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spk14: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the ERGO, Inc. Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to turn the call over to Nick Ladico, Chief Retail Officer. Please go ahead.
spk04: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the ERGO Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this call is being broadcast live and the digital replay will be available on our IR websites. Joining me on today's call are Christian Gormson, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Adam Loponis, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that some of the matters discussed in the conference call will contain forward-looking statements regarding future events as outlined in our press release today. We wish to caution you that such statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, are forward-looking in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainty, and actual events or results may differ materially. The factors that could cause actual results or events to differ include, but are not limited to, factors referenced in our press release today as well as our filings at the SEC. Before turning the call over to Christian, I want to make note that we have posted a historical gap to non-gap reconciliation table on our IR website in the events and presentation section.
spk05: With that said, I will now turn the call over to Christian. Thank you, Nick, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today.
spk03: The fourth quarter marked the culmination of a pivotal year for ERGO. In 2022, we settled our DOJ investigation and cleared our SEC filing delinquency, recapitalized the business through a major financing, added patient square capital as our major shareholder, and made meaningful progress against our most important business priorities. Perhaps most impactful to the future of Ergo was the progress we made on our strategic evolution into a true omni-channel business. While we continue to see stable trends in sales to direct-to-consumer cash-paid customers, retail has begun to diversify our gross shipments and leverage our existing media spend. And while still early stage, insurance remains a future opportunity. Lastly, we have retained top talent across the organization, despite the challenges our organization has faced. Given the circumstances, we think it's fair to say that Ergo has made incredible progress in 2022, and we're excited about the continued evolution of our business in 2023. Turning to operational results, the business momentum we reported in the third quarter carried into the fourth quarter. we established a nationwide physical retail presence through our partnership with Victor, in connection with the OTC final rule being published in October. Announced a strategic partnership with Nation's Benefits, and in early 2023, commercially launched Eargo 7, our most innovative product yet. Fourth quarter 2022 net revenue was $12.9 million, up approximately 28% year-over-year and over 63% sequential. I'll now provide a brief update on our strategic initiatives and the path ahead through 2023, beginning with an update on our retail strategy, which is the top organizational priority in 2023. In order to provide some context, let me first briefly recap our three primary objectives in launching this retail channel. First, leverage existing retail foot traffic and sales presence at a national scale to drive awareness and education of your goal. Second, better target and qualify consumers through in-person conversation and availability of an in-store hearing screener. And third, accelerate revenue growth while better defining our path to profitability. Moving to our partnership with Victor, one of America's largest wireless retailers. Early in the fourth quarter, we announced our expanded partnership, placing Ergo Inventory in approximately 1,500 stores nationwide. As a reminder, this partnership enabled us to meet the four core elements of a world-class experience, that we believe consumers desire when shopping in person for hearing aids. One, education and proper merchandising. Two, self-administered hearing screening. Three, expert sales consultation. And four, outstanding post-purchase support. The partnership remains in the early stages of scaling up and we're not prepared to make comments on expected performance. However, We have been encouraged by what we have seen in the five months that Eargo has been available for purchase in Victor retail locations. We continue to support our partner by training and educating their sales force on how to talk to consumers about hearing, and most importantly, the differentiators of Eargo. This process will continue in the first half of 2023 as we listen to customers, refine our approach, and improve the customer experience. While our partnership remains at the very early stages, we believe premium partnership opportunities like this one are important to the scalability of Virgo's business and our path to both accelerated revenues and clearer line of sight to profitability. We thank our partners at Victra and look forward to providing you with further performance updates over time. Turning now to insurance and benefits access. In mid-December, we announced a strategic partnership with Nations Benefits. Nations is a leading provider of supplemental benefits, flex cards, and member engagement solutions for health plans, and this opportunity will allow health plan members to serve by Nations to use their plan benefits towards purchasing Eargo OTC hearing aids. By doing so, we believe this will create a pathway for individuals with hearing loss, lower barriers to care, and offer oversight to ensure people have access to the right products for their individual needs, ultimately allowing more people to hear better. While the original timing of the Nation launch was expected to be January 2023, Nations has delayed launch of its OTC hearing aid offering generally, and we do not know when ultimately Nations will launch its offering. Nevertheless, we are excited to partner with an organization It shares our values of customer satisfaction and using technology to enhance the customer experience. In terms of broader insurance access, we're currently accepting both FEHB and non-FEHB insurance as a method of direct payment in certain limited circumstances. In particular, when this customer has undergone additional testing by an independent licensed healthcare provider to establish medical necessity, which supporting clinical documentation, for example, when customers receive an in-person hearing evaluations. It remains early in this new process, and we do not expect to see any significant volume for insurance orders in 2023. Additionally, we have generally focused on enhancing our compliance and risk management operations, including to support insurance claims processing, and we intend to continue to do so. Turning now to Yirgo 7. We were thrilled to announce the launch of Yirgo 7, our seventh generation device at CES in early January. With the commercial launch in mid-February, Yirgo 7 is now available for purchase online as well as in Victor locations across the country. Yirgo 7 is the most revolutionary device we have developed to date. uniquely designed to offer an even better experience hearing speech in noisy environments, widely perceived to be the most challenging situation for people with hearing loss. This is achieved through Sound Adjust Plus with Clarity Mode. This feature provides more sophisticated sound processing in loud environments by analyzing the soundscape as it changes and then automatically choosing whether to emphasize speech or reduce noise. No need to open the app or manually adjust anything. We're incredibly proud of this feature and believe it will have particular appeal in the new OTC landscape, offering advanced technology and high-touch post-purchase support at an affordable price without ever compromising quality or user experience. Importantly, following the receipt of 510K clearance from the FDA, you'll go five, six, and 7 can each be marketed as self-fitting hearing aids with the use of SoundMatch via our mobile app, and each will be marketed OTC pursuant to the FDA's new OTC regulatory requirements. Meaningful innovation is a priority at EarNote, and this latest generation device reaffirms this commitment with new features that continue to put the customer at the heart of the hearing experience. Let me now turn it over to Adam for a more detailed summary of our fourth quarter financial results.
spk06: Thanks, Christian. I will provide financial comparisons for the fourth quarter of 2022 sequentially versus the third quarter of 2022, given the difficult full fiscal year-over-year comparison as a result of the impacts the DOJ investigation had on our 2021 financial results. As Christian mentioned, We began re-accepting insurance as a method of direct payment in a limited capacity, but we do not expect a significant volume of insurance orders at this time. We are also seeking clarity on a plan requirement post the OTC rule. Fourth quarter 2022 net revenue was $12.9 million, up approximately 63.3% sequentially. The increase was primarily driven by an increase in gross system shift. fourth quarter 2022 growth systems shift for 8,863, up 71.9% sequentially. The increase was driven by a wholesale inventory purchase by Victor to have ergos available for purchase in their approximately 1,500 locations nationwide and sequential growth in systems shipped to our traditional cash pay direct-to-consumer customers. The fourth quarter 2022 return accrual rate was 34.9%, up 2.6 percentage points sequentially. Moving to non-GAAP gross margin and non-GAAP operating expenses. Our discussion of financial metrics in the gross margin line and below will be on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation expenses. please refer to our gap to non-gap reconciliation included in today's earnings release and the historical gap to non-gap reconciliation table on our IR website in the events and presentation section. Fourth quarter non-gap gross margin was 47.9% compared to 24.5% in the third quarter of 2022. The sequential gross margin increase was primarily due to higher gross shipment volume on a similar fixed cost base. Fourth quarter non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses were $14.9 million, or 115.3% of net revenues, compared to $10.6 million, or 134.5% of net revenues in the third quarter of 2022. The decrease in sales and marketing as a percentage of net revenues was due to the higher net revenues. Non-GAAP research and development expenses were 4.2 million, or 32.7% of net revenues, compared to 4.3 million, or 53.8% of net revenues in the third quarter of 2022. Non-GAAP general and administrative expenses were 8.6 million, or 66.4% of net revenues compared to 10.0 million or 126.8% of net revenues in the third quarter of 2022. The decrease was primarily due to a net reduction in professional fees. Non-GAAP net operating loss for the fourth quarter of 2022 was 21.5 million compared to non-GAAP net operating loss of 23.0 million for the third quarter of 2022, and compared to 33.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. Moving to the balance sheet. In late November, we closed our previously announced rights offering of up to 18.75 million shares of common stock to existing stockholders, representing a major step forward for the company. Through the offering, we raised gross proceeds from subscriptions of approximately 29.3 million, In addition to these gross proceeds from subscriptions, we also received an additional investment of approximately $5.5 million from PatientSquare. After deducting related costs and expenses, we are pleased to have raised a total net proceeds of approximately $32.9 million between the two transactions, which we plan to use to further fund our omnichannel growth strategy. We thank PatientSquare for their support and commitment to our long-term success. and look forward to their continued partnership. Following the rights offering and to end the year, we had cash and cash equivalents of $101.2 million as of December 31, 2022, with no debt on the balance sheet. This compares to $110.5 million of cash and cash equivalents and $15.3 million of term debt as of December 31, 2021. Our previous guidance for the fourth quarter of 2022 was a quarterly cash burn of approximately $20 million to $25 million. Our operating cash burn was $20.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, and our overall cash balance increased by $13.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, primarily driven by the rights offering and patient square investments. I will now turn it back to Christian for closing commentary.
spk03: Thanks, Adam. We're pleased to conclude 2022 and are proud of what the organization has achieved during a challenging year. We now look forward to 2023 and the opportunity to transform our business through executing our omnichannel strategy. We believe our progress in 2022 puts us at a sound operational platform for this execution. We continue to focus on our four most important business priorities this year. One, refining and expanding our retail strategy. Two, accessing insurance coverage for Eargo hearing aids, including continuing dialogue with individual FDHB carriers and other third-party payers regarding insurance coverage of Eargo hearing aids. Three, optimizing our cash pay business. And four, continuing to invest in innovation. Of course, all of this is supported by our culture of compliance and accountability as we continue to refine our program and maintain the utmost compliance across the business. Before closing, I would like to thank our team at Yirgo for their unwavering dedication to improving hearing loss. This organization remains motivated, incentivized, and energized to achieve our objectives, and without them, none of this progress would be possible. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but this market remains large and under-penetrated, and we believe our recent business progress and product innovation puts Ergo in a position to capitalize on this opportunity.
spk08: I will now turn the call over to the operator for Q&A. The floor is now open for your questions.
spk14: To ask a question at this time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point you'd like to withdraw from the queue, please press star 1 again. You'll be provided the opportunity to ask one question and one further follow-up question.
spk08: We will now take a moment to render our roster. We do have a question from the line of Margaret Caxor from William Blair.
spk14: Please proceed.
spk09: Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to start, I guess, to follow up on the Victor sales. Obviously, it's great to see their commitment to try to take this as a wholesale purchase. But can you give us a sense, I guess, around repeat purchases by Victor, either in Q4 and Q1, either units or percentages, just to get a sense of sell-in versus sell-through?
spk03: Hey, Margaret. Again, good to hear and thanks for the feedback. We're off to what we believe is, you know, early days in terms of detail and, you know, getting the commitment on their end to be present in all 1,500 locations has been, you know, significant. You know, we're not giving specific guidance. Adam, I don't know if we can, you know, provide more nuance here specifically to how we're looking at it. But overall, you know, we're pretty excited about this partnership and the collaboration that we're seeing from Victor.
spk06: Margaret, this is Adam. Thank you for the question. We aren't giving specific guidance or a breakdown of the elements of the Victor, but as Christian mentioned, we did provide initial stocking order that covered a unit in each of the 1,500 locations. And we did start to see sell-through in Q4, but it was very early days in that partnership as it was only started during mid-quarter.
spk09: Okay, that's helpful. And I know I have one follow-up, so I'm going to stick a few follow-ups in one. But, yeah, how are you guys thinking about, you know, this partnership maybe extending into other partnerships? You know, second sub-bullet, you know, how do you think about this wholesale sale? Were you able to recognize cash from it? And then the real kind of follow-up, I guess, would be, as we think about the core DTC underlying franchise, how is demand there, especially with your Go7, and then kind of maybe offset, if it is at all, by recent inflation growth? Thank you, guys.
spk13: Yeah.
spk03: No, thank you. That was an elegant way of asking one question, Margaret. No surprise. Let me cover the first part and then hand off to Adam when it comes to the cash, but You know, how we're thinking and I think how we've described the Victor partnership is that OTC is very new for the whole industry. And, you know, it's like how much support, what kind of experience are you building? Our view on the Victor partnership and the reason why we emphasize it so much in, you know, in this call is we believe that this is, you know, creating the close to optimal user experience. So we're very thrilled with the level of commitment we're seeing and also the level of experience that we can build and store in terms of actually actively talking about hearing loss and supporting prospective customers and experiencing like either hearing screening, simulation, having that kind of experience To our understanding, it's not what you see in a lot of other over-the-counter experiences. So what we are, you know, clearly focused on here is, you know, continue to work with Victor to build out this as a case of how over-the-counter can be done. We are in discussions with other retailers because clearly this is something that is getting a lot of interest. But ideally, you know, we're at the point where we can use as a case example of how to really bring customers into the category in a way where we're meeting the customer where they already are, which is the whole point. So I guess your assumption is pretty correct on that one. Adam, did you want to comment on the cash and collecting cash?
spk06: It's a standard distribution agreement, Margaret, with the standard terms against it. We did collect cash in Q4 from the initial shipment. But we are, you know, in an ongoing partnership with VICTRA and we'll continue to provide updates as things progress here in Q1 and beyond.
spk03: And then finally on the core D2C, you know, as we also mentioned, you know, we had a solid Q4 also versus Q2 and Q3. which, frankly, we've also historically been seeing good momentum in Q4, especially for the DTC business and the holiday season. And that's part of delivering the numbers that we did, that we had a strong Q4. Again, we're not really commenting on the new year, but I think it's fair to say that we have not really seen any strong indicators that the economy as such and all the worries about inflation, interest, cash, you name it, has impacted our business.
spk08: Great. Thank you, guys. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
spk14: This does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
spk00: Bye.
spk14: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the ERGO Inc. Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to turn the call over to Nick Ledeco, Chief Retail Officer. Please go ahead.
spk04: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the ERGO Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this call is being broadcast live and the digital replay will be available on our IR websites. Joining me on today's call are Christian Gormson, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Adam Loponis, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that some of the matters discussed in the conference call will contain forward-looking statements regarding future events as outlined in our press release today. We wish to caution you that such statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, are forward-looking in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainty, and actual events or results may differ materially. The factors that could cause actual results or events to differ include, but are not limited to, factors referenced in our press release today, as well as our filings at the SEC. Before turning the call over to Christian, I want to make note that we have posted a historical gap to non-gap reconciliation table on our IR website in the events and presentation section.
spk05: With that said, I will now turn the call over to Christian. Thank you, Nick, and thank you everyone for joining us today.
spk03: The fourth quarter marked the culmination of a pivotal year for ERGO. In 2022, we settled our DOJ investigation and cleared our SEC filing delinquency, recapitalized the business through a major financing, added patient square capital as our major shareholder, and made meaningful progress against our most important business priorities. Perhaps most impactful to the future of Ergo was the progress we made on our strategic evolution into a true omni-channel business. While we continue to see stable trends in sales to direct-to-consumer cash-paid customers, retail has begun to diversify our cross-shipments and leverage our existing media spend. And while still early stage, insurance remains a future opportunity. Lastly, we have retained tough talent across the organization, despite the challenges our organization has faced. Given the circumstances, we think it's fair to say that Ergo has made incredible progress in 2022, and we're excited about the continued evolution of our business in 2023. Turning to operational results, the business momentum we reported in the third quarter carried into the fourth quarter. we established a nationwide physical retail presence through our partnership with Victor, in connection with the OTC final rule being published in October. Announced a strategic partnership with Nation's Benefits, and in early 2023, commercially launched Ergo 7, our most innovative product yet. Fourth quarter 2022 net revenue was $12.9 million, up approximately 28% year-over-year and over 63% sequential. I'll now provide a brief update on our strategic initiatives and the path ahead through 2023, beginning with an update on our retail strategy, which is the top organizational priority in 2023. In order to provide some context, Let me first briefly recap our three primary objectives in launching this retail channel. First, leverage existing retail foot traffic and sales presence at a national scale to drive awareness and education of your goals. Second, better target and qualify consumers through in-person conversation and the availability of an in-store hearing screener. And third, accelerate revenue growth while better defining our path to profitability. Moving to our partnership with Victor, one of America's largest wireless retailers. Early in the fourth quarter, we announced our expanded partnership, placing Ergo Inventory in approximately 1,500 stores nationwide. As a reminder, this partnership enabled us to meet the four core elements of a world-class experience, that we believe consumers desire when shopping in person for hearing aids. One, education and proper merchandising. Two, self-administered hearing screening. Three, expert sales consultation. And four, outstanding post-purchase support. The partnership remains in the early stages of scaling up and we're not prepared to make comments on expected performance. However, We have been encouraged by what we have seen in the five months that Eargo has been available for purchase in Victra retail locations. We continue to support our partner by training and educating their sales force on how to talk to consumers about hearing, and most importantly, the differentiators of Eargo. This process will continue in the first half of 2023 as we listen to customers, refine our approach, and improve the customer experience. While our partnership remains at the very early stages, we believe premium partnership opportunities like this one are important to the scalability of Yirgo's business and our path to both accelerated revenues and clearer line of sight to profitability. We thank our partners at Victra and look forward to providing you with further performance updates over time. Turning now to insurance and benefits access. In mid-December, we announced a strategic partnership with Nations Benefits. Nations is a leading provider of supplemental benefits, flex cards, and member engagement solutions for health plans, and this opportunity will allow health plan members to serve by Nations to use their plan benefits towards purchasing Eargo OTC hearing aids. By doing so, we believe this will create a pathway for individuals with hearing loss, lower barriers to care, and offer oversight to ensure people have access to the right products for their individual needs, ultimately allowing more people to hear better. While the original timing of the Nation launch was expected to be January 2023, Nations has delayed launch of its OTC hearing aid offering generally, and we do not know when ultimately Nations will launch its offering. Nevertheless, we are excited to partner with an organization It shares our values of customer satisfaction and using technology to enhance the customer experience. In terms of broader insurance access, we're currently accepting both FEHB and non-FEHB insurance as a method of direct payment in certain limited circumstances. In particular, when this customer has undergone additional testing by an independent licensed healthcare provider to establish medical necessity, with supporting clinical documentation, for example, when customers receive an in-person hearing evaluations. It remains early in this new process, and we do not expect to see any significant volume for insurance orders in 2023. Additionally, we have generally focused on enhancing our compliance and risk management operations, including to support insurance claims processing, and we intend to continue to do so. Turning now to Yirgo 7. We were thrilled to announce the launch of Yirgo 7, our seventh generation device at CES in early January. With the commercial launch in mid-February, Yirgo 7 is now available for purchase online as well as in Victor locations across the country. Yirgo 7 is the most revolutionary device we have developed to date. uniquely designed to offer an even better experience hearing speech in noisy environments, widely perceived to be the most challenging situation for people with hearing loss. This is achieved through Sound Adjust Plus with Clarity Mode. This feature provides more sophisticated sound processing in loud environments by analyzing the soundscape as it changes and then automatically choosing whether to emphasize speech or reduce noise. No need to open the app or manually adjust anything. We're incredibly proud of this feature and believe it will have particular appeal in the new OTC landscape, offering advanced technology and high-touch post-purchase support at an affordable price without ever compromising quality or user experience. Importantly, following the receipt of 510K clearance from the FDA a year ago 5, 6, and 7 can each be marketed as self-fitting hearing aids with the use of SoundMatch via our mobile app, and each will be marketed OTC pursuant to the FDA's new OTC regulatory requirements. Meaningful innovation is a priority at EarNote, and this latest generation device reaffirms this commitment with new features that continue to put the customer at the heart of the hearing experience. Let me now turn it over to Adam for a more detailed summary of our fourth quarter financial results.
spk06: Thanks, Christian. I will provide financial comparisons for the fourth quarter of 2022 sequentially versus the third quarter of 2022, given the difficult full fiscal year-over-year comparison as a result of the impacts the DOJ investigation had on our 2021 financial results. As Christian mentioned, We began re-accepting insurance as a method of direct payment in a limited capacity, but we do not expect a significant volume of insurance orders at this time. We are also seeking clarity on a plan requirement post the OTC rule. Fourth quarter 2022 net revenue was $12.9 million, up approximately 63.3% sequentially. The increase was primarily driven by an increase in growth system shift. fourth quarter 2022 growth systems shift for 8,863, up 71.9% sequentially. The increase was driven by a wholesale inventory purchase by Victor to have ergos available for purchase in their approximately 1,500 locations nationwide and sequential growth in systems shipped to our traditional cash pay direct-to-consumer customers. The fourth quarter 2022 return accrual rate was 34.9%, up 2.6 percentage points sequentially. Moving to non-GAAP gross margin and non-GAAP operating expenses. Our discussion of financial metrics in the gross margin line and below will be on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation expenses. please refer to our gap to non-gap reconciliation included in today's earnings release and the historical gap to non-gap reconciliation table on our IR website in the events and presentation section. Fourth quarter non-gap gross margin was 47.9% compared to 24.5% in the third quarter of 2022. The sequential gross margin increase was primarily due to higher gross shipment volume on a similar fixed cost base. Fourth quarter non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses were $14.9 million, or 115.3% of net revenues, compared to $10.6 million, or 134.5% of net revenues, in the third quarter of 2022. The decrease in sales and marketing as a percentage of net revenues was due to the higher net revenues. Non-GAAP research and development expenses were 4.2 million, or 32.7% of net revenues, compared to 4.3 million, or 53.8% of net revenues in the third quarter of 2022. Non-GAAP general and administrative expenses were 8.6 million, or 66.4% of net revenues compared to 10.0 million or 126.8% of net revenues in the third quarter of 2022. The decrease was primarily due to a net reduction in professional fees. Non-GAAP net operating loss for the fourth quarter of 2022 was 21.5 million compared to non-GAAP net operating loss of 23.0 million for the third quarter of 2022 and compared to $33.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. Moving to the balance sheet. In late November, we closed our previously announced rights offering of up to 18.75 million shares of common stock to existing stockholders, representing a major step forward for the company. Through the offering, we raised gross proceeds from subscriptions of approximately $29.3 million, In addition to these gross proceeds from subscriptions, we also received an additional investment of approximately $5.5 million from PatientSquare. After deducting related costs and expenses, we are pleased to have raised a total net proceeds of approximately $32.9 million between the two transactions, which we plan to use to further fund our omnichannel growth strategy. We thank PatientSquare for their support. and commitment to our long-term success and look forward to their continued partnership. Following the rights offering and to end the year, we had cash and cash equivalents of $101.2 million as of December 31, 2022, with no debt on the balance sheet. This compares to $110.5 million of cash and cash equivalents and $15.3 million of term debt as of December 31st, 2021. Our previous guidance for the fourth quarter of 2022 was a quarterly cash burn of approximately $20 million to $25 million. Our operating cash burn was $20.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, and our overall cash balance increased by $13.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, primarily driven by the right offering and patient square investments. I will now turn it back to Christian for closing commentary.
spk03: Thanks, Adam. We're pleased to conclude 2022 and are proud of what the organization has achieved during a challenging year. We now look forward to 2023 and the opportunity to transform our business through executing our omni-channel strategy. We believe our progress in 2022 puts us at a sound operational platform for this execution. We continue to focus on our four most important business priorities this year. One, refining and expanding our retail strategy. Two, accessing insurance coverage for Eargo hearing aids, including continuing dialogue with individual FDHB carriers and other third-party payers regarding insurance coverage of Eargo hearing aids. Three, optimizing our cash pay business. And four, continuing to invest in innovation. Of course, all of this is supported by our culture of compliance and accountability as we continue to refine our program and maintain the utmost compliance across the business. Before closing, I would like to thank our team at Yirgo for their unwavering dedication to improving hearing loss. This organization remains motivated, incentivized, and energized to achieve our objectives And without them, none of this progress would be possible. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but this market remains large and underpenetrated. And we believe our recent business progress and product innovation puts Ego in a position to capitalize on this opportunity.
spk08: I will now turn it all over to the operator for Q&A. The floor is now open for your questions.
spk14: To ask a question at this time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point you'd like to withdraw from the queue, please press star 1 again. You'll be provided the opportunity to ask one question and one further follow-up question.
spk08: We will now take a moment to render our roster. We do have a question from the line of Margaret Caxor from William Blair.
spk14: Please proceed.
spk09: Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to start, I guess, to follow up on the Victor sales. Obviously, it's great to see their commitment to try to take this as a wholesale purchase. But can you give us a sense, I guess, around repeat purchases by Victor, either in Q4 and Q1, either units or percentages, just to get a sense of sell-in versus sell-through?
spk03: Hey, Margaret. Again, good to hear and thanks for the feedback. We're off to what we believe is, you know, early days in terms of detail and, you know, getting the commitment on their end to be present in all 1,500 locations has been, you know, significant. You know, we're not giving specific guidance. Adam, I don't know if we can, you know, provide more nuance here specifically to how we're looking at it. But overall, you know, we're pretty excited about this partnership and the collaboration that we're seeing from Victor.
spk06: Margaret, this is Adam. Thank you for the question. We aren't giving specific guidance or a breakdown of the elements of the Victor, but as Christian mentioned, we did provide initial stocking order that covered a unit in each of the 1500 locations. And we did start to see sell-through in Q4, but it was very early days in that partnership as it was only started during mid-quarter.
spk09: Okay, that's helpful. And I know I have one follow-up, so I'm going to stick a few follow-ups in one. But, yeah, how are you guys thinking about, you know, this partnership maybe extending into other partnerships? You know, second sub-bullet, you know, how do you think about this wholesale sale? Were you able to recognize cash from it? And then the real kind of follow-up, I guess, would be as we think about the core DTC underlying franchise, how is demand there, especially with your Go7, and then kind of maybe offset, if it is at all, by recent inflation growth? Thank you, guys.
spk13: Yeah.
spk03: No, thank you. That was an elegant way of asking one question, Margaret. No surprise. Let me cover the first part and then hand off to Adam when it comes to the cash. You know, how we're thinking, and I think how we've described the Victor Partnership is, you know, OTC is very new for the whole industry. And, you know, it's like how much support, what kind of experience are you building? Our view on the Victor Partnership and the reason why we emphasize it so much in, you know, in this call is we believe that this is, you know, creating the close to optimal user experience. So we're very thrilled with the level of commitment we're seeing and also the level of experience that we can build and store in terms of actually actively talking about hearing loss and supporting prospective customers and experiencing like either hearing screening, simulation, having that kind of experience to our understanding, is not what you see in a lot of other over-the-counter experiences. So what we are, you know, clearly focused on here is, you know, continue to work with Victor to build out this as a case of how over-the-counter can be done. We are in discussions with other retailers because clearly this is something that is getting a lot of interest. But ideally, you know, we're at the point where we can use as a case example of how to really bring customers into the category in a way where we're meeting the customer where they already are, which is the whole point. So I guess your assumption is pretty correct on that one. Adam, did you want to comment on the cash?
spk06: It's a standard distribution agreement, Margaret, with the standard terms against it. We did collect cash in Q4 from the initial shipments. But we are, you know, in an ongoing partnership with Victor and we'll continue to provide updates as things progress here in Q1.
spk03: And then finally, on the core D2C, you know, as we also mentioned, you know, we had a solid Q4 also versus Q2 and Q3. which, frankly, we've also historically been seeing good momentum in Q4, especially for the DTC business and the holiday season. And that's part of delivering the numbers that we did, that we had a strong Q4. Again, we're not really commenting on the new year, but I think it's fair to say that we have not really seen any strong indicators that the economy as such and all the worries about inflation, interest, cash, you name it, has impacted our business.
spk08: Thank you, guys. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation.
spk14: You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer