Nova Eye Medical Limited (EYE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] Thanks very much, Paul. We -- I'm here to talk to you today about ophthalmology. That's the delivery of products to eye surgeons globally. We're addressing, our company addresses the leading -- 2 leading causes of blindness in the world. And as such, we consider to have -- to be preserving one of the most valuable assets in the world, and that's our eyesight. Next slide. Our disclaimer there includes the anatomy of the eye very briefly. The front of the eye, we have the lens and the cornea, which along -- which contains the eye's irrigation system. At the back of the eye, we have the retina. The front of the eye focuses light to the back of the eye. And the retina sends the signals to the brain, the light signals to the brain. There's diseases -- we -- our business has worked on diseases of the retina, at the back and on the front. Next slide. So the snapshot of our business, as I said, those 2 leading causes of blindness in the world. One is glaucoma, and one is age-related macular degeneration. We're here today to talk about glaucoma, where we have business generating revenues. Our project, earlier stage, potential therapy for a very large market in macular degeneration. Next slide. This is a bit of corporate information. Our market cap is $42 million. We are here today to talk about the opportunity in glaucoma that we announced just around the beginning of April. You can see, this is interesting, the increase in share trading volume. That was as a result of the announcement of approval by -- of a new device to service our large American market or our main market which is the United States, as well as a raise of capital to exploit that. So we have nominally $11 million. We raised $8 million at the beginning of March. And we are attracting in order to exploit the opportunity we now have in the United States, which is what I want to talk to you to -- about today. Next slide, our glaucoma opportunity. We are the -- glaucoma has typically been treated with drops. A company that -- a person who is first diagnosed with glaucoma, [ he said ], "Let's go on to [ have drops ]." The emerging market we are attacking -- getting into is for surgical intervention earlier in the disease. Our new product, iTrack Advance is a device just approved which allows us to access the eye's irrigation system. Let me talk a little bit about the disease to make that more clear on the next slide. Glaucoma is a failure of the plumbing in the eye. It's the ocular irrigation system at the front of the eye which circulates nutrients. With age and time, and we're talking about patients 40 years and over or as young as 40, but obviously the incidence increases with age, blockages occur in that irrigation system at the front of the eye. This crushes the optic nerve; lets pressure build and, untreated, crushes the optic nerve. And patients lose their sight, usually commencing with peripheral vision. It's painless, asymptomatic, as they say. And the first signs are usually the loss of peripheral vision, so it's quite insidious. And it's why anyone who goes to any optometrists now will often get that little puff of -- puff in the eye to check your eye pressure. And that's a critical screening because, without it, there will be no pain and suddenly you'll be -- you will have glaucoma. Next slide. So as I mentioned, the traditional treatment for patients prescribed with drops is to have them prescribed with drops, which you may say, "Well, that's pretty nice. I could just take drops every day," but somebody who's 40 or 50 years, they've still got 30 or 40 years of -- on this earth. That's actually hard. And it's proven, it is a clinical fact, that patient adherence to taking those medications is very poor. They start taking them, lose interest. We're talking about taking drops, putting drops on your eye every day. The actual ability of an older person to take drops or put drops on the right part of the eye is also difficult. The eye -- this has spawned earlier minimally invasive surgical interventions which aimed to reduce that pressure without the need for daily drops or to reduce the need for daily crops. Nova Eye, headquartered here in Adelaide, is a key player in that global minimally invasive glaucoma surgery market and is -- with its industry-leading canaloplasty device. Next slide. This describes the market, 140 million people with glaucoma, with value -- or it has been valued at the surgical intervention part of it -- is about USD 600 million right now and growing at 15%. It's only a small subset of the total glaucoma market of $6 billion, which includes all those drugs, so we see a very, very strong landscape. And as 1 of the top 3 companies in the world in this space, we think we have a very good opportunity. Next slide. Even though we're a small company here in Adelaide, we have a reasonably good geographic footprint across the world. Our major business is in the United States, where we have an established, scalable direct sales team; salespeople working directly for us, not using any third-party distributor. We have our manufacturing of one of our devices in Fremont in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we handle all the delivery and sales administration. In Germany, we sell our devices directly to doctors. In Europe, we use some third-party distributor partners. And in China, we have a [ well-heeled ] third-party distributor who we've been working with for many years. The China opportunity is very large, considering the aging -- or the magnitude of the aging population in China, currently relatively small and growing fast. And so we are excited about the opportunity in China. We have all our approvals and are currently selling into China. In New Zealand, we have a manufacturing facility approved by the FDA for one of our other -- for our other glaucoma product. And in Australia, we have our product development and corporate strategy -- corporate marketing and regulatory strategy business. Next slide. This is a picture of the device we call iTrack Advance, which was approved on the 1st of April 2023 and for which we raised money a few days earlier. It is a catheter that is -- has 3 parts: a; light; a pipe; and a wire, functionally. That slider on the top, that handpiece at the -- is a pencil-like handpiece that enables the doctor to move his or her finger or thumb to gently move that catheter through the canal of Schlemm. And the next slide describes that a little more. So the canal of Schlemm runs around the colored part of your eye. So that shows perspective of the size of the device in the doctor's hand. We insert it into that canal of Schlemm through a simple, minimally invasive surgical site. We push with that slider around the canal and then we -- you can see the light there shows where it is. The doctor can see the light through the microscope. We then gently withdraw the catheter and infuse what's essentially biocompatible hydraulic fluid to flush the canal. You can see there that we are -- it's a bit hard to see in that picture, but the flushing effect flushes the canal and creates -- removes the blockage. So there's 2 methods of action. There's the passage of the canal through that -- the passage of the catheter through the canal and then the flushing. It's -- grossly stated, it's like clearing the leaves from your gutter and then flushing it with a hose. More sophisticated, it's very much angioplasty of the eye. Nothing is left behind. We leave the eye's natural systems then to start working again that had then failed due to these blockages. And next slide. This is one of our customers, a Texas doctor. She has just purchased some. This is a photograph taken during the month of April. We were making our first sales. And there she's using a microscope. In her hand is the device being gently inserted into that canal. Next slide. So currently we have a version of the iTrack technology which is generating -- well, we're accessing about 200 patients. Importantly, in the U.S., that's about USD 6.5 million of revenue. With this new track -- iTrack Advance, which has improved the ability to get -- with which -- the handpiece and the slider, we see this becoming more appealing to a larger group of glaucoma surgeons. We -- there's about 1,300 that we're now targeting. That's literally now in the United States. In due time, we will then access the larger market, again, of those that are doing cataract operations. Cataract operations are the world's largest operation, most common operation. And it's a clinical fact that 20% of people who need a cataract operation, and that's usually a function of age, also had glaucoma. And so we are accessing those. We will progressively access that market. Next slide. So to finalize: We have a good product participating in the consumable surgical device market. It's one of the fastest-growing -- or is the fastest-growing market in ophthalmology. And it starts growing in an absolute sense too. We have a best-in-class iTrack Advance approved for sale in U.S.A. We have a sales team in place. We have revenues at the moment of about AUD 15 million, USD 10 million. And we're well positioned now with the cash on hand to roll our new iTrack Advance product into the U.S. market for significant sales growth. Thanks, Paul.

Tom, thanks very much. That was a very, very interesting presentation. Much appreciated.

I've got a few questions here for you, Tom. And a quick one here: When will the company provide further clarity on sales of iTrack?

So I mean obviously our obligation is to report at least every 6 months. Historically we've also given updates every Annual General Meeting on November. We will -- it's currently May -- whatever it is, May 20. And we will -- our next date, reporting date, will be 30 June. We have only just released the product, of course, in the United States, which is our largest market, so we see a very important reporting date will be the results to 31 December. And we'll keep our shareholders informed if we have things that we believe need to be released.

Yes, totally understand. And just on the same sort of track, are you expecting significant sales activity in Europe as well now that iTrack is available in more places?