Biotricity, Inc. (BTCY) Q4 2021 Earnings Call Transcript
Published at 2021-06-16 14:07:02
Good day and welcome to the Biotricity Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mark Forney of MRK Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Biotricity’s 2021 Q4 and fiscal year earnings conference call. As a reminder, Biotricity’s quarter and fiscal year ended on March 31, 2021, so all figures presented for this period will reflect that end date. Earlier today, we issued our fiscal 2021, Q4 and annual results press release, which highlighted a number of financial results. It should be noted that these figures may be subject to change when the final filing is complete. A copy of the press release is available on the Investor Relations section of our website, and the completed financials will be posted on EDGAR by June 30, 2021. Before beginning our formal remarks, I’d like to remind listeners that today’s discussion may contain forward-looking statements that reflect management’s current views with respect to future events. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Biotricity does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements except as required. At this point, I’m pleased to turn the call over to Biotricity’s Founder and CEO, Waqaas Al-Siddiq. Please go ahead. Waqaas Al-Siddiq: Thank you, Mark, and thank you, everybody, who took the time to join us today. And thank you to our shareholders who are joining on this call as well. By and large, the quarterly details will be covered by John. I think, obviously, my esteemed colleagues use more astute in delivering those details. And the bulk of my remarks will be focused on the areas that I think are important to the quarter from a business perspective, as well as laying out the vision for the Company and what I believe can help lead us in realizing our goal of becoming $1 billion company. So, in terms of the quarter, and what I think is important from a business perspective on the quarter, we had a record quarter, and of course, John is going to go into those details. But what I’m more excited about is how that quarter and how that year or our last fiscal year has set us up for the rest of this year and for our next fiscal year. I believe, we will easily beat what we gave in our March 31st quarter, in the quarter that’s going to be ending June 30th. I think, we are on track for one of our biggest sequential quarter-over-quarter growths we had ever had, beating the projections that were put out by Maxim. And the reason this is occurring is because, we have gone through this pandemic and through COVID and this shut and the country’s reopening. And of course, we suffered alongside all other businesses because of the limitations in terms of freedom of movement. But what certainly became a point of importance during the pandemic is the importance of monitoring. And we’re seeing that as we come out of the pandemic, and that’s what I’m excited about in terms of the quarter for June 30th, as well as the rest of the year. The other important aspect of what I have seen that’s transpired since our first quarter and our March 31st quarter is that, based on our expectations for the quarter ending June 30th, we believe that we are on track for what was the target that was set out earlier, which was an $8 million to $10 million for this fiscal year, ending March 31, 2022. So, to summarize my quarterly comments, we expect a great year ahead, post-COVID; our business and our base business in terms of our focus on the Bioflux and the business that is at the core of Biotricity that is actually accelerating. And with that, I will kind of turn things back to what I was talking about earlier, which is our vision, what we are doing in terms of realizing that vision and our approach to building the Company to $1 billion story that we are very excited about. And for those of you who are new to the story, let me tell you a little bit about the Company and what we’re doing. So, Biotricity has -- those of you who are familiar, we’re a remote patient monitoring company that focus on the complex cardiac space. And we really feel that the future is in connected healthcare devices. So, what do we mean by that? We mean that as things get more and more connected, we see that the future of healthcare is going to be where devices that are smart and intelligent, but diagnostically and clinically relevant, are going to be provided to patients, so that they can go and they can monitor themselves in the comfort of their homes, while they’re on the go, while they’re moving about, and it will collect the important information that a doctor needs to see. And if there’s an emergency, it’ll actually transmit and provide that to the physician in real time, so that they can deal with response. So, that’s where we feel the future is. And so, we’ve built a platform, our remote patient monitoring platform, and we applied that into the cardiac space, because we believe fundamentally at Biotricity that all roads lead to cardiac. And what does that mean? That means that, one -- first of all, it’s the number one killer in the entire world and every country in the world. But more importantly, if you’re diagnosed with cardiac disease, you’re at risk for a number of other things. If you’re at risk for -- or if you’re diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes, et cetera, you end up becoming high risk for cardiac as well. So, you’re either suffering or diagnosed with cardiac disease or you have some other chronic illness, which then puts you into the high risk category for cardiac. So with that in mind, we believe that the entry point is cardiac, which we have done. And then to move into this complex cardiac, which is really dealing with individuals that have cardiac disease and some other disease that also puts them at a higher risk. And in terms of our vision and how does that apply. So, we believe that at Biotricity, that this is a $1 billion opportunity in terms of number one killer and in terms of cardiac disease, the idea of these patients living with this over a period of time. And our execution on this path to our vision is really about expanding our total addressable market. So, right now, we are in the real time, high end cardiac diagnostics, and we have a product pipeline that we are working on and executing on. And that product pipeline lets us get deeper into our existing customers, but also touch these patients more often. So again, what does that mean? Well, I’m diagnosed with cardiac disease, let’s say, by my cardiologist. My cardiologist puts me on our core product, Bioflux, I get diagnosed, he gets the medication, or he does a procedure. And then, I go into this cardiac management. So, every three months or every six months, I’m back to get a prescription renewal or to figure out what is my baseline or what is changing. And so, once I’ve done the initial Bioflux diagnosis, Biotricity is not touching that patient until six or nine months later. But in between that, patient is constantly going back and forth with their cardiologist. And so, our focus is how do we touch the patient in between visits? How do we help manage that patient? How do we facilitate collection of other data, so that the doctor when you’re seeing the patient in between visits, they’re collecting a more holistic picture of that patient. And that is really the $1 billion opportunity. And so, to put that into a context and also align that with what we’ve done over the last year comparatively. We now today have 1,300 cardiologists that use our product compared to 375 the same time last year. So, that’s a huge increase. We have 2.6 million patients that are serviced through those 1,300 cardiologists. So, every cardiologist has about 2,000 patients. So, that’s 2.6 million patients compared to 750,000 patients that -- for the 375 cardiologists we had this time last year. Why is that important? Because our goal is to touch more of these patients by expanding our product portfolio. And what is very important for everybody to understand, especially our shareholders, is that our product portfolio is very focused and aligned, because it all feeds back to our core business. Because, as I said just, we believe that all roads lead to cardiac. But everything that we have in our product portfolio and everything in our business, it begins and ends with Bioflux, always. And it’s very important, because once you diagnose the patient, the patient, they get a procedure, they get a medication. But a year later or six months later, when we want to make an adjustment, if you get a pacemaker, so you want to make an adjustment to that pacemaker setting, you have to again diagnose that patient again. And because they’re higher risk, you put them back on the Bioflux. So, everything that we’re doing in terms of trying to connect with this patient or help manage that patient, drives us back to Bioflux. So, it’s really around about. So, where some people are saying, oh, you’ve got this product portfolio and the product portfolio is -- they don’t see how that product portfolio is completely integrated and connected, because it’s part of one ecosystem, and it’s always driving the patient back to diagnostics, because that is essentially what the patient needs to do. And we know this. And we can confirm this, because we have seen this. Our product has been in the market for two years. So, the patients that were on the Bioflux in the first clinic that we ever opened in, two years ago, that patient is back on the Bioflux every nine months. Because if there’s an adjustment or there is a change or to make sure that the baseline -- or that the patient is stable, it’s all verified through diagnostics. And so, this is an important point in terms of how we are trying to grow and realize that $1 billion vision. It’s all about touching those patients more and more often. And while we do that, we are leveraging the multiple growth drivers of our business. So, what does that mean? So, we have multiple growth drivers outside of product expansion, right? So, product expansion is, I’ve got these X customers, I’ve got 1,300 cardiologists, they service 2.6 million patients, my products are going to go deeper into these accounts and touch more of these patients. So, I have a better touch rate. But simultaneously, I’m expanding our sales force. So, we’re doing horizontal expansion by, of course, opening up more hospitals, more clinics, and simultaneously to that is geographic expansion. We are in 23 states. So, again, how do we expand the number of states that we’re in? How do we expand our sales force that’s creating horizontal growth and vertical growth by product expansion? And what’s very, very important about all of this is that we are aligning all of this with our business model, which is Technology-as-a-Service. And why that’s important is because that model is making things superior, because we have 100% reorder rate coupled with high retention rate, because our model is enabling physicians to in-source. It’s also allowing us to have less overhead, because we’re not busy doing clinical work, we’re not setting up clinical offices all around the country. So, that’s creating better margins. So, our quarter-over-quarter growth and our year-over-year growth is directly a result of the business model that we have adopted. And this is very important because people like -- and individuals think we’re a lot smaller than that would initially make sense. And the reason I say that is because our revenue run rate, as you will see, is going to help in a healthy way. And we said in our last quarter results that we’re close to an $8 million run rate, and we have grown since then. But what’s important is, if we were adopting a traditional business model, our run rate would be $30 million to $35 million, much, much higher. But, we’ve specifically focused on a strategy that is a Technology-as-a-Service model, because that increases value, reduces overhead and improves margins in a substantial way. So, not only are we reducing overhead and the risk of having to deal with all of this infrastructure costs, we’re also accelerating growth and creating better margins. So, that’s a very important aspect I wanted to kind of talk about in terms of we have a good run rate, we’re certainly growing, all of those things are positive. But, we’re still small. But, in terms of looking at an apples-to-apples comparison in the market, we’re a lot bigger in terms of presence than you would originally think because of the fact that our business model is approaching in a technology angle, which actually lends itself to a less revenue initially, but far makes up for it in terms of value, margins and growth. And with that, I’d like to turn the call over to our CFO, John Ayanoglou, who will go into the details about our quarter and the important financial numbers that we have posted.
Thank you, Waqaas. Thank you to everyone who has joined us this afternoon. This was another strong growth quarter for Biotricity. So, I want to begin by highlighting our revenue, which increased from $362,920 in fiscal Q4 of fiscal 2020 to $1.2 million in fiscal Q4 2021. This represents a 227% year-over-year quarterly increase, but just as importantly, marks a sequential 19% increase over the $1 million we posted just last quarter for this fiscal year. We have the pipeline to back triple digit revenue growth far into the future. So, our confidence in this kind of quality growth is backed with high visibility into the sources of that growth. It’s important to note that most of our growth at this stage is organic. So, the space is set to accelerate as we expand our sales team and layer on new products, over the next 12 months. We spoke last quarter about revenue acceleration, how it is a true measure of sales growth. That trend was even more pronounced in Q4. Comparing the last few quarters and Q2 of fiscal 2021, we posted year-over-year quarterly growth of 115.3%. Now, following it through the year, in Q3 fiscal 2021, that increased to 162%. So, 115%, 162%, and now in Q4, it increased again to 227% year-over-year quarterly growth. That is the definition of a hockey stick when we’re looking at trajectory. Our upcoming Q1 should again set a new growth record with indications that suggest it will be in the neighborhood of approximately 250%. So, our trajectory, our hockey stick is becoming better defined. Our sales team has a seasoning effect as new salespeople develop their territory. So, in that regard, you can draw a line to higher sales from each new member of our sales department. As of today, we are in just 23 states. In fact, some of the largest markets in the country are still unpenetrated, including California, Illinois, and the number of key states in New England, the South, upper Midwest, and other parts of the country that we want to get to. Going in those states where we are not yet there is going to be a multiyear process for us, going in that map. High-risk cardiac patients are the same anywhere in the world. So, applying our truly global Technology-as-a-Service model, our TaaS model in any geography is essentially the same process. As we get more feet on the ground, we will eventually have coverage throughout the U.S. We will then infill those accounts with new products, such as our upcoming Biotres holter. So, our sales channel will become broader in terms of footprint and deeper in terms of multiple products sold to the same customers, so broader and deeper. That’s going to give us a multi-layered growth over the next few years, even before we turn our eyes to international markets. And again, don’t forget, we have connected -- a cellular connected product is a truly globally usable and useful product. Lower margin products, such as the holter, come with far larger market size. So, the net effect is to create scale across our product lines. The TaaS model is a bit different than a pure SaaS model, because every new cardiac office requires devices, and those devices are booked as an upfront equipment cost. The useful life is about three years for these reusable devices. So, we have a cost function that involves new and replacement pieces, both from new and existing customers who are growing their individual practices. During the quarter, we have reclassified certain costs related to provision of cardiac studies from general and admin expenses to cost of revenue, which is during the year. And we’ve also reclassified corresponding expenses in the prior year to conform. Increases in cost efficiency in combination with that reclassification and our numbers resulted in a quarterly gross margin being 69%, which significantly improved from our prior quarter adjusted gross margin of 22%. Our year-over-year gross margin improvement, which is 45% this year, was 34% last year. The larger our network, the more predictable our margins will become, the more we can scale and reap economies of scale. There’s been a lot of noise recently concerning billing practices in the remote monitoring industry. But our model largely shields us from those issues as all of the billing under our TaaS model is handled by our customers, typically at the local level. Overall, the metrics surrounding our operations showed little change during Q4. We’re particularly proud of our historical high customer retention rate, something we’re proud of and find impressive as the size of our network expands, our customers get best-in-class technology and dramatically increase their own revenue under our model, a combination that continues to improve our market share. During the three months ended March 31, 2021, Biotricity incurred a net loss of $5.5 million and a comprehensive loss of $5.2 million, compared to $4.8 million and $5.1 million in the comparable period of fiscal 2020. We continue to be in an R&D and infrastructure development phase as we prep for our holter product launch and design our move into chronic care. To put the scale of this effort into perspective, we are looking to build a sustainable set of products that will take our total addressable market from just $1 billion with the Bioflux to at least $30 billion during the next phase of our growth cycle -- $3 billion during the next phase of our growth cycle. Despite continued R&D and sales team expansion, you will note that our operating expenses decreased 12% compared to the same period last year, owing significantly to the one-time impact of a $1.2 million PPP loan forgiveness at the payroll and premises costs. We are also layering on extensive growth, while at the same time obtaining greater cost efficiency. Our G&A of $3.3 million was 3% lower than the $3.4 million we posted last quarter, Q3 2021. While R&D was $551,000, about 90% lower than one quarter ago. We have managed our R&D spending well at this stage, as this cost has thus far yielded revenue producing results with very long-term and growing potential. We had one extra item in the quarter that skewed our results a bit in the form of accretion expense on our most recent convertible note financing. Accretion expense of $1.8 million, plus change in fair value of associated derivative liabilities totaling $374,000 approximately comprised about 40% of the loss we mentioned. Like other early revenue technology companies, we currently operate at a loss. But, we’re managing our burn exceptionally well at this stage with a bulk of our capital applied directly to revenue-enhancing products and projects and sales to our territory expansion. We ended Q4 with $2.2 million in cash and over $4 million in current assets. So, we continue to manage our resources to meet our growth objectives. Waqaas already described how we expect to achieve triple-digit revenue growth for the foreseeable future. But one of the key features of that expansion is that we have excellent visibility. With the exception of a few weeks early in the pandemic, we have grown every month since beginning our revenue stream. We do not see any change in that trend, but expect it to grow even stronger as the year progresses, and into future years. At this point, I will turn the call back over to Waqaas for his closing comments. Waqaas Al-Siddiq: Thank you, John. And thank you for that overview. And I’d just like to add a couple of things because I think it’s important, and John focused on it, which is an important aspect, which is about this idea of expenses that we incur in terms of derivative liabilities and other aspects, and coupled with the fact that we are managing our cash in a very prudent manner. And the reason I want to bring that up is because when you are raising equity, there are general costs associated with that equity, stock offerings et cetera. And it makes your balance sheet and your financials look a certain way. But cash on cash burn is something that I think shareholders should also focus on. Because sometimes individuals are, oh, this is your burn, that burn includes stock options, equity compensation and all these other little facets. But when you actually look at cash burn, you realize we’re even more efficient than essentially meets the eyes. And a big part of that is the financial team that we have here at Biotricity who’s very good at managing all of this. But, I think that that is an important aspect when people look at and say, what is your burn and how much in the red are you? Well, it’s a lot less when you look on a cash per cash basis. So, that’s one of the points I wanted to kind of add to and to share with you. And kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier, in terms of the industry and where the industry is going and our vision, a big part of that is really looking at what’s happening in the industry and looking at comparables, especially right now, because we’ve seen a lot of buyouts that have happened recently, in terms of Preventice being bought out and BioTelemetry being bought out. And I think what is important to know is, compared to others, we are growing faster and more efficiently. BioTelemetry, we launched their product -- their first cardiac monitoring product in I believe 2012. Preventice did the same thing. So, these companies have been around for a decade in terms of, the space of real time, real time monitoring. And compared to them, a company that’s only been in the market for two years, from our official product launch, we are growing faster and more efficiently, compared to the same time in their life cycle. And I think that that shows the opportunity for shareholders, not just for now, but for the next two, three years. And also, it shows that it’s not going to take us a decade to achieve that same kind of growth. And that is our -- an important aspect of our business. And similarly, as John touched on it a little bit already is our business model, which is this insulation from reimbursement. So, we have seen reimbursement get chopped in different industries. Reimbursement in our space is very stable. It has been stable in real-time cardiac monitoring, because the real-time cardiac monitoring has been around for a while. In the holter space, extended holter just got chopped. But that’s because that was the newest reimbursement that came out in the marketplace. So, if you take cardiac monitoring, there is four types -- there is four categories. The newest was extended holter and that code was only approved about two years ago. And that’s why obviously within the first few years, it always gets chopped. But, what is important is that Biotricity insulated from it because of our model. So, if you take our Bioflux model in high-end diagnostics, it costs us $383 to make a device. The lifetime of the device is two years, maybe even three years, because we’ve seen devices that if we just refurbish a little bit, they’ll survive for three years. So, on a two-year basis, if you’re making $300, I mean, in simple numbers, $300, and let’s say, the device costs $400 and you’re using it once a month, over two years, that device generates a $7,200 on a cost of $400. So, it’s a very high margin. And so, even if reimbursement gets cut, even -- there is so much room there that we’re very, very insulated because we base our model on getting technology, making it as cheap as possible, best-in-class as possible, really focusing on the accuracy and the capability, and then making it available to physicians and hospitals to utilize, so that the operational overhead is not on our shoulders, it’s with the individuals who are actually the users of these technologies and have the expertise to build operations to service patients. So, that’s I think a very, very important component. So, to kind of summarize those points, if you look at the bios and what’s going on in the industry, there is certainly consolidation, but we are going faster and more efficiently comparatively, and we will achieve that type of valuation in a much faster and shorter time period. And because of our business model, we’re insulated from some of the things that are happening in the reimbursement aspect of the holter to market. And I bring that up, not because it’s related to the Bioflux, but because the Biotres, which is our future product will be in the holter space. So, people ask that question, and I wanted to address it for those of you who are not following the space as keenly as we would be. And I think what is in the big component and I think -- and before I turn it over to questions. The big interesting thing is, what is -- what do things look like post-COVID? What is happening to the industry? What is the change? And what I can say is, post-COVID, people understand the value of monitoring? They understand that when things like a pandemic happen, or -- and you’re dealing with viruses and things like that, you need to separate yourself. And two is you separate yourself and you want to de risk yourself, the biggest impact is on high risk patients, patients who don’t want to go to your cardiologist, even though heart attack is higher risk than COVID, but just because they want to minimize that exposure. And in that case, monitoring is a critical piece. And so, what is the future of healthcare? The future of healthcare is connected devices and telehealth integrated together to deliver as much care as can be done to the patient with the patient going in for procedural work. And COVID has accelerated that awareness. It has created much more understanding of that. It was already going that way. But the pandemic has accelerated all that. And so, what that has done for us as a business is it’s accelerated our core business, which is Bioflux. Because Bioflux is for high risk patients. The problem in the pandemic wasn’t individuals who can go in and get onto a telemedicine call, because they have a runny nose. It was the high risk patients that were higher risk if they contracted COVID. And they have to be kept at home. But, if they’re kept at home, nobody has insight. So, passive recording was just not enough. And so, that’s really the future, right, the future shifting into this connected, real time smart monitoring. And we also see the vision of physicians changing. They also see the risk associated with these patients. They also want to deliver the best of care, and they want to minimize the risk to their patients. So, they want these patients to stay at home as much as possible. But they feel more comfortable if again, the patient is on a smart, connected device. And so, from our perspective, not only through the pandemic what we have seen but also from our perspective from our kind of business is that we’re seeing that physician adoption of this now is all around patient safety and care and has accelerated as a result of what has transpired over the last year. And so, our vision at Biotricity perfectly fits in this. We saw the future that’s why we built the Company, that’s why we focused on remote patient monitoring, but we did not expect that the adoption would have been accelerated. And that’s what is happening right now. Because of the pandemic, adoption of real time monitoring, the importance of it, telehealth all of that has accelerated. And it’s not going to change, because the convenience of it is also an advantage. And so, if you look at Biotricity, we are not just high risk cardiac company, we are a complex cardiac cloud, and we’re going to go through two transformations, what I believe and what is our focus. Because earlier I talked about in the call that majority of my remarks will be aligned to how we want to turn Biotricity to a $1 billion company. And so, that’s going to, in our perspective and the team’s perspective, is going to go through two transformations. In two years, we will be one of the largest virtual specialty care providers. That is our vision. Now, what does that mean? Well, we have 1,300 cardiologists on using our product every day. 1,300 cardiologists in one ecosystem is a very unique position to be in. How do you interconnect all of them? How do you deliver care? How do you deliver more services? But -- that is our mission. In two years, we will become that because we will interconnect all of these pieces and that will create a specialty access that previously was not there before. And in four years, so two years after that, our vision is to start expanding our partnership with our physicians. So, we are partnering with our physicians. How? By enabling them with technology, letting them service our patients. But, we can also help them optimize our practice, by driving patients to them. If we see patients, when you get a referral -- or I get a referral, the first thing I do is I go on Google and I start searching. Well, if I’m getting a referral to a cardiologist, I want that patient to go to a cardiologist that is using Biotricity technologies. So, I want to help drive those patients to those doctors’ offices. But I also want to optimize the doctors’ practice by enabling them to focus on what’s important, meaning taking all of that data -- and we do that with the Bioflux. We get all of the data that the Bioflux generates and we help them look at the pieces that are of interest to them. By making all of the data available, but allowing them to decide what parts of that data to focus on and zoom in. And so, that creates optimization of time and it creates this stickiness in terms of our relationship with them, and will help drive us, so that when we say, hey, we want to partner with you further, because we want to drive patients to you. And that helps us because if we drive patients there, there is a high probability that at some point that patient is going to touch one of our technologies. And so, that really goes into our transformation as the Company and our vision as a company and working towards this idea where we really see ourselves as the cardiac of disease management, what Livongo did for diabetes, and you’ve heard me say this before. What Livongo did for diabetes? They came out, they came out with a glucometer. They gave it to the patients and then they dealt with diabetes management. And we want to do the same for cardiac patients. We want to manage them in between visits. And that is something that we want to launch within the next year. We are playing around with this technology. But, what does that mean? That really means that after the patient is diagnosed, they have the technology, they have the software and they have everything available to them for them to get insight into their condition and follow the doctor’s orders. And that is insurance reimbursable, because everything we do at Biotricity, I cannot stress that enough, is aligned to reimbursement. We make sure that reimbursement is there and then we deliver that in a Technology-as-a-Service model. So, it’s a recurring revenue. And the disease management component is such a big opportunity for Biotricity that accelerates our growth. So, the base business of Bioflux is already accelerating, but this further accelerates that because Bioflux in terms of diagnostics, you’re only -- as I talked about earlier, you’re not touching every patient, because not every patient needs diagnostics every month. But almost every patient needs to be managed every month or every other month because they’re dealing with this condition, they live with this condition. And so, if you talk about Bioflux as high reimbursement than low volume, disease management is exact opposite, very high volume, but very low reimbursement. But when you have an ecosystem like ours, where you have 1,300 cardiologists who are servicing 2.6 million patients, well, the volume is there. It’s about building the right solution, launching it at the right time and taking advantage of that opportunity. So, that’s really the vision. And I really wanted to kind of paint that picture for those of you who haven’t heard about us or are new to the story, and those of you who are following us and our shareholders. And I bring that up because people are always asking, what is their exit strategy. And I bring that up because in terms of me, you’re hearing a founder and a CEO. I’m a shareholder, and I’m looking at creating shareholder value. Part of that is optimizing capital usage. We talked about that. It’s why I bring people on and that look at how to optimize an organization. But alongside being a shareholder, just like everybody else on this call, I’m completely tied to this idea of creating value, shareholder value. And that’s why I wanted to talk about that vision and where I see that because people are always asking, what is that exit strategy? And for me, the exit strategy is, executing the vision of the Company and getting the Company to $1 billion. So that’s -- with that, I’ll kind of just finalize my last little point, which is, we’ve talked about what are our milestones and our goals long term. What are our goals for the rest of the year? So, obviously we want to continue our growth. We want to continue our execution and our product roadmap and work towards this broader vision. We are also focusing on a national uplifting. And we think that that’s really important because it increases number of institutions that look at us. It increases our shareholder base, increases our awareness, because we are a growing company, but we also want to expand that awareness. And I think that -- and uplift is a step in that and that’s a big milestone for this year. But also that exposes us to the entire global markets as well. And why that is important, because we have a long way to go before we fill the United States map, as John has mentioned, even with our core products. But our platform is transferable to the international markets as well, because cardiac issues and health issues are ubiquitous across the world. And so, international growth is another lever that we can pull when the time is right, and we’ve already set up our platform and our connectivity designed to facilitate that. And so, with that, I’ll turn it over for questions.
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We’ll take our first question from Allen Klee with Maxim Group.
Hello. Congratulations on a very strong quarter. Your revenues were up 227% year-over-year. That was ahead of my guidance and the pre-announced growth rate of 203%. And then, for the June quarter, I was guiding for 177% year-over-year. I thought I heard you say that it’s going to maybe be 250%, which I think if I did the math, that’s close to $1.6 million of revenue compared to the $1.2 million you just put up, which is quite amazing the amount of momentum there. Could you talk a little about what you see as the key factors that are causing revenues to increase so much? Waqaas Al-Siddiq: Yes, absolutely. So, I think there is a couple of factors, right? So obviously, COVID slowed our growth down, for sure. So, I think the reopening of the country is putting us back on path to what we felt that we could have done. And that’s just now essentially coming back full circle to before the pandemic and where we were at. But also, we’ve expanded our sales force as we bring in capital, as we deploy capital. As sales reps become profitable, we expand the sales team. And most importantly, we have figured out having been in the market after our first year, we really figured out the right types of talent to recruit. And so, the combination of those things are creating this acceleration. And then, I think, the last point, which I talked about on the call, which is this awareness of the importance of monitoring, right? So, the sales cycle, where we thought was maybe slowdown, or how can you go after low hanging fruit, you won’t be able to maintain such a short sale cycle, it’s maintaining, because of the fact that awareness is right and the use being driven up.
Thank you. Could you give us some color just on what you’re seeing in terms of utilization rates of the Bioflux that are out there? Like, how -- I know, you can’t give the exact numbers, but comparing maybe how much of the growth do you think is coming from more devices out there versus the cardiologists are starting to realize the value and using it more than once they have it? Waqaas Al-Siddiq: That’s an excellent question. So, we always look at those as two aspects, right? And rightfully pointing out is one is utilization of existing devices and the other thing is expansion of the market, right? And so, I would say both, but more of it is focused on opening up accounts and creating accounts. I mean, device utilization is certainly there. But we have not begun to optimize utilization yet. We think of that as a secondary sale. Not because we can’t do it today or that we don’t think it’s important or that we’re unaware of it, it’s just right now, if I have to focus sales reps time, I’m going to focus on lowest hanging fruit and biggest bang for your dollar, which is grabbing more account and opening up the network, because we have this -- as I talked about how vision and a product portfolio that’s going to come in. And so the more -- the bigger that network is, the better we are positioned for that. And then, optimization comes second. That does not mean that we aren’t using technology to optimize, we are certainly helping driving utilization by updating our software, updating aspects of the workflow that facilitate all of that. But that’s an ongoing journey and that’s one that we will continue. But to answer your question, I’d say, 80% of it is coming from new accounts and new growth and 20% or maybe it’s 70%-30%, 20% or 30% is coming from optimizing utilization, and that will continue to optimize. I mean, certain doctors, it’s automatic, they figure it out. They’re like, oh, this is so much better for my patients and I can get the patient in earlier and they naturally optimize it. But, because they’re used to -- that organization or that hospital is more and just have more attuned and just have more infrastructure and more individuals, and other practices, you kind of have to educate them.
Thank you. I thought I heard that after making some adjustments that your gross margins were around 63.9% for the quarter. I would think that over time as what you just answered the other question that more devices get out there, but then more of it comes from using them and getting the higher margin usage that maybe that number could improve over time. How do you think about that?
It’s John Ayanoglou. Yes. What we did was we optimized our -- we optimized our cost of revenue. We want to be held accountable for all of those costs. Some of the monitoring costs that we had put in prior years below the line as operating costs, we’ve moved up above. And, when we conform the prior year’s numbers to current year’s presentation, we really see that we’re doing well in terms of managing those costs. So, to answer your question, yes, over time, as we scale this business, we’re going to be able to purchase more and more devices for sale less expensively. We’re going to be able to leverage our artificial intelligence to run the monitoring process that much more efficiently. So, all of these costs that are associated with various levels and network of products, our ecosystem of products, are over time are going to come down.
Great and for Biotres, which the FDA is reviewing now, I know it’s not possible to comment on kind of how that’s going to go. Although I think you reasonably think this year is a pretty good opportunity. Maybe if there is anything, you can comment on that? And if -- once you do, I assume get approval, how you think about what the -- how you’re going -- what your growth strategy is going to be there of implementing it? Waqaas Al-Siddiq: Yes, absolutely. So, I think that with what has transpired over the last year with the pandemic and obviously the reopening of the country, the focus has been on -- from the FDA perspective, on devices, technologies that relate to opening up the pandemic. But, we’ve gotten three FDA clearances. This is a watered down, less complex version of the Bioflux. So, we are very confident in our process. And we expect it to be clear this year and launch this year, as we had earlier indicated. And in terms of our growth strategy and our plans, the Biotres is really an add-on to our Bioflux. So, first of all, we would deploy it in all of our existing accounts for the holter focused market within those accounts. And then, as we go and open up new accounts, it will be part of the offerings. We always lead with the Bioflux because that’s high end diagnostics, highest reimbursements, highest margins, and then the Biotres is there as a secondary product so that now the doctor or the hospital has all of the cardiac monitoring needs in the product portfolio that Biotricity is offering. So, that’s kind of our approach there. It’ll really be offered as part of the sales cycle. We’re not going to create a special sales group that focuses just on the Biotres or special channel strategy or anything. It all comes together in a portfolio, and that portfolio is sold.
Thank you. One of the competitive advantages of your Company is you’re really technology led. Can you comment on where you’re focusing your R&D and technology spend now? Waqaas Al-Siddiq: Absolutely. So, when we talked about that product portfolio, we talked about our increasing our TAM and stuff like that. So, what we’re spending our R&D dollars on right now and where we, I think continue to focus for the -- until we complete the cycle, is in downstream from diagnostics, right? So, it’s -- like I talked about earlier, the cardiac patient comes in, they get diagnosed. Now, what else does this patient have to touch in terms of technology for their entire patient journey, which is okay, from diagnosis to procedural work to medication to disease management to personal management, et cetera. So, we are focusing on R&D dollars, on technologies and solutions and software that can fulfill all of the places and so far that we’re capable of, and that makes sense in our remote monitoring model, because obviously there is many things that they touch that did not fit in remote monitoring category. So, we won’t touch it. But, the R&D dollars are designed to follow that patient. So, we get them into the funnel, Bioflux, great. We diagnose them. Well, now, we want to keep them into the funnel all the way down into disease management, and then take them back up and then talk them through. So, our R&D dollars today are spent on, how to collect other biometrics from that patient for other potential diseases that they have, on software first disease management, for products at the Biotres, which is holter for low-risk patients. So, once they diagnose, they a pacemaker. They don’t need to be on the Bioflux necessarily, unless there is a symptom. But if they have no symptom and they’re totally stable, we don’t need to use high-end diagnostic at that time. So, we’re looking and spending our R&D dollars on those technologies that facilitate more touch points on patients that comes through the Bioflux. Does that make sense?
That makes sense. Okay. That’s it for me. Congratulations for the strong quarter. Waqaas Al-Siddiq: Thank you.
Thank you. We’ll take our next question from Chet White [ph] with Helios Alpha Fund.
Thank you very much, and congratulations, guys, on the great quarter. I just wanted to ask a couple of quick questions. If you can, comment a little bit about the uplist. So, to-date, the retail has just been great. You’ve been seen a lot of demand. And now the National Exchange uplist can open up some institutional demand. But, what are you seeing as the compelling reason while some of these institutions may come in a little bit early to a small cap company? What fundamentals are you seeing out there that are attracting them? Waqaas Al-Siddiq: Excellent question, Chet, [ph] and a tough one in some ways. But, yes, like I kind of alluded to, uplist certainly opens up the horizon of all types of shareholders, both retail and international. But, in terms of your specific question about how to -- why institutional investors will invest in a company that’s smaller. Institutional investors look at growth stories. What’s the next big idea envisioned? And I think that if our vision was we’re going to build a business, we’re going to organically grow it, and we’re really -- a one product. So, they wouldn’t take that much interest. But I think that when they see that hey, this company is not only accelerating its growth, but it’s expanding its total addressable market. It’s got a product portfolio that is vertically sold into its existing ecosystem. So, it can essentially scale rapidly. I think they will take an interest and come and start investing when we are at this stage, because they see the vision two years, three years, four years, five years out, right, like as they see -- as companies grow, right? And most importantly, what’s happening in the one to two years? And I talked about this earlier, I see Biotricity going through transformations, right, two years from now, and then another two years after that. And both of those transformations create a massive acceleration in value. And I think institutions, they see the same thing that we see, right? We’ve built something. They’re seeing the trends. They’re seeing what’s happening in healthcare. They’re going to see the future. And you have to make a bet, right, and what bet are they going to make? Well, Livongo is acquired, right? The cardiac company that had any kind of revenue, but an older model with low margin, they’ve been acquired. So, if you want to make a play to become the largest, a specialty care or cardiac cloud for -- in the cardiac space, there’s a handful of bets to make, a handful of players to make. And our focus on technology, right, technology, specifically, as a technology player, not a clinical player, I think that puts physicians as well. And I think that’s what’s going attract institutions. And of course, continuing to work with people that will build that awareness, which is working with research, working with analysts, taking the time to let those individuals, kick the tires, come inside our organization. And we’re very open like that. We open for research and for analysts, we let them talk to our customers, we let them talk to people within the organization, our engineering, our sales team, all of that. Because that’s how that’s story is going to get out. So, part of it is, taking that vision and institutional guys getting interested, and then in part of that is doing the hard work of driving awareness by working with research and analysts and all of that.
Got it. Excellent. Thank you. And Waqaas, just as a follow-up, you’ve laid out, and what sounds like of course, the fundamental is showing up with great results and longer term vision. Currently, you’re on a great road. And so, if you can, I would expect that that is driving some competition, looking and watching what you’re doing now, and both from larger companies and some start-ups. Can you just give us update on what you’re seeing out there in terms of new competition, product wise and business model otherwise? Waqaas Al-Siddiq: Yes, for sure. So, I mean, in terms of -- we’re always keeping our pulse on the marketplace and things like that. We don’t see anything in the real time cardiac space and the algorithms are very complicated, trade secret. We’re not seeing anybody really pop up in that space. But we are keeping an eye on it. And of course, we are constantly optimizing, right? We believe in the concept of sustainable competitive advantage. You’re only as good as your last update, right? And so because we’re a tech company, we’re constantly improving our products. So, if my sustainable competitive advantage is two years, and then I sit on my hands, then every month, I get reduced by a month. But what we’re doing is we’re constantly updating. So, we’re maintaining leading edge. And by maintaining leading edge, you maintain your sustainable competitive advantage. So, that I think is the answer to your question about new start-ups and new on-trends and stuff like that. We are not seeing anybody really looking at the real time cardiac space. We have seen people jumping into the holter space, but that is a commoditized space and it’s very easy because there’s no algorithm and there’s no real time connectivity and all of that stuff. Some people oversimplify and they say, hey, cellular connectivity and all these things are simple. Well, the infrastructure is a lot more complicated nowadays. And integrating all of that and getting wireless coverage, then you have to get FCC certification. And all of that stuff messes up your electrical signal for data collection, if you don’t properly protect it. So, all of those things are -- make the product a lot more complicated to develop. So that is a barrier to entry. And we maintain that barrier to entry by constantly updating. And then to your other questions in terms of people updating the offering and the business model, I think that’s what you were asking. Certainly organizations can update the business model. But obviously, the two that would have updated would have been BioTelemetry and Preventice, and they got acquired. But at that point, we have built -- we have the smallest most accurate device in the market. So, cheaper, better, faster. So if you’ve got a cheaper, better, faster product, they’ve got to compete with you on that perspective. And in that case, we win. And not only that, because our model and our operational overhead is very low, we can be very, very aggressive in terms of capturing the market, because profitability for us, as we talked a little bit about margin with John and Allen earlier, we’ve got a lot of room there. And that lends ourselves to be very, very competitive. And when you look at these other organizations, what does that mean to compete? If you [indiscernible], they were, I think 18% margin business, okay. Well, 18% margin business and we’re just going to use simple numbers, right? So national average of reimbursement for real-time cardiac margin is $850. Well, they’re used to making $850. We’ll compete with them at $300; we’ll compete with them at $200. We’re very competitive. We’ll -- just to beat them we’ll drop in ours. But, if you’re used to make $850 and suddenly to compete with Biotres, you have to drop to $350, forget us even being aggressive. This is just to compete with us. You got to get rid of $500. Well, suddenly, now you’re in the red, instantly. So how many accounts you’re going to do that? You have to restructure your business. So it’s not that simple for them to compete in terms of our offerings, and that’s if we aren’t even in a price battle. And in our case, we don’t even think we have to jump into a price issue, because the technology is so much better that first, you have to beat us on technology or deliver the same things, right? So that has to be apples-to-apples comparison. Now, let’s start competing on dollars. And in that case, we’ll win because our -- we focused on making technology as cheap as possible. So that gives us a lot more room.
Thank you. This concludes our Q&A. I’ll pass it back to management for closing remarks. Waqaas Al-Siddiq: Thank you. And so, I think my closing remark for our quarter is, we’re super excited about what has transpired from March 31st, but what I’m super excited about is the rest of the year. As I indicated, June 30th, the quarter ending June 30th, I believe we will beat our last quarter and the expectations set out by analysts by a healthy margin. So, that’s super exciting, because that really aligns with the guidance that I have provided in terms of our target of triple-digit for fiscal year 2022. But, I think more importantly just vision and us realizing this vision, and marching towards that vision of building Biotricity and realizing that dream of making the Company into a $1 billion company. And so, I think that we are stepping in that direction, we are accelerating our growth, we are executing on our product portfolio. We have a number of milestones up and coming this year that are going to be exciting. We are planning to do that uplist as well. So, I think all of these things are really, really important milestones and really, really important things for shareholders to keep an eye on. But, it’s also an opportunity that shows a growth in the value of the Company over the next couple of years. And it’s clear in a way that you can see it and almost touch it. And with that, I’d like to just thank everybody for joining. And I’ll look forward to hearing from you guys. We’re always available. If you have any questions, please shoot us out or contact our IR group. And outside of that, we will be available on the next earnings call in a quarter.
This concludes today’s call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.