Elite Pharmaceuticals - Q4 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Elite Pharmaceuticals conference call. At this time, all lines have been placed on a listen-only mode. Before management begins speaking, the company has the following statement. Elite would like to remind their listeners that remarks made during this call may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that are subject to changes at any time, including but not limited to, statements about Elite's expectations regarding future operating results. Forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities laws and represent management's current expectations. Actual results may differ materially. Elite disclaims any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

More complete information regarding forward-looking statements, risks, and uncertainties can be found in the reports Elite files with the SEC, which are available on Elite's website at elitepharma.com, under the Investor Relations section. Elite encourages you to review these documents carefully. With that covered, it is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Mr. Nasrat Hakim, President and Chief Executive Officer of Elite Pharmaceuticals. Sir, the floor is yours.

Nasrat Hakim (President and CEO)

Thank you, Matthew. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Nasrat Hakim. I am Elite's Chairman and CEO. This is our year-end earnings call. I will give you a summary of the company's financials, an update on Elite's R&D, manufacturing, sale and distribution, and answer some of the questions that you have submitted to Dianne. Before I start, let me address the issue of our CFO vacancy, since Dianne received a few questions about the subject, and I don't wanna wait till the end. We had Carter Ward as our CFO for over 13 years. He was here a lot longer than I've been here.

When Carter got a great opportunity elsewhere that we could not match, we wished him well and encouraged him to take it because he is family and he is a good person, good CFO, and a good stockholder, whom we stay in contact with till today. Mark helped us recruit his successor. We took a chance on a gentleman who was a controller, and we promoted him to CFO, and he was really good. The pressure got to him, and he wanted to go back to his old job. You know, anytime you are in a regulated industry where you're subject to the SEC and the auditors are scanning every decision you make, and you have to consult with the SEC attorneys all the time, it wears you out when you are not used to it.

I would like to emphasize that he did a decent job. He was good, he actually resigned. He made the choice to leave. The next two CFOs did not. I will say nothing further about the subject out of respect for everybody. When you're working for a small company, you gotta work. All right. As the acting CFO, at least for today, I have the pleasure of updating you on our wonderful financials. Yesterday, we filed our 10-K for the year ending on March 31, 2023. Elite is on a March fiscal year. A copy of the 10-K is available in the investor section of our website at elitepharma.com. It is also posted on sec.gov and many other websites that provide link to our filings. I'll start with the financial update with the income statement.

We had record sales of about $34 million this fiscal year, up approximately $2 million compared to the last year, ending in 2022. Last year, we had $32 million. This year, it's $34 million. This is primarily to the sales of our generic version of Adderall, naltrexone tablets, and Lexapro capsules. The cost of goods sold was $17.6 million, compared to $17.5 million during the previous year. As a general rule, the cost of goods usually increases as revenues increase. Despite a $2 million increase in revenues, the cost of goods held constant. We posted an operating profit of approximately $3.7 million, compared to $5 million in 2022. The $1.7 million decrease in operating profit was primarily driven by an increase in R&D spending of about $2 million over the previous year.

Previous year, we spent about one and a half. This year, we spent three and a half, $2 million more than previous year. Our operating expenses were $13 million, an increase of approximately $3 million over the previous year of $10 million. The increase was primarily related to R&D increase in spending, that's $2 million, and $1 million of interest on our outstanding loans. Let's move to our balance sheet. Our working capital is $13.6 million, compared to $12.2 million during the previous year. Our cash from operating activities is $3.7 million, down from $6.5 million compared to the previous year for the reasons we spoke of, R&D expenses, et cetera, in 2023. Our total cash on hand was $7.8 million as of March 31, 2023.

That is after we paid a $12 million loan to East West Bank. Let me say a couple of words about the loan that we recently repaid. Elite's working capital requirements have increased as we transition to direct sales. Payment terms for direct sales require a longer time for repayment and a longer inventory hold time compared to licensing our product. Elite had a $12 million loan from East West Bank that we intended to use part of it for this purpose. Due to restricted covenants and Lannett's termination agreement, the bank would not allow us access to the majority of the loan money, but continued charging us on the full loan. Therefore, Elite decided to pay off the loan and decided to raise the money elsewhere.

The company put in place a loan proposal to raise $6 million under the same terms as East West Bank, but without the restrictions. This is a short-term loan to be paid in one to two years. It's a short-term loan for one year, with only Elite having the right to extend it to a second year to support the sales transition. This new loan provides the working capital needed without the restrictions that East West Bank put on us. It will also allow us to reduce the outstanding debt interest on $6 million by 50%. We have $12 million. We really don't need all of it, so we're gonna borrow $6 million. We're paying interest on 12, but let's pay interest on six.

Same exact conditions, except actually Elite can use the money instead of paying interest and not using it. So far, I have contributed $3 million, there is $1 million in the queue that's coming next week, we may pause in here to see how we do before we raise the other two, okay? We have potential investors that are willing to do this, for now, we may pause and see how is the working capital working and continue with that. That is mainly to help us reduce the cost of interest of borrowing this money. An important fact I wish to highlight is our annual sales have been on progressive trend for the past five years.

$7.5 million in fiscal year 2019, $18 million in 2020, $25 million in fiscal year 2021, $32 million in 2022, and now $34 million this fiscal year. In a short period of five years, Elite's revenues have drastically increased by 325%. That is excellent news for us. The bad news is, our stock price is inversely proportional to our achievements. The better we do, the less value it gets. Over the past five years, even though quarter after quarter, year after year, we have shown growth in the business, that is undeniable, the stock price is still disappointing and not where we want it to be. Once we go through an adjustment period in the next few months, now that we started our own sales and marketing, this trend will continue.

The revenues, after a few months, just to give you a target date, let's say January of 2024, in a few months, from January to December, will be substantially higher than they are today. I mentioned the number $40 million in revenues annually during the last conference call. I would like to rescind that and say it will be north of 40. To continue this trend, we need to invest in R&D. We need to feed the pipeline. Elite continues to invest in product development. Our goal is to commercialize new competitive products as we grow and diversify our portfolio. Elite recently filed two ANDAs, a generic antimetabolite ANDA, and a generic dopamine agonist ANDA. These two are under review by FDA today. In addition, the company submitted partial ANDA for pain management for review by FDA.

The partial application contains the recently conducted insufflation study. Elite intends to provide the FDA with the remaining data in Q3 of 2023 to complete this filing. We disclosed a while back that we're actually continued working on a generic version of oxycodone. The last time we filed it, we had deficiencies, and one of the deficiencies that everybody got is that an insufflation study was not conducted. It was cost prohibitive. That study alone is about a one and a half, $2 million, and this is why we put the product, project on hold.

Once we learned that the things are turning in the opioid world and the states and the federal government have sued everybody they can sue and settled everything they can settle, now the pendulum is switching, and we really believe in the next three to five years that opioids are gonna come back under managed control. Nowadays, before we release anything, we have to have serialization, where actually the FDA can come in here and know exactly where each bottle, not lot, each bottle ended up at what pharmacy and in whose house, okay? That's how serialization works. It also demanded, the FDA, that we have REMS, where we have to educate the doctors and the patients about the use. They also reduced the amount of prescriptions, or tablets per prescription that you can have at home.

You cannot, like the old days, have automatic refill. You have to go through the doctor. You can get a specific amount. All of these are factors in opioids getting back to the market, in my opinion, and this is why we started working on this product. Once we did the insufflation study, we rejoiced because the results were positive, and we wanted to make an announcement. We learned that there are three other companies that are doing the same thing, and we did not want them to beat us to the punch by knowing that we just made an announcement that we're going to file. We had to be quiet, wait till we filed a partial application to get the PDUFA date going. Now I can tell you about it.

The full application should be filed by August 1st, and hopefully, the FDA will accept it. That usually takes 45-60 days. Once they do, we will make an announcement. All right. Elite has three products that have moved from the formulation development phase and are now in the clinical phase. They are in the pilot BE phase, where they conducted pilot studies or the BE studies, or the BE study is ongoing. For future growth, Elite has other products that have entered the formulation development stage. We will update you on other development products when we reach certain milestones, such as filing or approval. Let me take a second and summarize R&D as I did with the financials.

In order to have a full R&D system in a company, functional R&D system, you have to have formulations that are pending FDA approval because they're gonna get approved, and you recognize revenues from that. You need to have some that you're doing clinical trials on or close to filing with the FDA, and you have to have some that you've just vetted the process that, yeah, these are good products for us to have. They are a fit for our company. They are extended release or tablet or capsule, which we can do versus an injectable. What I just described to you right now, we have products that are in the formulation stage. We have three that are in the clinical stage and two are with FDA. We have a fully functional R&D system.

The second thing I want to emphasize is that the three products that I mentioned, that are in the clinical stage, are all needle movers. What I mean by that, they will have material impact on the company, if any of them is approved. If we got one of them approved, we'll continue the positive revenue trend beyond 2024 and 2025, as a result of the contribution from them. If we hit all three of them, that would be a very good day for Elite and the stockholders. We finished this year with strong sales through our licensees. By year, I mean fiscal year ending March 31st, 2023. We saw revenue growth from the year before. We invested some of our profits in the continued development of our pipeline and invested in creating our sales on and distribution organization.

The products that are bringing the revenues today are Amphetamine IR and ER. These are Elite's largest products this year. We expect them to continue to be that under Elite's label. We have contracts in place, and we expect to maintain our double-digit marketing shares with these products. Management of the DEA quota is always a challenge. However, Elite has been able to manage through this challenge to date. Amphetamine IR remains on the FDA shortage list, and both products are in demand. A few minutes ago, I got a call from Kirko. The IMS or IQVIA data came out for the month of May. We just launched in April, and we didn't have that much material for launch because we were making everything for Lannett.

For the month of April, for the IR, we're on command with 6.68% of the market. I definitely expect that number to improve. Isradipine and Trimipramine are being sold under Elite's label now as of April 1st. Modest in volume, both products have only one competitor, and that is really important. Isradipine, in particular, is an interesting opportunity, and we believe with direct sales, Elite can increase the value of this product. Isradipine can make a difference in contributing margins to the bottom line of Elite. Loxapine and Dantrolene are also transitioned to Elite's label as of April 1st. Products have only two competitors. The pricing has been challenging though, despite few competitors and despite Loxapine only recently coming off of the FDA shortage list.

We do expect that they will be making a contribution to the company and hopefully the margins, because they are in a field of two players, will be healthy margins of profit. Licensed products, we will continue to sell selected products to licensees as well. For example, our long-term partner, TAGI, that's been with us for a decade and a half, will continue to sell Phentermine and naltrexone for us. The increase in sales are introducing new products once the ANDAs are approved, require more employees, more warehouse storage space, and more equipment. We are in the process of upgrading several pieces of equipment in the facility to keep up with sales demands. There is a point where we will have to have another facility to support our manufacturing.

The time to plan for it is now. It's an expensive project, but it's one of the most important projects that's on my mind. As an executive, you always have to think within a three-year time zone, plus or minus, not only three years in the future. Decisions we made few years ago impact us today. We need to continue refining these decisions, adjusting them, and planning to make them better. Decisions we make today are gonna affect us in the future, and we need to do the same. For example, when we did the three basket approach or three-prong approach, slowing the ER technology, creating partnerships that led to SunGen amphetamine combo, and developing our own R&D. That decision is really what made us profitable today. Okay? On the first part, slowing down the ER technology, it was draining us.

The FDA kept asking for more and more. Each study will cost millions of dollars, and these millions of dollars, I don't believe in borrowing money, so we were selling shares. We'll address that in a second. We reached a point where we can't do that anymore because it doesn't look like there is an end in sight for that. Slowing that down and focusing our attention on partnerships and our own products, gave us amphetamine combo and gave us the products we have today and made us the viable company we did today. If we did not, and if we actually borrowed money back then in order to support the ER technology, we will be like Akorn, bankrupt. We'll be bankrupt even like Lannett, whom today, even though they survived, but the stockholders didn't.

The stockholders got zero money, and the private adapters took over the whole company. Elite would have been in the same position, and even though our stock is low, it has the hope of coming back because of our great financials. If we borrowed money, there will be zero hope and zero opportunity for us to even make it. Okay. Sales and marketing, sales and distribution is one of these instances. In addition to thinking of another plan, sales and distribution is another one of these instances. Just to give you a historic background of how we got here. You all know and understand and remember that we didn't have sales and marketing, so us and SunGen partners with Lannett for the IR and ER. We engaged in a three-year licensing agreement that would end in March of 2022.

Lannett did a good job with growing the net sales for the Amphetamine IR and ER. Elite and Lannett decided to extend the licensing agreement by two years to 2024, and that's March 2024. It was interesting that Lannett extended it at about the same month in November of 2021, when they got approval for their Amphetamine ER. When that happened, immediately we sprung into action and start planning for the company's future. We start looking into sales and marketing by 2024 or another distributor because we saw the writing on the walls. In January of 2022, after about a month or two of mulling over it was starting to bother me, I started search for a VP of sales.

We screened and interviewed several candidates, three very solid candidates, till we met Kirko, and of course, we selected number four, who was, in my opinion, outstanding. In July 2022, Lannett received approval for the IR and for amphetamine. Even then, they placed them on the discontinued list, everybody tried to assure me like, "Hey, don't worry, they have GMP issues, they have financial problems. They don't want the headache of making this. You're making it, taking all the risk, and they're just selling it. They put it on the discontinued list. There is no way they wanna sell it." I said, "No, we continue trying to get licensed in all 50 states, hiring somebody to do this, and planning for our own sales and marketing." Sure enough, shortly after, Lannett exercised six-month termination clause in the agreement.

Within these six months, because of all of the background work we did, we got licensed in all 50 states, and we hired Kirko. September of 2022, I believe, 5th or 6th of September, we hired Kirko. When we hired Kirko, we want him to succeed, so we immediately also issued a termination notice to Epic to bring home Isradipine and Trimipramine also by March of 2022. We got six month notice from Lannett. We issued six months notice to everybody else. "Hey, we want our products back because we got somebody who's gonna sell them." We terminated the contract with Lannett for Dantrolene and brought that home by March 2023. We terminated the Prasco agreement and brought home Loxapine by March 2023.

In addition to amphetamine IR and ER, we also had Phendimetrazine and phentermine, and Dantrolene, and Isradipine, and Trimipramine, and Loxapine for Kirko to sell. That makes it a little better for a salesperson to go in with all of these products instead of one. Kirko joined us in September and with the mandate to set up a commercial operations group and launch the Elite brand, meaning launch Elite's products on our label for all of Elite's ANDAs that are available by April 1, 2023. Kirko explained to us what the process involved. He needed to set up a national distribution system with the support of 3PL partner. 3PL stands for Third-Party Logistics provider.

Because Elite does not have the capability and the warehouse operation, to ship directly from here to pharmacies and small amounts and pick and pack and all of that, we needed a 3PL to do that. He did that. He developed the specifications for the 3PL service. He set up the RFP process for the interested, 3PL service providers to bid on a three-year contract to work with Elite. We considered six providers, reduced it to three and selected Crossroads. Kirko's mandate was to develop a commercial sale, sales, marketing, and distribution strategy, negotiate and distribute, distribution contracts with distributing partners such as McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal. Buying groups such as Premier Generics, OptiSource, Topco, Rx Sourcing Strategies, LLC. Retailers such as CVS, Walgreens, Publix, and Meijer.

He also set up the contracting with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, CMS, to provide access to Elite's products, and was ready for national distribution of 29 NDCs on Elite's label by April 1, 2023. We got him in September and October. He already signed the contract with Crossroads, the 3PL. In November, he had the first contract delivered to us with Premier. By December, he had contracts with Publix, Meijer, OptiSource, Golden Oaks, and then Red Oaks, which is 50% of our business. He had contracts in place with all of these guys, in addition to working with the staff, getting licensed in all 50 states, listing us in the compendium as well.

When in March, the customer awards commitments began coming in, we were making batches for Lannett. We still managed to launch our products on April 1st. April 1st through June, it's my rough estimation that this is gonna be a good quarter. It's gonna be a low quarter. It's gonna be in the $7 million dollar range in revenues. We're talking about $7 million dollar range. Just remember, in 2019, in the entire year, we made $7 million. A good quarter is about as much as we used to make in an entire year. Elite now has in place logistics, warehousing, sales, and financial reporting for both controlled and uncontrolled products. Elite is executing its growth plan by filing new ANDAs, as I've explained, obtaining product approvals and creating our own sales and distribution organization.

We look forward to reporting our first quarter's earnings and talking to you about it or, analyzing it with you on August 15th, thereabouts. All right, take, I've got some of the questions that you sent to Dianne. Honestly, some of the questions are as always, some of our stakeholders are brilliant. They ask the right questions. Some of them give me great feedback, and some, not so much. I'll start first with the partnerships and sales. The first set of questions, about five, six of them, five of them, are about Mikah and Adderall, okay? I've addressed this issue to death, there will be no more other single decision. If and when the Board of Directors decide it is time to make an offer, if it is accepted, there will be announcement.

Till then, we are in the same norm we were in before, where SunGen owned this product, and if SunGen sold it to a Chinese or Indian company, we would have been in the same boat or even worse. It does not impact Elite in any way, shape, or form. The board will decide if and when they are gonna make an offer, and you asking the question doesn't mean I'm gonna tell you, "Oh, yeah, thanks for asking. I talked to the board and they said, 'Let's do this.'" These questions are meant to create negative impact on the board and create gossip, and we're done with that. We are a serious company. We're starting sales and marketing. We need to start entertaining serious questions. Questions like, "Why didn't you give us the money in 2020 in order to buy this?" are really ridiculous. Okay?

Under Lannett, Adderall XR barely scratched the surface. What are the expectations for Elite with this and the IR? A very intelligent question, a really very complicated question. If this was not a controlled substance, I will tell you it'll be like a home run with the bases loaded. This is a controlled substance. We cannot sell more than what the DEA permits us. We definitely are trying, but today I'm trying to give you the honest-to-goodness positive picture about the company, so I don't wanna talk about the demons in my head. That is, you know, the DEA sent us quota hand to mouth. We are having to struggle and turn things around and all the hard work we're doing here. That's not for you guys to worry about. That's for Doug Plassche and myself and Chris Dick and Kirko to worry about.

We cannot make a product if we don't have the API. To get the API, the DEA needs to allow us quota. The DEA is really controlling the quota. The DEA is not the villain here. They have a good point. They sent us analysis that they authorize, let's say, I don't remember the numbers, let's say five billion units to go to the market, and they only see three in the market. Where are the other two? Are people holding on in to, in order to drive the prices up or to wait till somebody can't deliver, and they have a failure to supply situation? They need to investigate that stuff. Elite is not one of these people.

We are a tiny little company, that we are making this stuff, and next day we're shipping it, and we can show evidence that it's going straight to the pharmacy and is being sold, okay? You know, of course, we have to go through the channels everybody goes through, and we have to work with the DEA. For that, we would do very well. Okay. With this long answer, let me give you a positive twist. My expectation for 2024, that will probably double the ER sales, okay? At least, go 1.5x what we have with Lannett.

I'm hoping, showing the DEA that I'm selling all of this, and I have contracts that will give us a break, and that break will go a little at a time, so it's not gonna happen today. Maybe by next year, when I show them all that data, they'll trust us and give us more. Up till then, we're gonna be selling pretty much about the same thing we sold, under Lannett, maybe a little more. Development questions. Any word on the oxy generic abuse study? Yes, as I just updated you, we really ran the insufflation study. We had to go radio silence on it because of competitive reasons. We submitted the data to FDA, was supplemented, in another 30 days or so.

With the rest of it, we will wait for them to give us a final answer. When we have final answer, we'll let you know. Does Elite Pharmaceutical have any plans to resume their abuse-deterrent technology? Not at this time. It's extremely costly. As I mentioned before, we don't have the money. For us to go back to the SequestOx, which is gonna cost millions of dollars, we are better served taking care of the facility, the current R&D line, Kirko, sales and marketing, creating a foundation that will survive. Later on, when we have money to splurge, we can do that. Right now, I have no interest in doing that for the reasons I mentioned.

The ER is of interest to me. Pfizer is still blocking everything because of what they did. We'll figure a way around that when we have the money. Right now, we don't. "Please provide an update on the Prasco generic vigabatrin launch. We are nearing one year into a three-year deal with zero revenues generated thus far." We sold Prasco the product. It is theirs, okay? We are contract manufacturers. When they ask us to manufacture it, we will manufacture it at a cost plus. That's about it. This is not a product that we intend to discuss. I wish them success. We will support them in any way we can to succeed. This is their product now. We will contract manufacturers for a couple of years for them. We'll move on. Okay.

Any update on Dexcel in Israel? Funny you should ask. This week, we actually heard from them. They sent us a notification telling us they're gonna send us samples for us to test. Let me explain to our stockholders that don't understand the issue in here, what's going on. We have a product that's approved by FDA. We are selling it in America. The Israelis would like it. The Israeli laws are different than ours. They have their Ministry of Health that needs to approve this product. If it's approved by FDA, that's a plus, but that doesn't mean they automatically let it in the country. Dexcel has to go through specific steps in order to make that product fit their country, if they can. They may not be able to, okay? This is an exploratory venture.

They are trying. They think they can. They think it's a great opportunity. They think they want to talk about other products. All of that, to me, is talking till we get to the point where it gets approved. From our end, there is nothing for us to do. The product is already approved. All we can do is they sent the samples to go, "Please compare this to that. Please compare it to what we sell in Israel. Please look, if you can see certain impurities for the Israeli Ministry of Health." Whatever they ask us for, we'll do it. If and when we have a material event, that's such as they are gonna launch the product, we'll tell you. It will be great news for us to share. Other than that, there's nothing for us to discuss, really.

Can you please provide some clarity on the CFO changes?" I already did that. There's two, three questions on that. When you work for a small company, you gotta work hard. Look at Kirko. In six months, he moved mountains. Doug Plassche, unbelievable. Chris did the same thing. I have an outstanding senior staff that we are all on the front line doing the work. I cannot handle a person that recruiters bring in to us, so they can be a corporate person sitting in their office and wanting to hire an entire staff and not work. You need to be a worker bee at Elite. That's what we all are. Business strategies. "Almost all previously communicated strategies have failed. The three-prong that was the last long-term strategy view.

Please provide strategic vision for investors as to where the company is heading near term and long term." I only read these questions to make a point. First, the reason we exist today is because of the three-prong approach, number one. Number two, every single quarter, even though we are an OTC bulletin board, small company, I update you guys on what we're doing, what we have done, and what we're going to do. These are the questions I will not be answering in the future. "What are the revenue expectations for the current quarter?" It's gonna be above $7 million. The next quarter, maybe $8.5 million. The one after, maybe we'll start hitting the mark, if not, definitely by January.

As I said, I do expect us to surpass the $40 million, at least when the dip is gone and we are full swing, and especially for next fiscal year. By the way, I, the next CFO, the very first mandate for him or her, is going to be change this fiscal year crap from March to a normal year, because that is really annoying. "What events has happened between Velocity and today that you feel may have a material impact on the Elite share price?" The first question, the first of the question is wonderful. The second one is the depressing part. As I just said, all of the good things that happened, it seems like our share price is inversely proportional to our achievements.

We've done a lot of great things, and the share price is not moving. I am not sure yet, short term, what I can do to move it. Long term, I have a plan, okay? In a year or two, when we get a couple more products, there are certain things we can do in order to change that. Right now, we have done a lot of things. I just went through them all, from all of the achievements of setting up sales and marketing, moving the products in-house, our revenues, all of that has been since the last meeting.

What impact, if any, has the expiration of the Lannett partnership with our Elite Financial's revenues and profitability? As I said, I am hoping that we'll be in better financial shape because now we're in charge for our own destiny. We can sell other products, not only Amphetamine IR and ER, with the same vigor. I'll disclose something for you to understand what I mean. A company that was selling one of our products, not the Amphetamine IR and ER, our lesser products, brought in certain revenues in 12 months, in the whole year. Kirko, in 12 weeks, brought in twice as much money as they did in the whole year. Why? Because it's his product. He's going there and trying to sell it, okay?

Versus the other company, they put it in some compendia registry, and if somebody orders it, they do, and they don't, they don't. He actually sold more than they did in a whole year in 2.5 months, okay? It's still the first quarter, yeah. This is the kind of thing that I'm hoping will help us financially. Revenue-wise, it's gonna be more. Profit is gonna be a little tricky because now, we have a higher cost for the sales and marketing department, okay? Just to give you a simple example that just came to mind, let's assume you're a pharmacist and you have five products in your pharmacy, and one of them is mine, you're selling it. You decide not to sell mine anymore, and I wanna sell it. I open a pharmacy for that 1 product.

If you and I sell the same amount of product, my cost is higher because I only have one in the pharmacy, and you got five, okay? How the profitability is gonna work over the next few months, I'm still trying to figure out that out and what other products we can supplement it with. Maybe even going as far as asking another company if we can sell their product in order for us to do that. There are other things we can do, but right now, I gotta focus how to make this a success, okay? Then we'll move to the next step. As Elite has become self-sufficient financially, would you consider taking your salary in all cash, as this would have a definite impact on the dilution of the share of the company?

Listen, nothing would please me more than I would have been paid in cash from day one. The reason I don't is because we don't have the money. It is a little bit weird for me to say to the board: "Hey, yeah, why don't you pay me in cash? And by the way, I'm loaning you money 'cause you need it," you know? Yes, the answer is yes. Long term, I'm hoping in a year or two, we will change all of that. As of today, it's only me and the board that gets paid in stocks. Everybody else, we've cleared that out. Hopefully, we will change that. Right now, this is what's working for us, and we'll continue doing it for at least another year. Can Mr.

Hakim explain on the press release regarding the increase in R&D and setting up the sales and distribution efforts? Both are quite important. My interest in R&D is if the company is working on products with substantial marketing opportunity. That's a very intelligent question. That's really a true stakeholder's question, the answer is yes, as I've explained before, we're spending more on R&D because that's our lifeline, that's our bloodline, and unless we feed that, there's gonna be a point where your revenues are gonna start to go down, and you'll go out of business. The same goes for the sales and marketing. Thank you for that question. Okay. Launch of Elite label. How is the launch of the Elite label going? It's going well. It's very exciting, actually.

I traveled with Kirko to Dallas one time. We spent an entire week of going through with the with all of the potential sales and marketing distributors. Man, he knows everybody, and he's well connected in there. We launched as of April 1st, slow and steady, May was much better than April, and June was better than April and May. July will be that, and August will start to tip off, and after that, we will we'll be in a nice trajectory. We have not had any updates on the impact of the new sales department leader has had on the company. Can you share with us some of the achievements since he came on board? I already went through all of that. Kirko has done an outstanding job with Elite.

I'll not repeat everything I said, but I'll tell you this, Kirko is not only a great employee, he's really a great human being, yeah. I sat when we went to meet with Roberto, I sat with him in the car for five, six hours each way, so we spent 10 to 12 hours in the car. He really is a wonderful human being. He's a good family man, a good human being. He's fun, he's intelligent, he's highly educated, IT graduate. He speaks multiple languages. He's well-liked, as I said, everywhere we went to a conference call, it was like speed dating. They bring people every 20 minutes. Every 20 minutes, you have to talk to a different company, and they kick them out, another 20 minutes.

Everybody that came in, he either knew them, knew their colleagues that were there before them, and knew their families, and knew their company, went through their history. Many of them were delighted to see him, and that goes a long way in getting sales and marketing. What he's done in the past six months, would take somebody else over two years, okay? I just realized something. Dianne, do you think Kirko is listening? Because if Kirko is listening, he's gonna ask me to renegotiate his contract. Let me amend my question and say this, he's doing okay, all right? I'm gonna have to study him for a year or two before I give you a final answer. Well, thank you all for listening. This concludes our meeting for today. We will talk to you on August 15th.

Have a wonderful weekend, and happy birthday to America. Thank you, Matthews.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.