And we are a textbook example of the importance of working capital, during the initial phase of rapid growth, which is what we’re going through. Sales are strong, profits are increasing, but also on the flip side, inventory and receivables are also growing. Those two together grew almost $18 million for us. Whenever you have this type of growth, it takes in our industry, approximately nine to 12 months for these receivables and inventories to start rotating into positive cash flow. We have to buy the inventory, manufacture, sell it, ship it, collect our accounts receivable. So there’s a whole process. And roughly, it takes nine to 12 months, before what I call rotations happening, and we start achieving positive cash flows. And we are now nine months into that, and we’re just entering that phase.
So as we continue to grow, I look for the inventory and the receivables from the prior period, things that we already booked to start generating working capital, and that working capital will support the ongoing revenue expansion. So as long as we keep going up, there’s always going to be working capital demands, as you go up until you hit a steady state and then things level off. Now on to the balance sheet. Our working capital that’s current assets minus current liabilities has increased by $4.3 million, approximately 32% over the past nine months, since March 31st. Profits drive working capital and our financials, they clearly demonstrate this. So I had some questions on total liabilities increasing at a rate that is faster than the rate that total assets have been increasing.
So this is a question on the rates of increase. Now to answer that question, really, I want to point you to three lines on our financial statements. On the balance sheet, there’s the warrant derivative liability, and there’s the accrued expenses on the liability side. And then also on our P&L statement, there are two lines there, change in fair value of stock-based liabilities and change in value of derivatives that are on our P&L. On the accrued expenses, approximately $7 million of $11.9 million, in accrued expenses are for stock-based liabilities. If you look at Note 4, in our financial statements, give you a little more details of that. And the warrant derivatives are obviously 100% stock-based. Now these liabilities are essentially valued as our stock price moves down.
So if the stock price goes up and it has gone up quite a bit over the past few months, so then we have to adjust the liability. We have to make the liability higher. So it’s not really any new liabilities. It’s just that accounting rules, they require that we have to revalue existing liabilities, which is what we did. And the net effect of all of these revaluations is recorded on our P&L. Whenever we adjust the liability, there’s a P&L expense. And, for the quarter, the change in fair value, so the increase in these liabilities is $5.3 million for the quarter. That’s on our P&L statement. And for the nine months, it was $10 million. So, we booked change in value of liabilities of $5.3 million for the quarter and $10 million for the nine months.
I also got a question on our inventory level. And our inventory levels has increased from the beginning of the fiscal year from $9.6 million to $14.3 million at December 31st. But our inventory as of September 30th, was $15.2 million. So that’s a $900,000 decrease from September to December. This is all pretty standard supply chain metrics going on here. We’re always challenged. We’re trying to achieve just-in-time inventory, but we also have to make sure we have enough stock level support. There’s lead times and regulatory and all the things that we have to do to support our manufacturing operations. So we’re always trying to — we’re always monitoring our inventory levels. There’s really nothing more than just ordinary supply chain metrics going on here.
We continue to look at that, but there are no issues. So to sum things up, when you look at 2022, December compared to December 2023, Elite Pharmaceuticals, we are looking at a very different company than from one year ago. Revenues are up 67%. Operating profits are up 77%. Nine months revenue are already more than last year’s 12 months revenue. Our working capital is increasing, our debt is low, and our balance sheet is strong and continues to strengthen. So a very different company, all of which is for the better when compared to the last year. So very happy to see all of the things that have been going on lately. So that concludes my presentation. Now our CEO, Mr. Nasrat Hakim will provide his comments.
Nasrat Hakim: Thank you, Carter. Most of the questions this time were about financials. So I asked Carter to handle them and he was kind enough to embed them in his presentation. I’ll say a couple of words about financials before I talk about the sales and distribution, research and development facility and infrastructure and then go to Q&A. $15.5 million in revenue is what makes this our best quarter ever. For the past four to five years, as you heard from Carter, every year, our revenue have been better than the year before. And therefore, every year has been our best year until the next year. Last year’s revenues were $34 million. Within nine months, okay, of this year, we’ve achieved $39 million, and we still have a quarter to go.
