ProPhase Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRPH) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Now, we just got in $5 million of new business. One of those two customers, we’ve already started manufacturing for them. The other one should start shortly. So right away, as we enter the second quarter, we should be at a $15 million, $16 million run rate. Instead of losing money, we should be making at least 20% to 25% net profit margins. That’s just the starting point. So, just based on that, we’re $3 million to $4 million profitable business just entering — on an annualized run rate just entering the second quarter. What also happened is we purchased automation equipment, which arrived, which we installed. It turned out the automation equipment works better than we expected. I give our COO, Jed Latkin, who joined us — originally, he joined us because he represented — he’s worked with multiple companies as CEO, CFO, COO.

He was representing the company that he was turning around that sold us the BE-Smart esophageal cancer test. He came as a consultant last year. He got involved with Pharmaloz. He became a full-time consultant and he became our full-time senior level executive and COO. And so, he’s hands on. He actually has a lot of experience in the manufacturing world by pure coincidence. And so, he got involved. We started building additional capacity. We brought in some high-level senior level executives to work in the company as well as a high-level consulting company to work with us to build a master plan to build that capacity over the next one, two, three years and so forth. And so, Jed flew to Germany to get the best automation equipment in the world.

We installed it, and our capacity now — we had capacity estimates. So, to put this in perspective, we estimated a month or two ago that by the third quarter, we have a second lozenges line being installed. And by the way, that lozenges line, we ordered that more than a year ago. You have to understand. It’s not like there’s lozenges lines out there to be purchased. This how tight the capacity is. If you want to purchase one lozenges line today, that have to manufacture it. By the time, they manufacture it, ship it to you, you install, it could be year-and-a-half. So, I understand that the lozenges line that’s about to be installed late in the second quarter, early third quarter, we planned on this more than a year ago. Just at the time, we were losing money.

It wasn’t an exciting business. But understand, behind the scenes, we’ve been working on Pharmaloz and building this expansion for year-and-a-half. At the same time, we were talking to two global brands since the beginning of last year as well. So, all this has been in the works. This isn’t something new. This is all about to come together and bear significant fruit right now going forward. So, it turns out our automation equipment works better than we expected when we include the lozenges line being installed in the coming months. We expect by at some point in the third quarter, we won’t be at a run rate of $30 million to $35 million of capacity, we’ll be a run rate of $45 million of capacity. This is an astounding number when you think about the historical value of Pharmaloz and what it will be now.

And understand, we might not get to $45 million run rate of revenues immediately of that. A lot of that has to do with how quickly we sign on new customers. But we’ve been pushing customers away up until recently because we didn’t have the capacity for them. And that’s why every single customer we have accepted our price increases. And we announced a month or two ago that we have these two major global brands that are interested in doing business with us. We’ve been doing all their formulation work. We’re in the final stages. We got the FDA inspection with flying colors and no citations. We had to go through audits, all these different things. There’s so much bureaucracy involved. The bottom line is, it’s the 11th hour. So, we’re going to see what happens with these two major global brands.

What’s interesting since I last announced the two major global brands, there’s another two significant brands out there that want to do business with us. So, I don’t know the timing of how this all plays out, but Pharmaloz is profitable already, and growing. And I couldn’t be more excited about it. And so, our goal — our longer-term goal, we already ordered in addition to the lozenges line coming in in a few months and all the ancillary automation equipment and so forth that we need, we have two more lozenges lines coming in by year-end that we’re going to install next year. That will take us to $90 million or $100 million or more in capacity. And what’s interesting, that’s based on a 3.5-day work week. You have to have downtime for cleaning of equipment and so forth.

But that 3.5 days, if the labor is available, it’s possible, we could bump it to 4.5 days. That $90 million or $100 million capacity number could easily become $110 million or $120 million. The numbers are so large, though, that it really is irrelevant even at the $45 million run rate. If we get to a $45 million run rate, and we’re generating 20% to 25% net profit margin, we’re talking about more than $10 million, the value Pharmaloz could be 50% or 100% more than the entire market cap of our entire company right now. Right now, we have a market cap of $80 million, $90 million. I think within months, the value of Pharmaloz is going to be worth more than the entire market cap of our company, depending on how long we keep it, and I’m going to have all sorts of strategic alternatives.

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