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Q4 2008 ART ADVANCED RESH TECH INC NEW Earnings Conference Call - Final.

Article Excerpt
OPERATOR: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Art Advanced Research Technologies fourth quarter and year end 2008 results conference call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Ms. Ani Armenian, Communications Manager at ART. Please go ahead, Ms. Armenian.

ANI ARMENIAN, CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER, ART ADVANCED RESH TECH INC NEW: Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. Our call today will be led by Sebastien Gignac, President and CEO of ART. Joining him will be ART's Chief Financial Officer, Jacques Bedard. Following their remarks, we will open the call for questions. (Spoken in French).

Please let mention, that in order to help you understand the Company's activities and results, we may make forward-looking statements. It is possible that actual results will differ. Additional information regarding assumptions underlying any forward-looking statements and potential risk factors that could cause such a variance to appear in our annual information form, as well as in our annual and quarterly reports filed with Securities Commissions in Canada. I will now turn the call over to Sebastien Gignac.

SEBASTIEN GIGNAC, PRESIDENT, CEO, ART ADVANCED RESH TECH INC NEW: Thank you. Thank you, Ani. (Spoken in French). Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We greatly appreciate your interest in the Company. We are reporting today on our financial results for the fourth quarter and the year ended December 31, 2008. Let me first review briefly our year end and last quarter financial results. First, we generated revenues of $1.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to $1.3 million for the fourth quarter of last year. Bringing revenues for 2008 to $5 million, compared to $2 million for 2007, 137% increase.

Furthermore, we have continued to bring operating expenses down to an even more manageable level. And as a result, achieved a 19% reduction in our operating loss in the fourth quarter as compared to the same quarter a year before. As for the year ended December 31, 2008, the operating loss decreased by $3.7 million or 40% to $5.5 million, from $9.3 million for the same period ended in 2007. Therefore, our burn rate in the fourth quarter, based on our operating activities, stands effectively at just around $217,000 per month, compared to $600,000 per month for the fourth quarter of 2007.

Let me now give you a broader perspective of what we accomplished in 2008 and since the year ended. Our decision just over a year ago to take over the direct sales and marketing of ART's Optix system has proven correct. After our first full year of direct distribution, our sales and marketing team turned in encouraging results with higher unit sales and margins. The worldwide install base of Optix systems now stands at close to 60 units, with new placement at major recent centers in North America and Europe, including the US National Cancer Institute and UCLA's California Nanosystems Institute.

Moreover, ART continues to...