Zomedica Corp

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Zomedico's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings results and business update call. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded today, Monday, April 1st at 4.30 p.m. Eastern Time, and all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow a formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the call over to Elif McDonald, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Ms. McDonald.

Thank you, Paul. And good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Zomedica's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings results and business update call. On today's call, you will hear from Zomedica's Chief Executive Officer, Mary Beaton, and Chief Financial Officer, Peter Donato. Before we begin, we'd like to remind everyone that on this call we will be making various remarks about future expectations, plans, and prospects that constitute forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and there are risks that results may differ materially from those statements. As such, Zomedica cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statements will materialize and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on them. We refer current and potential investors to the forward-looking information and risk factor sections of our public filings available on CDAR at www.cdarplus.ca and on edgar at sec.gov. Forward-looking statements made on this conference call represent Zomedica's expectations as of today, Monday, April 1st, 2024. Finally, we would like to remind everyone that all figures discussed on this call are in United States dollars. I will now pass the call over to Zomedica's Chief Executive Officer, Larry Heaton. Larry?

Thanks, Aleve. I'd like to start by thanking our shareholders for your support. Wishing our prospective investors and analysts and others a good afternoon. And welcome all to the Zomedica fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings results and business update call. I'll start by providing an update on the overall business. Then our Chief Financial Officer, Peter Donato, will walk you through our financial results and provide a corporate update. After our prepared remarks, we'll open the line in the web to your questions. Earlier today, Zomedica released its financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31st, 2023. Overall, this was another great quarter, topping off a remarkable year, the best year so far in Zomedica's history. Once again, we delivered record revenues, beating last year's record fourth quarter while maintaining high margins and reducing operating cash burn. Let me highlight that revenue for the quarter was $7.3 million, reflecting 19% growth over the fourth quarter of 2022, almost all of which was produced from the sale of products from previous acquisitions that have been fully integrated, validating that our strategic plan to acquire, integrate, and grow is working. Our $25.2 million in revenue for the year was up 33% over 2022, And 65% of that was from recurring consumable sales, reflecting a solid foundation of recurring revenue that grows with each addition to the install base of our various product platforms. Earlier this year, we provided forward revenue guidance as we have reached a certain level of maturity in our business that lets us say that we expect revenues to grow to $31 to $35 million this year, reflecting up to 40% growth year over year at the high end. As you're aware, we conducted a special meeting in February to seek approval for a reverse split. Since 60% of the shares that were voted, representing 35% of our outstanding shares, were voted against the proposal, it failed. This was a very clear message to us that our shareholders want to see us regain compliance with the NYSE American price thresholds through organic growth of the share price driven by the performance of the company. We heard you loud and clear and have no plans to reintroduce a reverse split at our upcoming annual meeting. We are committed to continuing to grow revenue, maintain high margins, and achieve cash flow and cap profitability as rapidly as possible. We've shared our plans with the NYSE American, and they have indicated that they will allow us to remain listed while monitoring our market-driven share price without giving us a date-certain deadline for reaching the $0.20 price threshold over a 30-day trailing average. Now to that performance. We've been building a business and delivering record quarterly results that have exceeded our expectations. In the fourth quarter, we announced the expansion of the market opportunity for Truforma with three new assays for the most commonly performed diagnostic tests for canine gastrointestinal disease. One of the top three reasons a dog is brought to the vet is vomiting and diarrhea. Knowing there is a high need for a quick diagnosis, we were pleased to offer three of the most common assays used to diagnose these cases, canine pancreatic lipase, covalamine, and folate, with the latter two being combined in a single cartridge. We believe through these assays we can help veterinarians produce better outcomes for pets and pet parents by providing faster diagnostic solutions while also streamlining their workflow and increasing practice cash flow and profitability. Early in the fourth quarter, we announced the acquisition of Structured Monitoring Products, converting our prior investment into full ownership of the VetGuardian product line. We are pleased with the early indicators and see significant future upside. In October, we acquired Formal Biotechnologies, QBT, focused on the development of point of care diagnostic solutions, leveraging their innovative bulk acoustic wave sensor technology and the development of the Omnia point of care diagnostic platform designed to perform assays for human patients, along with the Truforma point of care diagnostic platform to perform assays for companion animals, which we had marketed previously under license prior to the acquisition. A primary focus with this acquisition will be on capturing margin improvements by assuming QBT's manufacturing systems, as well as accelerating assay development for the Trueforma platform. This acquisition will also allow us to avoid future operating and capital expenses incurred by building R&D and manufacturing staff internally, as well as eliminating remaining payments, including license fees, transition fees, and future royalties, which would be due to QBT under the previous agreement. Regarding additional M&A opportunities, we've had quite a busy past couple of years as we've made five acquisitions to build the five product platforms we are commercializing today. As we look forward, we will remain opportunistically acquisitive, but with a focus on those acquisitions that not only include products that meet our five pillars, helping veterinarians improve the quality of care for the pets, the satisfaction of the pet parents, along with improving the workflow, cash flow, and profitability of their practice, but also focusing on those that would be accreted to earnings, shortening our timeline to profitability. With a strong liquidity position of over $100 million coming into the year and a manageable operating cash burn rate, we remain well-funded for the foreseeable future. Before I hand the call to Peter, I want to reiterate that we're happy with what we achieved during the fourth quarter and the full year of 2023. We look forward to building on this momentum as we continue to be confident of even stronger results in 2024. With that, I'll hand it over to Peter for the financial review and corporate update. After his remarks, I'll come back to provide some closing comments.