Joel Krutz: Thank you, Doug. Good morning, everyone. Today I’ll be walking through Crown’s 2023 financial results. But,firstly, I wanted to provide an update on our current NASDAQ bid price non-compliance status. We received our non-compliance notification from NASDAQ on October the 19, which gave Crown 180 days to trade above $1 for 10 consecutive days. We now have a May meeting scheduled with the NASDAQ hearings panel, to extend the process for a further 180 days, which would put us into Q4 of 2024. We’re confident with the company’s current production, growing pipeline, and improving financials that another couple of quarters will see Crown’s bid price progressing much closer to the compliance threshold. We will, of course, also need to ensure that the company has other options to ensure we retain our NASDAQ listing and will keep the — keep you updated.
Now, to the financials for the year ended of December 31, 2023, Crown’s net loss was $29 million. This included $9.7 million of non-cash other expense related primarily to the balance sheet restructuring, which Crown executed in the first half of 2023, eliminating our debt. Net losses from operations were $19.3 million compared to 2022’s $15.1 million, net loss. This loss consisted of $5.8 million, which related to investment in the new fiber optics business, and $13.5 million for the film division, which also includes the corporate cost base. Total 2023 revenues were $0.2 million, which were all attributable to the fiber division, and the majority of which were booked in the fourth quarter. Total operating expenses for the year end of 2023 were $19.4 million, with $0.9 million related to fibers cost of revenues, $1.6 million of depreciation, amortization, and impairment, and $2.2 million of film research and development, which was $1.9 million lower than 2022.
Finally, there was $14.7 million of SG&A expense, which is $4.1 million higher year-on-year. This is all due to investment in establishing the fiber division. For the year end of December 31, 2023, net cash increased by $0.2 million with the company deploying $16.7 million of cash for operations, and $2.3 million to capital investment in the fiber business. Crown raised $9.2 million from its financing activities, with $14.8 coming from common equity issuance, $3.1 million coming from preferred stock issuance, and $1.3 million from debt notes, which were subsequently extinguished. As of December 31, 2023, cash and cash equivalents were $1.1 million. Just a quick note on crowns working capital and capitalization instruction, so after successfully restructuring the balance sheet, eliminating debt, and allowing the company to recapitalize, we have been heavily reliant on equity financing to fund the company.
We should soon however have access to a revolving line of credit with a new lending partner. This will help support the company’s growing work in capital needs as we deploy and scale operations across multiple markets. This will serve to rebalance the company’s capital structure, reduce our reliance on equity financing, and importantly lower levels of dilution until, we turn cash flow positive, which we project to do in the back half of this year. Finally, as a reminder, we recently issued guidance indicating Q1 revenues would range between $0.7 million and $0.9 million, and net losses would land between $3.3 million and $3.5 million. Due to improved production levels in our recently established Florida business, I am pleased to announce that we now expect Q1 2024 revenues of between $0.9 million and $1 million.
This would represent a 10-fold sequential top-line increase compared to Q4 2023 and exemplify the momentum that we now have. We also still expect our second quarter revenues to be in-line with the recent guidance of between $0.7 million and $0.8 million as we further ramp-up our Florida operations and mobilizing to new markets with new customers. We look forward to providing updates as we continue to make progress against our strategic goals. And that concludes the financial update. I will pass you back to Doug.
