Biotricity Inc (BTCY) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and welcome to the Biotricity Fiscal Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mark Forney. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Biotricity's Fiscal 2021 Q3 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, Biotricity's quarter ended on December 31, 2020, so all figures presented for this period will reflect that end date. Earlier today, we issued our fiscal 2021 Q3 financial results press release, which highlighted a number of financial results. It should be noted that these are preliminary figures that could change when the final filing is complete. A copy of the press release is available on the Investor Relations section of our website, and the completed financials will be posted on EDGAR on February 16, 2021.

Before beginning our formal remarks, I'd like to remind listeners that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views with respect to future events. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Biotricity does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, except as required.

At this point, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Biotricity Founder and CEO, Waqaas Al-Siddiq. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Mark. And thank you, everybody, for joining us on this call today and hearing a little bit about our story and what we've been up to over the last quarter. So one of the exciting things that I think is an important milestone for us is we have done our first $1 million quarter. And that is on the back of doing 7 quarters of consecutive growth, barring 1 quarter when -- with the original COVID outbreak back in 2020. What's I think more interesting and valuable than that is if you count the original release of our product, which was our first FDA clearance was at the end of '17, so 2018 was when we were figuring out reimbursement and really trying out. Didn't really have a sales force, but it was an exercise in understanding the market and ensuring that reimbursement was available for our product and our business model worked.

Through that year, we also had consecutive quarterly growth. So if you include that before the 1-year pre-commercialization, we are now at a point in time where we had 11 quarters of consecutive growth, barring that 1 quarter because of COVID-19. And that has really resulted in triple-digit year-over-year growth and approximately 20% to 40% growth sequentially.

And that growth is not only in terms of revenue but also in terms of physicians access to patients and all of the other aspects that drive our business. And to speak to that, we now have over 700 cardiologists across 20 states that use our product. That's 150% year-over-year increase in the number of physicians that we had approximately. And approximately, those physicians service about 1.4 million patients.

We've also seen geographic expansion. We are now 20 states in terms of our network, which is up from 12 states last year.

And I think the exciting part, which I sort of alluded to in the last call and I think that trend is continuing, is that we have a product road map, and we are really trying to focus on increasing our current addressable market. So as everyone knows, we are in the cardiac diagnostics space, and that current addressable market for us is about a $1.2 billion market. And with this new product that we recently filed at the end of December, which is the Biotres, if that product is approved, that addressable market is going to grow from $1.2 billion to $4 billion approximately.

And that's exciting to us for a number of reasons. One is because unlike our flagship product with the Bioflux where we were really stitching together a network, bringing the product, going and developing our footprint across the country, every subsequent product and a product like the Biotres, if approved, is going into that ecosystem. So not only does it allow us to touch more of those patients, but it also goes in and increases our touch points within the account, allows us to go deeper and develop an even stickier relationship with our physicians. And as we provide more technology and more services with those physicians, those relationships get stronger and also expand our addressable market while also increasing our revenue.

So that's, I think, the exciting thing for us, one of the big milestones for this year. Obviously, we are confident that we will get the approval, but until that happens, we are working with our existing customers and focusing on the Bioflux product. We have a track record of getting FDA approvals. So I'm confident with our internal team, our management team, that we know what we are doing. We have a track record of showing that we know what we are doing. So it is a process that we are very engaged in but also very excited about.

And I think the other important component of last quarter, and I think that really facilitates because growth is about your resources, what are your resources on hand. So we recently finished the financing. We brought in about $11.7 million in capital. This capital will be used to facilitate our growth, continue that growth and execute on our product road map.

And with those highlights, I'm going to turn it over to our CFO, John Ayanoglou. He'll talk a little bit more about the numbers and the details before handing it over back to me. And I can take you a little bit deeper into our vision for the company and some of the things that we have on our plate that is going to come to fruition in the near future.

John?

Thank you, Waqaas. And thank you to everyone who's joined us this afternoon. Let me start by saying that my comments will focus on our unaudited preliminary financial results for Biotricity's third fiscal quarter of 2021, which is the quarter ended December 31. Final posted financial results will be filed on EDGAR on February 16.

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Biotricity, so I want to begin by highlighting our revenue, which increased from $0.4 million in fiscal Q3 2020 to just over $1 million in Q3 2021. Now this represents 162% year-over-year increase, but just as importantly, marks a sequential 34.5% increase over the $0.745 million we posted in Q2 of this fiscal year, 34.5%.

Our year-over-year growth showed considerable strength this quarter. Revenue acceleration, we feel, is a true measure of sales growth. So we are really pleased with the improvement in this category. On the last quarter, Q2 2021, we posted year-over-year quarterly growth of 115%, so putting up a 162% increase in Q3 is a particularly positive change in our growth trajectory: that hockey stick that we like to see. We see this acceleration as a hallmark of the results to come in 2021 and 2022.

Someday, we know that we will run into a lot of large numbers in terms of year-over-year and sequential revenue growth as we anniversary these smaller starter quarters. But for the foreseeable future, we believe that the dual trends of triple-digit annual growth and double-digit sequential revenue growth will be consistent characteristics of our coming quarterly results.

Cardiac patients typically need some kind of monitoring for the rest of their lives, particularly in the high-risk category where our core product lines are sold. We talked in the past about how our Technology-as-a-Service, or TaaS, model is similar to Software-as-a-Service models, but with a technology and physical product component.

Now there's a real stickiness in terms of our customer base. It has 2 levels: the cardiologist and the patient, who forge a lifelong relationship that varies based on the patient's health. We want to be a part of that relationship. Our high customer retention, or simply put, repeat business, speaks for itself. We have products that work well, state-of-the-art products. They work well in the cardiologist office. We're currently working to create a complete suite of products that bracket the entire span of the cardiologist-patient relationship.

During the 3 months ended December 31, 2020, Biotricity incurred a net loss of approximately $4.1 million and a comprehensive loss of approximately $3.75 million, compared to $2.4 million and $2.6 million in the comparative periods of the prior fiscal year. We had a big push to get our Biotres product ready for the FDA filing that occurred in December 2020 and are pushing just as hard to complete additional R&D and infrastructure development that we think will result in significant growth in the second half of this year.

Just as important, we're completing these foundational R&D projects. Just as important as doing that, we're simultaneously ramping up our sales team and the supporting infrastructure of the company. Operating expenses increased approximately 66.3% year-over-year to $4.4 million. This reflects that requirement, infrastructure and particularly to increase the growth in our -- of our sales team.

These expenses are comprised of general and admin expenses and R&D expenses. Our G&A of $3.7 million was higher than the corresponding prior year period by 69.2%. Our R&D spend came in at just under $0.7 million this quarter. That's a 52% year-over-year increase and an acceleration from the prior quarter. This is because our R&D spend, the reason it's historically high is that we realize that it provides benefits and R&D dividends as it [works] around the corner, measured in months and quarters. And we expect these to translate and commercialize into important new revenue sources.

Subsequent to year-end, the company completed an $11.7 million issue of convertible notes. This gives us the requisite funding to support significant growth, so we're in great shape to continue with our strategic plan. As this quarter shows, companies at our stage in the product growth cycle typically have high R&D and infrastructure costs, and this is a big part of our strategy. But we have a very positive outlook on this increased spending because we feel that we can drive pretty short time line to growth from these recent expenditures, from both a new product and new revenue sources standpoint as well as with respect to expanding our sales force. So we have multiple ways to grow with expansion and extension of our product ecosystem that will only capture a larger part of the cardiac market but potentially create revenue sources that would be both new for us and for our cardiologists.

We have a solid track record in technology development and are building Biotricity into a trusted brand, giving us a ready-made audience for each new product offering. Since fiscal Q4 2020, our revenue has essentially doubled every 2 quarters, but it is important to note that most of this has been from organic growth from our flagship product, Bioflux.

We expect 2021 to be the year when we layer on additional meaningful revenue stream, adding to the quality of our revenue and embedding our brand more fully in the cardiologist offices. Our recurring revenue model and new growth initiatives give us great confidence that we can achieve triple-digit growth again for fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022. And we haven't even started monetizing our data or really monetizing that relationship with the end patient and that growing group that we are seeing.

More from that from Waqaas. Waqaas, back to you.

Thanks, John. Appreciate that. And as I promised, let's go a little bit deeper in terms of what are our plans, what are we trying to do here at Biotricity. So we talked talked a little bit about expansion and growth. And that's been a characteristic of the company for the last few quarters, and we plan on continuing that. And part of that expansion is really focused on driving consistent growth and revenue increase by expanding our sales force. And part of that sales force expansion is also about driving footprint. Right now, if you look at us in the United States, we are primarily focused on the northeast and the southeast of the United States. And we want to go more westward and expand, so that we are across the United States. So the capital that we brought in puts us in a position where we can expand our sales force and drive a larger footprint.

While we are driving that larger footprint, so simultaneous to that, the product pipeline is about going deeper in existing accounts. I sort of touched on this earlier. John certainly touched on it as well. And that is where our R&D comes from. It's focusing on and understanding that hey, we've got these 700 physicians today and growing. But they are overseeing 1.4 million patients, and we want to grow that to 2 million by opening up additional accounts and growing our footprint. So how do we touch more and more of those patients? And the way we do that is by creating a product suite and expanding our product suite, so that we can go deeper. And at our core as a company, we are a technology company. It's been one of our key focus since inception is how to ensure and how to focus on best-in-class technology.

And we've been seeing the fruits of that. One is we have 100% reorder rate across our customers. We have fantastic retention rate. And as a result of that, we have a trust factor. And we have a stickiness where these physicians are listening to us and we're understanding what they need, and we're building those features into our technology.

And to kind of talk about technology for a moment, because technology is a very important aspect in remote monitoring. So COVID has certainly focused on the idea of monitoring. Self-isolation has become a norm. And monitoring is the future. This has become very clear. It was already a direction, but COVID has certainly accelerated that awareness.

And the problem is that there's very few organizations that are really focused on technology. People get wrapped up into the clinical side. They want to do the test. They want to bill insurance. They want to do all that.

Biotricity has maintained that technology, and this model of Technology-as-a-Service is the way to go from our perspective. And so we've developed all our technology in-house. We've taken the time to build our own IoT infrastructure. So I mentioned this on our previous call as well, all the cellular IoT and bringing the cellular technology in-house, so that we have a one-piece device, all of that was developed in-house. That gives us the ability to stay attuned to what's going on with the market when 5G comes out, when 6G comes out and so on and so forth. Because we have complete control of the technology, we're able to improve that.

Another aspect of that is focusing on collecting more and richer data. So what does that mean? Well, our device is a 3-channel device. And I will talk about Biotres shortly, which is also a 3-channel device. And typically, more channels means richer data, and richer data means better accuracy and better diagnostics, which is effectively better for the patient. And so when we take a look at what is going on in the market, most devices are 2 channels, or 1 channel if you go into the patch market. And to get 3 channels, you need 4 or 5 lead wires. We've been able to do that with 3 lead wires. So we're able to collect more data with less lead wires, meaning we have better patient compliance, which means better data and ultimately provides us better diagnostics.

And this idea of constantly trying to improve, you also see that with our FDA filings. We've got FDA filings from end of '17, then '18 and '19 and so on and so forth. We have some of the newest technology in the marketplace. When you look at other players in the cardiac diagnostic space, you're looking at FDA clearances from back in 2009, from back in 2012 and '14. So when you look at what is the latest technology, it's synonymous with the name and the brand Biotricity. And that's important because when you're talking to cardiologists and physicians, they want to use the best technology, so that they can get the best diagnosis for their patients. So we are trying to focus on that. And where we start with that is obviously the R&D but also this continuous and consistent focus on improving.

And so I talked a little bit about the Biotres product and how we've submitted it. We've done the same thing here. And this is a big focus for us this year to try and get this cleared and launched pending the clearance. We submitted it as -- on schedule, as we had indicated. But what's unique about this product is when you talk about patch monitors or Holter monitor, if you think about companies like iRhythm or BardyDx, and the challenge there has been that these devices have a 1-channel monitoring. Their FDA clearances are from back in 2009. And what we really focused on is a 3-channel device, so you get better and richer data.

The other thing is we've added connectivity, so you can actually offload the data. You don't have to mail it back and wait 2 weeks for a report. And that, of course, creates patient risk. And then on top of that, we've made it rechargeable, so you can use it for as long as you like.

And again, the key focus at Biotricity has always been is this commitment to understanding the model that physicians use in reimbursement. So we look at the reimbursement codes, we understand, and we provide our technology in a framework that facilitates utilization by a physician, so that they can be enabled to do the diagnostics and the work that they need to do within their practice. And we've done the same thing with Biotres.

So we talk about our product, where we are today, how do we continue this, right? It's all about a continuation of what we've been doing. And so our focus is to continue obviously do what we're doing, which is continue to expand our sales force, continue to expand our technology pipeline and continue to grow our revenues. I don't mean to oversimplify things, but in a way, we've got a product that works. We've got insurance that is established. We've got retention rate and utilization in physicians. So we need to replicate this, and we need to continue expanding and build our network bigger.

And a big part of that, and I've already touched on that, is to expand our sales force, expand the pipeline to go deeper and expand our company awareness. And I think that we are today at an excellent position with the recent capital raise, where we have excellent visibility into our growth potential with our existing products as well as any future products. And we can confidently say that we see that this trend of triple-digit year-over-year growth will continue for this year and on to next year.

And this is really a characteristic of having visibility into this recurring revenue model. This business model of Technology-as-a-Service has really enabled our ability to confidently say these things. This is why we were able to deliver 21 months of sequential monthly growth minus the 1 month for -- when COVID initially got released. And so that's where we can confidently say, hey, we expect this growth of triple digit to continue for this year and next year.

And I think the other important aspect that we can talk to is this idea of expanding our total addressable market. So as we execute on our product pipeline today, we understand that real-time monitoring is a subset of diagnostics. It's a $1.2 billion market. How do we expand, how do we make it bigger? And that's really due to this execution of our product pipeline and then going deeper into the account.

So with that, I'll kind of summarize where we are as a company, where we think we are going, where we can confidently say and what is on track for this year. And we've done very well this last quarter, but we already know we're going to do better next quarter. And this is directly a result of this model, this business model of Technology-as-a-Service. And every product that we are looking at in our product pipeline, including the Biotres, is designed with the same business model and completely tied with clarity on how reimbursement is going to work for the physician and how this technology is going to enable the physician to do what they need to do. And so we really focus on understanding that component, so that we can get the stickiness. The stickiness then leads to this adoption. And that adoption is in a recurring revenue model, so we can confidently and consistently show growth.

And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to some questions. I know you guys have listened to us for quite a bit time. So happy to take some questions.

With that, I'll turn it over to Mark, who's -- who'll reach out to the individuals that have questions. Mark?

Yes, operator, if you could queue up the questions. And at this time, we will take Q&A, so we've got about 30 seconds to get that organized and starting our Q&A.

(Operator Instructions) And we'll take our first question from Kyle Bauser from Colliers Securities.

Thanks for all the updates here. Maybe just on the sales force side, I know what you're focusing on is ramping the head count. Can you remind me what is the current head count and where you see that going and kind of the trend?

Yes. So we're focusing on doubling our sales force right now. We're trying to focus more, as opposed to head count, what we try to focus on is how many states we have exposure in. So we have 20 states that we are active in right now, and our focus is to grow that by 50% and get into 30 states by the end of the year.

Got it. And so as you expand, do you think you'll just add support to those existing? And then also as a follow-on, what's your expectations for kind of unlocking the remaining states over the coming quarters?

Yes. So the -- that's exactly right. So we'll do a combination of -- we will add to our head count in states where we think that the the population is big enough and the opportunity is big enough. And then there are smaller states where the population is -- can be serviced with a rep that is covering a couple of states. So that is a mixed approach that we will take, obviously, based on the opportunity and the population size of that state.

And with regards to how we see that in the coming quarters, our goal is we want to add and expand our network by 3 to 4 states every quarter. So if we're trying to get to a 30-state exposure, I think that the expectation that we're trying to set internally is try to add 3 states every quarter and achieve that network of 30 states by the end of the year. Now with that said, if we see that, hey, there is this huge market opportunity to expand within a state, we may decide to do that just because the business opportunity there from a numbers perspective is more important than expanding to a state that may not have the same size of opportunity.

Got it. Appreciate that. And just lastly, if I may, nice to see the opportunistic raise, and so you've got a nice balance sheet. How far does that get you? And how do you expect the burn on a quarterly basis to trend as well?

Yes. So I think that -- I'll answer that a little bit differently because it's not as binary as as that because we are obviously growing with the good thing. And that the characteristic about this raise is that we have existing shareholders that participated and investors that are going to come in and support the company in subsequent rounds.

So we are well capitalized alongside our growth where we can run the business and continue this growth trajectory on a 12- to 18-month program. And alongside that, we have existing investors and -- investors that participated in this round that will continue to support the company and continue to support our growth. So I think it's more important than the fact that we've got this capital and it's been able -- it's going to support our growth, but this capital is also not a onetime capital. It's capital and investors that we can go back to, which is very important because one of the big things about -- we talked about growth and how do you facilitate growth and continue that growth, it's about resources. And having investors that stick with you, having existing shareholders coming back and continue to invest multiple times, that's an important factor in able to continue growth.

So we are very happy with not only the capitalization that is coming to facilitate this growth but also the investors that came in and have shown commitment for subsequent capital needs. But to answer your question specifically, we are fine for the next 12 to 18 months and maybe even longer, depending on how we can focus on accelerating our growth.

And we'll go ahead and take our next question from Chet White, Helios Alpha.

Congratulations, Waqaas and John, very nice quarter. I just have a couple of quick questions. If you can add a little bit of color to what you're seeing at the marketplace. We've noticed some pricing pressure for some of the peers like iRhythm that they faced. And I want to know how that's affecting Bioflux and the upcoming Biotres. It'd be great to get your thoughts on that.

No problem. Thanks, Chet. Always happy to take your tough questions. So iRhythm is in the extended Holter market, right? So Bioflux is in the mobile cardiac telemetry market. So the Bioflux is really unaffected by anything that's going on with iRhythm. That issue is really a focus on extended Holter.

The Biotres product is a little bit different now because the Biotres product can be used as an extended Holter. We developed that product specifically for the Holter market. Physicians can use it for the extended Holter. But it will -- because our model is Technology-as-a-Service, the product is already designed to be profitable and generate revenue from our perspective because we are not tied to clinical reimbursement; we are tied to technology usage fees. And we've designed it so that it will work within the reimbursement framework that is currently the issue with iRhythm. And the reason that is, is because the iRhythm issue, I understand, is new for many investors. People are hearing about it. It's not new to us. We've known about this since early 2019.

And to provide a little bit of color, we really, at Biotricity, focus and understand reimbursement because it's a big part of our business to understand how does the physician get enabled. And so from back in 2019, we knew that there was a disconnect in reimbursement, and it's not restricted just to Novitas.

So to give you an example, Chicago Medicare pays $231.25 for extended Holter. And that's what they pay, but your bill -- you're billing Medicare $395. So they're not paying $395. They're paying substantially less. They're paying $231. But when you go to Maryland, they're paying $213, so that's not a big difference. But when you go to Washington State, it's $30. When it's Michigan, it's $31. When it's North Carolina, it's $147. And this is not a problem just for Novitas. Noridian, which is dealing with Washington State reimbursement; and Palmetto, which is dealing with North Carolina reimbursement, are also reimbursing at lower rates.

So we've understood this for a couple of years now. And when we built the Biotres, it was with the understanding about all of these metrics. But we are filling a need for our physicians, which was that they like Biotres. They like our workflow. They like this idea of being enabled. They like doing things in-house. They like being able to turn around their patient data quickly. And they came and they said, "Hey, why don't you give us the Holter product?" And so we built the Biotres to first service that unmet need of the Holter market. And then, yes, it can be used for extended Holter, but because we knew of this reimbursement issue for a couple of years now, our Technology-as-a-Service model is unaffected by this problem.

Got it, okay. And just a couple of follow-ups, could you just talk a little bit about some of the risks that you see? Obviously, the growth is exceptional, both sequentially and year-over-year in triple digits. But what do you worry about making sure that execution happens? And what are the big primary risks that you try to manage?

Right. Excellent question. So -- and thank you for recognizing that. And what I would say is our model is very unique, and it is designed for growth and value. It's one of the reasons why we didn't want to get into the clinical and the operational stuff and get -- and reimburse directly with Medicare and Medicaid. We really wanted to stay as a Technology-as-a-Service company, and that's by design.

It's also why, to your previous question where you were talking about, "How are you affected?" iRhythm does all of the clinical reporting and all of that and billing directly for insurance. So they're staffing clinicians and all of those operational overheads, which affect them.

So our model is designed for growth because it's a technology reoccurring service model. And that is why we are very confident when we can say we will continue triple-digit growth and quarter-over-quarter growth for this year and next year.

So what is my risk? And as I had mentioned earlier in the call, I know this next quarter is going to be bigger than last quarter. My focus is now how do I accelerate the growth? And how do I grow faster? Because that is the key component for us, right? We are confident in the growth trajectory. What we want to do is we want to accelerate that growth. And the way we plan to do that is by executing on a product pipeline and going deeper. So hopefully that answers that question.

Got it, absolutely. And can you give us a little guidance for the next few quarters as you see, say, for example, Biotres kicking in and some of the other product pipeline kicking in?

Yes. So we believe if Biotres gets approved, we believe it's going to have a 20% to 30% impact across the board for us. But outside of the Biotres, we expect to maintain this quarter-over-quarter growth that's -- that you've seen in line over the last 7 quarters, between 25% to 40% irrespective of Biotres. Everything else is really going to enhance that.

Got it. And last question, just it seems like you're doing a great job of really delivering fundamentally very well. And just now that you're getting scaled up, how do you envision kind of broadening your investor base and getting more into some mainstream venues like NASDAQ, and of course, one day the S&P 500, like Tesla?

Not sure I'd answer that one, but what I can say is this, right? We -- a lot of companies talk about uplisting in the national exchange and stuff like that. We -- today, we are very much focused on growth, and the capitalization that we just got is going to facilitate that. With that said, I talked earlier about company awareness. We definitely want to build the company awareness and audience. And being on the OTC market, it's really a smaller, more specialized audience that looks at the company. And we are definitely committed to a national exchange because we believe that is going to expand our awareness. And as we see some of the activity in the space and what's going on, there's certainly a broader audience and more name brand awareness when you are on a national exchange.

And that is certainly a focus for us. And we will -- we are committed to that trajectory. So it is on our radar. It is something that we plan on doing. It is an item that we are committed to not only just to be on a national exchange but also to expand our awareness and expand the audience and the investor audience. So that is certainly a priority for this year.

And we'll go ahead and take our next question from Chris Jarrous from Dunlap Equity.

My first question really goes to the macro in the space and what you're seeing competitively. So I know that -- I think a couple of others have been acquired recently. And I wanted to see what your thoughts were, both from a kind of what that means to the market and also what you're actually seeing in the field, and what, if you're hearing anything back from clinics and whatnot, there's -- if things have changed in that respect.

For sure. An excellent question. There is a lot of activity in the space. And I think -- so if we just take a step back and we think about that for a minute and why is that happening, so I talked about COVID, and I talked about the -- how the future is remote monitoring and the awareness of that, that has really facilitated this consolidation. And I think what's very good is that there've been acquisitions, but acquisitions at good values for organizations that are more operational. As I talked to you about having the clinicians billing directly for insurance really dealing with all of the overhead stuff, not as a technology player. So if they're getting acquired at good value, I believe that, that bodes well for us because we are a technology player, and technology companies generally get better multiples in terms of value.

And the consolidation is also an important component because it also shows which smaller companies like me and CEOs of smaller companies are always seeing things like that. But it's validation from a value perspective but also validation from the perspective that building this technology is not easy. So remote patient monitoring is difficult to develop. Algorithms are difficult to develop. There's high barrier to entries. It's why these companies are being acquired because the tech is difficult to create. And with the BioTelemetries and the Proventuses out, I believe we are very well positioned as we have technology, and also, acquisitions slow companies down. It gives us an opportunity. We are already winning in the marketplace and continue to win in the marketplace.

And I think the other important factor, which I talked about earlier, which is that the players that have -- that are being acquired, the technology is very dated. You've got FDA clearances from 2012, 2009, 2014. And some of these players -- Proventus was acquired for $1.2 billion. Their white-labeling technology, it's not even developed by themselves in-house. So I think from an overall multifactor perspective, it bodes well for a company like ours that is very tech-heavy where technology companies get better recognition for value. And it establishes not only value; it establishes the fact that this stuff is difficult to create, and that acquisition or partnerships or strategic alliances is the way to go. So I think that bodes well for our investor audience and our shareholder audience. I think it bodes well for our ability to attract additional investors and facilitate our growth.

Okay. Great. And then, I mean, speaking of BEAT, I mean, that's a company that's been around for, I don't know, 15, 20 years, something like that and obviously had done well. Is that the kind of pace that we as investors should expect -- given that you have to deal with so many different stakeholders in this and doctors and whatnot? Or is there something about your business that allows you to maybe scale faster than what these competitors have?

Excellent question. So it's a good point, and I think that's a good reminder. I always forget it sometimes as well. You look at some of these companies, you look at BEAT and like -- and you're like, wow, they're doing really, really well. And then you're thinking about, oh, well, they've been around for 15 years or 20 years. It's taking them a long time to get there.

Our model and our product portfolio -- so based on public information, based on what I see because I watch everybody in the space, we have one of the richest product portfolio, in my opinion, everyone can, of course, verify that on their own, which allows us to really layer on. And we are growing faster because of our business model and the type of people that we are able to attract than these companies were doing. So I believe that we will achieve growth faster.

And as I had talked about earlier, we're trying to accelerate that growth. So we are already growing on a faster trajectory than these guys. So it won't take us 10 years, but we are trying to accelerate that. So I think for investors and for shareholders and for potential investors and potential shareholders, I think it's a matter of watching us and looking at how we execute. And we've been showing that we can execute, so it's really about continuing to do what we've been doing successfully.

And we'll go ahead and take our next question from Jeff Porter from Porter Capital Management.

As you think about driving revenue growth going forward, how do you prioritize getting a lift in utilization from physicians as opposed to driving revenue growth by acquiring new physicians? How do you think about that?

Yes. It's an excellent question. So utilization for us, at the end of the day, it's about what is really required from a diagnostic perspective for a patient and then how do we facilitate and enable the physician to have the best insight. So how do we look at utilization, and we are looking at it. It's really about providing more data and getting more accurate and providing that data faster to the physician at their fingertips.

So what does that mean? Let's be specific. If a doctor is looking for atrial fibrillation as an arrhythmia patient, and AFib is found in day 3 and you put the patient on for a 10-day study, well, we need to be able to let that information permeate through our system, so that the doctor is alerted and has that data at his fingertips, so he can recall the patient. So we've been working on all of these things in the last year in terms of how to get data more available, faster available, more real time into the hands of the physician. So we've made a huge improvements in that, and that has been reflective in utilization. Utilization has improved for us in the last 9 to 10 months.

The other aspect is how do we facilitate patient hookups remotely, so shipping devices to the patient. That is something that we also implemented. COVID, of course, accelerated that. We were already planning on it, but this got forced because of what's going on COVID.

And then the last component, which we talked about a little bit on this call, is how do you touch more patients with your products. Because that doctor, we know, has approximately 2,000 patients. So -- but not all of them are needed for diagnostics, but they are all cardiac patients. So is there something else that we can develop from a product or technology perspective post-diagnostics that can help touch this patient and create an incremental revenue stream for us or expand.

So utilization, there's utilization on product. There's utilization by creating better accessibility. And then there's utilization by going deeper. And we are working on all 3 of those.

And we'll go ahead and take our next question from Liam Sherif from Platinum Point Capital.

First of all, I'd just like to say congratulations on your phenomenal quarter. The $1 million quarterly milestone is really an exciting development for the company. So my question is can you speak for a moment please about how cardiologists are being paid for using the Biotricity device versus how they are being paid for using a competitor's device? And also, just with that, what is the difference in out-of-pocket cost to the customer?

Yes, for sure. So I'll break that down into 2 parts. So the first part is what happens to the physician versus us? So we are a technology provider. So we provide the technology. The doctor, they buy the technology, and then we provide them software that they can use, and then they pay us based on usage. So they're dealing with all the clinical work. They're diagnosing the patients. They're dealing with interpretation, if there's an emergency. So they're really using our technology to facilitate diagnostics within their practice. And so what that means is that they're reimbursing for a global reimbursement. So reimbursement is usually professional and technical. They are reimbursing for both professional and technical.

The professional fee is around $25. The technical fee is around, national average is around $800. So they're collecting all of that with Biotricity. And then they pay us a technology fee, which, based on our negotiated contract, is substantially less.

When they're dealing with a competitor like some of the other companies that people are aware of, the doctor bills for the professional fee, which is basically reading the report, which is $25. And the -- our competitors will bill for the technical, which is the $800 reimbursement. So there is a huge difference. The doctors are already using it. It's just -- and there's no change to Medicare. There's no increase in cost to the system. It's really allowing the doctor to do the billing and facilitate faster response time, hook up the patient, because, obviously, if the doctor has to outsource it, the patient has to go somewhere else. They've got to wait for that device. Now the doctor has lost insight. So there's a whole patient quality in a patient care perspective outside of any financial component here.

So all of that basically improves. You get improved care, better access and all of -- and of course, the revenue stream is shifted. Instead of going out to a third-party service provider, the doctor is doing everything in-house. So that's the change there.

Now to your second part of your question, which was about the patient and the out-of-pocket cost. So out-of-pocket cost to a patient when you're dealing with a non-physician, like a lab or a center, it's really the center or, in our case, our competitor, they will determine what to do. So if they bill -- if they're charging $800 and Medicare only pays $600, that $200 delta, they will go after the patient for that.

What we have seen in the physician side is physicians, they have long-term relationships with these patients. So if their -- if the patient's insurance kicks back $100 or $50 or whatever, generally, the doctor will just let that go. He's not going to go in and collect it because he knows that this patient has been that doctor's patient for years and is going to be -- continue to be that doctor's patient for many years to come. So it's much nicer for the patient, not only from a care quality perspective but to have all of this in the hands of their physicians. Because the physicians can override a lot of these things, and they're not going to chase after their patients if insurance returned a reimbursement that was $50 or $75 less.

Great. And just my final question, could you give us a breakdown of utilization revenues versus sales revenues in this quarter and tell us a little about the growth you're seeing in utilization?

So I actually -- sorry, you asked me a question, which I don't have the exact numbers off the top of my head, but what I can -- I can talk about it anecdotally. We have seen utilization and revenue from utilization become a substantially larger percentage of our revenue every single quarter. So device sales is always becoming a smaller and smaller fraction every quarter. I believe last quarter, it was probably somewhere in the 15%, 20% maximum kind of range. But if you go a year ago, it would have been like 40%, maybe even more.

So every quarter, we see device as a function of revenue becomes smaller and utilization as a percentage of revenue grow. And that's where us as a company and myself as CEO, I'm always focused on the reoccurring Technology-as-a-Service model, what is that revenue and how do we -- how does that impact. Because that is the driver of our growth, and that is the one that we always want to see growing and become a larger and larger percentage of our revenue.

And we'll go ahead and take our next question from Thomas West from West Corp.

I'm sorry. My question has already been answered, so I will pass. Thank you.

Thanks, Thomas.

And we'll go ahead and take a follow-up from Chet White.

And it looks like Chet has disconnected. It appears we have no further phone questions at this time. And I would now like to hand it back over to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you, Ally. And I would just like to say thank you, everybody, for listening today, hearing a little bit about our story, asking some very powerful questions. Hopefully, this has been helpful for you.

At Biotricity, we're always trying to communicate and get our story out there, so please feel free to join our mailing list, come on to our website. We'd like to really build on the communication and our awareness. It's a big part of our goal this year. It's why we started these earnings calls. So John and I are always available, and we're always going to try and facilitate the best responses to your questions. So I implore everybody to visit our website, get on to our mailing list, please attend these calls, and we will try to keep everybody in the loop as best as possible, as we try to build awareness and a bigger audience for the company.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And with that, that does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.