Obi Greenman : Well, I think last year was somewhat of an anomaly in that we traditionally see sort of single-digit or low-single-digit organic growth in markets where we have 100% penetration, for example, in France and Belgium. And last year, we don’t know if it was a function of sort of COVID or just change in transfusion practices around transfusion thresholds for platelets, but we saw a decline last year in the organic growth or in the overall platelet demand in those markets. That’s recovered this year as we mentioned in our prepared remarks. I think as far as longer term growth trajectory, it really is about new geographies as well as ultimately having some growth in the plasma business which has been lagging the platelet adoption.
So I think we feel pretty confident about the geographic opportunities for us in Europe. And that being said, it’s really hard to predict exactly when these large accounts will come online. So I don’t know if that answers your question, Bill.
William Bonello : Yes, no, absolutely. That’s really helpful. And then just on CE Mark, is there anything more you can tell us there? I think you’ve said hopeful expected timing by the end of this year, but just what sort of has to happen between now and then? And any other color you can give us on timing would be great on red blood cell obviously.
Obi Greenman : So your question is specific to CE Mark timing under the MDR process and fortunately Carol Moore is on the call with us. So I’ll turn it over to Carol. She’s our Senior Vice President of Regulatory and Quality.
Carol Moore: We are working closely with our competent authority, which is in the Netherlands, to finish up any questions they might have on the responses we provided earlier this year. We have not heard back from them, but we did provide a complete response. And between receiving some feedback from our competent authority, we still will go back and talk to our notified body, which is the TUV and determine what the next steps are towards completing the application. So we’ll be in a better position once we hear back from our competent authority about the responses that we provided earlier this year.
William Bonello : And based on what you know thus far though, I mean, any change to your thinking and timing?
Carol Moore: Well, I think we’re just in active — we’re just in an active review process. So at times, it’s hard to predict what might come up next, but I think we’re working hard to make sure that we fulfill any request that we receive in the most timely way.
William Bonello : That’s helpful. And then just one last question on cash flow and happy to hear your thoughts about potentially being operating cash flow for the year and obviously seeing it for Q1. Just anything particularly unusual, I think we had some unusual working capital moves in Q4 probably that hurt operating cash flow. Did we sort of see a reverse of that helping Q1 or how do we sort of think about it in the future quarters?
Kevin Green: So you’re right. In Q4, actually 2023 at large, we saw kind of atypical working capital movements with increased inventory and rapidly declining payables. I think when we ended the year, we felt like we were in a position where we could reverse that. Q1 was really the first time, I think that you see the inventories coming down. Obviously, our receivables have come down, for that matter payables have come down. I think we’re cautiously optimistic for the balance of the year. Obviously, there could be chop in any given quarter. But if you think about our guidance in Q1 being kind of the low watermark for the year, I think we expect to see continued growth in the top-line. We’ll continue to work down inventory levels.
And then really it comes down to managing the payables and the receivables at the current DSO and DPO levels, which we think is manageable. So I think there’s a lot of fundamental reasons to be confident that we can generate operating cash flow and we’ll manage towards that.
Operator: I would now like to turn the call back over to Obi Greenman for any closing remarks.
Obi Greenman : Well, thank you again for joining us today and for your interest in Cerus. We look forward to keeping you informed of our progress throughout the rest of 2024. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
