Numinus Wellness Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to Numinous Wellness, Inc.' 's fourth quarter fiscal 2023 results conference call. A question and answer session for analysts and institutional investors will follow the formal remarks. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to your host, Craig McPhail. Please proceed.

Thank you, Brianna. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our fourth Quarter 2023 results conference call. Discussing Numinous' performance today are Peyton Nyquist, Founder and CEO, Nicole Handa, Chief Financial Officer. Joining them for analyst questions at the end of our formal remarks are Reid Robinson, Chief Clinical Officer, and Paul Fieldking, Chief Science Officer. The following discussion may include forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual financial and operating results to differ significantly from our forward-looking statements are detailed in our MG&A for the year, and quarter-ended to August 31, 2023, and in our other Canadian securities filings available on CDAR. NUMINIS does not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new events or circumstances except as required by law. Our fourth quarter results were made available earlier this afternoon. We encourage you to review our earnings releases, MDA, and financial statements available on our website and CDAR. As a reminder, all figures discussed in today's call are in Canadian dollars. I'll now turn the call over to Peyton Nyquist, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thanks so much, Craig, and thank you and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start by extending the utmost gratitude that our work is conducted on the unceded homeland of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and on other sovereign Indigenous lands and territories across Turtle Island. We are committed towards a path of reconciliation through continuous learning, reciprocity, and humility. Fiscal 2023 was a successful year for Numinous. where we built on the foundational elements we put in place in fiscal 2022 to forge synergies between our operations and go to market with the most comprehensive offering in behavioral health care. We achieved this at a time when there is a growing demand for therapies and the advanced stages of drug development drive the demand for efficient and clarifying clinical research. Numinous' combination of treatment clinics across North America and leading clinical research centers complemented by our program to train and certify psychedelic practitioners are the critical components of our success. We entered fiscal 2023 with a robust clinical footprint through the acquisitions of our Montreal, Toronto, and United States clinics in 2022. Our clinics generated more than 81,000 clinic appointments in 2023. About 9% were new client visits and over 30% of the appointments were for psychedelic-assisted therapy. We conducted 21,608 clinical appointments in the fourth quarter, a slight decline from 21,520 in the previous quarter. This reflects the seasonal impact of people tending to book fewer appointments in the summer months and our focus on increasing higher margin ketamine-assisted therapy appointments in Canada. Across the whole clinical network, about 34% of the Q4 appointments were for psychedelic assisted therapy. In 2023, we continue to bring all our clinics together under a unified operating philosophy with consistent standards and expectations. Improving the client experience is important, and we have a dedicated customer care group focused on understanding client needs and improving our service offerings. A key component of excellent client care is engaged practitioners, which we see increasing with every team survey, one of our ongoing priorities. Our patient-centric approach that combines traditional therapy with psychedelic-assisted therapy to optimize outcomes is a key differentiation from many providers. By providing under-one-roof care, we are building a profitable and sustainable clinic network. As other psychedelics, such as MDMA, are approved for treatment, it's likely these will be mandated to be delivered in clinics like ours. We took key initiatives last year to build on this robust network and increase our footprint in the market. Our clinics now operate under a single brand. This increases Numinous' visibility, enhances our reputation, and helps increase client traffic. In Canada, we moved our practitioner model towards more full-time role similar to how we operate in the United States. This drives greater practitioner engagement, clinic utilization rates, and a more consistent client experience. We strive to be the gold standard in psychedelic-assisted therapy, and as one of the early providers to achieve that, we have accumulated a significant wealth of knowledge of efficiencies, treatment protocols, and conditions. To share this, and to share this and to grow the number of practitioners to address the growing demand, we launched our practitioner certification training program at the beginning of fiscal 2023. To date, over 400 learners have participated in our programs. As this business grows, it's proving to be a strategic growth channel for us and an important source of high margin revenue. Our practitioner training program is unique compared to others available. It is designed for both working professionals and new learners. It is interactive, modular, and based on a common foundation that leads to distinct learning pathways for certifications in different psychedelics. It is specifically geared towards adult learners. This allows practitioners to seek accreditation in ketamine, for example, and at a later date for certification in psilocybin or MDMA. By January, the entire training program will be migrated to a new learning management system platform to continue to ensure we offer a leading training program by improving learners engagement, satisfaction, navigation, and community experience. The program's quality is being recognized with the cohort of learners doubling in our fundamentals program this past August. Also in June, we were invited by MAPS to offer experiential training for practitioners training to provide MDMA-assisted therapy. Practitioners who complete our MDMA-assisted therapy education program or have already completed previous MDMA-assisted therapy programs are qualified to enroll in our practical applications course, will be able to apply and to participate in the experiential clinical trial. With the training program now developed into a mature offering and with its scalable modular format, we see significant opportunities to expand its visibility and increase enrollment. In the next two weeks, we will launch a new introduction to psychedelics program. This will be offered free and help broaden the awareness of the benefits of psychedelic assisted therapy while also building awareness of the complete numinous program and help and helping build a steady pipeline of learners. We are also working with the Beckley Academy, a leading provider of psychedelic training to include numinous training in their program, as well as validation we received by being recognized by a respected institution. This collaboration increases our visibility in a broad, knowledgeable network. This is a very important part of our business, but even more so, It is vital to the psychedelic medicine sector meeting the expected demand for treatment. Once MDMA is approved for treatment by the FDA, a large population of patients will be in place to receive it. The bottleneck will be having enough trained practitioners in place to administer the therapy. Our comprehensive and modular platform is in place to meet this expected high demand and become a key training provider for therapists in this important field. Underpinning our therapy and training is the significant knowledge we are exposed to through our clinical research business. CDER clinical research is one of the leading research facilities for late phase two and phase three trials in psychedelics. They are the research partner of choice for leading drug development companies, including traditional pharmaceutical companies, research organizations, and the leading psychedelic drug and leading psychedelic drug companies. Two recent studies were for Compass Pathways Phase 3 clinical study of psilocybin therapy and MyMed's Phase 2B study evaluating MM120 for general anxiety disorder. CCR managed clinical trial sites for 21 trials in the fourth quarter, including 368 clinical trial patient appointments. In addition to the growing clinical trials, CCR has expanded the conditions it studies, such as ADHD, autism and Tourette's syndrome. CCR is a valuable part of Numinous' business, as well as building trusted relationships with drug development companies that provides our therapists with valuable real-world experience with psychedelic medicines and prepares us for a future when these drugs become legal. As you've heard this morning, all parts of our business are prepared for that future while delivering significant value across the psychedelic sector today. In fiscal 2023, we focused on increasing revenue and gross margin and optimizing our overhead to fully prepare for the significant opportunities we see in the near term. This included reviewing our vendor and agency agreements and renegotiating or terminating many of them. We also made the difficult but essential decision to reduce our team in non-revenue generating departments. We eliminated some roles while other team members were redirected towards growth-oriented initiatives. As a part of these initiatives, in September, we announced the cessation of operations of Numinous Bioscience, a research laboratory, and the closing of two research clinics. Numinous will retain all the intellectual property and regulatory licenses. We also announced post-quarter the closing of our wellness clinics in Arizona. Unlike the rest of the U.S. clinic network, efforts to turn around these clinics were unsuccessful despite despite investing significant financial and management resources. NUMIS will continue to optimize its clinic base and ensure its resources are focused on areas of high potential return while providing exceptional service to its clients. In total, we estimate our cost containment measures have reduced our annualized cash expenses, and starting in October, our cash burn is now under $1 million per month. We see further opportunities to optimize operations and are now focused on achieving positive EBITDA on a consolidated basis with our current operations. Looking at this in more detail, by optimizing its business model and providing excellent client care, our US clinic network generated positive EBITDA in Q4. Our Canadian clinics are not yet profitable. However, with the work we are doing to improve efficiencies and increase the number of full-time practitioners and ketamine-assisted therapy appointments, we are improving their profitability. CDER clinical research continues to achieve strong results, with revenue growing by over four times year over year. With this growth, we are starting to see economies of scale and continuing to increase efficiencies. Added to this attractive growth potential in our training business With the most comprehensive program and advanced LMS platform and the increased visibility of the offering, we expect enrollment to continue to increase significantly. It's important to note that this high margin business can scale significantly as demand increases. FDA approval of MDMA is expected in early to mid 2024, which will be a significant growth opportunity for Numinus. However, based on our progress, We see this as a development that will enhance our profitability, and we are not dependent upon it. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Nikhil to discuss our quarterly results in more detail. Nikhil?