Charles D. Goodwin
Thanks, operator and welcome, everyone to our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 earnings call. I'm joined on today's call by Matt Hill, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we delve in, let me provide a quick outline for the call. First, I'll discuss our quarterly revenue performance as well as some of the notable operational progress we made during the fourth quarter. Matt will then review our quarterly financial results and our 2024 fiscal guidance, which we introduced in today's earnings release. I'll conclude by sharing some additional thoughts on our outlook and priorities for 2024 before we open the call for questions. With this as a backdrop, let's begin with a review of our fourth quarter revenue results. Total revenue in the fourth quarter increased 16% year-over-year to $14.7 million. Our total revenue growth was predominantly driven by sales of our Advanced Energy products, which increased 15% year-over-year to $12.1 million. However, we also saw strong contributions from sales of our OEM products, which increased 22% year-over-year to $2.5 million. Turning to a more detailed discussion of the growth drivers in our Advanced Energy segment. From a product standpoint, our advanced energy sales growth was driven by double-digit growth in sales of both generators and handpieces, which increased by more than 25% and 10%, respectively. And from a geographic standpoint, the majority of our Advanced Energy sales growth was driven by sales to our U.S. customers. In the U.S. specifically, our Advanced Energy sales growth was fueled primarily by sales of our handpieces which increased by more than 35% year-over-year, reflecting an uptick in utilization-based demand. We also saw double-digit growth in U.S. generator sales, which increased by more than 15% year-over-year. Our U.S. generator sales growth benefited from sales of our next-generation generator system, the Apyx One console to existing customers. As a reminder, when we launched this new generator system at the beginning of 2023, we introduced an upgrade program for our existing users, enabling them to trade in their prior generation system to obtain discounted pricing on the Apyx One. Meanwhile, sales of our generators to new U.S. customers decreased slightly year-over-year as demand for capital equipment in the cosmetic surgery market continued to be impacted, which I will discuss in further detail shortly. With respect to our Advanced Energy sales growth outside the United States, international sales of our generators increased by more than 80% year-over-year. This performance was largely offset by sales of our handpieces, which decreased more than 15% year-over-year. In summary, the 15% year-over-year growth that we saw in Global Advanced Energy revenue was driven by double-digit growth in sales of both generators and handpieces due to growth in global generator sales and U.S. handpiece sales. As we shared in our preliminary earnings release in January, our Advanced Energy sales performance fell short of the guidance we provided on our third quarter earnings call, which had called for Advanced Energy revenue in the fourth quarter of at least $13.3 million. Relative to our expectations, we were pleased with our handpiece sales performance in the fourth quarter. We saw the strong sequential improvements relative to the third quarter, which was consistent with the guidance-related assumptions that we articulated on our last earnings call. With respect to generator sales, as a reminder, during the third quarter we observed softness in the overall market for cosmetic surgery capital equipment with more prospective customers delaying capital equipment purchases citing broader macroeconomic uncertainty and high interest rates. Our team moved quickly to expand our support for prospective surgeon customers, introducing additional financing options in September to provide them with further financial flexibility. As we shared on our last earnings call, our guidance has assumed that the capital equipment environment would remain similarly challenged in the fourth quarter. However, we expected to see sequential growth in generator sales from Q3 to Q4 as the fourth quarter has traditionally represented our seasonally strongest quarter of the year from a generator sales perspective. The capital equipment environment in the fourth quarter proved to be more challenging than we had anticipated with more prospective customers delaying investments given continued concerns related to broader macroeconomic uncertainty as well as the financing environment. As a result, generator revenue growth in the fourth quarter was essentially flat relative to the third. Ultimately, we managed to generate significant year-over-year growth in our Advanced Energy business in spite of these headwinds. With global generator sales increasing by more than 25% year-over-year, fueled by growth in the U.S. and internationally. Our sales performance in the fourth quarter enabled us to return to double-digit revenue growth on a full year basis in 2023. And in addition to our revenue performance, our continued focus on controlling our expenses, positions us to deliver improvements in our annual net loss attributable to stockholders and adjusted EBITDA loss of 19% and 13%, respectively, along with significant reduction in cash used in operations this past year. Turning to our fourth quarter operational highlights, we made notable progress in several key areas during the quarter, introducing new products, raising awareness in the market, strengthening our balance sheet, and enhancing our team. From a new product standpoint, we completed the limited market release of our Renuvion Micro Handpiece during the initial weeks of the fourth quarter, which provided us with important feedback to enhance our surgeon training protocols. In late November, we initiated our full U.S. commercial launch of the Micro Handpiece, consistent with our stated goal of launching by year-end. During the initial weeks following the launch, we have been pleased to see that the response from our U.S. customers has been consistent with the feedback obtained during our limited market release. As a reminder, our Renuvion Micro Handpiece features a smaller profile instrument shaft with a diameter that is half the width of our Renuvion APR Handpiece. Surgeons have shared that the device's smaller profile make it ideal for accessing and delivering energy, contracting the soft tissue in more delicate and sensitive areas of the body. In addition to completing and expanding the capabilities of our existing product offering, remember that our Renuvion Micro Handpiece is only compatible with our latest generation generator system, the Apyx One console. In addition to the Apyx One's enhanced features, the Renuvion Micro Handpiece represents another important benefit to adopting our next-generator -- next-generation generator system. In addition to introducing the Micro Handpiece, our team remained focused on educating the market about the strong safety and efficacy profile of our Renuvion technology as well as our latest FDA clearances with specific clinical indications for use. We participated in seven medical meetings and trade shows during the fourth quarter, the highlight of which was the ASPS Plastic Surgery Meeting hosted in late October. Our programming at the event featured an educational session led by three surgeons, which drew attendance from approximately 60 clinicians. We also hosted our second Latin America users meeting during the fourth quarter with panel discussions and presentations from 27 speakers, including some of the most successful surgeon customers. This event was attended by more than 130 clinicians from 14 countries. Ultimately, our Renuvion technology was featured in approximately 40 podium presentations at medical meetings and other industry events during the course of the fourth quarter, helping to broaden the awareness of our technology and its capabilities in the medical community. And at the patient level, we continue to develop our DTC initiatives, launching a new campaign near the end of the year that emphasizes Renuvion's role in body contouring procedures, with materials illustrating the real results obtained by Renuvion patients. We also made important progress in our efforts to enhance our sales, marketing and executive leadership teams with the addition of key personnel. As we shared last quarter, we conducted a strategic reorganization of our sales and marketing team during the fourth quarter. On the sales side, we implemented several planned departures within our team of direct sales reps in the U.S. and expanded the territory of some of our top performers to improve the overall productivity of our sales team. Internationally, we also brought in new leadership to manage our distributor relations in East Asia. From a marketing perspective, we hired a new head of marketing with extensive experience in developing and managing direct-to-consumer advertising campaigns for medical device and other healthcare companies and most recently, we added a new Senior Director of Marketing, who joins our team with over a decade of experience in the medical device industry, including significant experience in the cosmetic surgery space. In addition to this key talent, we were pleased to announce the appointment of Matt Hill as our Chief Financial Officer. Matt joined our Executive Leadership Team with over 30 years of financial and operational experience, more than 20 years of his career have been devoted to the life science industry, where Matt has served as CFO of four publicly traded companies most recently at PDS Biotech and Strata Skin Sciences. I'd like to take the opportunity on today's call to welcome Matt and the other new members of the Apyx Medical team. Lastly, we enhanced our balance sheet condition and financial flexibility. We entered into a new five-year agreement with Perceptive Advisors for a facility of up to $45 million in senior secured loans, providing us with $37.5 million of proceeds at closing. We used approximately $11 million of these proceeds to satisfy all obligations under the prior credit agreement as well as approximately $2.7 million of transaction fees and other expenses related to the transactions. We were pleased to leverage the progress we've made as an organization over the course of 2023 to negotiate this new facility, which expanded our access to capital and at more favorable terms. In summary, 2023 as a whole proved to be an important transitional year for Apyx Medical. We set out with four stated strategic objectives. First, to secure additional clinical indications for use addressing the remaining limitations of the FDA safety communication and improving our ability to market our technology. Second, to enhance our new product portfolio. Third, to expand our portfolio of clinical evidence supporting the use of our products. And fourth, to manage our expenses while driving progress towards profitability. I'm pleased that our team was able to accomplish each of these four objectives during the course of the year. With the progress made on all of these fronts, we believe that we are well positioned to expand our presence in the global cosmetic surgery market and with $44 million of cash and equivalents at year-end, we believe we are sufficiently capitalized to fund our initiatives as we continue to target achieving sustainable and profitable growth in the future. Matt will now review the fourth quarter financial results in more detail, along with our financial guidance for 2024, which we introduced in today's release. Matt?