Precipio Inc (PRPO) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Welcome to the Precipio shareholder 2022 fourth-quarter and year-end shareholder update conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note that the conference is being recorded.

Statements made during this call contain forward-looking statements about our business. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as these statements are based upon our current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. These statements may be identified by words such as may, will, should, could, expect, intend, plan, anticipate, believe, estimate, predict, potential, forecast, continue, or the negative of these terms or other words or terms of similar meaning.

Risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those set forth in any forward-looking statement include, but are not limited to, the matters listed under Risk Factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 30, 2022, which are then filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as other risks detailed in our subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These reports are available at www.sec.gov.

Statements and information, including forward-looking statements, speak only to the date they are provided unless an earlier date is indicated, and we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update any statements or information, including forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.

Now please let me hand the call over to Ilan Danieli, Precipio's CEO.

Thank you, Andrea, and good afternoon. Thank you for joining our call for this year-end period. First of all, please accept my apologies for my voice. I was a little bit under the weather over the weekend and now in I'm recovering but my throat is lagging. So I'm going to tried to make this call short answer and to the point.

By now, most of you have hopefully had the opportunity to glance at our 2022 annual filing. While we've shown some growth in our numbers, approximately 10% on the pathology side and 50% on the product side, it's obviously not where we were hoping for.

Earlier this year, our team spent quite a bit of time conducting self-selection sessions to understand and analyze the result and identify an action plan for what we need to do to achieve better results in 2023. I think the recent press releases have already shown us that we're on the right track. We believe that 2023 is going to be a very different year than 2022. And I'd like to share with you some of the reasons for this.

Let me begin with the pathology business. As we closed 2022, technology business still makes up the vast majority of our revenue while we build the product division. But the pathology businesses is also core, the heart and soul of the vision of our company, which is to battle the problem of misdiagnosis.

However, we didn't meet our goal. As a result, changes have been made within the commercial team, which we expect will result in a significant improvement to those numbers. In fact, already is evident -- an initial evidence of that, we recently finished March with a record number of cases in the company's history and exceeded $1 million in cash collections in the same month. So we believe we're on the right track going forward.

Keep in mind that the goal for the pathology division is to serve as an engine for the development of future product. Therefore, rather than building a huge lab with the huge sales team and tremendous operation, we're focused on building a high-class boutique operation for our customers that is financially sustainable while generating the patient samples we need in order to continue to develop our existing products, such as IV-Cell and HemeScreen, as well as future products.

Lab breakeven number for financial self-sustainability is around $14 million. We ended 2022 with a run rate of about $9 million. By the end of Q2, with the addition of some major customers, we expect to exceed a run rate of $11 million, well on our way to meet our goal for financial cash flow breakeven for the pathology division. We've restructured our team and created a tiered incentive program that tracks and rewards our high performers.

Now let's move to the product division. Last year, we established our product line with HemeScreen and went out to the market. We realized that penetrating labs, particularly after COVID, is not a simple task. Building a direct sales force is expensive, cumbersome, takes time to see the fruits of that investment.

Fortunately, in middle of 2022, we were approached by Thermo Fisher and subsequently signed a pivotal distribution agreement with them to market HemeScreen. For those of you who don't know who Thermo Fisher is, I view them as the equivalent of Amazon for the laboratory world. There's virtually no laboratory in the US, or indeed anywhere in the world, that doesn't buy products from Thermo Fisher. They had a massive sales force with both the depth of expertise and the breadth of reach necessary to successfully access any lab that is a target for HemeScreen.

The agreement with them was signed in Q3 and we officially launched in Q4 of last year. The launch included a formal training session with their leadership team, followed by an ongoing work with their team to educate them on the benefits of HemeScreen, customer targeting, and market penetration.

You may have seen that in January of this year, HemeScreen was recognized by the Fisher team, and won the award for the best new product for 2023. As a result of our efforts, we've seen significant increase in the pipeline of prospective customers that are now engaging with us for a purchase and setup of HemeScreen.

The relationship with Thermo Fisher is in addition to another major healthcare distributor, which for the agreement with them, remains unnamed, but assume it will be a formidable partner to us in leveraging their sales force to introduce HemeScreen to their customer base. The combined power of these three sales forces equals over 250 reps and support staff that have access to virtually every potential customer in the US.

The benefit of this is Precipio now has access to this sales force, while the cost structure is a variable commission based and therefore serves as a variable cost that is commensurate with revenue. This makes for a very attractive growth model. You've heard me say before that there's probably not enough money in the world that would enable us to build a competent sales force. I'm grateful that we have the opportunity to work with world-class organizations. I'm even more grateful that we have a structure that is scalable and financially attractive for both parties, making it a win-win.

Moving to 2023. If I had to choose one word to describe the action goal for this year, that work is conversion. We've already begun to see this in recent press releases that began in December at 3Q. I've shown you some of the deals that we've signed with the existing customers and their expected financial impact.

Keep in mind that our customers become recurring revenue customers, which gives us two things. First, it provides us with an ongoing revenue stream that continues to come in as we grow the business. Second, it provides us with a high level of predictability into operations, manufacturing, financials, and cash needs going forward.

The range of business within our field is a very attractive business to be in. And I'm sure you're well aware of all the major players and their financial results. The initial customer registration has shown us that HemeScreen is an attractive product that solves a real clinical operational and economic problem for the laboratory, and initial adoption of this product seems very promising.

The fact that major distributors have embraced this product is yet another market indicator of the power of this technology. What I'm trying to do is create a picture for you, the shareholder, of what each customer means to our revenues and roadmap to breakeven. The nice thing about our business model is that as we scale up our HemeScreen revenues, there is virtually no incremental cost other than the cost of goods.

We need to hire no more sales reps as we're leveraging the sales reps of our distributors. Our support team is in place that are set to handle significant customer growth. The good news, by the way, is that we've seen that for the most part, once our customers are live, they require very little help from us due to the simplicity of the technology.

In addition, our manufacturing capabilities are currently well in excess of production of $30 million of product annually. So for the foreseeable future, we require no further investments at the manufacturing site to support the growth. All this translates into a very attractive model for the company for a substantial percentage of the revenue impact to the bottom line and could have a significant impact on our cash flow.

As of now, given our operating expenses to both divisions, our company projected at $8 million of product revenue alongside the $14 million for the pathology side, the business will reach breakeven. Our goal is to reach that number this year. And as you will see from our Q1 results, as well as the ongoing press releases, we are well on our way to achieving that goal.

And all this happens because of one word: conversion. Management's entire focus is on taking our leave introductions and pipeline of customers, converting them into existing business into revenue into cash. This is a time where we begin to leverage our structure where our expenses are mostly fixed, our margins are attractive, and we have strong distribution channel so that each customer we onboard has a significant impact to the bottom line. So this is what you can expect to see from us this year: consistent, ongoing, accelerated conversion of this pipeline into account, each of them serving as another building block for revenue for the company.

Lastly, I'd like to discuss cash flow and cash needs. As you know, we've been using the ATM facility as our periodical source to bring in capital as needed. In our analysis, this is the least dilutive option and given our situation is by far the best vehicle to finance the company.

Any substantial capital raise would have to go through a process of filings and announcements that could prove very harmful to the share price. And so the ATM provides a nice, simple, and inexpensive option that we will continue to use.

For the foreseeable future, we don't have any plans to conduct any substantial capital raise. We believe that once we are cash flow positive and continue to grow in deposits into positive earnings company, then will be a different situation entirely both from a share price and market cap perspective. At that point, the opportunity to grow the business changed dramatically. But for now, we are hunkering down, focusing on one action: conversion.

I apologize. I know my voice doesn't sound that way, but I'm really excited for 2023. Last year, we didn't have the commercial team we have today. We didn't have the distribution partners that we have. We didn't have the marketing, training, and development elements that we now have, ensuring these partnerships are successful, that our team and our product is well positioned in the marketplace. With the strong wind at our back from Q1, I think you're going to be very happy with the upcoming results and with our continued building of our customer base.

Lastly, I want to remind you that despite all the focus on our HemeScreen, our vision is not to be a single-product company. HemeScreen is indeed our golden goose, and that's what's going to get us to the promise land of cash flow breakeven. So for now, we're all hands on HemeScreen development.

But once we get there, we're going to unleash our talented R&D team to continue developing and bringing to market other products that have similar value and similar market opportunity, leveraging the engine that we've developed to bring these products to market in a low and scalable cost.

I look forward to connecting with you again after our Q1 results are out. By then, we expect to have more news items that will demonstrate our continued growth and progress towards the financial goals for the company for 2023. Thank you and have a nice evening.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.