Unidentified Analyst: Okay. I’m going to — and was asking your question, you may not be able to or want to answer. What can we look forward to this year? At one point, we talked about the snowballing effect or they’re going to get a critical mass, either in pain management or epidural or wherever, and there’s going to be a snowball effect. Is that still possible scenario you’re looking at? Or is it going to be more of a slow, steady rollout? And when might we really gain the traction sales and earnings wise, so it’s noticeable to shareholders and to investors more than it is now? I mean I know from that 1 day of all of a sudden 2 million shares traded, there’s a lot of people paying attention to the Milestone Scientific. So what — are you more encouraged than ever for this year? Or are we just very tentative still? Or what’s your current thinking that you can comment as fairly and as best you can?
Arjan Haverhals: Yes. No. So I’m definitely positive, and I’m definitely encouraged. The snowball effect that’s always potentially possible, and it’s triggered through different things. It’s not only on the thoracic FDA approval, but a snowball effect would be when we hear back from the first health care insurance providers that would accept and would set the pricing on the reimbursement that will be one thing. Another snowball — potential snowball effect would come if we would be successful in the governmental business. Another snowball effect would come if we would be successful in a neurosurgery department at a major hospital that would use our technology for a spinal cord stimulator. So it’s a lot of things there. Now, I’m respectful that you are aiming at the medical business as such.
But of course, as management, we look at the overall company. And the goal for our Dental business is growing that business significantly, exponentially. The goal for the medical business is to get a foothold and a footprint in the marketplace. Whatever that number will be, we are not going to allude on that. And of course, for the Company overall, we are looking at operations and the financial well-being of the Company to secure that at a certain moment whenever that will be in time, that at least we would get a quarter that we would be cash neutral. That’s the goal of the management. Without going into the details about the timing and when that’s going to be because I cannot look into a crystal ball. Like I said, the only thing that we can do is execute, execute and execute and following the strategy that we have identified and decided.
And always make sure that for the investors and for the shareholders that they get a consistent message from us from management, which is based on facts and which is based on the real picture.
Operator: Your next question for today is coming from Mike Pfeffer at Oppenheimer.
Mike Pfeffer: What are your — can you talk a little bit about your expectations for cash burn going forward? How do you think about it? Whatever you can share with us?
Arjan Haverhals: Yes. So the expectation on the cash burn this year, the goal is that should be at lower levels that we had in prior year, from a general point of view. I will not go into detail what the cash burn will be year — quarter-by-quarter. But I would say also what you — what we should not forget is the following: By having the portal, it will definitely also help us in our cash management, right? Because the majority of the transactions that are being done over the portal is by credit card at higher prices than what we normally would distribute that to the prior distributor. So from a cash situation and a cash balance point of view, we would be in a better position than in prior year. But I’m not in a position to share with you what the burn would be quarter-by-quarter for the coming year.
Mike Pfeffer: Okay. And then obviously, the CPT code could be very important for you guys. And you talked about — I think you said you’re sort of at the point where the doctors are waiting for feedback for the insurance companies, whether they can accept or deny these claims. Can you talk anything more about that, about the process or the timing to hear that? What can you make us smarter about that?
Arjan Haverhals: No, absolutely. No, just to be 100% sure. What I said was that doctors, the 2 clinics that we have been working with and as we have announced and we are adding more clinics, that these doctors have sent in the information to the healthcare insurance providers. And then it’s a period where the healthcare insurance providers have to provide the feedback to the clinicians, right? That can be 30 days, can be a week, it can be 6 weeks, out of our control dependent on the health care insurance providers. And then what normally happens is you get an immediate acceptance or you get a denial. Now the denial can be based on procedural mistakes. I think I mentioned that to you on one of the other calls, Michael, that — it can be a very simple thing from using a staple instead of a paper clip.
Or it is a clinical argumentation or a procedural or filling out the forms, right? That depends. And I don’t know yet because I have not received any feedback yet. What the quality and what the type of feedback of questions have been from these health care insurance providers. Now, without promising anything, I’m just sharing what my expectation is. So this is just me shining my lights on that. I do hope and my ambition is you know that within the quarter, at least, we get some initial feedback from these health care insurance providers. That’s all I can say, right? And otherwise, it’s going to be guessing, and I don’t want to create any false hopes or provide any false expectations or whatsoever. The only thing that I can say is we’re doing whatever we can do to professionally execute on this process.
And the goal is to have additional clinics sending in more claims to the health care insurance providers because when we increase the volume and the health care insurance providers see that more clinicians are sending in the coding and the bidding papers, it will potentially also first enhance the speed of feedback; b, create an increased awareness of the health care insurance providers; and c, hopefully, facilitate a decision-making process at these health care insurance providers. That’s all I can share, Michael, because I would not know more about that than you would potentially find out with other people that are active within the medical health care.
