Lucid Diagnostics Inc.

Greetings and welcome to Lucid Diagnostics third quarterly update conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief 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. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Adrian Miller, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Adrian Miller, Vice President of Investor Relations at Lucid Diagnostics. Thank you for participating in today's business update call. Joining me today on the call are Dr. Lee Sean Eklav, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lucid Diagnostics, along with Dennis McGrath, Chief Financial Officer of Lucid Diagnostics. The press release announcing our business update and financial results will be available shortly on Lucid's website. Please take a moment to read the disclaimers about forward-looking statements in the press release. The business update press release and the conference call both include forward-looking statements, and these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are described in the disclaimer. and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For a list and a description of these and other important risks and uncertainties that may affect future operations, see Part 1, Items 1A, entitled Risk Factors, and Lucid's most recent annual report on Forms 10-K, filed with the SEC, and any subsequent updates filed in quarterly reports in Forms 10-Q and subsequent Forms 8-K. Except as required by law, Lucid disclaims any intention or obligations to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect changes in expectations or in the event of conditions or circumstances on which these expectations may be based or that may affect the likelihood of actual results will differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. With that said, I would like to turn the call over to Lishan Akhlaq. Dr. Akhlaq?

Thank you, Adrian. So thank you, everyone, and welcome to our quarterly call. I'd like to first start by thanking our long-term shareholders for their ongoing support and commitment. As we discussed at our last quarterly call, we had some recent transformational milestones that we've put behind us, and the team is now, for this past quarter and moving forward, just intensely focused on executing on our long-term strategy. We're very satisfied with the solid results that they've delivered over this past quarter and are really particularly proud that they did so well under budget for the quarter of the year as we continue to keep a close eye on cash preservation. I will note that for the first time, we've changed the format here, moving from purely an audio conference call to a webcast. We did so in response to feedback, including one of our long-term PatMed investors suggested that this would be more useful and look forward to ongoing feedback to make sure that we are providing the type of transparent communications that we have always aspired to. Let me start with some quarterly highlights. eCigar testing volume has increased 28 percent sequentially, quarter to quarter, and 436 percent annually to 1,088 tests performed in the third quarter, and we're happy that we've gratified that we've cleared that 1,000 tests per quarter milestone. We now have 13 LUCID test centers that are operating in 11 states, and three more are due to open during this coming quarter, during this quarter. The satellite LTC activity, a concept that we introduced on our last call, and I'll describe more in detail later, has been increasing rapidly and now includes about 22% of the patients undergoing e-cigarette testing. Our laboratory, LUCID DX Labs, is operating independently with enhanced quality and efficiency metrics that I'll review. We're starting to receive payments and recognizing revenue on e-cigar claims that were submitted under Lucid DX Labs starting in August. We have clinical utility studies to support private and public payer reimbursement that are underway. We completed the transfer of TESO check to a high volume manufacturer. And as I mentioned, we're executing on our growth strategy while continuing to focus on preserving cash and are running well ahead of our budget for both the full year and for this past quarter. Recent introduction for those of you who are just learning about our company, Vucid Diagnostics is a commercial stage cancer prevention medical diagnostic company. We're focused on early pre-cancer detection in the tens of millions of patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease or chronic heartburn who are at risk of developing highly lethal esophageal cancer. And our mission is to prevent these, deaths from these cancers in at-risk patients with chronic heartburn. Esophageal cancer is highly lethal and is becoming more prevalent. About 16,000 patients die every year. You can see on the far right there, we've had a 500% increase in incidence over the last few decades, and it remains the second most lethal cancer with an 80% overall prior mortality. The key statistic on this slide, however, is that The stage one mortality rate at five years is 40%, unlike most other, nearly all other common cancers like colon cancer and breast cancer, where a stage one diagnosis is actually a victory. So because of this, early pre-cancer detection is really necessary to prevent these deaths. And unfortunately, less than 5% of those who have been recommended for screening for over a decade have historically undergone endoscopies. Lucid's products include two products, IsoGuard, our esophageal DNA test, and our IsoCheck cell collection device. And they are the first and only commercially available test capable of serving as a widespread screening tool to prevent these deaths through the early detection of esophageal pre-cancer. So, in a sense, they're the missing link to establishing a viable cancer prevention program for this particular type of cancer. We're really excited, and we've previously announced this, that the society guidelines from the major gastroenterology societies now recommend an ESO check in conjunction with ESO-GARD as an acceptable alternative to endoscopy. And the further updates also no longer consider having symptomatic heartburn as a mandatory prerequisite, which has significantly expanded the population of patients who are candidates for ESO-GARD testing.