Covalon Technologies Ltd. (COV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining Covalon's conference call to the new CovaGuard technology. As a reminder, today's conference is recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Brian Pedlar, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Danny Brannagan, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, Mr. Pedlar and Mr. Brannagan.

Thank you, Megan. My name is Danny Brannagan, and as Covalon's Chief Financial Officer, I would like to thank everyone for taking the time this morning to attend our conference call. We will be discussing the recent press release related to Covalon's CovaGuard technology. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end of our call. Before we begin the discussion, I would like to remind participants that this call is covered by Covalon's safe harbor statement. Certain statements included on this conference call may be considered forward-looking. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by our statements. And therefore, these statements should not be taken as guarantees of future performance or results. All forward-looking statements are based on management's current beliefs, assumptions and information currently available to us and related to anticipated financial performance, business prospects, partnership opportunities, strategies, regulatory developments, market acceptance and future commitments, among other things. Participants on this conference call are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this conference call. Due to risks and uncertainties, including those identified by Covalon in its public securities filings, actual events may differ materially from current expectations. Covalon disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. I would now like to turn the call over to Covalon's CEO, Brian Pedlar.

Danny, thanks for the introduction. Good morning, and thank you for joining us this morning to talk about Covalon's new platform technology that we call CovaGuard. Over the past week, I received positive inquiries and responses from numerous medical companies, manufacturers, hospitals, health care providers and others regarding CovaGuard, and we felt we should hold a conference call for interested parties and shareholders so we could update you on the progress we are making with the new AquaGuard technology. Last week, on Tuesday, March 31, Covalon announced the development of a new antimicrobial technology that we formulated specifically to kill enveloped viruses like the COVID-19 virus or more technically correct the SARS-CoV-2 virus as well as other viruses, bacteria and pathogens that come in contact with skin and the surfaces of medical protective equipment like masks and gloves. So what's novel or special about this technology? Well, the CovaGuard technology has been demonstrated in our lab to be highly effective at killing pathogens on contact and has been designed to have that added benefit of providing persistent protection by killing microbes for up to 4 days. We extensively tested the CovaGuard technology on surgical masks using surrogate pathogens that mimic the responses of coronaviruses to antimicrobials, and the CovaGuard technology continues to kill these surrogate pathogens for the 4-day period. So I thought it would be easier for me to give you an example about the technology and I'll focus on our hand sanitizer. So our CovaGuard Hand Sanitizer, like many other sanitizers on the market, adhere to the U.S. Center for Disease Control guidelines and utilizes a high concentration of alcohol added to base to provide that immediate contact-killing effectiveness within seconds. We've all read about hand sanitizers, unfortunately, over the past several months. However, what happens is the alcohol evaporates very quickly and it stops killing microbes. So the next surface that you touch with your hands, you could then be immediately exposed to pathogens. So to overcome this, the CovaGuard technology was formulated with other ingredients, in addition to the alcohol, that are intended to continue to remain active on the skin and provide sustained protection for days after the alcohol has evaporated. Now how does it do this? Well, CovaGuard forms an invisible protective film barrier on skin that mimics the natural lipid barriers that are found on everyone's skin. And the lipid barrier is part of the skin's natural defense against pathogens. The difference is that the CovaGuard barrier also contains active antimicrobials that actively kill pathogens, including the COVID-19 virus. We also designed it to be water-repellent so the barrier helps to prolong its effectiveness on skin or gloves or masks so it won't easily be removed by exposure to moisture. The individual antimicrobial effectiveness of some of the compounds in the CovaGuard technology have been studied in literature by scientists and clinicians for over 30 years. So we are very confident in our technology's ability to kill the COVID-19 virus. The active ingredients in CovaGuard have a long history of being highly effective against enveloped viruses, including coronaviruses, such as the SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV as well as similar influenza viruses, including the H1N1 and H5N1 strands. The components have also been shown to be very potent antimicrobial and antifungal agents against numerous other microbes, like bacteria, both gram-positive and gram-negative. So we combined these active antiviral and antimicrobial agents within the proprietary mixture of compounds that form a barrier of film that creates a lasting, protective effect to trap, deactivate and kill viruses, bacteria and pathogens. In addition to its effectiveness, we also designed it to be safe, safe when applied to skin and safe for protective medical equipment like masks and gloves, whether that protective equipment is used for the first time or is intended to be reused. So how did we come up with the CovaGuard technology? Well, in early January, as the news about the novel coronavirus began to spread, we immediately created a COVID-19 task force to see if we could adapt any of our existing technology and experience to help during this crisis. Our mission was to create a new technology that could help to protect health care workers, first responders, patients and, of course, the general public. Our R&D team is staffed with experts in antimicrobial technology development, and it's supervised by Dr. Val DiTizio, who is our Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer. And I'm going to tell you he is a recognized expert in antimicrobial technologies in the medical industry. Val and his team have developed and patented numerous novel antimicrobial technologies and products, tissue repair products and drug delivery systems over the past 25 years. And they've done that both for Covalon and in our own products that are on the market but also under engagements with dozens of globally recognized medical companies. So we leverage this experience, this experience with infection control, skin integrity and wound healing along with our key decades of experience killing pathogens to create this technology, and we filed a patent on CovaGuard. I have to take this time right now to tell you how incredibly proud I am of the breakthrough our team has developed, and they did it at great personal sacrifice especially under the times that we're facing now. Our team has been working around the clock to get CovaGuard ready for us to begin manufacturing products containing this technology. To start out, we've identified and formulated 2 products, a hand sanitizer and medical mask spray. And those products comply with the U.S. FDA and Health Canada regulations. So that means that we can immediately begin to market and sell those products as they roll off the manufacturing line. We are in the process of sourcing raw materials in order to commence manufacturing of the hand sanitizer and the mask spray, and we will start in our Mississauga, Ontario facility. And I anticipate that we will begin manufacturing in the next several weeks. So we're not talking about launching this technology months from now. We intend to deploy our first manufactured boxes of hand sanitizer and mask spray to frontline medical workers because we believe this is where the need is the greatest. Sanitizing medical masks so they can be worn longer and even possibly reuse is a topic that the media is focusing on right now, and I think that the CovaGuard technology has a role to play in this by helping to extend the life of masks. We are also aware that our products can benefit the general public, and we are exploring ways to partnering to increase manufacturing capabilities to help as many people as we can. Now at the beginning of this call, I referred to CovaGuard as a platform technology. The CovaGuard technology will also enable the rapid formulation of other numerous products that contain the CovaGuard technology, and that's -- those are 2 arrangements that we can establish with medical companies, manufacturers of other protective equipment, consumer packaged goods companies and manufacturers of those products as well as with pharmacy chains through their online stores. We currently work with many medical companies on our other patented antimicrobial delivery systems, and we develop products for many multinational medical companies. We see an opportunity to make CovaGuard available to our current partners as well as in new medical verticals. I am already seeing new doors open for Covalon in response to our announcement last week. Now in addition to the CovaGuard technology, over the past several weeks, we have also leveraged our supply chain relationships to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. We have secured a source of personal protective equipment, surgical masks, face shields, antiviral suits and other protective equipment and have so far received orders for 1 million masks and related equipment from our international distribution channels. We anticipate receiving several additional orders in the near future and we will -- that we intend to supply in the coming weeks. To remind everyone, we are a registered medical products company with Health Canada and the United States FDA and about 20 other countries in the world, and we are licensed to import medical products. We'll be then reaching out to Canadian hospitals to see if there's interest in Canada for our personal protective equipment as we would love to help Canadian first responders protect themselves. As a company, we've also been carefully assessing the announced government financial assistance programs. And although not all of the details are clear, we believe that we will qualify for programs through the Canadian government, Ontario government, some programs in the United States as well as in the U.K. We are also assessing how the announced COVID-19 technology fast-track programs can benefit Covalon as we introduce CovaGuard and other antimicrobial products in our portfolio. I would now like to open the line for questions. May I ask that you please try to keep to one question at a time. There'll be lots of time to get back in the queue to ask for more. Thank you, and back over to you, Megan.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Justin Keywood with Stifel GMP.

Just on the strategic partners that you're looking to see. Can you just provide some additional details on how these discussions are progressing? And is this something that could come to a conclusion pretty quickly? Or are you looking to launch the products in the interim, the medical mask spray and sanitization product, and then maybe having these partners develop over the medium or longer term?

Justin, thanks for the question, and it's a good question. So we recognized the need immediately. The technology is ready to go. We've created the formulations for both the sanitizer -- hand sanitizer and the mask spray. And we're working very hard. Our team is sourcing the raw materials as we speak for us to start manufacturing. At our core, we're not a manufacturing company. We have the capability in our facility in Mississauga. But really to make the biggest impact, we'll need to partner with other manufacturing firms in order to make both products in high enough quantities to satisfy the markets in Canada and the United States and elsewhere. So that's something, I think, we can do relatively quickly as far as it relates to the hand sanitizer and the spray. But there's lots of inquiries that have come through. And I must apologize to those I've not been able to get back to and our team has not been able to contact yet. We've had lots of inquiries, and I think there's lots of opportunities for us to embed this technology and other products to help protect people. Hopefully, that can happen quickly, but there are FDA and Health Canada regulations that will dictate how fast those products can get into the market.

Our next question is from [ Al Deters ], private investor.

I have a quick question. I'm a bit confused on the last few press releases that came out regarding the new technology. When you come out on March 31, the first release, which came out at 7:30 in the morning, it stated that you have a new breakthrough antimicrobial technology formulated to kill the COVID-19 virus. And then later that night, you come out, and we've seen a lot of that -- those words, and you say at the IIROC's request, the company states that it is not making any express or implied claims that its products has the ability to eliminate or cure or contain COVID-19. And that's pretty clear. Now this morning, you come back with words in your prior statement that uses the word "kill the COVID-19 virus" again. So are we reiterating the very first press release you came out with that it does have the ability to kill the virus? I'd like just a clarification of that, please.

Thanks, [ Al ]. The -- so IIROC, when we put our press release, was not comfortable with us using COVID-19 in the title of the release. And so during that day, I spent the entire day talking to them, trying to allow them to understand that Covalon is in the business of killing pathogens. And as a company and technology-wise, we're very comfortable in the statements we've made around CovaGuard and its ability to kill the COVID-19 virus. And I think our evidence and our -- and the research over the past 30 years in the active ingredients back that up. But unfortunately, to be honest, I'm not sure that the Canadian regulators believe that a Canadian company could come up with something that could do what we've done. So we retracted the headline, but we didn't retract the statements that we made within the body of the release. We simply clarified those in the press release that came out at the end of that day. So thanks, [ Al ]. I appreciate that question.

Our next question is from [ Murray Miller ], private investor.

Brian, congratulations to you and Val and the team. I think this is -- as a physician that works in a hospital, this is going to be enormous for us. Right now, almost everyone I know working in the hospital has raw hands from the sanitizer we're using. They -- every time you walk into a hallway, there's sanitizer all over the place, you put sanitizer on. You walk into a room, you put sanitizer on. You wash your hands after you walk out of the patient's room, you put sanitizer on. Everyone's hands are raw. So if we can get something that's going to last beyond the immediate time frame, it will be incredibly helpful because as you said, once you sanitize your hands once and touch something, it's no longer effective. The question is how long is it going to be before we can get our hands on some of this? Excuse the pun.

[ Murray ], thanks for the question. I appreciate it. And I have to say, I've got a lot of respect for the frontline workers right now. It's a very difficult environment. I speak to a lot of them, and I know that not only are their hands raw but so are their nerves. It's a very scary environment. To the extent that our product can help relieve some of that fear and also help to provide sustained protection on hands is something that we're hoping to be able to achieve, and I expect that we will be up and manufacturing and beginning manufacturing process of our first batch in the next several weeks. It doesn't take very long to formulate and fill bottles. It's just getting our hands on all of the raw materials in this climate. Particularly bottles has been very difficult. We've secured a supply and intend to continue to order. So I'm hopeful that we can get this into your hands and others' on the fronts as soon as we can following our commencement of manufacturing. So again, I appreciate the question, [ Murray ].

You next question is from Lyle Atkins with Independent Financial Group.

One clarification on what this "up to 4 days" means. Don't people need to know that it's 100% effective for 1 day, et cetera?

Thanks, Lyle. Yes, look, we -- our testing shows that it continues to kill not only on the material used masks. So not only does it kill what's on the material, but it kills around it in a -- call it, a zone of inhibition. And it continues to do that for 4 days, depending on what happens with those surfaces. So mask, hands, obviously, if you are in a hospital environment and you overwhelm your hands through liquid, feces, blood, the -- that sanitizer that's on your skin or your gloves may not last a significant period of time. But under normal use and we think that it has a potential certainly in our testing on masks to be effective for 4 days. Hands -- again, depending on how we use our hands, certainly, that time frame is probably slightly less but even hours is a benefit as we heard from the doctor that was on, but it's a benefit for frontline workers. So it also depends on the application, but the technology has been designed to integrate with the skin in a way that it will stay on the skin for extended periods of time up to 4 days. Thanks, Lyle, for the question.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from [ Marcel Sush, Environ ].

I have a question regarding how -- could you explain how you're able to apply this spray to mask, for example? And how would you guarantee that you have covered all the aspects of the mask. And I thought you have a section on and a section that might be -- would somebody get hurt by.

Yes. Thanks, [ Marcel ]. It's a good question. So there is an application procedure with the spray. So -- and it's relatively straightforward. You spray the mask, allow it to dry for several minutes and put it on. And you could spray the interior and the exterior. Most of the surgical and N95 masks are also moisture barriers and have waterproofing. And we've tested the formulation of the mask spray, and in our tests, it has not appreciably changed those properties at all. So it keeps those properties of the mask intact. It also creates a zone of inhibition. So the spray will go on to the mask and create a film. Even if it doesn't get everywhere, there is a zone around here. I believe that material impacts the mask even if it doesn't cover the entire thing, and it will provide a zone of inhibition around where the coating has touched the mask in order to kill the microbes. So it's part of what we designed into the technology, its ability to coat and provide areas around where that coating is as well in order to kill. So no product is perfect, but we've done a reasonably good job in trying to create something that can help extend the life of masks. Thanks, [ Marcel ].

Your next question is from [ Paul Lucat ], investor.

Brian, very interesting developments. I appreciate that you've done some in-house validation testing on similar pathogens. I think the CDC guidelines, you have to demonstrate that it kills similar pathogens, more difficult to kill pathogens. Are you pursuing any outside validation, a third-party validation for the claims?

Yes. [ Paul ], thanks for the question. Yes, absolutely. We are working currently with labs to test, to continue the testing in third-party labs and also continuing to search for labs that actually have a reliable supply -- this sounds strange, but a reliable supply of the COVID-19 pathogens that can be safely used in testing. So those -- that tends to take several months for that testing to be completed. But I can tell you we're absolutely confident based on all the history that has -- that supports the active ingredients that we have in the CovaGuard technology of its ability to kill enveloped viruses. So we will continue to test internally and test externally, but we wanted to get this technology to the market as soon as we possibly could because of the dire need in the health care settings as well as in the general public.

Your next question is from [ Murray Miller ], private investor.

I did have a question about personal protective equipment, or PPE, because that's a big issue, I think, worldwide and certainly in Ontario where I work. As of last week, a directive came down of -- the staff get one mask per day when they walk into the hospital, surgical mask. And that's their mask for the day. And at the end of the day, all the masks are collected in a biohazard container with the hope that there'll be something that comes on the market that allows us to resterilize the mask and reuse them. If this is available, then I guess we can just have one person to have their own mask, sterilize it themselves, keep it for the next day. Again, we need that yesterday.

Yes. [ Murray ], I appreciate the comments and I can tell you -- I've heard from a number of frontline workers that the issues with masks. One that I've heard, some -- in some cases, outside of hospital environments, people are wearing them for a week. And if you just think about that and think about breathing into something all day long and all the exposure that happens throughout the course of the day to the outside and inside of that mask, those are not exactly sterile, clean surfaces by the end of the day. So that's the reason that we're trying to accelerate this mask spray into the market as soon as we can. And hopefully, we can get there within the next several weeks. Thanks, [ Murray ].

Your next question is from [ Jay Palmanjari ] with [ Perdium ].

I'm sorry. My question has been answered.

Your next question is from [ Arnold Shell ], private investor.

Congratulations, Brian. I have different kinds of questions. What is your current cash position and your burn rate? And do you think you're going to have to raise more capital? And how is your expense reduction program going?

[ Arnold ], thanks for the questions. I don't think we're going to talk on this call about our cash position and burn rate. We just finished our quarter. We're working on the numbers now. So I don't want to talk about something that is premature. Like every company, we are assessing the impact of COVID-19 on us. I think everybody has been impacted. It doesn't matter who you are. We are an essential services business. So we've been continuing to operate. And we're essential because quite honestly, our products are essential for those people who use them. They're life-saving in many instances. And so our business is continuing. We are, obviously, employing social distancing in the workplace as much as possible and having people work from home, but we're continuing to operate. So we're assessing the impact. We're assessing the opportunities with some of the government programs. We're assessing the opportunities in our business in other areas. I talked about the sale of personal protective equipment. So we're doing our best to try to keep Covalon servicing the hospitals in our supply chain, in our distribution network in the United States and Latin America, in the U.K., and all of that business is continuing. But as I said, we're still assessing those impacts.

Your next question is from Goldfarb with Goldfarb Intelligence.

Brian, it's Martin Goldfarb. Have we given -- congratulations, first of all. Have we given any of the spray to a hospital to extend the use of their masks so that we can test out the spray immediately?

Good question. We have used the spray ourselves on masks. I've used it when I -- an earlier version when I traveled. We are formulating right now and we have -- we're in the process of trying to fill some samples to get them out to facilities, but we have not engaged in that yet. This is unfolding in real time. So we are trying to move this technology into the market as fast as we can. Normally, these things take months, sometimes years to get into the market, and we've been moving in days and weeks here. So that's on our critical path. It's to get the first manufactured samples into hospitals so they can start using it. We've certainly extensively tested ourselves on masks and are comfortable and tested the properties of the mask before and after to make sure that it continues to protect in all ways that they've intended to protect as well as once sprayed to continue to kill microbes. So stay tuned. That's hopefully happening very shortly. Thanks, Martin. I appreciate the question.

Your next question is from Lyle Atkins, Independent Financial.

Just a clarification on that 4-day issue. It sounds to me like what you're saying is that this should be reapplied as often as you possibly can depending on the job you have.

Yes. Lyle, I think it's -- so for a mask spray, we've tested it and are very comfortable that if a clinician is wearing a mask throughout the day that, that will provide protection throughout that day and onto following days. Again, if it's applied on to hands, it all depends on what you do with your hands as to how long things survive on it. And we've designed the technology to go on to hands and break with the lipid layer and actually form what is technically called a bilayer on the hands of the lipid bilayer in order to embed and hold those antimicrobials. So again, difficult to say exactly how long every instance that survives on people's hands, but we certainly know it's -- in the work that we've done that it survives hours, days and so -- but again, each formulation. And remember, we have to formulate these products in order to get into the market quickly. And so we've done that with both the hand sanitizer and the spray. And so we'll continue to test those as we launch those in the market.

Your next question is from [ Anthony Martius ], private investor.

Again, congratulations. Can you talk about the economics of the products? Obviously, as an investor, I'm hopeful. I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to use this. So what are the economics of this? I would assume if you can extend the life of personal protective equipment, it would be an enormous game changer. So...

Yes. [ Anthony ], it's a good question. And to be honest, we're -- as far as the cost to put this together, the cost to manufacture is not substantially different than other sanitizing solutions. So we have probably a little bit more ingredients than a number of those sanitizers, but the cost to put it together is not substantially different. We've been working up economic models. To be honest, the focus in the early period here is to get it out to help, but obviously, as an investor and a fellow investor, we look at the economic opportunity. I think we have opportunities to license this formulation to -- and partner with companies so we can get more volume out into the market. And I think we have an opportunity to supply it at a reasonable level that is economically positive for those people who are using it to either extend the life of masks or protect hands as well as economically positive for Covalon. So again, it's still early days and we're developing those economic models as we speak.

Our next question is from [ Murray Miller ], private investor.

Brian, you mentioned the personal protective equipment that Covalon has. How do we access that as a Canadian hospital? And also, do you have N95 or the Chinese KN95 equivalent masks?

Thanks, [ Murray ]. We -- anybody who's interested could send an e-mail to myself to [email protected]. We will -- we can provide spec sheets on all the equipment. And we can take orders and fulfill those as there's relatively short lead times, but there are lead times. And N95 masks are in big demand, are -- and are hard to get. So can I guarantee those today however we're working on securing a supply to make sure that we can get the N95s? We certainly have access to surgical masks and all the other antiviral equipment face shields. So I suspect over the next short while, I'm hopeful that we can secure a reliable supply of N95s as well.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from [ David McGinn ], private investor.

I think we all understand that the N95 mask is an effective barrier against the virus even without any antimicrobial or antiviral spray. With this new CovaGuard spray, if it's applied to a surgical mask, would it then make that mask an effective barrier or a more effective barrier? And also could it be applied to a home-made cloth that we're seeing online and that the CDC is recommending that you will make? Could it make those more effective barriers to protect the wearer and not just be protecting the general public from the infected person?

Thanks for the question, [ David ]. No, the N95 masks and the surgical masks are tested through standards that are established for those medical devices. And so spraying with our CovaGuard spray doesn't mimic all of the protections that are available through N95 masks and the surgical masks. All it does is any -- it creates a film where any microbes that come in contact with it are trapped and subject to the activity of leading antimicrobials. So it certainly can be applied to cloth and basic masks we -- but we've got to be careful that we're not making any claims about our ability to upgrade material whether it's cloth or even basic surgical masks to perform the way that N95 masks do. We do know that N95 masks and surgical masks are designed to prevent liquid. And in the case of N95, 95% of particulate of a certain size gets filtered. And basically, that means it gets trapped within the fibers of the mask. So having a spray on it, we hope, will deactivate and kill those organisms that get trapped in those masks. It can be applied to cloth, but it doesn't upgrade that cloth to the level of an N95. Thanks for your question, [ David ].

Our next question is from Kevin Duffy with Earth To Go.

Congratulations again. I'm looking to see if this can be vertically integrated into the polymer and if you've taken those steps as to not make it a spray but to have it basically as a slow release based on the wear of the polymer.

Thanks, Kevin. Yes, we've worked with a lot of the substances that went into the CovaGuard technology in our other platforms, including our coating technology. And so we're very familiar with how that integrates. We certainly have done and actually used the learnings from those technologies that we have to create CovaGuard. So I think there's a lot of overlap there and we have the opportunity to also embed antiviral and other antimicrobials within our coating. We've got a lot of experience with that. So certainly, there's some overlap. Thanks, Kevin.

Your next question is from [ David Parks ], investor.

[indiscernible] Brian, a question [indiscernible]

David, I'm having a lot of trouble hearing you.

[indiscernible] Can you hear me now?

A little better, yes.

[indiscernible] last night, CDC [indiscernible]

Yes. I'm sorry, David, we're going to have to move on. I can't -- your line is very -- not a very good one. I'm sorry. I just -- I can't make out the question. I apologize.

Our next question is from Ian Brindle with Board of Covalon.

Brian, my question is about other surfaces. So you spray the mask, you can use this for a hand sanitizer. In a hospital or waiting room situation, what about other surfaces, such as chairs, desks, beds and so on and so on?

Thanks for the question, Ian. Yes, it is possible to spray on other surfaces. There's also other products on the market that can do that. So we focused on the surfaces that we think others have not addressed in areas, quite frankly, that we think are extremely -- high-risk areas like masks and hands. But yes, they can certainly be sprayed on to other surfaces as well.

Our next question is from [ Steve Sobecki ], investor.

I'm wondering if there's an avenue for the product as in a hand sanitizer to make it into the general public where you can purchase it at pharmacies like Shoppers or Walmart?

[ Steve ], thanks for the question. Yes. As we -- as I tried to allude to earlier that we are trying to focus on frontline workers, where we think the need is the greatest, but we also want to get it into the general public. I know we've all tried to get our hands on sanitizer and it's just not available. I know there are other companies like breweries and others that are creating alcohol-based sanitizers. But absolutely, I think this is something that can benefit the general public in consumer channels as well. Thanks for the question.

Our next question is from Keith Schaefer, Investing Whisperer.

So guys, I guess the one thing I'd be curious about here is it sounds like there's still a path that needs to be followed to get this thing both regulated properly and sold the way you'd like to. What would you guide investors to look forward to say, "Okay, here's the next few milestones we're going to be achieving on our way to getting this product into full commercial sales the way we want to, both from a regulatory point of view and a commercial point of view?"

Thanks, Keith. So from a regulatory perspective, I believe we have met all requirements. And the only thing holding us up now is sourcing enough volume of raw materials and scaling up the manufacturing ourselves, which we are trying to do in our Mississauga facility as well as we're discussing with other companies to -- that have pre-existing manufacturing facilities, making similar types of products where they can scale up to make the CovaGuard rapidly so we can get this into the market. So from that perspective, we're ready to go.

Our final question is from Kevin Duffy with Earth To Go.

I am curious if it's available in both -- but I think you just answered that question in that last one, going to supplying other people.

Yes, Kevin. I think we recognize that Covalon is -- was not previously in business of manufacturing sprays and sanitizers. We're doing that to get the product on the front lines as fast as possible, but really at the same time, we are talking to lots of different parties about best ways to get this into the hands of the general public and frontline workers wherever we can reach them. So that necessitates us and fits into our business model, working with other big medical companies. So again, thank you. I really want to assure all of our shareholders that the Covalon team is working very hard to minimize the negative impact of COVID-19 on Covalon. As I said, everyone has been affected. I'm also very focused on how to adopt us to the changes we're facing so that we emerge as a stronger company out of this if possible. We're an organization that's focused on researching, developing and selling infection prevention products and we are an essential business, as I've said. And we have a role to play and continue to help to protect people, patients and frontline workers from infection. Our products really do make a big difference in people's lives, and I don't see this changing because of COVID-19. We have great products. Clinicians love them. Patients love them. Hopefully, they'll love CovaGuard as well. Thank you for participating in today's call. And I'd also, again, like to thank our customers, who are the frontline health care workers, for all they're doing in this crisis. Hope that everyone and their families will stay safe. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.