Acutus Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:AFIB) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

David Roman: Sure. So on the utilization side, we’ve been very encouraged. And quite frankly, this has trended a little bit better than we had expected. On the pickup, we are seeing in utilization and procedure volumes, especially in the U.S. on the heels of some of the software releases that we have executed over the past 6 months. I think as we go back and reflect a little bit on the performance of the business, one of the things that we had observed and commented on was the extent to which we needed to make software improvements that would be critical to better aligning user experience with more conventional workflow, simplifying the procedure and ensuring that the benefits of AcQMap were not difficult to access for our customers.

And the impact of simplifying procedure workflow, as well as bringing some very targeted software releases and technology upgrades to market has had a more significant impact on our business than we might have expected. And one of the things that I mentioned in my prepared remarks that is showing through here is many physicians who had an interest in what Acutus is doing several years ago, whether that was because they were looking for solutions for persistent Afib patients or more complex patients who subsequently found that the technology did not meet their expectations are coming back to utilizing the system more regularly and at a more consistent pace. So that is helping drive higher-than-planned procedure volumes in the – especially in the U.S. So as we think about how AcQBlate fits into that, this becomes something that will ultimately help us accelerate our growth performance and capture anywhere from 30% to 50% more revenue per procedure and also continue to help from a cost perspective with our customers, allowing physicians to truly use Acutus on a stand-alone basis.

So as we think about the approval time line here, in Q4, we would expect to see fairly modest contribution from AcQBlate is reflected in our guidance and that largely coming from existing accounts. And then we’ll utilize this as a catalyst to drive new account adoption because if you look at our installed base, we have largely come to the end of the account removal and sort of repositioning process. There will still be some of that on a regular basis. But as we think about really growing the installed base in a more meaningful way, AcQBlate will be important to that, especially in 2024. But given the adoption that we are seeing in mapping procedures both in the U.S. and in markets outside the U.S. that is helping drive the overall business when AcQBlate as we kind of await the AcQBlate approval and launch year later this year.

Marie Thibault: That’s very helpful. Thank you, David.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line John Young from Canaccord Genuity. Go ahead, John

John Young: It’s John on for Bill Plovanic. Thanks for taking our questions. Maybe just start on the cash burn in Q2, the $15 million. Can you talk about the current cash runway and just expectations for cash burn throughout the rest of 2023?

David Roman: Sure, John. So you’ll see in our 10-Q that will be filed shortly. We continue to expect to have at least a year of cash here. So, we have made significant progress here, reducing our cash burn, as we’ve talked about on our past several calls. A few things to talk about with respect to the cash burn here. We had about $1 million of incremental inventory purchases, both on disposals and capital-related supply chain items. And that’s really to reflect the higher demand that we’re seeing and also to ensure that we have appropriate supply of some of the longer lead time items. As you kind of – if you go back and look at the financial statements from last year, we did bring down inventory very significantly, and move to a much more hand-to-mouth purchasing strategy with respect to our own inventory as we went through our restructuring initiatives.