InspireMD, Inc. (NASDAQ:NSPR) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript May 16, 2023

Operator: Good day, and welcome to the InspireMD First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that this event is being recorded. Now, I’ll like to turn the call over to Mr. Glenn Garmont with LifeSci Advisors. Please go ahead, sir.

Glenn Garmont: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the InspireMD first quarter 2023 financial results and corporate update conference call. Joining us today from InspireMD are Marvin Slosman, Chief Executive Officer; and Craig Shore, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, management will be making forward-looking statements, which are not historical facts and are based upon management’s current expectations, beliefs and projections, many of which by their nature are inherently uncertain. They involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. For more information about these risks, please refer to the risk factors described in InspireMD’s most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and InspireMD’s press release that accompanies this call, particularly the cautionary statements made in it.

The call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, May 16, 2023. Except as required by law, InspireMD disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Marvin Slosman, Chief Executive Officer. Marvin, please go ahead.

Marvin Slosman: Thank you, Glenn, and thanks to everyone for joining the call this morning. Without a doubt, the most significant development since our last quarterly update and one of the most significant milestones in InspireMD’s history is our completion of a transformational financing through a private placement of up to $113 million. The financing was led by Marshall Wace with participations by OrbiMed, Soleus, Nantahala, Rosalind, and Velan Capital. These are amongst the most highly regarded medical technology institutional investors. It’s also worth noting that certain number of our Board members have also elected to participate in the offering. We are both inspired and humbled by this vote of confidence which fuels our company’s growth and enables our strategic goal to change the therapeutic standard of care in the carotid disease market.

Pursuant to the engagement, we received an initial $42.2 million in gross upfront capital, with additional four tranches of 17.9 million each tied to milestones totaling $113.6 million fully exercised. The warrants are tied to the following milestones. First, the readout of top line 12-month data from our ongoing FDA C-Guardians IDE clinical trial; second, receipt of premarket approval, PMA, from the FDA for the CGuard Prime carotid stent system; third, the announcement of receipt of FDA approval for the SwitchGuard trans carotid system and CGuard Prime 80 cm; and fourth, the first five quarters of commercial sales in the U.S. market. The funds are intended to further catalyze our milestone execution, including approval and launching our new products in the U.S. and in our current serve countries, including the CE Mark territories, advancing our tandem lesion indication for CGuard and establishing a U.S. base of business operations and commercial architecture.

With our balance sheet significantly strengthened, we can accelerate our plan to drive value inflection by way of advancing CGuard EPS through the U.S. regulatory pathway while commencing the build out of a world class commercial infrastructure deeply committed to making CGuard broadly available to the many patients with carotid artery disease who stand to benefit from this novel advancement in technology. The mission of our business remains unchanged, which is to focus on implant performance and positive patient outcomes. As a reminder of the superiority of our unmatched data from nine rigorously designed, peer-reviewed clinical studies that have enrolled approximately 1,850 patients CGuard EPS demonstrated superior short and long-term clinical outcomes measured by the lowest complication rate of death, stroke and myocardial infarction as compared to those competing first generation stent systems as well as surgical endarterectomy.

Turning now to the quarter. We generated total revenue of $1.2 million, representing growth of 4.7% over the first quarter of 2022. This was driven by a 6.7% increase in sales to CGuard EPS in our 30 served markets. As we shared in our last quarterly reporting, our temporary restriction of sales due to the loss of MDD certification in November 2022 created a gap in sales and shipments, which was a result in the second half of the first quarter. It is significant to note that we were able to generate year-over-year revenue growth despite this restriction, but more importantly, we’re able to successfully maintain sufficient inventory in our channels to avoid loss of procedural volume and access for patients for our CGuard stent for best patient care.

It is a testament to the tireless work and focus of the entire InspireMD team that we were able to maintain availability in our markets and address patient needs with slight temporary interruption of shipments. Recall that in November 12 of last year, our CE Mark certification temporary lapsed as European regulators transition from the existing MDD directive regulatory framework, which govern the marketing approval and sale of medical devices in the EU with its medical device regulation framework, or MDR. This transition resulted in well documented and significant delays by the European regulatory bodies and processing of application and audits under the new MDR certification. The MDR deadline for transition to update its certification has taken more than three years with multiple revisions, delays and requirement changes, putting the entire medical device industry serving the EU market at risks.

This complexity, combined with constantly changing requirements and deadlines, has made this a challenging undertaking for all medical device companies that fall under the MDD purview. In anticipation, we proactively work with our distributor partners to provide as much available inventory as possible to avoid shortages, while continuing to complete the MDR process to reestablish sales, which we have successfully done and are now able to resume normal cadence in our sales efforts. As a reminder, we enjoy greater than 25% market share in over half of our served CE Mark territories with some exceeding 80%. We believe our continued efforts on the ground together with the launch of two new stent delivery platforms will enable share growth and accelerate the conversion of surgery to endovascular standard of care with a CGuard stent system.

Our mission remains unchanged, to convert the last surgery first segment of vascular medicine to an endovascular first line standard with a best-in-class implant CGuard EPS. With a full range of delivery options serving the broadest multidisciplinary physician base, we believe we are uniquely positioned to accelerate this conversion. And turning now to our U.S. regulatory activities. Our C-Guardian U.S. IDE trial continues at a robust pace for enrollment with 20 active trial sites recruiting and treating patients. We recently announced that on May 1, the first patient was successfully treated in this trial utilizing CGuard Prime, the company’s next generation test stent platform. This marks a very significant milestone for the company with CGuard Prime used in a clinical setting, marking a significant step forward in advancing more stenting procedures.

Since that first case, we’ve continued to rapidly enroll in the final patient set with CGuard Prime anticipating completion of enrollment by the end of this quarter. As a reminder, the new CGuard Prime offers numerous benefits and advantages to physicians performing carotid revascularization, including an innovative handle design, and catheter and tip constructions which makes stent trackability and deployment much easier. This gives physicians and staff a much higher degree of confidence which we believe will contribute to its confidence in stent utilization once approved and launched. After completing enrollment in C-Guardians, we will advance our PMA submission and approval process to get us closer to test [indiscernible] of CGuard Prime in the U.S. market.

In parallel, we’ve commenced critical commercial readiness activities in the U.S., including the hiring of Shane Gleason, a seasoned commercial executive in the vascular space, to lead our go-to-market preparation as the GM of the Americas. In terms of carotid pipeline, the CGuard EPS stent platform remains the core of our business as we focus on the value of the implant as the single most important variable in patient outcomes. To fully realize the full potential of CGuard however, we’ve developed two new delivery platforms to drive utilization across the broader vascular specialist community. As noted earlier, we continue to advance development, regulatory approval, and launched plans for our test platform CGuard Prime, which will be available in both standard and short shaft versions compatibility with development of SwitchGuard, our TCAR neuro protection platform.

In combination, we believe our transcarotid stent will enhance TCAR utilization with the best implant. We believe the breadth of our total toolset with a stent-centric focus will be a key differentiator for us as we work to unlock the tremendous potential of this rapidly evolving market segment. The winds of change and focus on endovascular first and carotid revascularization reinforce that our investment in this space will yield tremendous value as we work to lead this market transition. In summary, we’re incredibly proud of this financing, which serves as a proxy of our direction and as a transformational time for our company as we look for a bright future. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Craig for a review of the first quarter financials.

Craig?

Craig Shore: Thank you, Marvin. I would like to begin this morning with a review of our recent financing. We entered into a securities purchase agreement led by Marshall Wace with a significant participation by other highly regarded healthcare investors for the sale of common shares or prefunded warrants at each investor’s election and warrants that in aggregate can bring in up to $113.6 million. As Marvin indicated, we received an initial $42.2 million gross upfront, with an additional four tranches of approximately $17.9 million each tied to milestone-driven warrants totaling $71.4 million if the warrants are fully exercised for cash. This would bring us to a grand total of $113.6 million. The warrants are tied to the following milestones, including the reporting of a 12-month data from our ongoing FDA C-Guardians IDE clinical trial, the receipt of premarket approval, PMA, from the FDA for the CGuard Prime carotid stent system, receipt of FDA approval for the SwitchGuard transcarotid system and CGuard Prime 80 centimeters and the first five quarters of commercial sales in the United States market.

Turning now to the quarter. We generated total revenue of $1,239,000, a 4.7% increase over $1,183,000 for the first quarter of 2022. This increase was driven by a 6.7% increase in sales of CGuard EPS. During the second half of the quarter, the company’s CE Mark was reinstated under the MDD directive, allowing the company to resume sales and shipments to the EU countries. The company worked the remainder of the quarter shipping product to reduce the backload of orders that accumulated over the past few months. InspireMD believes that the quarter-over-quarter increase in revenue during the first quarter of 2023 is not representative of the real underlying market demand for CGuard EPS due to the company’s inability to ship product for the first half of the quarter.

We ended the quarter with a remaining backlog of approximately $600,000 due to the temporary expiration of our CE Mark. The company continues to work to expedite the review process for recertification under the MDR. For the three months ended March 31, 2023, gross profit increased by $251,000 or 206% to $373,000 from $122,000 during the three months ended March 31, 2022. This increase in gross profit resulted from a decrease in write-off of $184,000 and a $71,000 increase in revenues, as previously mentioned, less the associated related material and labor. Gross margin increased to 30.1% during the three months ended March 31, 2023 from 10.3% during the three months ended March 31, 2022, driven by the factors just mentioned. Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2023 were $4,754,000, an increase of $146,000 or 3.2% compared to $4,608,000 for the first quarter of 2022.

This increase was primarily due to increases in expenses related to C-Guardians FDA study, sales and marketing expenses and regulatory expenses. Net loss for the first quarter of 2023 totaled $4,256,000 or $0.53 per basic and diluted share compared to a net loss of $4,481,000 or $0.57 per basic and diluted share for the same period in 2022. As of March 31, 2023, cash, cash equivalents and short-term bank deposits were $12.9 million compared to $17.8 million as of December 31, 2022. This, of course, excludes the transformational financing just described as the transaction closed subsequent to the end of the first quarter. That concludes the financial review. We will now open the call for Q&A. Operator?

Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. We’ll now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. The first question will be from Benjamin Haynor of Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.

Operator: Thank you. And I’ll turn the call back over to Mr. Marvin Slosman for closing remarks.

Marvin Slosman: Thank you. I’d like to thank everyone for taking the time today to join the call and for the ongoing continued support. I’m extremely excited about what is the transformational financing and what that will allow us to achieve. More than at any other point in the company’s history, we’re extremely well positioned to execute on our plans to benefit patients and shareholders alike, and we appreciate the ongoing support. Have a good day.

Operator: Thank you. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.