Nephros Inc (NEPH) 2025 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and welcome to the Nephros, Inc second-quarter 2025 financial results conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Kirin Smith, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Megan. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Kirin Smith with PCG Advisory. Thank you all for participating in Nephros' second quarter 2025 conference call.

Before we begin, I would like to caution that comments made during this conference call by management will contain forward-looking statements regarding the operations and future results of Nephros. I encourage you to review Nephros' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, the company's Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which identify specific factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.

Factors that may affect the company's results include, but are not limited to, Nephros' ability to successfully, timely and cost effectively market and sell its products and service offerings, the rate of adoption of its products and services by hospitals and other health care providers, the success of its commercialization efforts and the effect of existing and new regulatory requirements on Nephros' business and other economic and competitive factors.

Contents of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live call, today, August 7, 2025. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call, except as required by law.

I would now like to turn the call over to Nephros' President and Chief Executive Officer, Robert Banks. Robert, please go ahead.

Thank you, Kirin, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm thrilled to be speaking with you today as we share our Q2 2025 results. We've grown our trailing 12-month revenue from $13.8 million to $16.7 million, added more than 400 new active customer sites over the past two years and most importantly, have continued to prove our strategy works.

Q2 was another high achieving quarter. Net revenue reached $4.4 million, up 32% -- 36% over Q2 last year and marks our third consecutive quarter of profitability. These are not just financial milestones. They are clear signals of durable momentum and strong operational execution.

When you zoom out to look at the first half of 2025, the growth becomes even more compelling. The first half of 2025 revenue hit $9.3 million, a 37% increase over the same period in 2024. Every region outperformed its first half targets.

Overall, we delivered well above our internal target, reinforcing both the resilience and scalability of our business. Much of this success is driven by our core programmatic business, which has now seen 40% compound growth over the past two years. In fact, programmatic sales reached all-time highs, confirming the efficacy of our reoccurring revenue model.

We have also seen encouraging traction in other key areas, a thriving installation program, which has accelerated reorder rates and expanded our footprint, a record level of programmatic sales even with lower emergency response volumes, the strategic expansion of our sales team into non-health care verticals has begun to bear fruit, and growing customer adoption of our filter tracking app, which has improved visibility, compliance and support with thousands of filters now being tracked.

This quarter's strong execution reflects the entire team's commitment from sales and operations to product and customer success. We now serve over 1,600 active customer sites and are delighted that our Q2 brought in the highest retention rate of the past six quarters.

Looking ahead, we are focused on three things, expanding into underserved verticals like dental, government and municipal facilities, bringing new innovations to market like our S100 microfilter and 20-inch HydraGuard, which have unlocked opportunities across cell processing, labs and beyond.

And lastly, executing with operational discipline while continuing to protect profitability. To everyone who has supported our journey so far, thank you. I am deeply proud of what we've built and even more excited about what's next.

With that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Judy Krandel, for a more detailed look at our financials. Judy?

Thanks, Robert. I will now provide a closer look at Nephros' financial performance in the second quarter and first half of 2025. We reported second quarter net revenue of $4.4 million, a 36% increase over the corresponding period in 2024, reflecting strong growth in our programmatic business and emergency response business. Active customer sites continued to grow and were over 1,600 as of June 30, 2025, slightly higher than at March 31, 2025.

Gross margins in the quarter also increased to 63% compared with 59% in Q2 2024, an improvement of 4 percentage points. The improvement in gross margins in 2025 was primarily driven by a reduction in shipping costs and inventory reserve adjustments.

Research and development expenses in the quarter were $311,000 compared to $254,000 for the same quarter in 2024. R&D expenses were higher this year due to an increase in headcount. Sales, general and administrative expenses in the quarter were $2.2 million compared to $1.9 million for the corresponding period in 2024, an increase of 13% due to higher sales commissions resulting from our increased revenue, higher accrual of employee bonuses and higher stock compensation expense.

We are very pleased to report positive net income for the quarter of $237,000 compared to a net loss of $289,000 in the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was positive $355,000 compared to a loss of $133,000 during the same period in 2024.

Net cash provided by operating activities was $994,000 in the second quarter of 2025 versus net cash used of $501,000 in the prior year period, an improvement of $1.495 million. Net cash provided in the second quarter reflects primarily our positive net income, a decrease in accounts receivable and an increase in accrued expenses. Net cash used in the second quarter of 2024 reflects primarily a net loss in that period and an increase in accounts receivable and inventory.

Moving on to the six months, the first half of this year. Sales for the six months ending June 30, 2025, increased by 37% to $9.2 million from the prior year period, reflecting strong growth in our programmatic business and emergency response business.

Gross margins improved to 64% in the first half of 2025 from 61% in the prior year period. The increase in gross margin was primarily driven by lower product costs resulting from a more favorable product mix and a reduction in inventory reserve adjustments.

SG&A expenses increased by 9% in the first half of 2025 versus the prior year period due to higher sales commission expense, increased bonus accruals and higher stock-based compensation expense.

Net income increased to $795,000 in the first half of 2025 from a net loss of $458,000 in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA in the first half of the year was positive $1.022 million compared to a loss of $228,000 during the same period in 2024. Our cash balance on June 30, 2025, was $5.1 million compared to $3.8 million as of December 31, 2024, and we continue to be debt-free.

Please refer to today's press release for more details about the calculation of adjusted EBITDA and its reconciliation to GAAP net income or loss. And additional information about our results can be found in our filing on Form 10-Q, which we also filed this afternoon.

I will now turn the call back to Robert for some closing remarks. Robert, please go ahead.

Thank you, Judy. With an eye towards the future, we remain focused on scaling our successes and exploring new ways to drive value. The strides we've made operationally, commercially and financially position Nephros to lead in a future where water quality and infection control are more important than ever. This quarter shows what we're capable of when innovation, execution and purpose come together, and we're just getting started. Thank you to our team, our customers and our shareholders for being on this journey with us.

With that, we'll now open the line for questions. Operator, please go ahead.

We will now begin the question and answer session. (Operator Instructions)

Thomas McGovern, Maxim Group.

Hey guys, thank you for taking my question. So congrats on the quarter. Obviously, it's great to see some of those KPIs you discussed in the prepared remarks, high retention rate, all-time high active customer sites. And as you noted, it seems to be reflective of several of these initiatives that you implemented, whether that's the installation and replacement program, the app or the expanded sales force.

So I just kind of want to understand where you're at with each of those initiatives. Where do you really attribute the bulk of this growth? Is it evenly divided amongst those? Or is there one initiative in particular that you think really drove growth in the quarter?

And then maybe beyond that, just talk a little bit about how you see the continued rollout of this, particularly as it relates to the app and some of the innovations you guys have recently launched. Just kind of give us an idea of the trajectory of the business moving throughout the rest of the year. Thanks.

Thomas, great to talk to you again. Good questions, really good questions. And all of them make me think back to a year ago when I was looking at two quarters of not so high top line performance when we were remarking about things that we're doing to try to convert that back into more sustainable growth.

And one of the things we noted last year was that we weren't losing customers, but our customers were not reordering filters at the rate with which they were supposed to. And that really is how the old filter tracking app and some of the service initiatives were born. We saw that as how do we remind our customers not to just leave it in because it's still flowing water, but actually do and follow the recommended procedures for how we implement.

And really, that's where that came from. So it's a combination of the app allowing us to have visibility to where each filter is being installed, the service capabilities allowing us to help the customer if they don't have the personnel, the time or knowledge to be able to change out the filters from once they were first installed.

And then really having the sales team focus up and continue to drive those very strong relationships. By being present and finding out if there are any troubles and really giving that customer a great experience, they realized that the filter was giving them a peace of mind and also helping to protect from some of the things that are causing the negative headlines in bacteria infection.

So really a combination of those three. I think it started with the app because it just raised visibility, but the service implementation took the visibility and turned it into action. So we've created a model that is sustainable, and we can continue to capitalize on that growth, because it doesn't do anything good if we grow 600 customers, but then have existing customers not reorder as they're supposed to, especially in a time when the number of hospital beds has been flat over the past 5 to 10 years. So that growth is deliberate, intentional and I believe sustainable based on a lot of the actions that we've been talking about in the past few months here.

Understood. I appreciate that response. And then just maybe a second question for me. Looking at your expanded sales force, you guys are obviously, as you just noted, looking to expand your active customer sites. And you mentioned in your prepared remarks that one of the big growth catalysts you see in the near term is pursuing additional verticals.

So I'm just curious as it stands now, do you believe that you have a sufficient sales force that you could leverage both maintaining your current active customer sites, keeping them happy, keeping kind of hands-on as well as pursuing these growth avenues in verticals outside of health care? Or do you expect to have to add additional sales force as you guys kind of continue to move along in your growth strategy?

Another great question. You really actually hit on the only hindrance I see right now for our growth. We don't have the sales force we need in every place, location to grow. So we've been pretty strategic about where we've deployed resources, people, hands and expertise.

So in the past, we had to really focus on maybe areas where there is high population densities or higher probability, whereas now we're able to go into areas and locations and states and regions where there hasn't been much attention being paid. And what we're finding is that a lot of these people just don't understand the importance of pathological mitigation or biological remediation.

So it starts with education. So we've been able to reach more of these different opportunities and potential customers through different speaking engagements, different posts on LinkedIn and other social media outlets and really getting the name known so that we are using our existing staff to cover where we can, but also having to augment with junior associates and others who can come in and help take care of what we got while these more seasoned experts go out and get new business. So that under gatherer type model has really been quite effective. And what we're noticing is that we're just going to have to keep expanding it. So it's working very well.

Great, I appreciate those responses. Very helpful as always. I can hand the call off to the next person in queue. Thank you.

Thank you.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.