Cytosorbents Corporation

Good afternoon and welcome to the CITOSorbents first quarter 2020 financial and operating results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the formal remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Please be advised that the call will be recorded at the company's request. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to your moderator, Jeremy Pfeffer. Please go ahead, Mr. Pfeffer.

Thank you and good afternoon. Welcome to Cytosorbents' first quarter 2020 financial and offers call. Joining me today from the company are Dr. Phillip Chan, Chief Executive Officer, Vincent Capponi, Chief Operating Officer, Kathleen Bloch, Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Efthymios Mikas Deliargyris, Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Christian Steiner, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing from Germany, and Christopher Cramer, Vice President of Business Development. Before I turn the call over to Dr. Chan, I'd like to remind listeners that during the call, management's prepared remarks may contain a forward-looking statement to risks and uncertainties. Management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions today. Or the company claims protect harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1994. may differ from results discussed today, and therefore we refer you to a more detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties in the company's FESC. Any projections as to the company's future performance represented by management include estimates today as of May 20, and we assume no obligation to update these projections in the future as market conditions change. During today's presentation, we'll have an overview covering the operating and financial highlights for the first quarter by Dr. Chan and Ms. Falk, Following that presentation, we will open the line to your questions during the live Q&A session with the rest of the management team. At this time, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Dr. Phil. Phil?

Thank you very much, Jeremy, and good afternoon, everyone. Before we get started, I'd like to congratulate Vince Capponi, who has now been promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer. As you saw from my comments in yesterday's press release, Vince has done an outstanding job here in his 18 years of service to the company. and I just want to thank him here publicly for all that he has done. Turning to the operational highlights for the first quarter. In the first quarter, we achieved 88,000 or more cytosorb treatments delivered up from 61,000 a year ago. In the first quarter, total revenue grew 68% to 8.7 million and product sales grew 78% to 8.2 million over the first quarter in 2019. We ended the first quarter of 2020 with 2.7 million and Cytosorb order backlog and have ramp production to near full capacity with the ability and flexibility to go up or down with the current situation. We achieved blended product gross margins of 76% in the first quarter of 2020, up from 74% a year ago, but lower than Q4 2019 due to expenses of rapid scale up to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cytosorb is now EU approved to remove ticagrelor during on-pump cardiothoracic surgery with an expanded C-mark label. And we have now treated, and in the first quarter, we treated the first 70 COVID-19 patients, including the very first patients treated in China with partner China Medical Systems Holding Limited, of now more than 750 patients treated, including 25 under the US FDA emergency use authorization. During the quarter, two case reports came out on the first successful cytosorb treatments of grade four were life-threatening cytokine release syndrome, or CRS, in two CAR T-cell immunotherapy patients. And we also completed the 250-patient removed endocarditis randomized controlled trial in Germany that is expected to read out in mid-2020 that was done as an investigator-initiated study in 15 centers throughout Germany. We also have achieved marketing approval of Cytosorb in Mexico with our partner, Fresenius Medical Care. Now, to talk a little bit more about Ticagrelor and our recent breakthrough designation, I'd like to introduce you to our new chief medical officer, Dr. Efthymios Deliargyris, who also goes by the name Mikus. Mikus, could you give a little background on yourself and give your thoughts as a subject matter expert in this area on this application?