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spk01: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Stage Zero Life Sciences fourth quarter financials call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to the host, Head of Investor Relations, Rebecca Greco. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the Stage Zero fourth quarter and year-end 2021 earnings conference call. Joining me today is Stage Zero Chairman and CEO James Howard Tripp and CEO and CFO Matt Pietras. Please note that management's discussions today will contain forward-looking statements about anticipated results and future prospects. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, and Stage Zero's results may differ materially from those discussed today. Investors should consult the company's ongoing quarterly filings and annual reports for additional information on risks and uncertainties relating to these forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. The company disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law. On today's call, management will refer to non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA. This metric excludes certain items discussed in our press release under the heading discussion of non-GAAP financial measures and any other items that management believes should be excluded when reviewing continuing operations. The reconciliations of Stage 0's non-GAAP measures to be comparable Gap measures are available in the financial tables of the Q4 2021 financial results press release on Stage Zero's website. With that, I would like to turn the call over to James Howard Tripp, Stage Zero's Chief Executive Officer. James, please go ahead.
spk04: Thank you, Rebecca. And good morning, everyone. It's good to be with you. 2021 for us was actually an amazing year. In fact, the last two years have been that way, but I think 2021 particularly. If you look at what we were able to do, it's actually quite amazing. We start with COVID, which I think upended everybody's world. But in our case, it actually allowed us to dramatically test and expand our capabilities. It actually helped us build to everything that we wanted to get to and to do it a lot faster. We'll expand on that as we go a little further into it. We closed the care oncology acquisition, which was absolutely critical for us in terms of where we wanted to go as a company. I will talk a lot to that too as we go forward. We launched Aristotle in the U.S. We also later on launched it into the greater Toronto area, sort of to get it up, get it moving, and actually begin to fulfill the promise that we had with us. We launched the AVERT program in the U.S. We established an on-site clinic in Richmond, Why was that important? Because we have the clinic. You'll see that as we talk to the telehealth side, about 50% of people want telehealth, but about 50% still want brick and mortar. This was our opportunity to begin to test the ability to do that from our side, particularly as we build out into other areas. We broaden strategic relationships, doing deals with Rexel, with Sobeys, with countries like Aruba, like Barbados, with IATA, now with Qantas, all of those demonstrate the fact that we actually can do big deals. We know we can, but this is really good demonstration of what we can do. These are not just limited to COVID. We start with COVID, but clearly we want to take them in other directions as well. We commence trading on the OTCQB. Why? It's part of the strategy of us continuing to build our market presence in the U.S., We wanted a proper platform to begin to work from, and so it has put us firmly there. We've dramatically expanded the company. In fact, we're four times larger now than we were two years ago. What that's done for us is really build out the management team. It's built out the staff, but also the management team. Matt, who's on the call with us and will speak a little later, It's clear evidence of that, but it goes beyond that. We've got a new head of IT who's incredibly experienced. We've got new physician groups. We've got new scientists in through this. They are world renowned. They bring all of their expertise with us and they've helped us build out the whole product development side as well as the partner side in all kinds of directions. And we've added to the board of directors. We will continue that over the next few quarters. We've raised money. Money is absolutely critical in terms of where we go. And one of the things that we will talk about is obviously the marketing aspect. And as we drive it, we're competing with really large groups out there. We need to be adequately funded. We will always try and make sure that we are adequately funded. We announced the formation of a scientific advisory board and the SAB in and of itself, not that important. The SAB, in terms of who they are and how they work with us, and particularly leading into the Healthy Conversations podcasts, the shared vision in terms of where all of this goes, and particularly the push through into, I guess, what is called integrative oncology, is absolutely critical. And if you haven't listened to any of the podcasts, we'll direct you to that. They're excellent. They're also very, very instructive. We're making money. We're generating revenue. We're 22% up on last year, sorry, 2021 over 2020, which is a nice climb. In addition to that, as we move from the fourth quarter and then particularly as we're even moving into the first quarter of this year, we're transitioning from COVID revenue to the cancer revenue, and that's critical for us. Matt will also talk to the changes in margin. It's obviously really beneficial for us. And so all of that's really good. Next slide, please. We got a lot of flack when we started to move into telehealth. I remember all of the emails saying, what are you guys doing? Why are you spending money going down there? We were absolutely right in choosing to go there and in what we did. Had we not moved into telehealth at the time that we did, we wouldn't have been able to do the COVID business. we wouldn't now be able to be taking the cancer programs out in the way that we are. Telehealth is absolutely critical. And I think as you can see from this slide and this analysis, telehealth has settled down to about 50% of patient consults. It stays that way, but it also allows you to have a very broad reach. So again, going back to what we're doing with the clinic in Richmond, what we're doing now in LA, what we're doing in London, England, is to begin to build some of the physical presence. 50% of the people want physical presence, but the other 50% are going to access healthcare via telehealth. And it also allows us to begin to move on. So we're talking to countries all over the world right now. None of this possible if we weren't there. Next slide, please. We're at an interesting intersection. I think people have known that we always do things with strategy. We always try to think it out as carefully as we can. We've talked for some time about the fact that the dynamics in the market are changing and that if you're going to be positioned in the marketplace to be successful, you've got to try and be a little ahead of where those pieces are, not trying to catch up. We believe that's where we are. And so we're setting it actually an amazing intersection of what we regard as the future of cancer care. Part of that is telehealth. So to some extent, we're a telehealth company. It's what we do. We have physicians. We have partnerships with groups that rely on this as well. It's how we do the testing is all through this. It's all connected through this amazing system of telehealth. So we're there. As we're moving out through AVERT, and I'll talk a little bit about that, clearly we're going to be surfacing a whole series of conditions that require broader help. The immediate question on our side is why should we not provide that? So if you're in telehealth, you're in telehealth. Build it out. So definitely that's something that you can look forward to as we move on forward. Separate from that is the liquid biopsy and then the early diagnostic space. And although they're somewhat together, they're also somewhat separate. You can be in the liquid biopsy space without being in early diagnostics because that's essentially where it began. But we're in both. And liquid biopsy extends beyond, for example, tests like Aristotle. Liquid biopsy can also work with the various metabolic pathway panels as you look at it. And if you were speaking to Dr. Vamadevan, who's the clinical lead on the AVERT programs for us, Dr. Vamadevan would tell you that in actual fact, metabolic pathway disease leading to chronic diseases in actual fact almost always is the precursor to cancer. So if you find it early and you look for it, you can then move to the more sophisticated testing. All of this ties together. So we work within an entire system. We'll talk a bit about what we're doing on the early detection side when we get to the Aristotle section. But the programs within that, as we look at clearly from Aristotle to AVERT to the COC protocol, which internally we typically refer to as TREAT. Next slide, please. But this is how we put it together. And I'm going to take a little bit of time across these others, I think, to make sure that we're as clear and as instructive as possible in terms of why we build things the way we have and what we're taking out. So first of all, we start at the bottom. Everything stands, all of the pillars stand on telehealth. As I said, it's one thing that connects everything. So we can get to you no matter where you are. We can talk with you. We have patients in New Zealand, in Australia. We have patients in India, patients in South Africa. We have a large presence in the UK and then out into Europe. Remember again, Europe's got 780 million people. It's a very large market as you build out into it. We're in North America. We're in the US and Canada. Between that, we're sitting with about 360, 370 million people. It's the primary market in the world. We're in all of this. It gives you the reach that allows you to get everywhere. Yes, we're going to have the physical presence, but telehealth, absolutely critical. And as I mentioned, we clearly are looking at opportunities to continue to build out the telehealth piece. Within this, we would have the three programs. So we would have Aristotle, which is the specific cancer testing. It's the early diagnostic aspect, We would have the COC protocol, which is really for patients that currently have cancer, and so we work with that. AVERT is derived from the COC protocol program, but it's for patients that are concerned about developing cancer or developing other forms of chronic disease. All of this is tied together with the fact that we not only have our own oncologists, our own nurses, our own physicians and scientists, that we can do additional testing with all of this. But it's actually all connected within that. And at this point, we'll talk a lot about the interconnectedness. Matt will go into this in quite a fair degree. But for example, I think everyone has looked at us as saying it's Aristotle. It's an Aristotle company. Yes, we are. But we're much more than that. And the reason for building this out is critical. Aristotle, someone will have an Aristotle test once a year, once every two years, once every five years, whatever the choosing is that they have it. But it's one and done. If you're with Treat, you come and you stay with us for a significant period of time. We touch on multiple touch points. The amount of money that we actually made through the initial process with Treat is nearly identical to what we make out of Aristotle. But we're doing it time and time again. Then we go to AVERT. AVERT is the same thing. AVERT has stickiness. You come to us, you stay with us. You can start with AVERT and then move to Aristotle. From Aristotle, if you have cancer, you can move to treat. If you don't have cancer, you can stay within the AVERT program. It's all very interconnected, and this is our way of seeing the world, and it's the way that we believe things truly work moving forward. Absolutely critical with what we've built. Next slide, please. We'll talk about these in a little detail. In actual fact, we can probably move through that slide fairly quickly.
spk06: Let's go to the next slide.
spk04: Okay, so let's talk about the CoC protocol. The CoC protocol started on the care oncology side nearly 20 years ago. One of the lead scientists and groups of physicians working a series of the major cancer hospitals in London, UK, a member of his family developed cancer. He was extremely unhappy with the way that the treatment was going, and he was fairly determined that there was a better way to do this. So that started an entire process, an entire research program that actually ultimately developed into what we call the COC protocol. And the COC protocol is an adjunctive therapy that goes together with standard of care to actually look for better outcomes. The initial clinical research and the papers that were published were in glioblastoma, and they showed a very significant improvement, not only just in quality of life, but also in survival time. There is a second publication in process that will come out in a while that actually builds on that. It's now been expanded across multiple cancers in terms of where it is, and this is exactly what it is. It's a junk of therapy that actually deals with metabolic pathways that either allows cancer cells to thrive or to die. And that actually seeks to enhance the actual standard of care treatments that are being used with this. And so it's growing very, very nicely. One of the key things that we did is we acquired the care oncology group and began to integrate it into us was to put more financial resources behind the care oncology program, the TREAT program, and it's showing growth. It's doing what we expect it to do. We now move from there. Next slide, please. So, AVERT is the natural extension of that. We had, for example, patients that were being treated with cancer. They would come and meet with our oncologist. They would have their family with them. Within the family, there was an absolute natural anxiety that said, well, what about me? I could also be at risk. What about me? How do I know that's not them? So VIRT was designed to begin to work with those people. And so it started on the cancer side. It's now expanded out into essentially all metabolic pathway diseases. that, in fact, lead to chronic disease, prediabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular issues. You can keep going down all of this. There's a link here, too, as we go to Aristotle, because don't forget Aristotle doesn't just do cancer. Aristotle also does cardiovascular disease. It also does immune disorder disease. It also does neurosciences. all of these play into it. So you can see the connectivity as to where we go. So with AVERT, and the reason that we have launched AVERT, and particularly because we wanted all of it out during the first quarter of this year, is that we've now put all of the platforms in place that are critical for us to move forward. But AVERT is essentially a program for people that are concerned about development of chronic disease, notably cancer to begin with, but expanding out whereby we actually bring them in, we evaluate them, we put them through a very sophisticated series of tests, which could include Aristotle, very often does include Aristotle, and then depending upon what they flag as green, amber, or red, we devise a specific program for each of them. It is oncologist-supervised, and we then work with them to actually invert diseases. I think if you look at the press release that went out on yesterday in the UK, it's a staggering one in two people over the age of 50 will in actual fact develop cancer during their lifetime. Just think about that. One in two people. That is staggering. The other thing that's also not known, I think, is that about 40% of cancers, the most common cancers, can actually be prevented. And if you actually adopt the right lifestyle indications, diet, exercise, a variety of other modifications which sometimes involve medications, you can actually have a very positive effect on outcome. This is what it is. This is why we're so heavily focused on cancer at this point, but we'll expand out. Next slide, please.
spk05: Next slide. Thank you.
spk04: Obviously, Aristotle is a critical piece from the stage zero side. And Aristotle is built on a platform that is fully validated. I can say that again because it's absolutely critical. Aristotle is built on a platform that is fully validated. The advantage of that means that we can add additional cancers in a much faster way. We can also add additional diseases in a much faster way. We don't have to take each and every one and run it through this massive program because it's actually validated on the platform. So our ability to adjust with this is critical. So the current panel that we have out in the marketplace validated on 10. We're really focused much more on nine. The nasopharyngeal cancer is less of an issue in North America. So we're very, very heavily focused on the others. The women's panel particularly, We're just recently joining up with the World Ovarian Cancer Coalition. They have a, they have their major, it's in actual fact, it's the World Ovarian Cancer Day on May 6th. We're working with them to get that as publicized as possible and out there. But having a really strong women's panel, female health panel, is really critical. And so that's what we're taking out. We're not trying to do multiple, multiple cancers. We're not really interested in trying to do 50 cancers, where particularly data on a lot of those will be relatively limited, where there aren't really standard of care treatments for a lot of this. We're focused much more heavily on working on those cancers that are more common, that have standard of care where the intervention is much more appropriate. But we're also then interested in going deep. And so, for example, right now, if you have the colorectal cancer test, it would essentially tell you whether you have colorectal cancer or do not. Yes, we have the added advantages of right-side versus left-sided cancers. We have the all of that. But the test that's coming up in the shadow of this and will be available within the panel relatively shortly is a much deeper one than that. It actually separates out colon polyps from stage 1 versus stage 2 versus stage 3 and 4 colorectal cancer. Why is that important? It really is because it's not only good to know, obviously, what you're dealing with right up front, But it informs the endoscopist when they go in to do a colonoscopy. They now know what they're looking for. As a result of that, you tend to get a much better outcome through all of this. So it has absolute clinical implications. And we're moving from colorectal cancer to breast to lung as we work through it. So these are all of the pieces that are coming up as we speak. Next slide, please.
spk05: Next slide.
spk04: We work with a series of industry leading people and wanted to put this up mostly to talk about this a little bit. So Dr. Fung actually resides in Toronto. He's extremely well known internationally, nationally, as well as internationally. And he's an expert, notably in the integrative medicine space. Of course, he's got a passion for cancer. And if you go to the podcast that was recently done by Travis Christopherson on our side, it's very, very interesting leading. Dr. Boyd is an integrative oncologist, notably into the same space. Dr. Bickman, a PhD researcher, again, very heavily into all of the metabolic pathway disease. They are three leading lights in the process. We've joined with them. They've joined with us, notably in order to make sure that we're getting as much attention around this field as we can. So there are podcasts, long, very detailed, as well as shorter sessions. They'll be authoring articles with us, a whole variety of pieces, all of this taking it out. It then ties to the World Ovarian Cancer Coalition. I talked to that a moment ago as we begin to work with them. A delightful group, believe it or not, headquartered out of the Canadian side. But this is a global operation, and it's an extremely good thing that they do. If you know anyone who's died of ovarian cancer, and I unfortunately know too many, it's absolutely miserable. It also leads through to a variety of other partnerships that we're talking with. We're actually talking with one of the hospital groups in Toronto about working with them as they expand out. They've got a novel approach, I should say, on how to perhaps indicate who may have cancer versus who doesn't. What they've asked us for is would we work with them in identifying those cancers once they find them. So if they flag it, Would we be the group that in actual fact that does that? So we're working on that with them right now. There are several initiatives like this underway. It's how it builds out and where we get to go. It leads to Teen Cancer America. Teen Cancer America really needs you. What's the buzz about this? Well, it's Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend from the WHO. that actually put this together, wanting to give back to the primary group that had supported them as they became famous. But this is the expansion into the North American space. And so Simon Davies, who is out on the West Coast of the US, we're working with them to put together the first ever public conference on liquid biopsy. but brought down to the consumer level. So not the scientific ones. There are lots of those, but there has never been one that actually explains what liquid biopsy is and what the opportunities are to actually find cancer, notably in teens and young adults, which are underserved, and that there are strategies by which you can work. Think about what I was talking about with avert. If you change your diet or you change your exercise, you can have a positive impact on where you go. These are the kind of lessons that will be tried to be taught through. We put the HC Wainwright up there just to show we're building out into the U.S. side. It's actually turning out to be a very good relationship. We're very pleased with that. On the Canadian side, we obviously have Echelon. We continue to work strongly with them. That, too, is actually developing into a very, very nice relationship. So it's really important to continue building out like this, and we would suggest keep watching this space because there's a lot more in process. Next slide, please. So tying up, tying my piece together, it really is that what we've done, at least as the way we look at it, the world has changed. It was changing before COVID, but COVID dramatically accelerated all of that. The rise of digital technology sort of advanced 10 years in one year. The need for telehealth did the same thing. Telehealth went from 6% to setting in at 50%. Critical. Talking to one of the major New York hospital groups, the head of pathologies commented that if you do not have telehealth, you are not in the game. You have to have it. We have telehealth. We were one of the very early adopters of this. So you build it out. We then have looked at how you deliver innovative programs like Aristotle. We believe that the model of one touch lab test is done. You have to have a fully integrated system in terms of way to do it. We think reps in the field are actually less effective these days. There are numerous examples of that in the companies that the very large diagnostic groups that are getting into trouble with that. you have to have a different approach. We believe that we have an approach that is different, but we also believe it's an approach that is successful. Through this, we have an ability to treat the patients wherever they are, whenever they need it. That is absolutely critical. And as we've talked about, there's the interaction. As I mentioned, Matt will go down the multiple revenue streams as to how they work. Remember that all of our programs touch each other. They're all woven together. You come to us, you're with us for a significant period of time. We touch you multiple times, and all of those are obvious revenue opportunities. There's also the ability to move within the programs from one to the other. All of that works extremely well. And I think the final thing with this, particularly as we're building it out, we're assembling a team of people that is very experienced in doing this. By and large, the group we have around us have done this before. They've done it successfully. We think at this point we're extremely well poised with all of the pieces we've done to actually build it out. And in actual fact, that's now beginning as we go through this quarter. And we fully expect it to accelerate as we move out to the remainder of the year. Matt, to you.
spk03: Thank you, Jim. And good morning, everybody. I'm going to begin by walking us through the financials, and then I'll give an operational and strategic update. So if we can, we're on slide 13. Thank you. So 2021, as Jim described, was a really good year for us operationally. We accomplished so many things. And if you look closely at the financials, you'll start to see how some of that is just beginning to emerge and be realized. For the year end of December 31st, 2021, we generated $5.1 million in revenue. And as Jim mentioned earlier, that's 22% higher than we realized in 2020 when we generated just $4.2 million in revenue. $3.8 million of that revenue is attributed to our laboratory and another $1.2 came from our clinics. In line with higher revenues and really encouragingly, we also saw a step up in our gross margins. Gross margin percentage increased by 6.4% or half a million dollars to $1.2 million in 2021. versus $700,000 in 2020. However, we have to acknowledge that 2021 was an expensive year for us, and it's not unlike any other transitional period. We reported a total comprehensive loss of $7.5 million for the year, which was 11 cents per diluted share. That compares to 6.9 million in comprehensive losses in 2020, or 15 cents per diluted share. So where did we spend the money? Importantly, we invested in the foundations of building long-term business growth in 2022 and beyond. We spent $775,000 in research and development, and I'll tell you a little bit more about that in just a few minutes, but we also spent another $1.2 million in sales and marketing in 2021, mostly in the latter half of the year, as we put real emphasis behind building commercial growth through digital marketing and online advertising. And to some extent, I think you can see that our revenue numbers are beginning to show the benefit of those investments. Also, not surprisingly, our total general and administrative expenses increased by $3.1 million year-over-year, but it was in areas where you'd expect it, primarily increases in professional fees of $1.6 million and compensation of 1.2, and some of which is not recurring. As a reminder, we do present adjusted EBITDA as a metric to compare our results on an operating basis. In 2021, our adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $7.9 million, as compared to 3.1 million in adjusted EBITDA loss in 2020. And please remember, refer to the MD&A to see a full reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP financial results. Turning quickly to the balance sheet, we closed the year with $1.7 million in cash as compared to 6.6 million at the end of 2020. During the year, we spent $9 million on operating activities and raised another $4 million in finance-related activities. Let's turn to slide 14. As James mentioned earlier, our acquisition and integration of Care Oncology was truly transformational for the company. We're now a vertically integrated telehealth company that offers a complete set of solutions across the continuum of time. Whether a patient's been diagnosed with cancer or is worried they're at risk of it, we're able to comprehensively address patients across the entire spectrum of health and illness. with everything from early diagnostics to sophisticated and proprietary cancer treatment protocols, all regardless of their stage. This provides stage zero with multiple interconnected opportunities to generate revenue. A patient could start with Aristotle and continue to the AVERT or TREAT programs, or a patient can begin with the AVERT program and based on their unique circumstances may determine that they could benefit from the early cancer detection that Aristotle provides. These offerings can be either independent or combined. But more importantly, as we build a relationship with patients over time and provide them meaningful insights, the motivation for them to stay with us increases. Not only are the revenues synergistic, but they're cumulative. This aspect of our business makes us truly unique. In addition, we believe that we have the ability to build on these offerings over time. Let's move to slide 15. And it brings me to the most exciting aspects of Stage Zero Life Sciences, not just where we are today, but what we're doing today to make tomorrow better than yesterday. Our long-term global growth strategy focuses on three distinct principles. First, deepening our capabilities, followed by broadening our offerings, and lastly, by expanding our reach. To deepen our capabilities, we're investing in Aristotle's ability to detect additional tumor types and increasing our ability to assess the staging of certain tumors. If they are detected, Jim talked a bit about this a few minutes ago, the ability to distinguish the stages of colorectal cancer, and more importantly, the potential for benign polyps, more so than stage 1 or stage 2 disease, is tremendously intuitive and important to physicians and patients alike. We're also enhancing our clinical offerings beyond just oncologists and nurses to include nutritionists, physiologists, and other medical disciplines as well. When we think about broadening the offerings, we think about the gene signature platform that we've built, that sentinel principle, and its capabilities to exceed far beyond just oncology. As a result, we intend to develop gene signatures that could play an important role in better understanding the risk of developing cardiovascular, metabolic, autoimmune, and even neurodegenerative diseases in the future. Correspondingly, we would look to add physicians and scientists to our AVERT program to meet the needs of patients at risk. for these other chronic illnesses. Lastly, expanding on our reach involves the integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence into our clinical practice, thereby allowing us to further optimize our clinical solutions. We continue to establish key relationships with strategically important regional centers to facilitate the global deployment of our integrated laboratory and telehealth solutions. With that, let's turn to the next slide and talk a little bit about how we're going to do it. We've built a long-term strategy. And as I've discussed, we've begun to invest in both our commercial and R&D growth platforms. Jim mentioned earlier in the beginning of the presentation, we commercially launched the AVERT program and Aristotle programs in the United States last year, and they were just beginning to build momentum. We also launched the Aristotle in Canada in the fourth quarter and have been delighted to see its uptake. We launched TREAT in the broader Europe just a couple of weeks ago. And today, we announced the launch of Avert in the UK. Commercially, we've been tremendously busy. And there is so much more that we're planning to accomplish. We continue to make considerable investments in digital marketing and are constantly monitoring our online consumer sentiment and branding. We're also planning the expansion of the Avert program into other geographies later this year. We continue to build critical relationships with clinics, healthcare practices, self-insured corporations, research foundations, and others as we address the unmet medical needs of patients via our telehealth platforms and liquid biopsy testing. With respect to research and development, we're investing in next generation sequencing to deepen and broaden the next evolution of Aristotle. Jim talked a bit about that a moment ago. We've begun to design clinical systems that allow us to leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence in our clinical practice. Most importantly, all of these initiatives, And our continued investment in them are critical in achieving our goal of improving patient outcomes through early detection and intervention. Let's turn to slide 17. This just captures some of the operational developments we've already talked through, but I'd like to take a moment to share with you just a few thoughts about how we think about our business and how we assess the value that we're creating every day. Not just for you, our shareholders, but the patients and the company and the broader healthcare system. And some of it's obvious. It's binary and numerically driven. We look at how much revenue we produce and how it compares to our forecast. We monitor the number of new inquiries we receive, how many new form fills we get on a given day, and our conversion ratios. We consider how many tests we've sold or appointments we've held in a given day or week and how what we do in the days and weeks that lead up to those increases and decreases was affected by the investment decisions we've made or the marketing materials we deployed. We're constantly assessing our performance to figure out where we did well and, more importantly, where we could do better. We make it a point to celebrate our successes, but monitoring our KPIs is just one part of it. When we think about how we're building value for this company, we have to consider our strategic initiatives and how well we're doing at achieving them. Jim and I are constantly evaluating our long-term ambitions and how our near-term initiatives are contributing to building our business. Take, for example, the recent launch of the TREAT protocol in Europe. or the AVERT program in the UK. There is so much effort that goes into each and every one of these initiatives. And they will result in revenue funnels that will inevitably give us more binary numbers to evaluate and analyze. But it's important, too, that we take a step back and see what these initiatives do to build value for our business, our investors, our patients, their families, and how that relates to our mission of improving cancer and chronic disease outcomes through early detection and intervention. As we stated numerous times before, our strategy has positioned stage zero at the nexus of three of the fastest growing and most exciting sectors in healthcare, liquid biopsies, global telehealth, and early diagnostics. We're excited to be able to drive a paradigm shift in healthcare and fulfill our mission. And more importantly, we're grateful that you're along with us for this journey. With that, we'll open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.
spk01: Certainly. The floor is now open for questions. If you have any questions or comments, please press star 1 on your phone at this time. We ask that while posing your question, you please pick up your handset if listening on speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Please hold just a moment while we poll for questions. There are no questions in queue at this time.
spk02: Operator, we have a question on the webcast. Maybe James wants to answer it about being able to attend our upcoming SCE Summit with Teen Cancer America.
spk04: Yes, and so, yeah, that's actually a good question and yes, it will be available for literally everyone to attend. So, Simon Davies, who I mentioned is, is the director of teen cancer America in the US as well as Jamie Reno. Jamie Reno is a very well known. I would say podcaster, but also a journalist in terms of that, but he's also a cancer survivor. So we'll very shortly be doing an interview with Jamie Reno that we'll actually put up on our site as well. We're working very actively with TCA to make sure that we can let you know where it is, how you can register, and it's free. So we would absolutely encourage you to do that. And we're not just speaking at that, but our peers in the space, including the other companies that are doing similar things are there too. And then there are expert panels around that. There's also patients around that. So that's very good. I think too, on all ideas, so if I use this as maybe a springboard, absolutely go to the healthy conversations. In addition to that, a lot of our physicians are doing interviews with groups As we go through it, we're attracting significant attention at the moment, which is actually really good. So watch the investor relations page too. Watch the press release page. It will flag all of this. And a lot of these things you can get access to, and it's really, really great education with information.
spk02: Great, James. We also have a question probably from Matt on whether we're going to provide guidance for revenue for 2022.
spk03: Thanks, Rebecca. Yeah, at this point in time, no, we're not going to provide revenue guidance, not until we get into a position where we feel like we can provide reasonable and reliable future guidance. And, you know, it's not unlike any other point in time when a company is at the early stages of growth. You need to understand how the market is responding. And that gives, you know, kind of a lens into how we're evaluating every day the KPIs associated with our marketing strategy and our online promotions. Yes, we will begin to give guidance hopefully later this year, but not at this point in time.
spk04: Rebecca, I'll add to that a little bit because I think within that we could also probably see people are looking for how do you know we're being successful? And so, in other words, what are the KPIs? How do you measure that? I think Matt put a whole series of those out. In addition to that, go to, for example, what I think was slide number three in terms of where we went as we look at what we've done. If that was a KPI list, I don't think most people would have believed that we actually could have got there. But we have got there. In addition to that, we're ahead of a curve on a lot of things. So what should you look for? Clearly, as we move forward quarter to quarter, a lot of focus is going to be on revenue. Together with revenue, it's going to be where it's coming from and we'll expand on that as we move out through the quarters. You're going to be looking for increased gross margin because that's the cancer tests have a much higher gross margin than do COVID tests, for example. That's a really positive thing for us. I think we mentioned earlier that we're transitioning very nicely out of the COVID revenue. into the cancer revenue. That's exactly what we wanted. COVID is here for a long time, but it's not a major driver of revenue for us. That's key. In addition to that, look for the initiatives that we put on the table. Being able to announce that we've launched a vote in the UK, important. Why is it important? Because it ties within the platform of what we can do. Now what you look for is you look for the additional announcements. What about the launch of avert into all of Europe? And what about expansion of those programs? As we bring partners on board, we will announce those. Those are the things you look for. And then, yes, you will keep score. We all keep score by looking at the revenue and we will report on that quarter by quarter. So I think those are the KPIs. That's how you get to measure where we've made progress. start with 2021 and say, good grief, did they actually do all of this?
spk02: James, we have another question. With all the internal growth and infrastructure in place, are we poised to handle larger self-employed employers?
spk04: The answer to that is yes. That's a brilliant question. because the obvious thing is everyone is saying, well, okay, where's the explosion in all of these things? Well, ladies and gentlemen, we're still coming out post-COVID. An example that I was thinking of is think of the airlines. Think of Air Canada. Air Canada would be an ideal candidate in all sorts of ways to immediately move But Air Canada right now is actually concerned about staying alive and building its own business. They've been coming out of everything in COVID. They're trying to gear up, getting their own people back. They're trying to get flights going. They're still dealing with changing regulations around all of this all of the time. And so really, they don't begin to go, okay, we need to get all of our employees COVID, sorry, cancer tested until they're actually on the stable base. So therefore, COVID has significantly fractured everything that we're dealing with as it goes through. You've got to think about how you do it. You then move to the other side, that clearly there are a series of groups that are well ahead of that in terms of where it is. And so you go, okay, that's a starting point. That's where you go. And so you begin to work with it. If I come back to Aristotle in GTA, it's actually been very interesting. One of the things that we've had to deal with is because Canada is a nationalized healthcare system, is that a lot of the people, and we've been absolutely amazed at the response out of GTA, but a good number of the people that have come to us have said, okay, I presume it's covered under the National Health Service. Well, no, it isn't. You actually have to pay for it. And so then you immediately get the question, well, what about my insurance? What about OHIP? What about these things? And so as you start to walk down that, those are possibilities. And so the kind of thing that we're doing is we're helping people unravel that. Could you get an OHIP covered as we talk with OHIP? Yes, under certain circumstances. If it's done correctly, if it's laid out correctly, OHIP will cover things like this. What about your own individual health care coverage that you have through your employees? employer as we've spoken with the with with those insurance groups they've said yes depending they do cover this it is allowable depending upon the plan that you have and again how it is written up and done through it is there so you begin to do these but these things don't happen overnight you've got to do them piece by piece and build it out so the answer is yes we're actually perfectly poised for that so much of what we've done is to begin to build it out It's not just working with our own groups internally, but obviously making it available to larger groups outside. And we are perfectly poised. We've built all that infrastructure. Now we're leveraging it.
spk02: Great. James, leading on to that, we have a question about when we're going to be in Quebec.
spk04: Good question. So we wanted to be very limited in Canada for all of the very obvious reasons I've just been talking through. But the amazing thing that we've had out of, for example, taking Aristotle into the GTA is nothing like this is available. So people are saying, well, if it was paid for, we probably couldn't keep up with the demand. So it's a matter of figuring that out. We are looking at other jurisdictions in Canada right now. We will introduce them over time, obviously somewhere in the West and obviously somewhere in Quebec would make perfect sense. We'll let you know when we're there.
spk05: Yes.
spk01: Operator, do we have any other questions? There are no further questions in queue at this time.
spk06: Okay, good.
spk04: Well, thank you very much for joining us this morning. Hopefully, the call has been instructive. If you have further questions, please feed them into Rebecca, and Rebecca will make sure that you get a response. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye.
spk01: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.
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