Aurora Spine Corporation

Good day and welcome to the Aurora Spine third quarter financial year 2025 results conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touch tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President of Lithum Partners. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chloe. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to conduct an update with investors and review the financial results for Roarer Spine for the third quarter fiscal year 2025 that ended September 30th, 2025. With us on the call representing the company today are Trent Northcutt, President and CEO of Roarer Spine, Matt Goldstone, Chief Commercial Officer, and Chad Klaus, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that statements made during the course of this call may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934. These statements reflect current expectations concerning future events and results. Words such as expect, intend, believe, may, will, should, could, anticipate, and similar expressions are words that are used to identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean a statement is not forward-looking. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties and other important factors that could cause performance or achievements to be materially different from those projected. For full discussion of these risks, uncertainties, and factors, you are encouraged to read Aurora Spine's documents on file with CDAR, including those set forth in periodic reports filed under the forward-looking statements and risk factors section. Aurora Spine does not intend or update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. On this call, management may refer to EBITDAG, adjusted EBITDAG, adjusted net income, adjusted EPS, which are not measures of financial performance under generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. Management believes that these non-GAAP figures, in addition to other GAAP measures, provide meaningful supplemental information regarding the company's operational performance. Investors should recognize that these non-GAAP figures might not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies. These measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or superior to any measure of performance prepared information. in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in accordance with SEC Regulation G can be found in the company's earnings release. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. Trent Northup, President and Chief Executive Officer of Aurora Spine. Trent, please proceed.

Thank you, Adam. I'd like to welcome everyone to the call to update everyone about Aurora Spine. To lay out the agenda for today's call, I plan on updating everyone on the company's operations and then hand the call over to Matt Goldstone, our Chief Commercial Officer, to review all of our sales initiatives. After Matt makes his remarks, I will pass the call off to Chad Klaus, our Chief Financial Officer, who will then briefly review the company's financials. Afterwards, I'll make some brief concluding remarks and then open call to answer any questions you may have. The third quarter results were moderate of nature as we're going up against a strong third quarter comparison from last year. That said, I am pleased with the changes that we were making and the momentum that we built during the third quarter of 2025, which showed consistency, disciplined expense controls, and continued profitable EBITDA. The momentum we built in the quarter were due to efforts that we made on building our internal sales force, which now have additional products in their bag to detail the medical professionals that we're targeting. Also, the momentum we're referring to is how the quarter started off a bit slow, but grew stronger into the fall months, especially September and October. As a matter of fact, October was Aurora's best months on record by revenue. That said, I must continue to remind investors that we're still in early innings of a new paradigm in offering key proprietary products that can be used in a minimally invasive manner, of which certain procedures in their own right are still very new to the industry. As a result, it will be a bit more, we'll need a bit more boots on the ground to effectively educate medical professionals about these new procedures and the use of these products. Surrounding this momentum is the initial ramp-up of our newly launched products, the Hydra ARO and the DEXA-L. But we're also strong contributors to our franchisor main products, such as our Silos SI Fusion products, as well as the Zip series of products. During the third quarter, we were very pleased, busy preparing for our commercial launch of our FDA-cleared product, our new facet pain device, the Hydra ARO, and our new exciting DEXA-L anterior lumbar fusion system. With regard to the HYDRA-ARO, there was a trademark that we needed to address, and so we had to change the name of the product from AERO to ARO. We worked diligently on this product to produce initial surgeries, which commence early in the third quarter. Initially, surgeries are continuing, and we are gaining lots of positive feedbacks and we have made some minor modifications ahead of the next order of inventory, which is currently underway. We do believe that this product series is revolutionary and has a strong future ahead. We anticipate more doctors will start implanting this product throughout the remainder of the year and in 2026. Sales efforts so far are very strong. We have approximately 10 kits in the field for the Hydra ARO and we are planning on adding more kits in the coming months. Our longer-term goal that we are working on is to convert the products over to a disposable kit, which is something slated for 2026. There are some logistics that we need to accomplish for this to be completed, but we do believe that this is a long-term for tools for the Hydro ARO will be disposable and we'll keep you appraised as that occurs. Now pivoting to DEXA. We officially launched the DEXA-L during the latter part of the third quarter, and we're making strong inroads with the product. DEXA-L is part of the Aurora patented DEXA technology platform, which is a series of products that are the world's first bone density-matched implants. We have high hopes for the DEXA-L as subsidence issues occur more frequently in lumbar section of the spine due to heavier loads and that are put in this portion of the spine. In addition, CDC estimates that almost half of the U.S. population over 50 years of age have low bone mass. This equates to millions of patients that have an implant that needs to match their patient's bone density and have had spine surgery. We're extremely excited about this launch and believe that the product will be a key growth catalyst going forward. Moving on to major revenue contributor for Aurora is our silo platform, which has a series of proprietary products, including the silo, silo allograft systems, and the silo fixation system, where revenues were over $2 million in the third quarter, which compares to the launch of the, to the strong sales continuing in the third quarter. The silo proprietary product platform over the last few years has gained significant traction in a short amount of time. To reiterate that I said earlier, it's important to remember that we're still in early innings in the SI joint market. The market opportunity that we expect for silo is to continue to expand and grow and gain more market share. We're also pleased to see new publications on the silo systems. in the past few months, including that one evaluated its biomechanical performance compared to its traditional posterior transverse technical, which demonstrated that the silo's superior performance and lead it to a positive patient outcomes. That concludes my formal comments. I will now turn the conversation over to Matt Goldstone, Aurora Spine's Chief Commercial Officer. Matt, please proceed.

Thank you, Trent. The company's sales initiatives in the third quarter were very active. We continue to build a strong foundation through our internal sales team and distribution partners. While we have more work to do, we are excited about our future and have the right products available to deliver the best outcomes for patients. To give an update on where we currently stand, we have 12 sales directors and are excited about adding multiple more in 2026. We recently added a new sales executive in a key market and are partnering with a major university in that region. The team is focused on both neuro-ortho customers and the interventional spine market. We are proud to see the success of the launch of both ARO and DEXA-L, which are major growth opportunities for Aurora and the industry as a whole. We are excited to announce that Aurora has officially gone live with our biologics division. Osteograft and TurboFuse will follow in Aurora's portfolio of best-in-class products. We continue to forge forward with our new products and are honored to work with excellent physicians. I also want to take a moment to reiterate what Trent has expressed. We have a very great opportunity ahead of us, Several of our product platforms are still very young. We have a bright future, and those products have many years to grow and to help patients. That concludes my formal comments. I'll now turn the conversation over to Chad Klaus, Aurora Spines CFO, for some commentary on our financials. Chad, please proceed.

Thank you, Matt. The companies for financial performance in the third quarter Continue to show excellent progress. What's disgusting about this? Total revenues for the third quarter of 2020-25 were $4.43 million, a decrease of 7.1% when compared to $4.77 million in the same quarter a year ago. The current period shows decreases in lumbar sales as the company transitions from the third-party lumbar screw to the osteodontic lumbar product. Sales of lumbar screws have decreased 30% from Q1 The company works with facilities and doctors to complete the transition. Moving on to gross margins, which in total revenues were 60.9% in the third quarter, a slight improvement from 60.5% for the third quarter of 2024. Gross margin continues at a strong level and we'll leave that level sustainable as we sell more proprietary products and move to direct sales. Moving on to operating expenses.

of operating expenses for approximately $2.81 million in the third quarter of 2025, which is down from $3 million for the second quarter of 2025 when compared to the third quarter of 2024.

Operating expenses in Q3 2025 included $267,000 in non-cash expenses compared to $266,000 in non-cash expenses a year ago third quarter. operating expenses were in line with a year ago, and lower on a sequential basis due to tight expense controls as the company was able to lower G&A expenses and consulting fees to offset increases in marketing expenses. The EBITDA and non-GAAP and non-NYPERS measure to finance earnings according to tax depreciation utilization stock basis compensation was approximately $165,000 in the third quarter of 2025, compared to $142,000 in the second quarter of 2025, and $308,000 in the same quarter a year ago.

EBITDA was higher a year ago due to higher revenue levels. The loss was $842,000 for the third quarter of 2025, compared to $199,000 in the second quarter of 2025, and net income of $71,000 in the third quarter a year ago. basic and due leaded net income per share was 0.0 per share in the third quarter of 2035, 0.0 share for 2014. Moving on to the balance sheet at the end of the quarter of the year, with nearly $700,000 in cash, accounts receivables were elevated relative to prior quarters, but manageable with the activity in the third quarter built throughout the quarter. a strong selling cycle in September towards the end of the quarter. We're working to build cheaply on cast collections.

As I mentioned in the past, we have added personnel to assist me in improving our collection process, and the majority of the receivables in the balance sheet reflect those that are 30 days or less. We believe the capital structure is sufficient to meet our budget needs for the remainder of the year, and into 2026, we should continue to improve it so we continue to make progress in our collection efforts and experience to work in the business.

That concludes my comments. I'm now going to turn the conversation back to Trent. Thanks, Chad.

To summarize, I'm extremely proud of our team's performance and staying focused on building this company. We are well positioned to take advantage of the emergence of minimally invasive procedures for spine health with many of our new proprietary products, including now the addition of two key growth drivers, the Hydra ARO and the DEXA-L. We are very excited about the addition of these products into our sales efforts and believe that both contribute meaningful for years to come. We remain focused on penetrating these markets further this year and through continued training sessions, industry conferences, and sharing and updating the clinical data of our products that we currently use in treating inpatients. While we are pleased with the quarterly results, we are working diligently to enhance the company's revenue growth. We are very excited about the company's future opportunities and the product lines we have brought to market. As we move to focus our commercialization efforts, we continue to build the sales team efforts and educate Marketplace to the products and the value they bring to the patients. With that said, operator, we are ready for any questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster.

The first question comes from Tom Fettichin with Micro Cap Connection.

Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my call. I want to ask about October's sales and what set that month apart. from other months in the quarter. And, you know, what attributed to the increase in sales that quarter or that particular month?

Well, what contributed to it, of course, was the new Hydra Aero and allowed us to have that product available in the portfolio as a release. And also, DEXA-L was also out and about because we released both those products out into the marketplace. We were able to get a couple more approvals in some different locations in the country, which is also, we constantly are working on that. Yeah, we were disappointed in the first start of the Q3, but we closed strong at the end of the quarter and kicked off the fourth quarter with a bang. It was an all-time record for the company.

No, that's why I asked with it being a record for the company for the month. So would you say moving forward that what we've seen in October is something that's repeatable on a monthly basis moving forward? Or do you think it's more of a one-off given it's a new rollout and everybody's excited to try the product?

I would This is Matt Goldstone. I would kind of give you kind of two parts to that answer is that, yes, I would say that I feel like we've reached new plateau of sale per day in growth. We also had a long month in October, which gives us more sales days, which is a great opportunity to have a best month of the year.

Okay. Okay. And is there anything... I'm sorry. Go ahead. One of the things we did well, Tom, this year so far... Last year, we had dips in the year where we went as low as 1.18 and 1.32. We did that twice last year. This year, we have not dropped below 1.4 million on any of our months. So we were able to elevate ourselves up consistently through the whole year, and we're going to have an average drop. as long as we continue to do what we're supposed to be doing for the rest of the year, that we'll hit that average of over 1.5, which has always been the goal. You've heard me say that a dozen or more times.

No, it's good. And I'm just trying to get an understanding with the sales of DEXA-L and maybe the ARO, what we can expect moving forward. With the kits you'd mentioned, you've got disposable kits for the ARO. Has it rolled out to like 10 doctors so far? Is it something that's going to start to ramp up from there? Maybe you can give us some color on what the rollout, how it's gone so far, how many doctors are using it, and what we can expect in the months to come and quarters to come.

Well, for the DEXA sets, we are limited by the number of sets we have, but we have been able to launch multiple physicians. And as they get comfortable with it and are seeing great outcomes, they continue to do more of it in each month. So from that standpoint, we're very excited to see the current performance of DEXA-L, and we'll be adding more kits into next year. In regards of ARO, we have already launched about a half a dozen physicians, but have engaged... dozens more and are working through their VAC processes and getting them onboarded through training and other events. So that will have quite a bit of more growth coming here this quarter.

Perfect. Perfect. Okay. Okay. I don't have any more questions at the moment. I'll go back in the loop and if I've got more questions, I'll come back and ask.

All right. Thank you, Tom. Thanks, guys.

Again, if you have a question, please press star then 1. The next question comes from Lindsey Leeds, private investor.

Please go ahead.

Hi. I wanted to ask about how you see the rollout of Arrow progressing over the next three quarters.

Go ahead, Matt.

I would compare it very similarly to the rollout that we had of siloed PFX. We were able to do trainings initially. Those trainings led to physicians getting exposed to the therapy, getting comfortable with the technique, and then being able to offer to their patients, along with the launch of Our silo products, where we put out data on it, will be moving into this year to do clinical research on ARO to make sure that the market and the payers see the success and the continual outcomes of this product. With that, we'll be able to get access to more and more physicians and help them help their patients.

Okay. Okay.

There was a comment in the press release about the lumbar screw system. Can you give us an update of where you're at with making the transition?

Yeah, so one of the reasons why the corridor was not where we wanted it to be, and this is going to answer the full question, Lindsay, was we lost one of our customers, and the screw system that we were using was with another third party. We have transitioned away from that third party product. We are almost 100% now Aurora products. We're as close as we've ever been. And so hydro osteo onyx, uh, is part of that transition. Um, and that doctor that we were working with was, would have been, you know, a hundred thousand dollars, uh, a month, um, in that, you know, in the, in the quarters, which would have boosted this up, you know, uh, to a stronger, uh, third quarter. Um, and he, he uses that, he used that third party product. He was the number one user of that third party product. So we've parted ways with that third-party product, and we've also parted ways with that particular customer. Another answer to your question on that is we are now rolling that product into some new areas around the country, including some academic locations in the U.S., and have gotten some positive feedback, some things that we need to fine-tune on it. But in general, it's gotten some really good feedback, and the Osceolonyx kit is very comprehensive. approaches to it. It's a minimally invasive set. It actually has a scoliosis function to it, deformity function to it, and, of course, a degen function to it with the added feature that it has this thing called roughened surface technology where it allows the bone to better indigitate itself into the structure of the implant. The implant has a more porous structure, and the reason why we were making a switch to this product was it better aligns with us in our DEXA messaging, having an implant that goes between the bones that allows the bones to have a better, softer landing for the material and for the bones to land on and get a better fusion, less subsidence, and then actually have an implant that goes into the bones that gives it better indigitation so it has less likely for it to migrate and for it to move around and to create failure for that patient. So the stories matched up better for us. So we did 100% part ways with that third party company and that all happened in the end of Q2 and the beginning of Q3. One more comment I'll add that you didn't ask is we had a really strong customer through Q1 and going into Q2 His separate customer, his hospital had some financial problems. So we had to stop doing surgeries there. We didn't lose this second customer. We had to move him to another facility. He moved himself to another facility. He's actually coming back online with us, has actually already booked surgeries again with us here in November. And he'll be back. And he was one of our top tiered customers. And we lost him all through um, spring and the summer, and now he's coming back online.

Okay.

With the, uh, so the doctor that you lost with the third party, um, lumbar that is, uh, he continued to use that third party sets. He didn't transition to your new product line. Is that what I'm understanding?

We don't know what he transitioned to. We just know that we no longer work with him, and we also parted ways with that third-party company.

Okay. I want to talk about Dexa-L for a minute. How is that doing coming out the gate here at Launch?

The early response has been fantastic. I mean, the physicians have not only liked the tooling, but have really, really appreciated the porous nature of the implant, and the early results have been fantastic. Everything has gone very well from a case standpoint. Outcomes so far on early days have been fantastic. We are working, obviously, in our 2026 CapEx to be adding more DEXA-L trays, and that will allow us to expand our customer base and continue to make the adjustments needed in that product class.

It could be 8 to 12 weeks depending on what part it is, so there's always a leave time on the manufacturing of it. The making of the implant is easier because we 3D print those implants just right down here about 100, you know, 200 yards from our office. The tooling is what always takes the longest. And we're also trying to make sure that with this new build out that we've, we found that, because we had a product called Solo L, which was our old 3D printed system. We learned from that and we took that into surgery with the new DEXA L. And the good news is that we found that we could reduce some of the instrumentations. A lot of the doctors that we work with that some of the tools that were in the kits were not necessary. So that was a pleasant surprise for us so we could reduce some of those costs and also reduce some of those manufacturing times. And performance-wise, we were able to make some steps easier for the doctor and the doctor saw the efficiencies of the new DEXA-L system.

Okay. Okay. Is there a possibility that DexL makes a significant contribution, say like half a million in Q4, or is it not going to be able to hit that kind of level until you get more kits?

I think we're going to need more kits to be able to get to that milestone. but I do think it's going to be impactful financial because these are a lot of these newer customers are coming on because just because it's, it's the top, it's the product that they've been waiting for. We had been talking about this product for a couple of years. So it's here now. And the good news, these are all ortho and neuro customers. And some of these doctors will do, you know, 10 a month or, you know, or more. And in, in the, The charge price on that is a very robust price for that, luckily, because it's a big product. About $250,000, maybe more, per quarter.

Okay. Are we going to see, hey, a doctor uses Dexil. They really like it. They have a relationship with you. Now maybe they start using Dexac, which maybe is a more competitive product. to monetize product?

I think one of the only real reasons why we've had some, we had the highs and lows of, of, uh, Dexa-C was that customer I'd mentioned that was out of that hospital because the hospital was having some financial problems. He was one of our top Dexa-C users. Um, he's coming back, as I mentioned, um, and he's already booked more cervical cases and can't wait to get started. He was still doing surgery. It wasn't like he stopped being a doctor, but he was at a facility that wouldn't pay their bills and we didn't want to provide, we didn't want to go into a hole financially. So there was, he was using some other products and we, I found out firsthand from some other vendors that those companies got that fate. You know, they had to sell those products and they sell them and paid on them. We didn't want to deal with that. So luckily we didn't. We also had the Apollo plate system. failure where the Apollo plate, the locking mechanism popped off in some surgeries and we had to fix that. And so with one of our vendors, they were very diligent with us to help us troubleshoot the issue. We found what the issue was and we are fixing that right now. So when you, when you go in to see a doctor and you say, Hey, I'd like you to use our cage, the Dexter C they say, great. I don't want two vendors in my room. I want one vendor. in my room, and if you don't have a cervical plate, then it makes it difficult. So that's the main reason. Those are the two main reasons why we had highs and lows of Dextase C users in the 2025 campaign.

So do you have a new Apollo plate that you can provide to physicians right now, or are you still waiting on the redesign to be finalized or the problem to be fixed?

What we did was we went to a third-party plate company, picked up a third-party cervical plate, and we are representing that product in the field right now. And it's performing well, and we're getting our feet underneath ourselves with that plate. And we do expect Dexa-C to grow in the fourth quarter and to grow into the beginning of 2026. And we're confident that Dexa-C is going to continue to grow.

Okay, great. I have no further questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Lindsay.

Again, if you have a question, please press star then 1. This time we have no further questions.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Trent Northcutt for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us.

We appreciate your time and interest in Aurora Spine. We are very excited about what's ahead. We appreciate your interest and support of Aurora Spine and are looking forward to updating everyone in the coming months on our progress. If you'd like to chat with Matt, Chad, or myself, please reach out to Adam Lohnesteiner at Listen Partners and we'd be happy to schedule a meeting. Thanks again everyone and have a great rest of your day.

The conference has now concluded.

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