Covalon Technologies Ltd. ($COV)

Welcome to the Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders of Covalon Technologies Limited. Please note that the meeting is being recorded. I would like to introduce Mr. Brent Ashton, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Covalon. Mr. Ashton, the floor is yours.

Hi. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders of Covalon Technologies Limited. My name is Brent Ashton, and I'm the Chief Executive Officer of Covalon Technologies and a member of the Board of Directors. Also in attendance from Covalon are Katie Martinovich, Covalon's Chief Financial Officer; Kim Crooks, Covalon's Chief Operating Officer and a Board member; and Saleha Assadzada, Executive Assistant to the CEO. As this meeting is being held virtually via live webcast, it's necessary to set out a few rules for the orderly conduct of the meeting. Questions with regard to a motion can be submitted by a registered shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder using the questions feature of the TSX Trust meeting platform. Please note that there will be a slight delay in the publication of the communications received. When asking a question, please indicate your name and which entity you represent, if any. Only questions regarding procedural matters or directly related to the motions before the meeting may be addressed during the meeting. Other unrelated questions will only be addressed during the question period at the end of the meeting. Voting on all matters today will be conducted by a single electronic poll. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders may vote on each business item at any point during the meeting if they have signed in with a control number. Only registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders of the corporation are permitted to participate in the voting. The questions feature is accessible on the left side of the screen. The Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders of Covalon Technologies Limited will now come to order. With the consent of the meeting in accordance with the bylaws of the corporation, I will preside as Chair with respect to this meeting. And Craig Harasymchuk of Stikeman Elliott LLP, will act as Secretary of the meeting. Saleha Assadzada will act as moderator to help with the virtual communication. I'd like to thank our shareholders for attending this meeting virtually. We will now proceed with the formal portion of today's meeting. To expedite the formal part of the meeting, I will move the item of business and take such motion as seconded with no -- a seconded, sorry, with no further action required. I would ask Amy Kam of TSX Trust Company to act as scrutineer for this meeting. The purpose of today's meeting was set out in the notice of Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders and the Management Information Circular dated February 6, 2026. I do not propose to read the notice. However, copies of the meeting materials are available under the corporation's profile on SEDAR+ website. I direct that a copy of the notice of the meeting be attached to the minutes of this meeting. I've been advised that the notice calling this meeting, together with the management information circular and the form of proxy were made available to shareholders on February 20, 2026, to shareholders of record as of February 6, 2026, in accordance with applicable law. A copy was also mailed to each of the corporation's directors and to its auditor. TSX Trust Company has provided proof of delivery of the form of proxy or notice and instruction form and notice and access notice, and I direct that a copy of such proof of service be attached to the minutes of this meeting. According to registrations, the scrutineer has advised me that there are a total of 49 shareholders present in person or by proxy, representing a total of 10,157,014 shares that are entitled to vote at this meeting. That is approximately 36.8% of outstanding shares. I therefore declare that a quorum is present, and accordingly, the meeting is constituted for the transaction of business. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders attending this meeting may address the meeting when there is a call to discuss a motion before the meeting. Should you like to address the Chair on a motion, please type your message into the question section. If there is any discussion or question, the question will be read aloud. Today, we'll be conducting the following orders of business: the presentation of Covalon Technologies Limited's annual financial statements for the year ended September 30, 2025, the election of Covalon Technologies Limited directors, the appointment of Covalon Technologies Limited's auditor, the appointment of an amendment to the corporation's articles to authorize the directors to create and issue classes of preferred shares and add such preferred shares to the corporation's authorized capital. The approval of the corporation's amended and restated bylaw #1 and the repeal of the corporation's current bylaw #2, the approval of a new advanced notice bylaw, the approval of the corporation's amended and restated Omnibus long-term incentive plan, the approval of the grant of 150,000 options granted to Ms. Kim Crooks, Chief Operating Officer during the corporation's 2025 fiscal year. As previously noted, we will conduct the votes on these matters by a single electronic poll. On a poll, every shareholder entitled to vote on the matter has 1 vote in respect of each share entitled to be voted on the matter and held by that shareholder. The poll will be open for all resolutions at the same time. This will allow you to choose to vote on each resolution immediately or wait until the conclusion of discussion on each resolution prior to casting your vote. If you have already submitted your vote by proxy, you should not vote during the meeting unless you wish to change your vote. I now declare the polls open. [Voting]

I now declare that this meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. The first formal item of business is the presentation of Covalon Technologies Limited's audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended September 30, 2025, together with the auditor's report thereon. As these financial statements in this report were previously provided, I would not propose to review them as part of the formal part of the meeting. After the formal part of the meeting has been completed and the various presentations made, we will be pleased to respond to any questions shareholders may have on these financial statements. We will now move to the next point on today's agenda. The next matter to be dealt with is the election of the directors. As indicated in the circular, management is nominating 7 directors for election by the shareholders. Management nominates Abe Schwartz, Brent Ashton, Joseph Cordiano, Kim Crooks, Martin Goldfarb, Dr. Samantha Nutt and Ron Smith. Each of these persons nominated has confirmed that he or she is prepared to serve as a director. Each of them qualifies as a director under the provisions of the Business Corporations Act of Ontario. Are there any further nominations?

There are no further nominations.

As there are no further nominations, I declare the nominations closed. I move and take as seconded the motion with respect to the resolution that the following persons be and they are hereby elected directors of the corporation to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of the Shareholders of the corporation or until their respective successors are duly appointed: Brent Ashton, Abe Schwartz, Joseph Cordiano, Kim Crooks, Martin Goldfarb, Dr. Samantha Nutt and Ron Smith. Is there any discussion on the motion?

There is no discussion at this time.

As there is no discussion, the motion is now on the floor. The Business Corporations Act of Ontario requires that the Board of Directors be elected. Proxies have been solicited for each of the 7 proposed qualified persons listed in the management information circular. The form of proxy for voting on the election of directors sets out each proposed nominee separately and allows shareholders to vote for each director individually. As mentioned at the beginning of this meeting, voting today will be conducted by a single electronic poll. You may choose to vote on each resolution immediately or wait until the conclusion of the discussion on each resolution prior to casting your vote. We will now continue with the next item of business. The next matter to be dealt with is the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, Chartered Accountants to serve as auditor of the corporation until the close of the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until its successor is duly appointed and to authorize the directors of the corporation to fix the remuneration of the auditor. I move and take a seconded the motion. Does anyone wish to discuss the motion?

There's no discussion at this time.

The motion is now on the floor. And as there are no questions or discussions, I will move on to the next item of business. Approval of amendment to the corporation's articles to authorize the directors to create and issue classes of preferred shares and add such preferred shares to the corporation's authorized capital. The next matter to be dealt with is this special resolution to approve the amendment of the corporation's articles to authorize the directors to create and issue classes of preferred shares and add such preferred shares to the corporation's authorized capital. The text of the special resolution is set out in Appendix A of the management information circular and a detailed description of the amendment to the corporation's articles is also set out in the management information circular. As set out in the management information circular, in order for the special resolution to be passed, it must be approved by the affirmative vote of not less than 2/3 of the votes cast in respect thereof by the shareholders of the corporation present at this meeting in person or represented by proxy. I move and take as seconded that the special resolution approving the amendment to the corporation's articles be approved. Does anyone wish to discuss the motion?

There is no discussion at this time.

The motion is now on the floor. And as there are no questions or discussions, I will move on to the next item of business. The next matter to be dealt with is the ordinary resolution to approve the corporation's amended and restated bylaw appointment and the repeal of the corporation's current bylaw #2. The text of the ordinary resolution is set out in Appendix A of the management information circular and a detailed description of the amended and restated bylaw # 1 is also set out in the management information circular. I move and take as seconded the ordinary resolution approving the corporation's amended and restated bylaw #1 and the repeal of bylaw #2 be approved. Does anyone wish to discuss the motion?

There's no discussion at this time.

The motion is now on the floor. And as there are no questions or discussions, I will move on to the next item of business. The next matter to be dealt with is the ordinary resolution to approve the corporation's new advanced notice bylaw. The text of this ordinary resolution is set out in Appendix A of the management information circular and a detailed description of the new advanced notice bylaw is also set out in the management information circular. I move and take as seconded the ordinary resolution approving the corporation's new advanced bylaw be approved. Does anyone wish to discuss this motion?

There is no discussion at this time.

The motion is now on the floor. And as there are no questions or discussions, I will move on to the next item of business. The next matter to be dealt with is the ordinary resolution approving the corporation's amended and restated Omnibus long-term incentive plan. The text of the ordinary resolution is set out in Appendix A of the Management Information Circular and a detailed description of the amended and restated Omnibus long-term incentive plan is also set out in the management information circular. I move and take as seconded the ordinary resolution approving the corporation's amended and restated Omnibus long-term incentive plan be approved. Does anyone wish to discuss the motion?

There is no discussion at this time.

The motion is now on the floor. And as there are no questions or discussions, I will move on to the next item of business. The next matter to be dealt with is the ordinary resolution of the grant of 150,000 options to Ms. Kim Crooks, Chief Operating Officer of the corporation during the corporation's 2025 fiscal year. The text of the ordinary resolution is set out in Appendix A of the Management Information Circular and a detailed description of the grant of options to Ms. Crooks is also set out in the management information circular. I move and take as seconded the ordinary resolution approving the grant of 150,000 options to Ms. Crooks be approved. Does anyone wish to discuss the motion?

There is no discussion at this time.

The motion is now on the floor. And as there are no questions or discussions, we will now provide those in attendance who have not already voted on any matters discussed during the meeting time to submit their vote. [Voting]

I now call for any registered shareholders or proxy holders who have not yet voted in the matters discussed in this meeting to please do so now. We will wait for 2 minutes for the completion of the electronic ballots and then move on with the remainder of the meeting. During this 2 minutes, you will hear silence. [Voting]

I now declare the polls closed. I would ask that the scrutineer compile the report regarding the results of voting on all business matters. We will reconvene in a few moments with the scrutineer's report and the voting results. Based on the preliminary scrutineer's report, I declare all motions are carried. I direct that the results of the voting be included in the minutes of this meeting. This completes the matters of business to be conducted as set out in the notice. As there is no more formal business to which we must attend, I would request a motion to terminate the formal portion of the meeting. I move and take as seconded the motion. Does anyone wish to discuss the motion?

There is no discussion at this time.

As there is no discussion, this concludes the formal orders of business for today. On behalf of the directors and management, I would like to thank you for your support. Thank you for joining us today. I invite all of you to stay on for our business presentation. Please feel free to submit questions using the questions feature at any point during the presentation. You are able to ask questions regardless of whether you registered for this call as a registered shareholder, a duly appointed proxy holder or a guest. Okay. Well, with all of the required business process and formal part of the meeting, it's good to get to the fun management presentation side here. So good afternoon, everyone. I think we might have some people in Europe as well. So good evening for those of you across the ocean. And thank you for joining us. It's great to have the opportunity to speak with you today as part of our Annual General Meeting. I'm extremely excited to be able to be here today and represent all of our hard-working Covalon employees and Board members and share more on our progress and our future to this group, our highly valued shareholders and guests. So this month marked the start of my 19th year working in medtech. I guess you can say that in many of the provinces in Canada that my medtech career is now legally allowed to order and drink a beer. Along the way in those 19 years, I've been really, really fortunate. I've had the opportunity to run $1 billion-plus businesses for 2 of the largest companies in the medical space, 3M Healthcare, which is now known as Solventum and Becton, Dickinson or BD for short. You might not know these companies, but if you know anyone who is a nurse or a doctor or an infection preventionist, they will be very familiar as these are 2 of the largest global companies in medtech. And for the past 2 years, I've had the distinct honor to serve as Covalon's CEO. My first medtech business leadership role many years ago was running 3M's advanced wound care business. And over the subsequent years, I had the opportunity to successfully lead other businesses in the vascular access space, the surgical space, infection prevention and diagnostics. Some really big and impactful businesses. I led the acquisition of a fast-growing vascular access company, about the same size as Covalon and led a number of key work streams on a $7 billion acquisition to form the world's largest advanced wound care business, took dozens of other companies through various pre-acquisition steps, including due diligence. I spent time working with some of the most amazing nurses, infection preventionists and doctors in hundreds of hospitals in over 35 countries on every continent on earth, except for Antarctica. A ton of highs, lots of big wins, no shortage of challenges that I learned from as well. Very, very grateful for my time with 3M and BD. Fast forward to the present day. And in my 2 years as CEO of this amazing med tech company called Covalon, I'm very proud of what we've accomplished to date, but the journey is by no means complete. In fact, as I sit here today, with the various career memories I've shared with you as a backdrop, I am hard-pressed to think of a time when I've been more excited about the future potential of a business or a company as I am here with Covalon. And over the next 25 or 30 minutes, my goal is to share the reasons behind this excitement in ways that matter to you as existing or potentially new shareholders. And of course, we need to pause briefly here for the forward-looking statements and non-GAAP language on the slide. You can also find this on our website. So let's start. We'll go to the next slide. Yes, let's start here on the vascular access and infusion therapy space that Covalon is quickly becoming a much more notable and bigger player in. Vascular access is one of the cornerstones of health care. There's a good chance that everyone on this call has had an IV inserted into the body at one point in their life. In fact, something like 90% of all hospitalized patients will receive an IV line at some point during their hospital stay. And for some patients, this might be multiple lines. And that adds up to more than 1 billion IV lines being placed each year, billion with a B, a huge market. These IV lines are literal lifelines. They deliver critical to life medications and nutrition. They enable diagnostics, but they also create risk. And any time you place an IV line into a patient, you create a pathway from the outside world into the bloodstream. And if outside contamination and the microscopic bugs in them are not stopped, that can lead to serious complications. Basically, these IV lines, which do so much, so much good for the patient are also ticking time bombs for bloodstream infections and other serious complications. Now that's certainly not what patients signed up for when they entered the hospital, right? You get admitted with a case of pneumonia, end up in the hospital for what should be only a couple of days of recovery, but then boom in the blink of an eye, something goes wrong. You get a bloodstream infection. And then your best case, your very best case is that you have to spend an extra 2 or 3 weeks in the intensive care unit, getting pumped full of antibiotics, your family worrying about your safety, and that's the best case. It's not a fun one for sure, but it's the best case because the other pathway is that you die from the infection, which happens about 15% or 20% of the time. And then the patient's family is questioning like how the hell did this happen? And the clinicians are often wondering, was there anything else that could have done to prevent this? And it's a big problem for health systems as well, the hospitals, government or private insurers see these complications like infections as never events. And when they happen, the cost to treat, which can run $50,000 or more is typically absorbed by the hospital, thus creating some very compelling financial incentives for hospitals to prevent these tragic events from happening in the first place. Now I know that's a healthy load of bad news for us as potential patients. But the good news is that the vast majority of these complications associated with IV lines are preventable. And that is exactly where Covalon plays. When you help prevent an infection or other serious complication tied to an IV line, you're not just improving a metric on a hospital dashboard. You're preventing a devastating event for a patient and their family. You're helping a clinical team avoid an outcome that nobody ever wants to have to explain. And you're saving time and money for hospitals that would otherwise have to treat the infection or deal with the complication often at their expense. This is a business for Covalon that in the U.S. has grown very rapidly over the past few years, almost 50% a year, 10x the market growth rate. But the reality is that this growth, as good as it is, is almost meaningless compared to the magnitude of the overall opportunity in front of us. We've got a strong hopper and pipeline of innovation, new products, new use cases for existing products and new potential business models. To be honest, one of our biggest challenges as a company is around prioritization. I know and have full confidence that we can do anything. But as a small company, we can't do everything. And so we're prioritizing the best and brightest innovation opportunities. Even as we made a lot of progress in the past few years, we constantly ask ourselves, can we do more? And can we do it quicker? And so at the tail end of 2025, we made some changes in our U.S. commercial leadership and brought in a strong seasoned sales leader with proven expertise driving vascular access technology products from small starting points to large-scale winning. Things have gone well, and we're seeing tangible results from this change and see a bright future. We've made significant inroads on the market development front, clinical evidence generation, building strong relationships and partnerships with the most respected clinical experts in vascular access and infusion therapy. And this will be an important part of our future as well, a strong hopper of activities to drive awareness of the problems and the Covalon solutions. And then the last point -- bullet point here, a great segue to an area that I want to go a little deeper in because it's a really significant growth driver for the future of our company around contamination prevention. I believe that Covalon's contamination prevention solution, which is anchored by our VALGuard line guard and our CovaClear IV cover dressings is our most exciting opportunity in the present day. Well, actually, if I am being completely honest, that's selling the technology short. I firmly believe that this is one of the most exciting opportunities, not just at Covalon, but in the market overall. It's still in its infancy, but like the proverbial snowball rolling down the mountain, gaining speed and growing in size, we're definitely seeing this play out with our solution. And of course, you might be thinking, wow, Brent is the CEO of the company, he's biased. Of course, he's going to think this technology is the best there is. And that's fair. But I do think as you listen over the next couple of minutes, you'll see it's not just me. It's not just our incredibly dedicated employees, but it's being proven out by folks outside of Covalon, by notable customers, by experts in the field of vascular access and beyond. And you might be wondering, what is contamination all about in this context? And to help you here, it can be a patient vomiting or their fees or urine going all over the place. It could be a family member sneezing or even something as simple as a spilled glass of orange juice. In all of these contamination events, there are microbial bugs present that through the vomit or the sneeze or the spilled drink end up in contact with a key part of the IV line. And those bugs are going to work their butts off to make their way into the patient's bloodstream through the IV line pathway. And then once they get into the bloodstream, you're looking at the risk of infection and the horrible chain events that we covered a few minutes ago that can lead to sepsis and death. These bugs are the big villain in, we'll call it our vascular access movie here. And the hero is Covalon's contamination prevention solution, which in the present is comprised of our VALGuard line guard product and our CovaClear IV cover dressing product. These products serve as single-use shields to contamination events. They literally take the hit and protect the underlying IV line components to keep the bugs from getting into the IV line and eventually into the patient. When I think about my past experience and tipping points I've seen with technologies that went from really not much at all to something big, there are some similar pathways. You see some early hospital adopters and things start to spread to be more mainstream. A number of big name brand hospitals evaluate and assess the technology, start to use the product, and that quickly evolves to greater and greater adoption elsewhere. An initial clinical study demonstrates a significant impact around reducing infections or other complications. That leads to other work, more studies, that type of thing. Key opinion leaders. These are experts in the field who help educate a large number of clinicians on emerging solutions for tough problems. These key opinion leaders in the space start to take notice and then the challenge and the solution starts to show up via poster presentations and on the podium at large scientific meetings where thousands of nurses gather to learn more. All the while here, the snowball keeps picking up speed and growing and growing. I've seen this in the past. And on this slide, you can see 3 examples of this playing out. The first one is IV skin prep, best known for the ChloraPrep brand, which was acquired as part of Becton, Dickinson's $12 billion acquisition of CareFusion about a dozen years ago. The overall space grew over the past 15 or 20 years to be north of $400 million in annual revenue. Antimicrobial IV dressings, similar story, grew to more than $300 million in annual revenue, led by 3M Healthcare. And disinfecting caps, innovation that first came to market about 15 years ago. The early leader was a company called Ivera Medical, and their product was known as the Curos disinfecting cap. They were purchased -- they were acquired their purchased by 3M Healthcare about 10 years ago, and the technology has continued to grow and grow and the Curos brand remains the market leader. Total space today achieves annual revenues north of $200 million. Three specific examples of innovative technologies that solved a real problem for hospitals and all had that snowball downhill momentum, and they're still rolling and growing every year. And so that takes us to Covalon's contamination prevention solution. We're certainly much smaller today and much more towards the top of the mountain today than the 3 examples I shared with you above. We ended 2025 with less than $5 million in revenue, but we are growing rapidly. And those same elements around name brand account momentum, clinical evidence, key opinion leaders, podium presence at key scientific meetings are taking place. And one of the reasons that I'm so passionate on this solution is it achieves 3 really important benefits that customers, mostly hospital customers, although there's certainly big opportunities outside the hospital as well, but 3 important benefits that customers are looking for these days. The first is clinical benefit, preventing complications, including infections, always important for our customers. Second, economic benefit, direct cost savings associated with the adoption of the solution, especially important these days as hospitals strive to reduce their costs. And third, workflow benefit, saving nursing time. You want to talk about a group of amazing caregivers that are stretched thin and could use a few extra minutes each shift, that would be nurses. I've taken to calling this our triple winner solution. None of the other innovations I spoke about a minute ago hit all 3 of these customer benefit areas. But we do, and this is definitely helping to speed adoption. To help you appreciate the acceleration of adoption, in just a few months, we have secured new wins with a number of highly regarded institutions. I'm sure you recognize many of the hospitals on this page. They are sophisticated customers. They evaluate products carefully. They care deeply about clinical outcomes, and they do not move lightly. So when you see names like the Mayo Clinic, like Memorial Sloan Kettering, Nationwide Children's, Texas Children's and other top institutions buying into the solution, that matters. It matters because these are exactly the type of customers that help validate both the clinical relevance and the commercial potential of what we're doing. Landing world-class hospitals like these, it's not easy. Even some of the largest med tech companies in the world with far, far greater resources than Covalon can struggle to win these kinds of accounts. Accounts like the ones you see on the left-hand side of the screen here are what I describe as multipliers. The business that they bring in, it's definitely valuable in its own right, but their adoption also helps to influence other institutions. Nurses from different hospitals talk, infection preventionists across different hospitals, different geographies, they talk. These clinicians attend these scientific meetings where they talk to one another. Other hospitals look to the leaders to see what they are doing to advance practice. And then we're also gaining significant attention and traction from the major scientific associations that clinicians pay a lot of attention to. You can see these on the right-hand side of the screen. APIC with its focus on infection control, AVA, the Association for Vascular Access. And INS, the Infusion Nurses Society. Together, these associations have tens of thousands of clinicians as members, and they are constantly looking to learn more about how to deliver the best possible healthy economic outcomes within their facility. The annual meetings and other events that these associations host are well attended. The content that's presented and the new learnings that get ingested get taken back to hospitals for action. And this is also where our partnership with Dr. Nancy Moureau is helping to advance awareness. She is one of the most respected clinical experts in voices and vascular access. When she speaks, clinicians listen and take action. And her work with Covalon is helping to educate the market around contamination risk and prevention. It's really significant. She's been selected to present at the upcoming APIC and INS meetings from the podium on this important topic. A recent webinar that was hosted by AVA had more than 600 nurses take time out of their incredibly busy days to learn more on the topic from Dr. Moureau. All of this activity, the scientific engagement, the upcoming podium presentations all point to the same thing. This topic around contamination is resonating. The clinical need is real. The audience is engaged and the market is increasingly ready to act with a sense of urgency. You might also recall that several months ago, we highlighted the groundbreaking clinical study that demonstrated the strong reduction in bloodstream infections connected to the adoption of VALGuard at a large, well-known and highly respected children's hospital in New York City, known as the Children's Hospital at Montefiore. And then separately, there was the evidence that was presented at the Association for Vascular Access Meeting last fall that clearly showed the economic and workflow benefit that CovaClear IV cover provided to a very large hospital in the Northeastern United States. These powerful evidence pieces help to validate the impact of our products with potential customers and gives Covalon even more confidence that we're participating in an area with real staying power. In medtech, evidence and advocacy can create a super powerful flywheel. Better clinical outcomes lead to stronger stories from the field. Stronger stories drive more interest. More interest creates more opportunities for adoption and more opportunities to generate further evidence. This is how the snowball grew bigger and bigger, faster and faster for skin preps and for antimicrobial IV dressings and disinfecting caps. And that is the kind of cycle that we're starting to see here for Covalon and what we're working hard to build more and more each day. So I know this was going a little deep, but I think it's really important for you to understand as this is a tipping point type opportunity here. Pause for a drink of water, sorry. And then not to be outdone, the second major space that Covalon operates is in wound care and really a focus around our unique and highly differentiated collagen dressings product lines. And this is also an area with a lot of excitement and future opportunity. It's a very large and clinically important market. There are hundreds of millions of wounds globally each year. And for many patients, the challenge is not simply closing the wound, it's closing it without infection, without unnecessary trauma and without a prolonged healing journey. I've been working in and around the wound care space for almost 20 years now, focused on both chronic wounds and surgical wounds. Surgical wounds, I think, are pretty well understood, easy to think of these as things like replacement hips or knees or knee heart surgery. The incision site becomes a wound, and it's best if it heals as quickly as possible while avoiding complications like infection. But you might not be super familiar with what a chronic wound is. Chronic wounds are wounds that really don't heal when they should, typically found on the foot or lower legs or the lower part of your back, but really can be anywhere. Most wounds follow -- most typical wounds follow a predictable path. They close within weeks. Surgical wounds are typically more likely to follow this pathway. A chronic wound doesn't. It can stay open for months or even years because the body gets stuck in a cycle where healing breaks down. And that's not an exaggeration. In my past, I've talked to patients who have dealt with chronic wounds that have stayed with them for 5, 10, I think the record was like 20-plus years, and it's just horrific. It's the quality of life challenges. I can't even put it into words, and it's one of those things where you just never want yourself or a loved one to have to deal with. These challenges with chronic wounds that stay open for months or years because the body gets stuck in the cycle where healing breaks down. And that creates an ongoing clinical problem that often requires frequent repeated treatment, frequent clinician time and they carry a high risk of infection and complications. They're commonly connected with underlying conditions like diabetes and aging populations, both of which are growing rapidly. So instead of being a onetime event, a chronic wound becomes a long-term resource-intensive condition. Unfortunately, very few people that are on this call will be able to live their full lives without having to deal with one or many of these challenging wounds, either surgical or chronic. One of the paradoxes of modern health care is that we're all living longer, but with that extended longevity comes increased complications and procedures that directly lead to these wounds. On the chronic wound side of things, we're talking about conditions such as diabetes and venous insufficiency that lead to wounds that don't heal naturally, as an example. And we talked about on the surgical side, things like hip and knee replacements. So a very large market with solid growth expected as the macro environment of longevity plays out. And similar to the IV side that I shared a few minutes ago, really not a whole lot different for wound care. Only instead of a small hole for an IV in the case of these wounds that are much larger in size and some could just be really, really tricky, really challenging. They can get down to the tendons and bones and whatnot. And you definitely don't want these wounds getting infected. So the best way to achieve this is to get them to heal up and back to normal as quickly as possible. And that's where Covalon's Magic kicks in. Our collagen dressings help ensure that these wounds heal as quickly as possible. And where infection is suspected, we have collagen dressings with silver, a powerful antibiotic to help kill those nasty bugs. For all of you listening, I trust that you are healthy, and this may not sound super exciting, but trust me when I tell you that if you or your loved ones ever has one of these challenging wounds, you will want the best possible solution. And we believe that Covalon's unique and patented formulation makes a world of difference. And we've seen that play out with millions of patients all over the world who benefited from our great collagen technology. For Covalon, this is a business that has more than doubled over the past few years, 35% compounded annual growth rate. And looking forward, we're working hard to double it again as quickly as possible. We'll grow by working closely with our existing and new strategic partners in the United States to increase our penetration in the highly lucrative U.S. market. We're also confident that our amazing technology can be expanded geographically where, to be honest, we've really barely scratched the surface in terms of the opportunity. New product introductions will also be an important growth vector for us, and we have a very robust new product innovation offer. As some of our early investments in manufacturing, automation and our facility come online in the near future, this will help us drive cost down and increase our capacity as we continue to grow the business. Wound care is a very meaningful platform for us. And because of the benefits of our unique product formulation, it's very meaningful to the patients and the clinicians who treat them who count on our dressings to help them, oftentimes quite literally get back on their feet. So with the past few minutes focused on the present and the future, let me take a few minutes to capture and characterize our recent financial performance. Two lenses here, a look at 2025 compared to 2024 and then a look back at 3 years of the Covalon turnaround. If you look at fiscal 2025, a few things that stand out. Revenue grew by a little more than 5% to almost $33 million. We saw strong growth in our vascular access and surgical consumables business, but that was partially offset by a slight decline in the wound care business, largely a function of inventory rebalancing with one of our U.S. collagen strategic partners as well as a onetime pricing action. Gross margins were down about 700 basis points to just over 53%, largely driven by product and geographic mix changes as well as that onetime price impact. We continued our disciplined spending mentality, and we're able to lower our operating expenses by almost $1 million to $15.7 million. And then with the drop in gross margin compared to fiscal year '24, we saw a corresponding drop in adjusted EBITDA to $3.7 million. Looking at the cash side of things. In FY 2025, we ended the year with about $600,000 of additional cash on hand, taking us to more than $17 million while maintaining our debt-free status, and this continues to give us great optionality. Post fiscal year 2025, our hard work in advancing Covalon and the strong view for the future that we see allowed us to return more than $4 million of cash to our shareholders in the form of a special dividend. And then taking a slightly longer view, looking at the progress we've made since our transformation journey started in fiscal year 2023, revenue is up more than 80% and even higher when you look at our core business focus around wound care and vascular access, both of which have been strong growth drivers in the past few years, each of them growing many times faster than the underlying market growth. And as we discussed earlier today, a lot of upside for the future. Gross profit has more than doubled, and our gross margins are about 1,200 basis points higher than where they were at just a few years ago. A big part of this has been our strong work to in-source and optimize our wound care manufacturing. Our operating expenses are down mid-single digits, which when you think about a business that has essentially doubled its revenue, taken margins up more than 1,000 basis points and done all of that while spending less, I think that's a really compelling proof point that Covalon has the operating discipline needed for strong success in the short and long term. And then all of the above progress adds up into an adjusted EBITDA turnaround of almost $10 million from where we sat at the end of 2022. So you can see the underlying story here. We've been building a more disciplined, more focused and more capable business. Let me now shift to a bit of a broader business perspective. I spoke a little bit about my background at the start of the meeting. And I think it's really important context for this next little bit because when we spend almost 20 years working directly in the spaces that Covalon is focused on in vascular access and infection prevention and wound care at 2 of the largest players in these spaces at 3M Healthcare and Becton, Dickinson, you build industry connections and strong domain expertise. You learn what works and doesn't work, and you can easily recognize when a product or a solution or a business has a lot of future potential or is on the downswing. I'm very grateful for the time I spent at both these companies and especially in the specific domains that have so much relevance to Covalon's area of focus. So when I share the strong future ahead for our wound care business, while it comes from the benefit of years spent working in and around wound care at 3M Healthcare, now Solventum, which is the largest player in the advanced wound care space today. And when I share those 3 other, call it, further down the mountain snowballs that have grown into businesses with several hundred millions of dollars of annual revenue on the vascular access side, you'll recall that the biggest players, really the champions in those spaces were -- in those 3 spaces were Becton, Dickinson within IV skin preps and 3M Healthcare within the antimicrobial IV dressings and disinfecting cap spaces. I've seen firsthand the pathway that these technologies took to get to where they are today. I led 3M's acquisition of Ivera Medical, the company that invented the Curos Disinfecting caps. And I'm seeing a ton of parallels for Covalon with our contamination prevention solution quickly picking up speed and size as we roll that snowball down the mountain. And given my connections and relationships in the spaces we play in, one of the things that has become increasingly clear is that industry recognition of what Covalon is doing is ahead of the financial market recognition. We're seeing growing engagement from companies and organizations that recognize the momentum in the business. We're seeing more interest in partnerships in strategic conversations and in broader corporate engagement. It's a very different place from where Covalon was at just a few years ago. We've architected the financial turnaround to stabilize the company, return to profitability and growth, and this has set the stage for the next phase of driving to scale. And this brings me to what I believe is a really, really important part of today's presentation. Covalon is on the cusp of a meaningful inflection point. The financial turnaround has created a much stronger foundation to scale from. Our products are clearly differentiated and clinically relevant. The contamination prevention solution has very large upside and external engagement is increasing. When I look at all that together, I see a company that is creating more value than is currently recognized in its market valuation. And I say that not just as Covalon's CEO, but from the perspective of spending a meaningful part of my career at 3M Healthcare and Becton, Dickinson, evaluating dozens of companies for partnership and mergers and acquisition type opportunities. And I can tell you very directly what Covalon is doing matters. It matters in vascular access and surgical. It matters in wound care, and it is drawing more outside attention than it used to. Listen, I recognize the impatience that many of our shareholders have. A couple of things that I think are worth noting. One is there probably aren't too many things that everyone on this call would agree on, lots of different backgrounds and viewpoints and whatnot. But I think we would all agree that in the world today, while it's a little unpredictable, if you had the Strait of Hormuz essentially being closed down for a few weeks and running, if you had that on your geopolitical bingo card for 2026, congratulations. You could have made a lot of money betting on that. But one thing that is extremely predictable is that health care, no matter what else is going on in the world, is critically important and just continues to grow and the need continues. Unfortunately, people keep getting sick and need treatment. And so health care in general is an amazing space to be in. And in times of turbulence can be a bit of an investment safe haven. And then go one step closer. And when you think of med tech consumables, like the products Covalon sells for in wound care and vascular access, well, at its heart, these are annuity businesses. Once you're in, and it can take some time to accomplish that. But once you're in, you tend to stay in. In fact, you tend to increase as clinicians gain exposure and you expand patient populations and departments within the hospital, then you add new products and whatnot. And with the growth we see ahead on the wound care side and the vascular access side and especially the unique opportunity of contamination prevention, I believe our investors have a very unique asymmetrical upside opportunity with Covalon moving forward. At the broader market level, over the past few years, a small group of stocks like NVIDIA and Tesla and Apple, the Magnificent 7 as their coin, they've sucked the oxygen out of the collective investment world. We're definitely seeing a rebalancing towards safer or more stable investments like precious metals, consumer staples and, of course, health care. And I think this will help to serve us well in the near term as we make good on our tipping point. I know that the market doesn't fully reflect the awareness today, but the health care industry is much closer to understanding it. When nurses and doctors and hospital systems and strategic companies and financial sponsors who know health care start paying attention in a more serious way, value tends to get recognized eventually. And for context, if you look at comparable medtech consumable businesses with attractive growth profiles, differentiated technology and strong clinical relevance, revenue multiples can be meaningfully higher than where Covalon is implicitly valued today. So when I look at our progress, our portfolio and our momentum, I believe there is substantial room for value creation ahead. Now I want to be clear. I'm not making a prediction about timing, and I'm not suggesting value appears automatically. We absolutely still have to execute. But I do believe the gap between intrinsic value and public market recognition is meaningful, and that gap can narrow as results and impact continue to build. Before I wrap up, let me very briefly bring the story together. We've built a much stronger company foundation. We are seeing encouraging commercial momentum. We have a very compelling and very -- and increasingly validated opportunity in contamination prevention. The snowball is gaining speed and size. We continue to advance our wound care platform, and we're seeing signals from the broader industry that what Covalon is doing is gaining recognition. This doesn't mean that the work is done. It's not. We still have plenty to execute on, but I do believe the direction of travel is increasingly clear, and I'm very optimistic and very excited about where this company can go from here. And with that point, we will transition to Q&A, and then I'll do a brief wrap up. We'll take a few seconds here to organize the questions and then answer them in the time remaining.

Okay. We've got a couple of questions here. The first question comes from HH. And their question is around previous statements around the company doubling and keep doubling. Do you still see this happening? And can I elaborate on it? Absolutely. I think that was part and parcel of really the bulk of the presentation today. We are that snowball in just the contamination prevention solution alone. This can be a product. You saw the other examples. right? This is a product that could -- can and will easily eclipse the total revenue of our company today down the road. And so very strong opportunity, add on there, the wound care growth and whatnot. And I am super bullish on the future of the company. And I've tried to share so many nuggets of why it's not just me. Of course, you would -- I would be fired if I came on here and said, I'm not excited about the future of the company. But it's not just me, it's our team, it's our customers, name brand hospitals. It's these experts in vascular access and wound care. So lots of momentum there. The second question is around the outlook for 2026. And this is not an earnings call, more of the Annual General Meeting. But as I said at last month's earnings call, we saw a clear line of sight to a strong Q2 and fiscal year 2026. And as you've seen in the presentation today, so many opportunities, so much excitement for this year and beyond, and we're very excited about that. A question has come in from Isaac, and I apologize if I don't say this correctly, Dimitrovsky, and it's asking around protection that we have for our product, around IP, trade secrets, et cetera. And yes, we've got -- one of the foundations of this company, which started out of the University of Toronto Lab has been around the intellectual property. And so across our wound care, our vascular access and surgical space, we do have IP that will protect us many years in the future. There's also a certain level of know-how, and I'm sitting across from Kim Crooks here. So between our R&D team, our operations team, as we brought in manufacturing, we've optimized that, and there's a lot of strong learnings that give us protection. And then the other thing I would say, IP is great. We're going to continue to build it. But the other thing we're building, especially with this contamination prevention solution is the first-mover advantage. And in health care, that is really, really important. I kind of showed you the examples of these companies that built the $200 million, $300 million, $400 million, these products, sorry. And once you get in, you want to continue to maintain the product and do line extensions and improve it. But once you get in, it's harder to get kicked out. It does happen. And on the contamination prevention side, one of the beautiful things is we're not really competing with any of the companies I talked about. Our biggest competition on contamination prevention is apathy. It's not doing anything to protect. There's also some kind of odd, I'll call it, arts and crafts, not fit for use, kind of, not designed for that purpose products that we're actively displacing as well, but no real direct competition. So we've got that first-mover advantage. And so it's super critical for us to keep advancing and keep that ball, that snowball rolling down the hill. Apologies for the Northern climate people. I know I'm up here in our Toronto, our Mississauga offices and wasn't super happy to see snow here 2 days ago. But hopefully, the only snow you will see is my slides of the snowball rolling down the hill and building more and more momentum. I think that is it on the question side. And so I will appreciate the great questions. As you can probably tell, I'm a really strong believer in Covalon. One of the reasons that I chose to leave a large corporate med tech behind and come to a smaller, more focused company like Covalon was because I saw a real opportunity, a really, really unique opportunity to lead a small but powerful team of incredibly dedicated employees to help turn a diamond in the rough into something much more fully realized. We made meaningful progress. We're continuing to build the snowball -- we're continuing to drive the snowball bigger and bigger, faster and faster down the hill. And it's clear to me that Covalon is moving towards something very, very significant. So thank you again for being with us today, and thank you for your strong support of our company as shareholders. This time we're going to wrap up. So no more questions, we're going to conclude. So on behalf of management, our Board of Directors and our employees, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for attending the meeting today. Thank the shareholders for their commitment and look forward to speaking with many of you over the coming months and reporting on our progress. We look forward to your attendance again next year.

Thank you for attending today's meeting. You may now disconnect.