Alimera Sciences, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good morning and welcome to the Alamira Sciences corporate update conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Participants of this call are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcast live over the internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. A webcast replay of the call will be available approximately one hour after the end of the call through August 18th, 2023. I would now like to turn the call over to Scott Gordon of Core IOR, the company's investor relations firm. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and thank you for participating in today's conference call. Joining me from Alamira's leadership team are Rick Eisworth, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Russell Skibstead, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, management will be making forward-looking statements, including statements that address Alamira's expectations for future performance, operating and financial results, and the impact of recent transactions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, please refer to the risk factors described in Alan Mayer's most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, the Form 8-K filed with the SEC, and Alan Mayer's press release that accompanies this call, particularly the cautionary statements in it. Today's conference call includes discussion of forecasted adjusted EBITDA and non-GAAP financial measure that Alamara believes can be useful in evaluating its performance. You should not consider this additional information in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Please refer to Alamara's press release for more information regarding Alamara's use of this non-GAAP measure. This call also discusses certain historical financial information and operating results related to iPoint Pharmaceuticals. This information has been derived from iPoint's SEC filing. The content of this call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, May 18th, 2023. Except as required by law, Alameda disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Rick Isworth. Rick, please go ahead.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning to everyone. I'd like to thank you all for your patience the last few days with the delay of our call. but given the nature of this pending news, we felt it was best to postpone. This morning, we're announcing a transformative acquisition for Almera. We are very excited to have acquired additional commercial rights for UTiQ from iPoint Pharmaceuticals, and specifically the ability to add UTiQ to our US portfolio. As you're aware, we've been looking for a retina asset to leverage the infrastructure we've built to support Alluvium for some time now. We always thought that it was important to find the right first acquisition and we believe we've found a great asset in UTiQ. The concept of combining Alluvion and UTiQ under one company and one commercial team has been a topic of discussion amongst investors, our customers, and our employees for several years, given their belief that bringing these two brands together makes such strategic sense. For those of you who don't know, UTiQ is a 0.18 microgram lisinolena-setanide intravitreal insert, much like our product Alluvion. and it is approved in the United States for the treatment of chronic non-infectious uveitis affecting the posterior segment of the eye. Our current product, Alluvion, is based on the same underlying technology license from one of iPoint's predecessor entities. iPoint has grown UTEC into a significant brand in the retina space, having generated over $28 million in revenue in 2022. This growth has been driven by strong messaging centered around the ability of a consistent, but a consistent low dose of corticosteroid to control the recurrence of uveitic inflammation, resulting in a continuous calm for patients. This asset acquisition makes strong business sense for us for so many reasons. We are already very familiar with this asset, not only due to its similarities to alluvium, but also because of our experience commercializing alluvium for UVI syndication in our European markets since 2019. Both products contain the same anti-inflammatory corticosteroid, flucinolone acetinide, and both use the same technology to deliver continuous microdose of the drug for up to 36 months. Historically, the messaging behind UTiG's value has been very consistent with our Alluvian messaging. While we have promoted Alluvian as providing continuous microdosing to reduce the recurrence of diabetic macular edema, or DME, UTiQ has been positioned to deliver the same release for continuous calm in patients suffering from uveitis. Both the mechanism and the promise is the same for both products. Further, both products share practically the same customer base in the U.S., and there is significant overlap with the retina specialist that we are already calling on daily to detail alluvium. We will need to add uveitis specialists to our target list, which we estimate is between 300 and 500 new physicians. We're very excited to have several members of the UTIC commercial team join Almera to support this expanded market. As we integrate the individuals who have been supporting UTIC into Almera, we expect to increase the number of clinical account specialists, known as CAS, in their territories to 35 to 40 in the second half of the year. This planned integration and expansion means that there will be at least a 75% increase in the number of CAS detailing UTIC to retina specialists every day and at least a 20% increase in the number of CAS detailing alluvium. We believe this will serve both brands well, as the reach and frequency of engagement with physicians has been shown to impact utilization, and an increased number of reps promoting both products will allow us to see more doctors more often. Additionally, a second product should make each of these engagements more effective, as our CAS will have more reasons to have a discussion with the retina specialist. In the past, We have been disadvantaged relative to our competitors because their products are on the market with multiple indications leading to greater familiarity by the retina specialist. We expect that the ability to discuss the benefits of the only truly long-term low-dose steroids across multiple indications will strengthen physicians' relationships with Alimera and the recall for utilizing continuous micro-ing technology to treat DME and uveitis and deliver that continuous call. And most importantly, This transaction will have a profound impact on the future finances of Almera. We believe this transaction will be immediately accretive to revenue and could contribute positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half of 2023. As we reported on Monday, in a typically seasonally low quarter for both products, we recognized $13.5 million in a leave in revenue in Q1 2023, while iPoint recently reported $7.4 million in UTIC sales for the quarter. On a combined basis, Elluvian and Utique generated $20.9 million in revenue in the first quarter. Because of the product similarities and the significant overlap in our customer targets, we believe that there will be synergies commercializing these products together. We expect to begin seeing those synergies in the second half of 2023 and continue to see more in 2024 as we further integrate Utique into Alamera. And as a result, we are expecting consolidated net revenues in excess of $100 million and positive adjusted EBITDA of over $20 million in 2024. With that, I will now turn the call over to Russell to review our financial results for the first quarter and the financial details of the transaction.