Microbix Biosystems Inc.

Recording in progress.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We have an update with Microbics, who just put out their Q2 numbers this morning. So hopefully everyone's had a chance to review those. With me on the call, I have Cameron Groom, CEO, Ken Hughes, COO, Jim Curry, CEO, I'm not sure if we're going to work off the presentation today, but as always, this session will contain forward-looking statements. If you'd like to know more about those, you can find them on the presentation on the company's website. There will be a Q&A section, so feel free to enter any questions you have in the Q&A box. With that out of the way, I'd like to turn the mic over to Cameron. Hi, Cameron.

Good morning, Debra. Thank you so much. and good morning, Ken and Jim. I just want to thank everybody on the call for joining us for this update call this morning. As everybody will have seen from our results in Q2, it's not a particularly pretty quarter. The revenues were well below our engineered break-even point, which is about $5.5 million a quarter of revenues, so not unexpected to show a net loss, but we but net losses are not what we get dressed up in the morning for, even if controlled. Some of that, and I'll ask Jim to speak to any specifics and address particular questions, but we have continued, of course, to see lower year-over-year sales into China, and that's a principal driver for the year-over-year comparability. We also saw some... as we normally see in Q2, is not a strong quarter for our sales to the proficiency testing and external quality assessment agencies, our CAPS products. And we did see some antigen sales that we aimed to land in Q2 delayed until later in the year that weren't made up by CAPS programs just due to some continued client delays. So it's a bit frustrating, and it doesn't reflect the level of effort and fine work that we're doing, exerting on now looking to secure new business. So, you know, if I reflect on where we'd hoped to be at this point, we're probably – we're certainly well behind that level. And, you know, it took – decades to get this business to 10 million in revenues. And we've been adding to our capabilities considerably, and we're actually looking to bring back about 10 million revenues within 12 months of a couple of major client fall-offs. So it's a steep hill we're climbing, and I think we're climbing it very well. We started with building capabilities for our business and broadening those out, modernizing the antigen production, bringing in the skills and capabilities to create our quality test control products and quality assessment products, or CAP. Then we worked successfully on building the capacity to produce those at scale. And I think because of that, now we've really achieved the credibility as a result of both the capabilities and capacity we have successfully built. So what we... What we need to demonstrate, I think, now to investors is the league that we're actually playing in. And I'm very confident that over the coming months, we are going to be able to demonstrate that. There are opportunities that we're pursuing that are of a scale that's unprecedented for our business that we can absolutely deliver on. and our prospective customers know that we have both the skills and the capacity to execute on that. So these are opportunities that really dwarf anything we've seen so far coming into our company, and we're very optimistic that we'll win that business now. As we look forward, we have to abide by our disclosure policies, which are, of opportunities when they are either secured by way of a firm contract agreement or begin to realize material revenues. And we're really at the cusp of some of those developments, I believe, and that's definitely forward-looking information. You know, you can't take that to the bank yet. But these are the things we're working on and why we get up in the morning. And we'll also talk about the ongoing work on our kinetic file as well, which is advancing well towards a supplemental biological licensing application filing. And that is moving ahead as a value creator. So we continue to have our business growing. on the diagnostic side, playing at the highest levels of industry now and working with many multiple large companies and driving value on that front while we continue to, on a fully funded basis, advance a clinically and economically important therapeutics program. So that's very much where we are. We are quite optimistic about what we're achieving, and we continue to have a strong balance sheet to be able to execute on that, notwithstanding the quarterly losses we've seen over the past few quarters. So with that, maybe I can... pass over to Jim to speak to any high points you'd like to call out about a quarter that's far from a high point. And then Ken, we'll then pass over to you for operations, and then Deb, we can move into any questions from those on the line.