operating results. Management uses non-GAAP measures to compare our performance relative to forecast and strategic plans, to benchmark our performance externally against competitors, and for certain compensation decisions. Reconciliations from U.S. GAAP to non-GAAP results are presented in the tables accompanying our earnings release, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to a Census Surgical's President and Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Fernando.

Thanks, Mark, and thank you all for joining us today. On today's call, I will provide a brief summary and ask Shamish to review our financial performance. after which I will discuss our performance during the first quarter, as well as our priorities for the rest of 2021 before turning to Q&A. Before turning the call over to Shamice, I would like to provide an overview of our recent performance. Overall, despite the continued headwinds from COVID impacting hospitals across the globe, we made significant progress towards a number of our goals for 2021. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we signed two new lease agreements with hospitals in Europe, one of which we announced in a press release earlier this week, and the second, which will be announced upon installation later in the second quarter. We also had our first lease buyout occur during the quarter. with a high-volume Senhans hospital in Japan, opting to purchase the system after having leased for just over a year. We believe this shows the value we bring to hospitals and is an early proof point that our business model around pricing and flexible economics is working. In addition, we had a number of published clinical papers. One of the clinical papers compares health economic outcomes of the Senhan systems versus another robotic system as well as traditional laparoscopy, which among other things pointed to very favorable cost per procedure as compared to the other robotic offering. Lastly, we drove compelling procedure volumes in key geographies with over 500 procedures completed globally. We are very proud of what we were able to accomplish and look forward to continuing this momentum throughout 2021. With that, I will turn the call over to Shamis for a financial update.