Asensus Surgical, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to Ascensus Surgical Inc. 2022 First Quarter Financial and Operating Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Our question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Now I'd like to turn the conference over to your host, Mark Klosner from Westwick Partners. Sir, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Ascensus Surgical First Quarter 2022 Business and Financial Update Conference Call. On the call with me today are Anthony Fernando, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Shamiz Rampertab, 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 and other geopolitical factors beyond our control. The company undertakes no obligation to update the information provided on this call. For discussion of risks and uncertainties associated with the Ascensus surgical business, I encourage you to review the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the 2021 Form 10-K, filed in February 2022, and the Form 10-Q, expected to be filed later today, and any 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 stockholders and the 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 Ascensus 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 an overview of our recent accomplishments and then ask Shamice 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 2022, before turning to Q&A. Before turning the call over to Shamice, I would like to provide an overview of our recent performance. Despite headwinds associated with COVID spikes early in the first quarter, as well as the ongoing political instability in Eastern Europe, we drove strong procedure volumes as a result of continued increase in system utilization globally, with total case volumes increasing 29% year over year and 16% sequentially over the fourth quarter. While we are disappointed by the slowdown in news enhanced program initiations, we have experienced thus far in the year, which in large part are due to the macro factors that I mentioned. During the quarter, we continued to leverage events aimed at driving awareness and growing our pipeline of hospital customers. During the first quarter, we attended multiple highly impactful industry events, including the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons, or SAGES, in March in Denver, Colorado, and the German Surgeons Congress, also known as DCK, in Leipzig, Germany, in April. Feedback at both events was extremely encouraging, as both surgeons and hospital administrators were highly engaged with Sennhans and our vision for performance-guided surgery. As we continue to focus on the development of SENHANCE and components of performance-guided surgery, during the first quarter, we announced the expansion of our Digital Solutions R&D Center in Yoknam, Israel. Since opening the center as part of our acquisition of MST in 2018, we have continued to put together an incredibly talented and growing team of engineers developers, and scientists who are working together to bring innovative augmented intelligence capabilities to the platform. And we look forward to updating you on our progress in the quarters to come. With that, I will turn the call over to Shamis for a financial update.