Milestone Scientific, Inc.

Good morning everyone and welcome to the Milestone Scientific's second quarter 2025 financial results and business update conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode and the floor will be open for questions following the presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during this conference please press star zero on your phone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, David Waldman of Crescendo Communications. David, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Jenny. Good morning, and thank you all for joining Milestone Scientific's second quarter 2025 financial results conference call. On the call with us today are Neil Goldman, Chairman, Eric Hines, Chief Executive Officer, and Keisha Harkam, Vice President of Finance at Milestone Scientific. The company issued a press release yesterday afternoon containing second quarter 2025 financial results, which is also posted on the company's website. If you have any questions after the call or would like any additional information about the company, please contact Crescendo Communications at 212-671-1020. Company's management will now provide prepared remarks reviewing the financial and operational results for the second quarter ended June 30th, 2025. Before we get started, we'd like to remind everyone that during this conference call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding timing and financial impact of Milestone's ability to implement its business plan, expected revenues, and future success. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties and are based on assumptions involving judgments with respect to future economic, competitive, and market conditions and future business decisions, all of which are difficult or impossible to predict accurately and many of which are beyond Milestone's control. Some of the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements are general economic conditions, failure to achieve expected revenue growth, changes in our operating expenses, adverse patent rulings, FDA or legal developments, competitive pressures, changes in customer and market requirements and standards, and the risk factors detailed from time to time in milestones, periodic filings of the Securities and Exchange Commission, including without limitation milestones report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2024, and milestones report on Form 10-Q for the second quarter ended June 30th, 2025. The forward-looking statements made during this call are based upon management's reasonable belief as of today's date, August 15th, Milestone undertakes no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason. With that, we'll now turn the call over to Neil Goldman, Chairman of the Board. Please go ahead, Neil.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Milestone's scientific second quarter 2025 conference call. Before we get into the results, I want to start with what I believe is one of the most important drivers of our future success, the recent additions to our leadership team. First, I'm pleased to introduce our newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Eric Hines. Eric brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in scaling sales-driven enterprise software companies and serving customers across multiple industries, including healthcare. He has built efficient, high-performance teams and delivered consistent topline growth. At Ex Libris, a division of Clarivate, Eric led operations across the U.S., Canada, and Latin America, substantially growing the business, ultimately generating over $100 million in revenue. Early in his career at Nice Systems, he managed a $90 million North American security business. Eric is a leader who knows how to execute at scale, and we're excited about the vision and energy he brings to Milestone. We also recently welcomed Jason Papes as Senior Vice President, Global Head of Sales and Marketing. Jason brings more than 30 years of experience in scaling commercial operations across healthcare and medical technology sectors. He's built national and international distribution network, driven strategic growth initiatives, and led successful ventures to acquisition. His expertise spans orthopedics, neurology, pain management, and digital imaging, making him a tremendous asset as we accelerate both our dental and medical businesses. On the governance side, Shantz Salingam has joined our board of directors. He brings in more than 20 years of global leadership in commercial scaling, reimbursement strategy, and product innovation across medical device and pharmaceutical industries. Shantz's experience and track record will be invaluable to Milestone as we look to expand adoption of our copy flow epidural and advance our commercial execution. I believe this new leadership team is built for acceleration with the talent, experience, and commitment to take Milestone to the next level. And with that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Eric.

Thank you, Neil, and good morning to everyone. When I joined Milestone Scientific, it was after conducting extensive due diligence digging deep into the technology, the market opportunities, and most importantly, the people. What I saw convinced me that this company is with tremendous untapped potential. We have a world-class products, an expanding base of loyal customers, and now a leadership team and expanded board with the experience and drive to unlock the next phase of growth. One of the most important recent developments and a critical foundation of our medical segment was securing Medicare Part B payment rate assignment under CPT code 077T in multiple jurisdictions, including New Jersey, Texas, and Florida. This is a significant milestone, not only because it opens a reimbursement pathway for millions of eligible procedures, but also because it validates the clinical value of our CompuFlow epidural system in the eyes of payers and providers. We've already seen early traction with respected clinics adopting our system. For example, during the quarter, the Painless Center in Tenafly, New Jersey, led by Dr. Chin Shin Jason Chu, a double board certified physician in pain management and anesthesiology, began using the CompuFlow epidural system following a successful evaluation. This adoption broadens market awareness and reflects growing confidence among critical leaders in CompuFlow's ability to deliver safer and more effective epidural administration. Turning to Q2 results, Revenue grew 25% to 2.3 million, driven primarily by performance in our dental segment, where international sales more than doubled. By transitioning to a leaner sales organization and selling through our online platform directly to dental clinics and DSOs, we've created a more direct line of communication with customers. This approach not only improves margins, but also strengthens relationships, resulting in greater customer engagement, higher satisfaction, and more repeat orders. While domestic dental sales were relatively flat this quarter, we believe the combination of our direct sales model, targeted marketing initiatives, and enhanced e-commerce platform positions positioned us well for growth in the U.S. market. With Jason leading global sales and marketing, we are in a strong position to aggressively grow both our dental and medical businesses. In dental, our focus is on accelerating penetration in existing markets, expanding internationally, in capturing greater share in the U.S. through targeted marketing and direct engagement. In medical, we are building on the reimbursement foundation, focusing on our federal presence and pursuing new distribution partnerships both domestically and internationally. In short, the foundation is here, the team is in place, and the opportunities are significant. My focus now is disciplined execution, accelerating adoption, and ensuring that Milestone delivers innovation growth, and long-term value for our shareholders. I'm genuinely excited for what lies ahead. Thanks, and please go ahead, Keisha.

Thank you, Eric. Consolidated revenue for the three months ended June 30 of 2025 and 2004 was approximately $2.3 million, an increase of $470,000. E-commerce dental revenue for the three months ended June 30 of 2025 and 2024 was approximately $1.3 million, respectively. For the three months ended June 30 of 2025 and 2024, international revenue was approximately $1,489,000 respectively, an increase of $511,000. For the three months ended June 30 of 2025 and 2024, medical revenue was approximately $32,000 and $19,000 respectively, an increase of $13,000 compared to June 30 of 2024. Consolidated gross profit for the three months ended June 30th, 2025 was approximately 1.6 million, an increase of approximately 206,000 compared to approximately 1.4 million for the same period in 2024. Consolidated selling general and administrative expenses for the three months ending June 30th, 2025 and 2024 was approximately 3 million and 2.9 million respectively. Consolidated research and development expense for the three months ending June 30 of 2025 and 2024 was approximately $52,000 and $352,000 respectively. The loss from operation was approximately $1.5 million and $1.8 million for the three months ending June 30 of 2025 and 2024 respectively, a decrease of approximately $296,000. The decrease is due to an increase in salaried and a reduction in selling and general administrative expenses. Consolidated revenue for the six months ending June 30 of 2025 and 2024 was approximately $4.6 million, an increase of approximately $453,000. E-commerce and dental service revenue for the six months ending June 30 of 2025 was approximately $2.6 million and $2.7 million, respectively, an increase of 0.3%. an increase of about half a million. For the six months ending June 30th, 2025, international revenue was approximately 1.9 million and 1.4 million, an increase of 500,000 compared to June 30th, 2024. For the six months ending June 30th, 2025, sales to China revenue was approximately 110,000 compared to June 30th, 2024. For the six months ending June 30, 2025, medical revenue was approximately $83,000 and $26,000 respectively, an increase of $57,000 compared to June 30, 2024. Consolidated gross profit for the six months ending June 30, 2025 was approximately $3.3 million, an increase of approximately $178,000 compared to the $3.1 million for the same period in 2024. Consolidated selling general and administrative expenses for the six months ending June 30th, 2025 and 2024 was approximately $6.3 million and $5.9 million respectively. An increase of approximately $384,000. Consolidated research and development expenses for the six months ending June 30th, 2025 were approximately $421,000 and $409,000. The loss from operation was approximately 3.5 million and 3.2 million for the six months ending June 30 of 2025 and 2024, respectively, a decrease of approximately 237,000. Now I would like to turn your attention to liquidity and capital resources. We continue to carefully manage expenses and have maintained a solid balance sheet. Milestone had cash and cash equivalents of 1.3 million and working capital of approximately 3.9 million with no long-term debt. For the six months into June 30, 2025, we had cash flows used in operating activities of $2.8 million and $0.4 million respectively. At this point, I would like to turn the call back over to Eric.

Thank you, Keisha. There will be a quiz at the Q&A session. As I said earlier, I believe there's untapped potential here. We have the opportunity to accelerate adoption in both medical and dental deepen our relationships with our customers, and expand into entirely new geographies and verticals. Our path forward is about disciplined execution, focusing on revenue expansion while rationalizing expenses, turning our vision into tangible, sustainable growth. I'm energized by what we can accomplish together, and I'm confident that the next chapters for Milestone will be the most exciting and rewarding yet for our customers, partners, employees, and most importantly, our shareholders. I'd like to thank you all for joining the call today. And at this point, we'd like to open the call up for questions. Jenny?

Thank you very much. We are now opening the floor for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your phone keypad now. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For anyone using speaker equipment, it might be necessary to pick up your handset before you press the keys. Please wait a moment whilst we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is coming from Anthony Vendetti of the Maxim Group. Anthony, your line is live.

Thank you. Good morning. Eric, welcome aboard. Thank you. I was wondering just if you could talk a little bit about the medical side since obviously, you know, most of the growth to this point and most of the revenues, the vast majority have been dental. And, you know, there's been this Medicare Part B coverage issue. which we hoped would drive adoption, but it has been a very slow process on the medical side. Can you talk about how many facilities have adopted the CompuFlow system on the medical side, and then what specifically you intend to do to try to drive adoption at a much accelerated rate or or get that moving in the right direction? I know you hired a new head of sales. So if you could talk about, you know, what you're going to do differently than what, you know, prior management has done on the medical side.

Good question, Anthony, and thank you for the question. The plan really, it's all about reimbursement, right? And I think that, so to answer your question, we've got between five and ten clinics that are actively using the product here in the U.S. market. I think in the past, we've been trying to boil the ocean. And what we will do is get a little bit more focused. And it's all about the data. It's all about getting the doctors using the solution, collecting the data, submitting it to Medicare, and so forth. And we really need a team that's focused on doing that. So the plan is to invest in some specialists that can really help us usher through some of these claims and different stuff through the clinics and collect data so that we are can confirm that the reimbursement will be at the right place so the doctors will want to use this solution. So the short-term plan is, again, to be a little bit more focused, not try to cover the entire U.S. or even all the states within the respective jurisdictions where we have approval, but more importantly, to spend our energy on a handful of clinics early, get the proper data collected, get it submitted, and make sure that it's very clear that doctors will be reimbursed the way they want to be reimbursed.

I would just like to add that the hiring of Jason Papes as our head of sales is a key part of that plan. And he brings 30 years of experience in medical distribution and selling, and he has a team that he can work with and really help us succeed on the medical side.

Okay, so Jason is a key hire. And I know you just recently joined, Eric, but have there been other hires either under Jason or other key hires? Or if Jason has a team that he's identified, have those individuals been offered positions yet? And approximately how many other key people do you think you need to hire to implement what you just outlined?

Yeah, so Jason brings along with him his prior distribution business of sorts. We're working through some of the details on that. So he's got a team of folks primarily focused in the Texas region. We obviously still have our relationship with Axial and we still have a relationship with Shamrock that Jason and I are evaluating and looking into because there's quite a bit of coverage there. So the plan will be eventually to perhaps hire additional distribution But our focus for CoffeeFlow will be primarily U.S. based and primarily in a handful of states and probably the VA where we've got some traction right now. But as far as additional new hires right at this moment, we need to evaluate the talent that we've got out in the marketplace right now. And we are doing that.

OK, any other maybe just high level, Eric, as you've. evaluated the company in general, any other obvious changes or direction that you want to take the company that you've evaluated and noticed that needs to happen as soon as possible?

Yeah, no, I mean, what I found and I knew coming in and after looking into this and being a patient of the STA, we have one hell of a foundation that we've got here with the dental business, right? And so, you know, there's an opportunity here to continue to grow that business, hopefully more dramatically than we've done in the past. And, you know, at the same time, refocus our energy on the right way to bring CompuFlow to market, especially on the Medicare side of the equation. So I think the bit of an epiphany for me is, you know, there's quite a strong business here that will continue to support the investment that we need to make in copy flow to take it where it needs to go. But focus is very disciplined. Focused is crucial to having success in the medical field.

Okay. And then last question is international with what percent of revenues this quarter and what drove the growth in international this quarter?

Keisha, the question was the percentage.

The percentage of international is 48%. The international growth was due to additional distributors, larger orders coming in, timing of when we're getting the orders out, and doing a better job of reaching some of our distributors that had fell off previously for different reasons, and just making a headway to get everything out timely.

What I'll share is the international business is quite lumpy. When the folks internationally place orders, it's usually large orders for a group of customers, whereas the online e-commerce business within the U.S., it's kind of a steady business. So it probably won't be unusual even here moving forward to see some lumpiness in the international business where we might receive a very large order from Canada, for instance. That's part of the reason maybe for a little bit of the exaggerated growth on the international side, although we're quite bullish on new countries being added and the impact that they will have.

Okay, very helpful. Thanks so much. Welcome aboard again, and good luck. Thank you. We concur that you have, we think, a market-changing product on the medical side and a great opportunity in front of you. So with that, I'll hop back in the queue.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Bruce Jackson of The Benchmark Company. Bruce, your line is live.

Thank you. Good morning, Eric and Jason. Welcome aboard. I wanted to look at the international number a little bit more. What was the role of tariffs in the quarter? And was there any behavior where there was some international stocking to avoid the tariffs? Or are tariffs just really not a factor In your business, it sounds like you had some new distributors come online, but I'm just trying to kind of gauge the lumpiness in this business, given the market dynamics.

At this point, the tariffs haven't hurt us so much in getting our orders out for international. We have set up some other opportunities where we will be shipping directly from our warehouse in China to some of our international partners and distributors like that. So we have already gotten in front of the tariffs. We do have enough inventory here for the domestic orders. sales so that that won't be effect into our inventory and we already did an inventory build up in 2024 preparing for the tariffs where we have enough inventory on hand that's not affected by the tariffs of bringing in the hand pieces from china at this point so we don't think that in the near future we will have an issue with the tariffs because we've already set up um international shipping that we have already started, and that for domestic, we do have enough inventory here on the mainland where we are good, and tariffs will not affect us at this point.

Okay, great. And then turning over to the reimbursement side of it with the JMAT coverage and the private payers, Is there anything in the funnel right now? And do you have anything near term in terms of adding either more JMAX or more private payers to the reimbursement? Or is the idea to just kind of go deeper in the regions that you've currently got reimbursement for?

So, Bruce, you nailed it. Yeah. Right now, the thought and the focus will be on investing in the folks that are already using the coffee flow, understanding how it's working for them, understanding how the claims submission is going for them, hiring the appropriate people to help them through that process, and making sure that we have a really clear understanding of reimbursement that's solid before we start taking this out more broadly to the rest of the market. In the meantime, we will pick and choose for the different jurisdictions some areas where we want to start developing the data as well with the support of our board members, which are fantastic to help us through that process. I don't know if the folks on the phone know, but Shan, one of our board members, that's kind of his specialty. And so we plan on engaging him to help us move this through the different categories, but also to help us with some of the reimbursement plans.

Just as an aside, Stan is running a private company called PainTech. And when he took it over, they were losing, I think, a million a month. And he's turned it profitable within two years and has grown sales dramatically. And I think he and Dr. Desmond, who also is on our board, who is a practicing surgeon, the two of them will help us significantly focus our medical business going forward.

There's really three pillars to reimbursement. One is the clinical aspect of it. The other is the business side of it. And the other is the academic side of it. And over time, we will continue to invest in those three areas to help us sort of solidify the foundation for reimbursement so that we can do that across the other jurisdictions. But it needs to be programmatic. There needs to be a lot of data collected. There needs to be a lot of contact with these reimbursement claims, and we will have a much more disciplined program in place to make sure that we get the reimbursements that make the most sense.

Okay, great. Thank you for taking my questions. That's it for me. Thank you, Bruce.

Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Dr. Richard Durando of Dr. Richard Durando DDS. Your line is live.

Good morning. My question is very similar to most of the other questionnaires. The native reflection by clinicians that you've approached for sales, how bullish are they on the technology? And I've been an investor for a very long time. And I'm a dentist. I love the product. It's a great product. Is there a way to recruit these people to be cheerleaders and effective? You've got what? We have eight other jurisdictions where there's not much going on. Can you give me some color, some depth in those areas? Thank you.

It's a good question, and one that we're thinking about every day. We do have an advisory group, and that's kind of how this all got started. The challenge is trying to identify, is it three, is it five, is it 10, is it 20? I think the number is smaller than larger. So I think that, again, starting to understand the pros and cons of the clinicians using the product to make sure that when we go out to the broader market, that we have a very clear story. We know the right use cases and so forth is so vital. And I think we had a little bit of a shotgun approach. We were out shooting in a lot of different directions without collecting information and collecting insight. And so the next phase of growth will be collecting that insight, having a clear understanding of what doctors are liking, where the best use cases are, and then expanding from there. But I think until we really press down on the folks that are actually using it and collect a lot of really good insight. We would be not doing the right thing by taking this out to the broader market until we have a deep understanding of all of that insight. So the plan is not to just go push this out to other jurisdictions. The plan is to make it work in the jurisdictions where we've already started, primarily in New Jersey, quite honestly. And then once we have that established and we have good data and we have good reimbursement, then we will start taking it out to additional areas.

I don't know if that helps.

So in the last three to five years, there was all these reports of people using it in certain clinical settings that seemed to be more hospital-driven than individual clinics. And you get these very bullish reports about how much the clinician loved the product. And so there wasn't enough data generated to approach the general anesthesiology field with something like, wow, this is really slick. I mean.

Well, I think, you know, to my earlier point, you know, just maybe a little bit of a lack of focus, right? I think some started off maybe in labor and delivery. Then we sort of start, you know, more recently there's been personal injury. And the focus needs to be, and these are very different parts of the organization, is on the pain management clinics. And so I think, and a lot of it, again, it all has to do with reimbursement. So with personal injury, doctors are seeing very large payments from the insurers. But with the pain management, we yet have not collected enough data to make sure that the reimbursements are good for them. And so it's just a matter of really doing a lot more focused cases in pain management versus labor and delivery, personal injury, so forth and so on. So it's again, you know, I don't know what was said in the past or not, but the technology is real. The technology is great. It's just we can't try to boil the ocean. We can't try to be, you know, every jurisdiction, every type of use case. There's there's cash check. There's there's lots of different components to this. So I think if we just focus not exclusively, but mostly exclusively on the pain management clinics with a handful of doctors, we will get to the right reimbursement code so we can roll this out more broadly.

Thank you. And one last question. Have you had a failure, in other words, a wet tap in all the procedures that have been done? Has everything held up well so that you have this product that's rock solid in that particular vertical?

No wet taps, to my knowledge.

Right. And I understand the problem is not necessarily the wet tap, but the short tap. You're not in the space, so the anesthetic is not as profound as it could be.

Yeah, I guess if they don't get to the space. Yeah, I'm not... aware of any short taps either, but that's a good question for a person like Dr. Demesma, since he's probably done the most with the solution so far.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. And our next question is coming from Elliot Sparrow, who is a private investor. Elliot, your line is live.

Thank you and welcome to the company, Eric, and Jason also. I'm looking forward to a new regime and some success. My question is, can you give us an update on the VA status and what is going on there first?

Great question. So it's top of mind for us as well. So we've already been in touch with our partner, Shamrock, on that opportunity. We've got a handful of VA VISNs that we're working with. The next step is for us to focus on, again, not boiling the ocean, but focusing on one VISN where we think we can have an impact. And so winning one means more than likely winning several at some point. But again, each VA operates highly independently, believe it or not, and they're all unique and different. And they also work in conjunction and many times with some of the private hospitals. So the plan is to focus on a particular vision in the Eastern part of the country and make some progress there, but we are actively engaged in that opportunity.

The one thing I will add is that the pricing has been set And it's very favorable for us both from the instrument and from the disposable. So if once we start achieving success in the VA, DOD, and Indian Health Reservations, you know, we think that's going to be the real fast forward on the medical side. It's going to take some more work, but we're confident that the team can do it.

Okay. Sounds great. One other question. About a year ago, again, obviously way before your time, we heard that we won Brazil and that we had all the groundwork laid and it was ready to roll. Here we are a year later, haven't heard a peep about Brazil since. Is it a dead issue or is this just another, since you're here, we're not boiling the ocean? Yeah.

I would say it still remains a long-term potential, but nothing is happening in the near term. We had an individual working on that. And now recently, I don't know if you've seen the tariffs that have been put on Brazil by the U.S. government. And so in the short term, I don't expect any news. But again, it's on the plate. Jason and Erica focused on renewing that over time. And hopefully we can have some success. I'm told there are more dentists in Brazil than there are in the U.S., despite this difference in population.

Yeah, so Elliot, sort of exactly, these all respectively are massive markets, whether it's Brazil, whether it's 13 jurisdictions. And what this new team will do is we will be precise. So we're going to be extremely focused on reimbursement. for copy flow in a very small segment of the population before we try to roll this out to the rest of the world. Each geography is different. Each jurisdiction is different. And it's wonderful to talk about all these great opportunities, but it's different to execute within one of them. So we will be focused on execution. We will be focused on getting the right reimbursement amount. And we will do that with precision more so than you know, waving our hands that there's this massive, huge opportunity, which there absolutely is, but we've got to do it in a very pragmatic and programmatic way in order to ensure that doctors are getting what they deserve. And I'll just say one more thing since you're a shareholder. I was a private shareholder, you know, before this, since 2019. And one thing we will do here moving forward is we want to hear from you guys, right? You own the company. We own the company as shareholders, and if you've got any insights, if you've got any contacts, we're happy to listen. So know that this will be a very transparent board, a transparent leadership team, and we work for you.

Okay, great. I'd love to hear it. My biggest goal for this call was hearing a plan coming forward from you, and you have it. I'm happy.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Well, we appear to have reached the end of our question and answer session, so I'll now hand back over to the management team for their closing remarks.

I just want to thank everyone for joining us on this call. I think with the addition of Eric and Jason and some other plans we have for the future, We will hopefully make this a successful company. We are going through a complete evaluation of where we should spend the money and where we can cut to make sure this company is successful. Thank you for your time, and I appreciate any questions. You can just reach Keisha or myself if you have any questions after the call. Thank you very much. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks. Thank you very much, everyone. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation.