Numinus Wellness Inc.

over to your host, Craig McPhail. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our fiscal first quarter 2024 results conference call. Discussing Numinous' performance today are Peyton Nyquist, founder and CEO, and Nikhil Henda, 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 MD&A for the quarter ended November 30th, 2023. and in our other Canadian securities filings available on CDAR. Numinance does not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new events or circumstances, except as required by law. Our first quarter results were made available earlier this afternoon. We encourage you to review our earnings release, MD&A, and financial statements available on our website and CDAR. As a reminder, all figures discussed on today's call are in Canadian dollars. I'll now turn the call over to Peyton Nyquist, Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Craig, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start by extending our utmost gratitude that our work is conducted on the unceded homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and on other sovereign indigenous lands and territories across Turtle Island. We are committed to a path towards reconciliation through continuous learning, reciprocity, and humility. We're looking forward to the opportunities available to us in 2024. This will be a pivotal year for psychedelics as more drugs are advanced to commercialization and regulatory approval. This past December, MAPS submitted a new drug application to the FDA for the treatment of PTSD with MDMA. This follows a successful phase three trial, which indicated that over 70% of participants no longer met the criteria for having PTSD after receiving three dosing sessions together with therapy. As MDMA has been designated as breakthrough therapy, the FDA has 60 days to accept the application for review and decide whether MDMA will receive a priority review of six months. This development was very well received by the psychedelic therapy community as it puts us significantly closer to providing transformational care for millions of Americans afflicted with PTSD. The markets also reacted well with the MAPS news. Now rebranding as Lycos Therapeutics has raised $100 million with an oversubscribed private placement. It's important to note that this application for the treatment of PTSD with MDMA is just one of several psychedelic therapies under development. According to the news service Psychedelic Alpha, There are over 30 psychedelic compounds in the Phase II or Phase III clinical trial stage, with most addressing conditions for which there is no effective treatment, and Numinous is well-positioned to benefit from that. The advanced stages of drug development drive the demand for efficient and clarifying clinical research. Once approved, these drugs will be required to be administered and monitored in treatment clinics using FDA-approved methodology. Considering the expected strong demand once these drugs are approved, there will be a high demand for trained psychedelic therapy practitioners. On all three fronts, Numinous is well positioned with the most comprehensive offering in behavioral health care. Let's start to look at the details of the quarter with our wellness clinics. We conducted almost 20,000 clinical appointments in the first quarter, slightly declining from our 21,000 in the fourth quarter of 2023, Year over year, appointments were up about 3%. The quarter over quarter sequential decline in appointments was mainly due to the reduced appointments in our Canadian clinics as we scaled back services that were not focused on our core of mental wellness and also with an increased focus on higher margin service lines. The year over year increase resulted from improved clinic utilization across the clinics as a result of an operational focus on expanding appointments for ketamine services. New clients made up about 7% of the appointments in Q1, and about 22% were ketamine-spravato-related. In our Canadian clinics, we are also treating patients with MDMA and psilocybin-assisted therapy under Health Canada's Special Access Program. Delivering excellent patient care and experience continues to be a priority at all our clinics. And in the past quarter, we put in place several initiatives to elevate service across the clinics. One was an eight-week in-house education program for all clinical staff to establish consistent best practices across the network. This covered all aspects of our clinic operations, including service standards, patient care, and operational systems. We take pride in delivering excellent patient care and a great patient experience. And programs like this will ensure that every patient benefits from a consistent, high-quality, numinous experience at all our clinics. We also took important steps to removing the obstacles preventing patients from seeking help. This included improving our digital presence with a refreshed website, a unified numinous digital presence on search engines, and an enhanced patient booking process. We also expanded our hours of operation in our transformative care center, including opening earlier and staying open later, along with seven-day-a-week access. Together with expert care, these initiatives will drive appointment growth, clinic utilization, and ultimately strong financial performance. Next, I'll talk about our practitioner certification training program which we see as a strategic growth channel and an important source of high margin revenue. Over 700 learners have enrolled in Numinous training programs, and we expect that number to increase with the recent launch of our Introduction to Psychedelics program. This free course will introduce learners to the Numinous and encourage them to continue into full practitioner training. In January, the entire training program was mitigated to a new learning management, migrated, sorry, to a new learning management system platform, which ensures we continue to provide a leading training program that improves learners' engagement, satisfaction, navigation, and community experience. What drives success in Numinous' practitioner training is that our differentiated offering combines highly experienced instructors with real-life experience administering psychedelic-assisted therapy in our clinics and clinical research expertise that informs our training. Soon, we will add experiential learning opportunities so learners get first-hand experience with these medicines. This is delivered in a blended learning format that optimizes adult learning. After completing the course, Accreditation is available through major regulatory bodies in both Canada and the United States. Currently, we are working with the Oregon Health Authority to receive formal approval under their guidelines. This enhances the credibility of our certification pathway and increases the program's visibility when it is included on authority's list of approved training programs. The progress we are making with Numinous Learning Pathway positions us to be the essential training provider to meet the high demand for therapists in psychedelic assisted therapy. The third essential component of our business is CDER Clinical Research. CCR is the research partner of choice for leading drug development companies, including traditional pharmaceutical companies, research organizations, and the leading psychedelic drug development companies. CCR also provides Numinous with frontline experience in administering breakthrough psychedelic therapies and knowledge of patient care and clinical practice that informs the rest of our business. In fact, both Paul and Reed have helped design training and are the faculty of Numinous certification pathway. The first quarter of 2024, CCR managed 22 clinical trial sites, including 456 patient appointments. One of these was for the Ketamine Research Foundation, with CCR providing one of five research sites investigating the potential of CAT in improving the quality of life for individuals facing end-of-life challenges. In December, CCR was chosen as one of multiple sites for Beckley SciTech's cutting-edge Phase 2B clinical trial for treatment-resistant depression. The study aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of different doses of Beckley's proprietary intranasal formulation of the short-acting psychedelic compound 5-MeO-DMT. With the continued increase in psychedelic drugs under investigation and CCR's expanding expertise, we expect steady growth in our clinical research division. Based with the significant opportunities ahead for us, To benefit fully, we continue to maintain financial discipline. Increasing revenue and gross margin while optimizing our overhead will continue to be the focus for 2024. As we said on our last call, we are seeing the positive impact of our cost containment measures and, starting in October, have reduced our annualized cash expenses such that our cash burn is now under $1 million a month. As a result, our operating expenses declined by 19.9% in Q1 of 24 compared to Q4 of 23. We see further opportunities to optimize operations and are now focused on achieving positive EBITDA on a consolidated basis with our current operations. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Nikhil to discuss our quarterly results in more detail. Nikhil?