Aurora Spine Corporation (ASG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and thank you all for joining us during the Lytham Partners Fall 2021 Investor Conference. My name is Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President at Lytham Partners. Our next presentation comes from Aurora Spine, ticker symbol of ASG. That is Alpha, Sierra, Golf on the Toronto Venture Exchange; and ASAPF. That is Alpha, Sierra, Alpha, Papa, Foxtrot on the OTCQB in the U.S. Presenting for the company today is Mr. Trent Northcutt, President and CEO of Aurora Spine. A copy of the slide presentation is available on your webcast screen, and you can access a downloadable version by clicking the Materials button on the left-hand side of the screen. Today, I've asked Trent to briefly run through the slide presentation, and we'll then engage in a fireside chat like Q&A session. As a reminder, the company will be available for one-on-one virtual meetings. If you've not already signed up, please send me an e-mail at [email protected] or visit www.lythampartners.com/virtual and click the one-on-one meeting request button. With that said, let me now turn the presentation over to Mr. Trent Northcutt, President and CEO of Aurora Spine. Trent, please proceed.

Thank you, Adam. It's a pleasure to be here, and thanks for inviting us to the conference. So coming off last week at NASS, the North American Spine Society meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, we had a very good show, a very good showing of Aurora's new technologies. It was absolutely highlighted by the DEXA technology, which I'm going to share with you today in this presentation. So Slide #1 is the investor presentation. Going to Slide #2, which is our forward-looking disclosure statement here. Moving right to Slide #3. Aurora has developed a portfolio of solutions for the spinal implant market through a series of innovative, minimally invasive products. Our focus has always been to keep it more of a regenerative spinal implant technology where it's better for the patients, easier for the doctor to implant. We're located in Carlsbad, California. It's actually my hometown, just 35 miles North of San Diego. And it's a big medtech area. So actually a lot of spine companies and other medical companies in that area. We have 2 primary divisions that we really focus on, which is Aurora in our innovation sector of our product, of our company and our portfolio. And then we have Spine within that division. So Aurora Spine, which has all of our spinal implant, our technologies for cervical, for lumbar. And our newest division, which is Aurora Pain Care, the Aurora Pain side of the division is actually focused on working with interventional spine doctors and minimally invasive devices such as our ZIP implant and our new SiLO posterior system. So really exciting stuff for the company to get into the hands of the doctors so they can help keep their patients back up on their feet. Going to Slide 4. So the ongoing conversation with Aurora has been really successful this year for us getting away from third-party products. We've been successful in that. So in a year previously, we were selling nearly 65% to 70% third-party products, and Aurora now has switched that. And we are now moved to past 70% of Aurora products only. And we will be at 80% Aurora products only in the coming -- no, say, next 35 to, say, 55 days with the new release of the Apollo cervical plate, which is approximately 8% of our monthly number. Advance, our technology development, so we've worked on some new technologies such as our posterior SI joint system. We did push back a little bit on our ZIP flex because of the excitement and the revenues that are being generated by the new SI joint system called SiLO, and in the multicenter study, which I'm going to talk about more in this presentation. So that advance product development has really been focused on the SiLO and the SiLO TFX and the DEXA technology, and of course, getting the FDA approval with the DEXA and with the Apollo cervical plates this year was key to the company. The third point here is the expansion in the pain market. This has been one of the most impactful divisions in our company. It's led by some really good, talented salespeople who are out there, direct with Aurora. And we've been able to pick up new physicians within our company, and it's actually added this whole new marching orders to the company to go out there and be part of these events and trade shows and categoric labs with the pain interventional doctors and showing our technologies and how they could work in their practice, and it's been really well received. In fact, it's increased our revenues in one of our particular products from 8% to over 40% of monthly revenue increase. So it's been really strong, and we continue to march that way with that product and those doctors. We've strengthened our balance sheet. There will be a couple of things I'll talk about in this presentation that Aurora was able to pick up an investment of USD 5 million, CAD 6.5 million. And we did that because we need to build out more of our inventory and focus on sales infrastructure and that was the key purposes of us picking up that investment into Aurora. Going to Slide 5. So spine surgery, just a quick overview. If you look to the right of the slides, it's cervical, it's thoracic, it's lumbar and it's sacral. So the implants that you see that go underneath that is our fusion devices, such as our ZIP implants that you see, the cages, the plates, the standalone and the lumbar screws, which help us to use these bones together or help treat these bones and pain generators that come out of these segments. So a majority of spine surgery is targeted through the pain caused by disc interior disease. Most surgeries involve damaged disc or the removal of a disc such as extruded disc or a degenerative disc that's now really causing a lot of pain for that patient. And our implants that we make allows us to help bring these bones together and create a fusion between them. Going to Slide 6. So the addressable market for us, it's an established market and it's an emerging market sale. There's still a lot of growth in this market to come. So it's a $9.6 billion implant market in the United States, which is what we primarily focus on. And the market is growing at 3% annual. 80% of the market is supplied by 6 of the big players. We're talking about the Medtronics, the Strykers, the Johnson & Johnson, you have a few big companies like that. But the innovation sector comes from companies like Aurora. We are innovative. In big companies, let's face it, they acquire and both companies innovate. And Aurora, I think, is a great innovation company. We've got some really few technologies, some patented technologies that are really resonating. They resonated really well for us last week in Boston. So that is what we think is our driver towards why Aurora would be looked at by one of these larger companies. So innovative and growing and having emerging technologies that these big companies might want to take a closer look at. Skipping over 7 and going straight to Slide 8. We talk about the screwless procedure. And this is something that's been really key to us with our new pain interventionalists. We've entered into a multicenter study with a very successful, very known pain interventional doctors around the country. We've trained over 200 interventional doctors now in cadavaric labs and training sessions across the country, from Miami to Dallas to Nevada. We've done training sessions in regions such as Chicago, Seattle, San Diego and New York. So it's been really great to get out there across the country, even during the COVID wind down we hope. And it's been really productive for us, and the ZIP screws screwless procedure has done really well for us. So the key features of why ZIP's doing for us and why it's resonating with these pain doctors is that it reduces the operating room time, and it also reduces the patient's blood loss. And this is a really key product for them if they're in a surgery center or in an outpatient setting at the hospital. They want to have a product that's going to conform for them and get that patient in and out safely, effectively and get back on to the road to recovery. And then the TiNANO, that was the other big product that was Aurora's mainstay product, working together with these 2 products to help us advance our technologies along with stand-alone and the cervical plate, which is all part of that fusion I talked about on Slide 5. Going to Slide 9. We not just make products but what we do is when we make a product, we often look at it from the viewpoint of what should we do to patent-protect this product. So we actually have a full portfolio of 9 patents issued U.S. -- 7 U.S. -- sorry, 9 patents issued and we have 7 U.S. patents issued. And of course, we have another 6 patents that are pending within our organization. And we're building a big, robust IP portfolio to help us mark on going into the coming years of products that are actually developed but also patent protected. Going to Slide 10. So currently, we have 6 regional managers across the country that work with independent distributors and strategic key markets, and we've got a lot of room to grow. So we're constantly active in hiring and adding on them. It's also part of the reason why we wanted to pick up an investment in the company was to hire more regional managers to help us get impactful sales numbers in areas that we don't sell a lot of our products. And we've seen new increased sales in states such as Arizona, up in the Oregon and Seattle and even in the midwest areas in and around Missouri and Iowa. And we're starting to see some more sales in areas that we didn't have sales before. So Aurora's quality system is, we are ISO-13485. We actually have our own little in-house manufacturing company that we were able to blend in with the company. They were a local company out of Carlsbad. And they came to us, and we thought the opportunity was just great to merge us together, and this is going to really help our supply chain for our products. They're actually now part of our ISO certification. So we're actually making implants now with our new machine shop, which is just 2 miles away from our office. And they actually are in our office as employees and full-time integration. Their company and now our company is now one company, it's just Aurora, and we're really excited about it. And they've been helping to help us prototype faster, machine implants and instruments faster, and we've been able to get them part of our certification, as I mentioned. We have a great team. We have engineers in-house. We have also consultative engineers that work for Aurora. And then we have full prototype capabilities in our facility in Carlsbad. Skipping over Slide 11 and going to Slide 12. Again, we talked about the #1 priority. One of our biggest key initiatives was to get rid of the third-party products as much as we could and focus on Aurora products, and we've done that. Two, we've entered into the pain market with the SiLO system and with the ZIP market, and it's done really well. And number three is the ZIP clinical study, which we have our first patients registered. And we've actually begun -- we've done our first surgeries with the ZIP study. And it's been a major increase, like I said, from 8% to over 40% of sales revenues are now because of the ZIP product. And the DEXA patent, which was a big winner for us at the Boston Trade Show, NAS, North American Spine Society in Boston, Massachusetts, last week. Moving to Slide 13. Again, third-party products who are representing 54% of all sales in 2019, and that was a problem that we needed to correct, and we've done that. So now as of today, right now, today, we're at over 70% of Aurora products. And as I mentioned earlier, by the time we get to the next, say, 30 to 60 days, we're going to be able to move that number to 80% of our products. So we feel really good about this line change and profitability change because it's more a better contribution margin for Aurora. And on that, it is on Slide 14. We've commercialized and released the SOLO system. This is a big break for us. We launched it in Q3 in 2020. It continues to be a growing product for us. And we are actually converting this 3D-printed product into our DEXA portfolio. So we think it's going to be even more exciting to talk about SOLO next year because we're advancing the way the product is made with our patented technology with DEXA. APOLLO plate, we got FDA approval in late February, and we're able to start working through the manufacturing of this product. And we're going to actually release this product as an alpha sites late this year and continue to commercialize that product going all through next year. And then our team is constantly working on new advancements, and we have a couple of new exciting things that are part of the pipeline of product development that the engineering team is working on, and we feel really good about what's in the pipeline. Looking at revenue growth, on Slide 15, here. So the global pain market, as we've been talking a little bit here, is a very large, robust market, $14.5 billion by the end of 2026 with a CAGR of 13.8%. The pain market is evolving because the pain doctors and the interventional doctors are now using devices to help combat opioids to help treat their patients with mechanical fixation or mechanical devices to help get that patient back to good. And then, of course, the spine doctors are just as important to this equation. We see a collaboration between the pain interventionalists and our orthopedic and our neurospine doctors to help make these patients better as a team. And so in our cadavers labs and in our lab sessions, we've had ortho and neuro doctors there training, the interventional doctors, on how to be better clinicians using some of these devices that are helping the patients get back to good, and these labs have been fantastic. And the interaction, the collaboration amongst the doctors has been just impressive, and it's really fun to see how everyone is working so well together. And this market is really looking in this direction. I think innovation arc is going to continue to grow and expand with some really big players in there. And we've had the privilege of chatting with some of these big companies that are looking at Aurora closely to see how does this little company do it, and we're having a lot of fun while we're in this sector. Going into Slide 16, revenue growth. So the SiLO is our fastest-growing revenue growth product from a new development product. It's had quarter-over-quarter growth. It addressed the market that was needed in the SI joint fusion market, which fuses the iliac bone to the sacrum bone, so SI joint fusion. The global MIS SI joint market is valued at $150 million as of 2018, but it's expected to reach over $450 million by the end of 2025. So it has a growing CAGR of 14.7%. The leading company that's out there is SI Bone, which has done an amazing job. SI Bone, even in their own words, we concur that this market has only been tapped into about 10%, and that's a lot of growth in this market to come. And we think Aurora and its position of what we're developing as a company and then what we're currently providing as a company is really maximizing this opportunity. And we are treating this opportunity with open arms because we see this as a great place for Aurora to be in the training sessions, and the cadavers lab sessions have gone really well. So we launched this product in late 2020. And again, as I mentioned, it's become one of our fastest growing products quarter-over-quarter, and we continue to promote this product. And we showed a really good interest from doctors that came by our booth at NASS last week, which takes us to the second product, which is the SiLO TFX. The SiLO TFX is our metal version of our posterior transfixing SI joint system. So the transfixing system is really key to us because it allows doctors to use a single incision, minimally invasive approach to fusing the SI joint with an implant that is patented, has unmatched biomechanics. The biomechanics on this device are incredible, and we really think this is going to be a great addition to our portfolio. It's going to have people talking about Aurora, wanting to use this product of Aurora. It's going to be a great product for patients, for doctors and for Aurora from a profitability -- and at least also from a profitability, but at least as a product that to us brings really strong revenues and growth to the company. So we're currently FDA pending with this product, and we expect to do a full commercial launch in the first half of next year. The ZIP FLEX is -- this product is still near and dear to us. It's part of our product extension of the ZIP technology. It is being pushed into next year and probably the second half of next year, and it will compete with products such as CoFLEX and Vertaflex as a device that helps treat stenosis for patients. But we're going to continue with our ZIP study, and we're going to enter into a multicenter study with our SiLO. And that's going to create our real focus there in the pain sector. So the ZIP flex is going to be moved into next year. Going to Slide 18. So the Screwless procedure. So in December 2020, Aurora, we started off on this major center study -- a multicenter study with pain interventionists, neuro and orthopedic doctors. And we hope that the -- one second here. All right. The goal of the study was to prove that this product can be used to help treat pain for patients. Over 5,000 procedures have already been formed before we started this multicenter study with Aurora. And this has increased our monthly revenues and our monthly unit volumes of this product, and we've got some really good preliminary results so far. Patients are feeling great. They're able to really get back on their feet. And they have really embraced this technology, the pain doctors. So the pain doctors are putting in the ZIP device and training other pain interventional doctors to put in this device. And many of the doctors that we've trained with our ZIP multicenter study are the same doctors that participated and were part of the Vertiflex multicenter study, which our hats are off to that product. And that performance of that product is ZIP product really offers the benefit to these patients and to the doctors in their hands and getting it out to those patients. And again, eliminating the use of stenosis and a really great, cool from Dr. Mangel, who's at National Spine & Pain, the largest pain center in America, device has revolutionized his practice as a minimally invasive device. It significantly improves the function of pain for its patients. So he's really excited to be part of the study. He's really helped us push along the study, getting people excited about the company and about what we're doing with the product. And he's been at almost every single of our training sessions and is proud of many of his colleagues from the largest bank group in America to Aurora, and they used the ZIP product week in and week out in their centers across the country. Going to Slide 19. We recently got our patent, which was in October of last year, and we got our first commercialization 510(k) approval of the DEXA technology, which is an entire platform. I could talk about this product for hours. But we commercialized our DEXA-C product, which is for cervical. The cervical cage is going to be -- was shown last week in Boston at the North American Spine Society. It was definitely the most talked-about product, in our opinion on the floor and amongst the doctors and distributors that we're coming to buy, both to view this technology and this product. U.S. side and international side, there's a lot of interest in this product. So we commercialized this product. We've got it queued up for a full release, and we're going to continue to roll this product out. And it's the first implant that actually allows the patient and the doctor to be aligned with the implant with the stiffness and the density of the implant, because bone density matters. And our implant actually matches closest to that patients DEXA scan score or their T-score. And the doctor can simply just look at the product and say, it's color-coded, it's numeric values and then pick the right implant for that patient. And this is an example in Slide 20 that shows how the implant has evolved over time. And there's lot of good information about bone quality, bone density and the way that the patient's body responds to implants. This shows the evolution of how doctors have gone from a bone allograft to a metal implant, to a polymer, to 3D printed. And what Aurora has done has taken all the benefits of this platform of products that have come out over the last 25 years and it put it all into one product that is better and is exactly what the doctor is looking for, and it's exactly what the patient's need. It helps fit that patient's bone density where the other systems that you see above do not. And the DEXA technology is really going to be key. And we were hearing some really great feedback from the doctors that this is the product that they've been waiting for. And it's the second largest product in the spine pie chart of hardware. Number one is the fixation device, the pedicle screws, which is number one, always is. And number two, that pie wedge there is interbody devices. And we think Aurora, with its technology and its patented technology, that the DEXA technology is going to be the most sought-after product in interbody. And we couldn't be more pleased with this patent and with the response we've been getting for the product so far. And of course, it's a platform. So I'm going on to Slide 21. As you see here, it's going to cross over into all of our interbody-type devices. All of our implants are going to become DEXA technology, and this is being validated by our doctor groups, distributor groups, our engineers. And we have the physician paper, PhD researching going on with the product. And we are going to also embark on a multicenter study with some universities across the country that also help validate the product, product claims and the way the product is performing. Going to Slide 22. So we're able to hit most of our objectives this year. We feel really good about the objectives we did hit. We were able to add some key ideas to our goals. And so with the SOLO system that was released and had been successful in its growth, that has been released. The SiLO SI joint system is, like I said, the fastest-growing product for us. The APOLLO cervical plate, the hydro pedicle screw and DEXA release and launch at the North American Spine Society was fantastic. And then SiLO TFX is still on track to be commercialized and released in the beginning of next year. And we are -- as I mentioned, we're going to move the ZIP FLEX also into next year because of the priorities in SiLO TFX and on the DEXA technology. Skipping past Slide 23 into Slide 24. This shows how the company has evolved over time and from 2014 all the way through 2020, and our numbers are released in 2021 so far. And we think that we're starting to come out of the COVID side of things. We've been -- it's been a slower growth than we would probably want, but at least the growth has count. We've been able to grow each month and each quarter this year. And it's been more tactful because of our approach with not only just the spine side but we were able to add new revenues to the company because of our new pain division and that's been really key to our growth this year. Moving to Slide 25, shows our revenues and our gross profit margins and our adjusted EBITDA. And it's key to note in here that we're showing a growth into this second half of this year. The company is showing growth, and that we had a decent start of the year, and I think we're closing very strong this year. Slide 26. It gives you more granular detail of our income statement and our highlights for the quarter. The thing that's important to remember is that we were able to strengthen our balance sheet because we were able to pick up the investments for the extra products that we wanted to build out and to create more products development and more inventory development that was needed to help increase the sales revenues that we have anticipated and actually indeed are seeing. So successful execution of converting to third-party products is part of that strategy and the reason why we needed to develop more products out there, which helped us adjust our EBITDA profitability, so better contribution margins. Slide 27. Again, a key to note on the slide is that we did pick up the $5 million investment into Aurora, and we feel as though this is going to be a really nice investment for Aurora. It gives us the runway that we needed to get out and commercialize all of these products. Next slide is 28. So this is a peer comparison information slide. It shows our stock price at -- on the Canadian side of $0.44 a share. And of course, we're on the OTC listed as well, and it shows the different valuations. We still feel that we're way undervalued. And that this is a great buy for investors that are interested in Aurora and Aurora story and that they should be interested in our story and our patents because this is why we are way undervalued and why I think Aurora should be looked at closer from investors. It's a great stock to pick up. And we think that with Slide 29, that, again, innovative companies. So back in 2019, Boston Scientific acquired Vertiflex, which is a company that was just down the street from us in California, that had released an interspinous device as part of a multicenter study, and they were required from Boston Scientific for $465 million. That was a 7.8x multiple. We think the success so far that we've already experienced with our ZIP multicenter study is in line with this type of data that big key companies are looking at, such as the Boston Scientific. And we know that this is a product that is going to be continually reviewed and looked at. So this takes me to Slide 29 to 30, so execute the initial -- initiating the focus on the new products, the proprietary products, the patented products of Aurora, full conversion of the third-party products out. And Aurora continues to focus on a strategy bringing expansion to our portfolio and increasing our gross margins. The first half has grown -- is grown, and the second half is showing better growth for Aurora. So we showed in the first half of 2021 a gross margin of 45%, up from 37% from 2020; the new product initiative to drive revenue growth to expand on our sales force, which is key to us, expand also into the pain market further and continue to train and educate those doctors on our products; the SOLO technology as it expands into DEXA-added technology to it and grow in that stand-alone product; the SiLO implant, which continues to show growth and expansion; the APOLLO cervical plate, which is a full strategy with our DEXA cervical cages that we showed at Boston, the APOLLO plate is part of that strategy. And also as that product gets rolled out, that adds an 8% increase to Aurora on its product versus -- 80% of proprietary products versus third party. And then launching the multicenter studies for the SiLO, which is going to be coming out of the first half of this coming year; and the ZIP study continue releasing key clinical data on the success of how these studies are going; and then work for FDA approvals on more products such as FLEX and further products down the road. Slides 31 and 32, it is myself and members of my team and my amazing Board of Directors, people who believed in Aurora since day 1, and I couldn't be more thrilled to have these gentlemen represent us. And as we expand into the 2022 campaign and close out 2021, no change is experienced on our Board, and everyone is really excited about the future. Adam, I'll throw it back to you.

Great. Thanks, Trent, for the overview.

Let's expand a bit on topics. What's your background like?

I came from the operating room. I started as a scrub nurse back when I was a young man, and I still feel like I'm young. And we're -- I worked in surgery. I got started in sports medicine. I fell in love with the idea of working on the spine with some early start-up companies, and I helped take a company public back in 2006, which was Alphatec. And I also help raise capital for companies, such as Lanx, which we sold to Biomet for $143 million. And I helped commercialize a very successful spine company called Spineart, which is friends of ours, a good company. It's in the marketplace as well. And I felt like I wanted to do Aurora myself. And I felt like we had some really good ideas and some good patents that we could apply and wanted to bring this product to market. So that's part of my background.

Great. The company's working on issuing several new products like ZIP, SiLO, DEXA. How large can these initiatives be for Aurora Spine?

Well, so I touched on it a little bit with the multicenter study that Vertaflex had when Boston bought them at 7x revenue of $465 million acquisition. I think that the ZIP technology and its patent and its multicenter study are really key to Aurora's position in the market, the customer base that we work with. And we couldn't be more thrilled about the ZIP multicenter study. The SiLO product is a really key product, and it's talked a lot about in the marketplace, the biggest leader in the SI joint space as SI Bone. It's estimated that the value of the SI joint market is a $2.5 billion market in a market that actually has a total addressable market with a gross -- with growth initiatives in it that has a potential of over 279,000 procedures performed annually, and that's a conservative number. And I mentioned in my presentation that less than 10% of that market is actually tapped into. And we feel as though it's just getted started to be tapped into by the pain interventionalists. And they see more SI joint procedures, and they see more SI joint injections than any orthopedic or neurospine doctor does ever based upon their treatment and the treatment of the SI joint space. So we see this as a very large opportunity for Aurora with our SiLO and our SiLO TFX system. And it's showing in the numbers, and we're really excited about it.

How are you marketing these products? You mentioned you were at a major spine conference last week. How was that conference? And what was the response like to some of your newer products?

So 2 parts of that. One, yes, we were at Boston, the North American Spine Society meeting last week. And I think the foot traffic at these meetings are still a little bit slow because of the COVID. We had some good -- some really strong interactions with some doctors that did attend and some distributors that attended. We were excited to see them, and they really expressed a lot of interest in the DEXA platform, the DEXA technology. It's key to us. And we're glad to see trade shows get back on schedule around the country, and we think that next year we will be even better. As far as what we did this year in training and getting exposure to the product, we had a very strong presence on social media, getting the product out there that for doctors to see the success of the product, sharing information online, on social media. But more importantly, we were able to get doctors to come to cadaveric labs around the country, which I talked about in the presentation. Our cadavers labs, every single cadavers lab that we've performed this year have all been sold out. Like, not a single slot was available to add on. We've trained over 200 doctors this year and the year is not over. In fact, we've got a couple of regional meetings, additional regional meetings, coming up in the midwest and in the northwest and in the southwest. So we're going to be closer to 250 doctors trained on our technologies and our platforms, and the reception has been really strong. And again, it's showing in the numbers. We're seeing sales increases because of this technology and unit increases and profitability increases, and we're meeting some really terrific doctors that are working with us.

Can you describe how revenues are by geography? I asked this question as some hospitals were inundated with COVID patients leading to cancellations of elective surgeries.

Yes, we did see some facilities in Florida. And then in certain areas of Texas, it's not all of Texas, we saw some of that slow down. We saw one facility go -- in Mississippi go in and out 1 week on, 1 week off, just to control the flow of patients with COVID. It didn't -- I think it was more of a supply thing for, I think, a lot of companies and maybe even a little bit for us that we were trying to get the supply chains managed. But hospital-wise, it didn't affect us nearly as much as I heard it affecting some other spine companies out there. And we hope that, that doesn't affect us going into next year. We're hoping that everyone is going to get back on their feet and patients are going to get their vaccinations and we can get back to a healthy new normal, if you will.

You mentioned the company recently raised some capital. Maybe share with the audience what was the purpose of raising the capital? And what are you going to be using the proceeds for?

Very clear on that. We took the investment because we felt as though we needed to build our sales infrastructure, and we needed to build more inventory. We were limited. We could have had -- I think we could had more sales if I had more inventory. So I'm building more instrument sets. I'm adding more salespeople in key strategic areas. I'm going to build and add in more direct salespeople versus distribution. I'm a big fan of our distributors, and I support them completely. But I also know there's areas in the country that's just better for us to have a direct sales rep. And having a direct sales rep, it gives us better margins. It gives us better controls of those areas. And I took that investment to invest in salespeople, product and technology and completely dedicated these proceeds towards a stronger sales structure for the company.

And finally, where do you see Aurora in the next 5 years?

I think that we're going into a good close for the rest of the year, this year. And I think it's -- this is a springboard that we needed with this multicenter study for the ZIP and for the multicenter studies that are going to begin for the SiLO implant and TFX device. I see that Aurora will have a very strong position within the device side of the pain interventional market. And I think with the DEXA implants, the DEXA technology platform that this is actually going to give us a position within the spine market to be unique in that space and unique from the standpoint that people are coming to us because they want that technology. And I think it's going to be sought after by doctors and by distributors. And patients are going to read about it because the patients are more savvy than ever. They are reviewing social media posts. They are looking into technology they find online. The doctors are advancing themselves. Doctors are always looking to have new technologies that are going to be minimally invasive. And I think Aurora is going to grow significantly going forward into 2021, '22. And over the next 5 years, I expect for our sales revenue growth to grow at a new clip, at a high rate clip, and we couldn't be more thrilled about it.

Trent, thank you very much for your time today. We greatly appreciate it. To anyone out there that has not already signed up for a one-on-one, again, please send me an e-mail at [email protected] or again, visit www.lythampartners.com/virtual and click the one-on-one meeting request button. Finally, we have another presentation coming up here shortly. Again, visit the Lytham website for details. Thanks again for listening, and enjoy the rest of your day.