Nephros Inc. 0 Earnings Call

Welcome to the Nephros Investor Event. Thank you for taking the time to join us today and for your interest in Nephros. Whether you've been a shareholder for years or just beginning to learn about the company, I hope you leave today's event with a much deeper understanding of who we are, why we exist, and perhaps most importantly, where we're headed. Today's event isn't really about filters, it's about water. Water is necessary for life. Clean, safe water is fundamental to health, and yet most people don't think about it until something goes wrong. When water quality fails, the consequences can be significant. Patients become ill, buildings can shut down, equipment can fail, businesses lose confidence, trust is lost. At Nephros, our purpose is simple. We purify water where it matters most.

That includes hospitals, dialysis clinics, commercial buildings, laboratories, food service, and many other environments where water quality has real consequences for patients, customers, caregivers, equipment, operations, ultimately, trust. The interesting thing that the market around us is just changing so rapidly. Just a few years ago, most conversations centered around Legionella. Today, the discussion is much broader. Customers are thinking about opportunistic premise plumbing pathogens, biofilm, antibiotic-resistant organisms, PFAS, lead, aging infrastructure, and increasingly, microplastics and nanoplastics. The expectation is no longer simply to react when problems occur. The expectation is to prevent them. That shift plays directly into Nephros' strengths. Our membrane technology provides a physical barrier through size exclusion filtration. Rather than relying solely on chemistry or perfect water conditions throughout an entire building, our technology provides targeted purification exactly where water is used.

Today, I'd like to show you and like you to see that the filter is not the only part of the story. Over the past several years, we've intentionally evolved Nephros into a company built around three complementary pillars. The first is products. Everything begins with differentiated technology. Our hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane has been proven in some of the most demanding environments. The technology is incredible. It gives us credibility, the opportunity to expand into new markets, new applications, all while continuing to strengthen our leadership in healthcare. The second pillar is service. We learned that even the best product creates less value if it isn't installed properly or maintained correctly. Customers increasingly need a partner, not simply a supplier. Today, Nephros supports site assessments, installations, emergency response, filter replacement, and ongoing consultation.

Service doesn't just improve customer satisfaction, it helps ensure that our technology performs exactly as intended. The third, most recent pillar, is education. One of the most exciting initiatives we've launched at Nephros is the Nephros Water Institute. Why? Water quality is becoming more complex every year. Standards continue to evolve. Regulations continue to change. Customers are looking for trusted guidance, not just products. Through webinars, industry presentations, consulting, and educational programming, we're helping customers better understand water safety before they ever purchase a filter. Education creates trust. Trust creates relationships. These relationships create long-term customers, and that's an important point I'd like everyone to remember today. At Nephros, we are not trying to build a transactional business. We're building an enduring customer relationship. When you combine differentiated products, responsive service, and meaningful education, something powerful happens. Customers don't simply buy a filter.

They increasingly look at a trusted water quality partner. That creates recurring demand, stronger customer retention, and opportunities to expand into additional applications over time. Today's event was designed to show you exactly what that looks like in practice. You'll hear directly from members of our team who work with customers every day. You'll hear from a partner who has experienced firsthand what it looks like to work with Nephros, and you'll see how our approach translates into measurable value in the field. Following this next video, Judy and I will discuss our recent progress, our outlook for the business, and opportunities we believe are in front of us. We're excited about Nephros, where we are today, we're even more excited about where we're going. We believe water quality will continue to become more important across healthcare, commercial, institutional, and new adjacent markets.

We believe our technology is uniquely positioned to address many of those challenges, we believe that the combination of products, services, and education creates a differentiated platform which is capable of generating sustainable long-term growth. Thank you again for spending part of your day with us. I hope you enjoy today's program, I look forward to speaking with many of you during our live question and answer session. That being said, let's get started, I will share the first video with you.

Total Quality Medical has been working with Nephros since 2008, maybe even earlier. They came up to me. We were doing some international shows and things like that, they asked me if they could purchase equipment from us Refurbished RO systems machines because they were testing out that new hemodiafiltration product that they were developing. We were able to supply them with some machines and RO systems, they developed the filters. We became probably one of their first distributors in the market, we just kept building on that. Going and say, "Can you go here and check this out?" We would do it and tell them what we found. We take it into the market to some of the larger facilities, Fresenius Medical Care, DaVita, and things like that.

It's kind of worked out a great relationship with them for the past 20-something years, 30 years. Nephros has really supported our growth because we were doing a lot just dialysis machines. When we got involved with Nephros, it opened up larger opportunity going into hospitals, getting more into infection control. We started carrying a lot more infection control products because we were meeting with infection control. We've been able to evolve over the 30 years from just building machines and clinics to development of doing a number of other products. Now they're starting to do a lot of installations and educating staff on that. We've been able to send our staff down to Nephros and get educated on doing other things with the product. We had learned how to do ice machines and things like that, how to install under the sink.

It's worked out great. They've done a great education for us. How our customers respond when we bring Nephros in is all positive. Okay? They understand it's a great filter. It's got to be the best filter in the world. You go to a facility and you're like, "Why do I need a water filter? I got water filters." Well, you don't have this water filter. Okay? This water filter saves lives. Nephros has helped us in an urgent emergency to get filters overnighted. Last night, we had a huge issue. We had to get filters to New York by this morning. We were able to do that. We didn't get the PO from the purchaser until 1:30. We made a call yesterday, two hours prior to getting the PO, and they already started making the kits to get the filters out on time.

We got the PO in, we got the filters out, and everything delivered today at 8:00 A.M. We're looking forward to the future relationship with Nephros and Total Quality Medical. There's a great opportunity to develop a number of different products for the market. The market is huge, and there's really nothing we can't do.

What a great testimony from one of our key partners. Now we're going to go a little bit deeper into the expertise and value of the platform that Mike spoke about with our colleague, Brianne.

When most people think about Nephros, they think about filters. They think about products. We're not just a manufacturer. When I joined the company a little over five years ago, we endeavored on a huge rebrand. One of the outcomes of that rebrand was determining what was our why. Our why was because water matters. Really, this is so key to how we do what we do and why we do what we do. We're making products that help make water safer or better, but we're also helping people understand why that's important. The way that we do that is through education. When it comes to water, knowledge is more important than ever. As technology advances, so too does our understanding about different things that impact our water quality and safety.

Your understanding of more risks, understanding of more challenges, all things being discovered every day, new regulations being introduced. This creates some operational and compliance challenges for different industries, particularly for customers like our own, who are often in healthcare or other regulated industries where water safety and water quality concerns are not a should, they've become a must. Referencing back to our why of because water matters, it was key to our rebrand in defining that why, that it was also key to help people understand why it matters. In knowing why it matters, one must also understand what can challenge it. Having that understanding is often a factor of education. Very early in our rebrand, education became a cornerstone of the work that we do.

When it comes to supporting our customers who are navigating these technology advancements, these changing regulatory expectations, and the landscape of different standards being released, the compliance and operational burden that they face is something that we are more than happy to help with, that we feel it is very closely tied to our mission. With that, we make a point of doing the work ourselves to understand what is going on in the industry. What are the challenges facing water quality and water safety? Not just from an industry perspective, but from a human perspective. With that work and that research, we have to be well-versed in what are the expectations for compliance.

We do that work of learning and understanding so that we can do the translation, turn it into actionable items, tactical guidance that we can then in turn share with our customers and our partners. Beyond how we help our customers and partners better understand water quality and water safety challenges and how best to respond to them, we're also looking to advance the public understanding of water challenges and how to respond, calling attention to different blind spots, if you will. Something that we have found that is true both from an industry perspective but also from a public perspective, is the idea that water is safe because it is a utility that we rely upon, right? There are different government standards dictating what makes EPA quality water, what makes water safe, right? Water is also something where if there are problems, they're invisible.

One can't look at a glass of water and know immediately what might be wrong with it if it's not something that's affecting the color or the smell. With this invisibility comes another opportunity for education. A lot of focus with water treatment comes from before it gets to the building part, when you're talking about water treatment plants, right? Something when we're thinking about municipal supply, we're thinking about large-scale purification, large-scale treatment, and assuming when water gets to us, all of the work has been done and it is now safe to consume. The reality is, when water enters a building, all bets are off. Things change. You have another water journey that starts from the point of entry into a building to the point of use, where you're going to interact with that water, maybe at a faucet, maybe taking a shower, maybe in a facility, maybe as part of your commercial or professional process.

That's another area where there are plenty of things that we can call attention to that are not just useful for industries, as I said, but for the average, to have a better understanding of something that we rely upon for life, water. Earlier this year, we took another step in our efforts with education.

We decided to form what is now known as the Nephros Water Institute, which is essentially a more formalized version of what we have been doing already for some time, engaging with our public, staying abreast of industry developments, being mindful of what are the contaminants of most concern, but also what are the regulatory changes and how can we translate this to our partners. We are holding webinars. We are creating tailored resources. We are really focused on using evidence-based education as a support for our public, for our customers in particular. Education also creates value for our business. Yes, we're helping the public and our customers and partners better understand the situations that they're navigating when it comes to water or bringing attention to things that they may not have been aware of. An informed customer is a better customer, right?

They're having a better experience with our products. Better understanding leads to better implementation. Better implementation leads to better outcomes. It helps establish, grow that trust that is so key in any customer relationship that will also hopefully expand and grow over time. Another way that education supports our business is helping us to reach customers beyond our traditional markets, beyond our traditional customer base. As you well know, healthcare is a big source of customers, but there are other industries that we are engaging in, different types of manufacturing, different aspects of water treatment beyond just healthcare. With these industries, it's very important to be in touch with what are the topics and contaminants that are of particular concern to them. This comes from industry engagement, often with conferences, but also different professional organizations.

We've had the privilege of also being asked to speak at a lot of these. It's great to be able to identify these new areas, to identify topics that are relevant, be able to tie that back to how Nephros can support them, how Nephros can provide value for these areas. It also creates an opportunity for different industries and different populations and audiences to have a better understanding of Nephros, if they have little understanding, and if they've never heard of us before, know that we are a resource that's out there, know that we are a solution that is available. Education is not separate from our business strategy. It is an extension of our purpose, of our customer relationships, and the value that we bring beyond the products themselves.

Now that you've heard from Brianne and the Water Institute, I want to take a little bit deeper dive and look what's under the hood to understand really where the magic happens. For that, I pulled Mike in and had a little round table. Take a look at this recording on that.

As a filtration manufacturer, Nephros has developed a lot of different filtration technology. We have been able to support a wide range of industries, different applications, and water quality challenges. Having started in dialysis, where the scrutiny, the quality needs, the rigor of purification is so high, it has really helped inform our expertise and the breadth of our product solutions, if you will. Since our start in dialysis, we have expanded quite a bit. We are in infection control, physical and chemical contaminant control, as well a number of different custom commercial partner-driven applications. On that note, I did want to take this opportunity to open up the conversation with our Vice President of R&D, Michael Milman, who's here with me today.

We want to peel back the curtain, so to speak, on our OEM partnerships and a lot of the custom product development that is not really publicly spoken about, but is a big part of the Nephros business. Mike, I know one reason Nephros is able to support the range of applications and capabilities that we've developed has to do with the technical demands of the work that we've done. Thinking historically about different industries and applications we've supported, be it dialysis or even pathogen detection, things of that nature, can you walk us through how our early technical foundation has shaped what we are able to offer today?

Sure. Of course. Many might not know about this, but we were the customer, right? Nephros started out developing a novel dialysis, both the system and treatment, and big part of that treatment was the requirement to have really high-end, really pure purification process. We tried to find something that was available, and it wasn't, so we actually had to develop our own technology for that high-end purification process. That technology still sort of stays as a core to a lot of our products.

As a result, we were sitting in our customers' shoes. We know what problems they were dealing with. We know what support they really needed. Through that experience, we really got this deep understanding of our customer pain points, their needs, and often we can help direct them or identify the problems or the solutions or the questions they may not be familiar with because we've sort of been in their shoes. Because of the history and the development, we really deeply understand our customer pain points and their needs, we're able to help them and guide them through the process, having that experience.

I imagine the nature of that sort of problem-solving position, acting as a bit of a consultant to partners, there probably been some unusual requests. Is that true? Has there been anything that's stumped your team?

I don't think we're often stumped these days because there's such a broad range of applications that we get involved with, from chicken coops to forward military deployment filtration to medical device manufacturing, and even some people trying to filter New York water so they can make better pizza upstate. I'd like to say we've seen it all, we're a team that always wants to learn more and curious about other applications. We get really interested in seeing something new. Being involved in so many different sort of the breadth and depth of the applications gives us the ability to really find the right solutions for our customers.

We're going to dive a little bit more closely into the specifics of the applications and the industries. It's just interesting in the few examples that you mentioned, it really runs the gamut from different water quality issues to water safety. Very similar to our product catalog, but different in the sense that we're really thinking about, as you said, what the customer needs, their pain points, et cetera. Mike, when we talk about OEM capabilities, product customization, and even product development, can you run through how you would characterize our capability set when it comes to the support we can offer?

Thank you, Brianne. Thinking about Nephros capabilities, we're not just a filter supplier. Nephros collaborates very closely with our partners, especially in those OEM applications. We get involved very early in the development cycle so we can really ask the right questions, help our customers develop the problem, really focus on the core problem they're trying to solve. Then we stay very close, working with them through the development, through launch, to make sure we can help them every step of the way.

We're also not only focused on our filtration side, but how we can best use our products for their technologies, right? How do we integrate better? What are the right solutions? What's the best pathway, even regulatory-wise, if it's a medical device?

We continue to support them through the launch with post-launch to make sure we continue to help them with whether it's improvements or sustaining engineering, really develop that strong partnership that they can rely on us as not just a supplier or a product company, but really a partner in helping them address their core problems, really focus on the ultimate solution their business organization needs.

I think another key point for investors is that we're not working from a single technology. We've touched on this a little bit. Speaking specifically about the filtration nature, can you walk us through the different types of filtration and how they can support different problems that we're solving?

Sure. I can talk about the broad range of technologies available today. Nephros started with hollow fiber.

Hollow fiber technology, whether it's ultrafiltration or microfiltration and other sites in between, is really where we started and is the key technology in a lot of infection control applications, where it's the ultrafiltration membrane that helps us trap, whether it's viruses, bacteria, endotoxins, to microfiltration, where customers focus on bacteria and maybe need really high flow rates or low pressure drops, to other technologies such as media that we use today to help our customers with contaminants, such as maybe it's the forever chemicals or PFAS or lead, or even chlorine and chloramine, which is very important in a lot of dialysis applications- to emerging technologies and problems such as nanoplastics and microplastics removal, all the way down to something like scale reduction for equipment maintenance.

We've worked with a lot of partners over the years that have other technologies that may be useful on specific projects. It's not just our own technologies that we can utilize, but we can also work together to integrate technologies from other partners- if they're appropriate for the problem the customer is trying to solve.

tell me, at the start of a project with a customer, how do you determine whether the solution is an existing product, something to be developed? Further, is it a media-based filtration? Is it membrane-based? How do you make those decisions?

Sure. That's a great question. I think this is where we start, and going back to our experience, is knowing the right questions to ask.

The customers may come to us with something they researched, with a solution they found readily available, which they think is something they could use. It's our job to really understand what problem they're trying to solve.

not so much what filter they may think they need. This is where we work closely with customers to understand what is the core problem, what does success look like for them.

We start looking into what technologies we have available off the shelf, what can be either tweaked or modified to where a completely custom solution is developed. Our job isn't to go into the lab and over-engineer something just to create something cool. It's really to make sure that we balance what the customer problem needs to what we have available, versus what we can develop or even work with our partners to help that integration. We want to make sure that we're challenging the assumptions, right, that come with whether the original specs or requirements, or people in the industry have about the solution that they're looking for, and really focus on what's going to really solve the problem for the customer. With some of our technologies, we often start with a little bit of skepticism, right?

When you tell somebody we can throw an ultrafilter on their tap water line, and it's going to last 15,000 gallons, that's not something other technologies can do. What we find is, after working with us over the years, the customers are now coming to us instead of saying, "Hey, here's the filter I need." Now they understand to ask us, "Here's the problem we have. Help us. How do we solve that problem?" That's really what turns these sort of customers into long-term partners because they trust us with finding the right solution, and even the one that's not readily available or somebody has thought of before.

You're describing a bit of a classic product design challenge where, especially if somebody comes, and they think they already know what the solution is, and they're looking for somebody to help them execute it.

Right. You kind of have to backtrack and Sure unassume what the solution is, again, like you said, dive more into defining what the problem is, and in turn, what the goal, what the solution you're working towards.

Absolutely. This is where we balance. We try not to be too annoying because we don't want to throw 1,001 questions at them. We really try to stress the value and explain that this is how we bring value, right? We're not a distributor that takes a product and just provides it to them. We really want to solve their core problem, and for them to walk away with at least solving that problem, but probably even having an improvement than what they thought was possible before.

Another important part of the Nephros value proposition is not just our access and history with filtration technology, but also the path to regulatory clearance. Thinking about successful development and commercialization of products, of getting things through the FDA 510 clearance process specifically, because as a reminder we are a manufacturer of Class II medical devices. We have that experience when it comes to filters, but I know it's not limited to filters. Can you talk us through how experience navigating that particular landscape, how you carry that experience over when it comes to supporting customers?

Sure. Having the history or the background of several FDA cleared products and, like you said, not just filters, but also the entire dialysis system or our dialysis HDF module from where the company started is a lot more complex. Also over the years, we've developed a lot of, whether it's validations and third-party testing and documentation, and just arsenal information and data around our core products. When customers come to us, and they're looking to submit their overall system, whether a device for 510 clearance or it's a custom product we're developing for them, we have all that experience and history to an arsenal of information to use.

Sometimes it could literally speed up the development cycle for a customer by 6 to 12 months because we already have the biocompatibility testing. We already have those third-party validations. At the same time, when the FDA reviewer is looking at the submission, and they see that the most important, let's say, polishing step for some kind of a pathogen retention is a Nephros filter that's already been cleared in several other devices, and it's the same technology, it makes that part a lot easier, right? They're not looking at a new device. They're already familiar with the Nephros product. When we get into whether it's a regulatory pathway, just working with our customers, we know what questions to ask, we know how to avoid certain issues.

We know all the different pathways that they can take, whether they want to have some preliminary meetings with the FDA or what the FDA is looking for when it comes to purification as part of their system, we're already very familiar with.

We can both advise our customers, we can use our own experience and several products that have been already cleared to really help them both accelerate the process, but also save a significant amount of cost as they do it as well.

Got you. I know we don't want to get into any specifics with customers or functionality, but are there any notable examples of how that expertise, like you mentioned, could speed up the process of approval or clearance from 6 to 12 months? Are there any examples of that that you can share any details?

Sure. I think it's something that I touched on a little bit. It's, for example, one of the most maybe costly and long process end up being something like biocompatibility testing.

As a medical device manufacturer, as doing something, for example, with dialysis, where your device comes in direct blood contact through a dialyzer or through your device, you have to show that the water, the dialysis solution or whatever is coming in contact with the patient.

is extremely pure. You have to be able to prove that not only your device's function is intended, but also you're not leaching something, right, on that kind of very small scale into the solution or into the person's bloodstream. Having the data that we have for our devices that we had essentially conduct for own purposes.

Right It can really save you easily six months in testing and also tremendous cost because we already have that, or we can supply, and we can show an equivalency that the product that we've cleared or the product we conducted biocompatibility testing on is substantially equivalent to the product that our customer is trying to put into market.

I think another one of our clear indicators of value is not just the range of industries that we are able to support, but the range of products and solutions that we've developed as well. I'd love to dive a bit more deeply into the applications and industries outside of healthcare specifically. I know we talked a bit about dialysis, but I also know there's a whole range of non-healthcare related industries that we've had the opportunity to touch. Can you tell us about those?

Sure. Let's dive in. Over the years, we've been involved from anything to pathogen detection or filtering a small volume of solution of about 20 mils through one of the filters, so we can do the proper extractions for the PCR reaction, upwards up to a system that's flowing 30 gallons a minute for whether it's manufacturing or processing of something specific like a clean solution.

We've been in military application of manufacturing, both medical device and non-medical device manufacturing. We have food processing, like where, for example, in chicken coops where they need to make sure that the process water used for washing down their equipment and processes clean to, as I mentioned to people trying to make novel food applications.

All kind of equipment, whether it's reprocessing. We talked about infection control in hospitals, but also just even in situations where, in the East Coast after Hurricane Sandy, we had a lot of silica in the water.

A lot of technologies were struggling with trapping the silica, so the other technologies can work properly. Our filters have been used to trap silica in most technologies because of the such a small pore size that we can go down to without clogging. We really kind of seen it across many different areas.

We have some new novel technologies being developed also for military and non-military use in terms of different healthcare solutions, which, again, can't speak to in detail, but they also need to really purify the water used for that process. It's really been sort of a really broad range of solutions we've seen over the years.

Yeah. Speaking of Sandy. I know the point about the silica, the silt in the water. I know the reason why we were able to tackle challenges like that, the fact that we have a range of technologies that use the hollow fiber that are operating through size exclusion. Can you talk to us a bit about how that means of a barrier, how that can apply to a broad range of different types of contaminants? Because I know, like, when we're talking about medical grade filtration, that's the same type of technology that we can rely on to take care of things like bacteria, even down to endotoxins. But when we're talking about the non-medical application, size exclusion, if we're talking about solids suspended in the water, that can apply to a whole bunch of different particulates, right?

Sure. Can you take an opportunity to just walk us through that?

Sure. I mean, a great example is you hear a lot about microplastics nowadays. When we talk about microplastics, it's really the nano side of that, nanoplastics. You hear microplastics, people really mean both.

It's the nanoplastics that most published studies are concerned about because their particles are really small.

Now those are the ones that can, let's say, believed to can make it across blood barriers and so on, and people are finding them when they do post-hoc, looking at people's brain tissue and other tissues. Because we're able to go down to such a small pore size, we're actually now helping people that are looking to remove nanoplastics from their water supply.

Not just, again, bacteria and viruses, right? There's also other contaminants where really small pore size can play a role, and having that ability. It's also not just our technology in terms of the hollow fiber, also our media filters, right? Whether we're removing PFAS, which are the long and short chain forever chemicals that are much concerned, or it's chloramine, which again, can be very dangerous in certain application or just really will make your food and beverage taste terrible if you're trying to have a business that you're dealing with chloramines in the water, like on the West Coast.

Yeah. It's really a lot of different application, and it depends what the customer is trying to do.

We've been able to apply our solutions to a broad range of applications as those we discussed.

One thing you mentioned was reprocessing, which I wanted to expand on a little bit. I know with our customer base, we do focus on that a lot in a healthcare setting- Yeah thinking about sterile processing and cleaning of medical instruments and such.

That kind of work with water in a cleaning setting, we see extend into other industries. Dental, for instance, they use sterilizers, and I know they're getting a lot more scrutiny when it comes to water. I know the CDC has called some attention to things that they should be concerned about because they're in a very similar setting as you would find in the hospital, but they don't yet have the regulatory oversight telling them they must do something. That being said, I know we do have customers, and there are folks in the dental space that are being proactive about it. Are there any customers or any details about the dental space you can kind of elaborate on and shed some light?

Sure. I won't go into specific customer applications, but we definitely have applications within both the dental industry, also extending to the just lab water as well, where water quality is extremely important. We are helping some customers to create solutions around purifying water and making sure that they're addressing microorganisms that they think can be dangerous for the application, especially if you're getting some kind of oral surgery or in that space. At the same time for, as I mentioned, in lab water, you have to have very high purity water to start with if you're doing experiments. You want to make sure that the water you're using for your experiments is actually interfering with your experiments. That's another area that we're starting to see a lot of demand and interest, as a complement industry to what we're already doing.

We have customers coming with requests for solutions from both of those spaces.

Yeah. I imagine dental too, just the nature of it lends itself perhaps more to custom product development, given that there's such a range in different equipment types and so many instrumentation and where water's flowing in tiny tubes and things like that. It's like all of the conditions that we talk about in other settings that kind of create a great environment for bacteria to thrive. Yeah, I imagine there are some unique challenges when it comes to space limitations, probably when you're trying to identify a solution for a customer in that space.

Yeah. That's very true. I don't think dental is the only I think a lot of applications, they want to see the smallest, most efficient compact product.

Right. Yes. If you're trying to put something into an already designed dental chair or some kind of dental application, being able to provide the right flow rate, the right pressure at a very small footprint matters a lot, which is another area where we excel, compared to what's available in the industry.

Yeah. Really good way to highlight what we were able to accomplish and how we can generate value well beyond the filter.

Next, I'm going to have Judy share a financial update with you before we go to the Q&A section. Judy? Thanks, Robert, and thanks everyone for joining us today.

I'd like to just give a short recap of our first quarter earnings, and of course, I'm happy to answer any questions during our Q&A session when this is over. We reported our first quarter revenue of $5.2 million, which was a 7% increase over last year. This was really driven by strong growth in our programmatic revenue of over 20%, which did offset a year-over-year decline in our emergency response business. As you know, emergency response business is lumpy and opportunistic. The growth in the programmatic business. We also showed significant growth in our service business, albeit from a small base. If you look at the fourth quarter relative to the first quarter, we had a 10% sequential growth in revenue, again, driven by programmatic and service revenue.

I'd like to touch upon our gross margins a bit and go into those in a little bit more detail. Our gross margins in the first quarter of this year declined to 57% from 65% in the first quarter of 2025. There are a number of things that affect gross margins quarter-to-quarter, and I'd like to walk through each of those now and share how they affected our margins in the first quarter. First and foremost, of course, are product costs. Ours have been relatively stable. There's been some minor inflationary increases in some non-core products, but we've managed through those fairly well. We did put a small through at the beginning of March, which did offset some of these inflationary price increases. The second point I'd like to talk about is tariffs.

Since the tariffs were initiated originally, we were subject to a 15% tariff through February of this year. Our come from Italy, and Italy has a 15% tariff. In fact, tariffs cost us over $200,000 in the first quarter of 2026. Without that tariff, our gross margins would have been comfortably in the low 60s%. We have applied for a tariff refund on all tariffs paid through February of this year, and we do expect to receive that refund in the very near future. Our tariff rate was reduced to 10% from 15% at the end of February. This new round of tariffs were designed to last 150 days and at this point are scheduled to expire at the end of July.

We certainly are hopeful that that will be the case and potentially no new tariffs initiated after that, but certainly we will see how that plays out. A 10% tariff certainly is easier to manage than a 15% tariff. Point that can affect our gross margin quarter-to-quarter is the euro-dollar exchange rate. As we import much of our products from Italy, as I mentioned, changes in the euro-dollar exchange rate affect our gross margins. Since the end of last year, the euro has strengthened against the dollar, which affected our gross margins negatively. Since the end of March, the euro has actually weakened just slightly against the dollar. The next point that does affect our gross margins is our customer mix. We offer volume discounts to our larger customers that are tiered based on the business levels that they do each year.

If we happen to have a quarter where much of our business came from those larger customers, it certainly would affect our realized margin that quarter, and that just moves around quarter-to-quarter. Finally, I'd like to discuss the mix of business, which also can affect our gross margins. Our infection control business has the highest gross margins. After that, our commercial and service businesses, albeit incremental revenue that is very important to us, they have lower gross margins. In the first quarter of this year, we had faster growth year-over-year in those two businesses. Commercial and service grew even faster than our infection control business, despite the strong growth in programmatic. That mix would negatively affect the reported gross margin. Hopefully those issues explain some things that we manage through every quarter and some movement.

We feel extremely healthy with our overall product margins, product costs, and manufacturing ability to provide a great product at a continued high gross margin that we always have done. Our research and development expense in the first quarter increased 17% year-over-year. That was really due to increased headcount in that department. Our SG&A expense increased 12% year-over-year due to increased compensation expense as well as higher professional fees like accounting, audit, legal, et cetera. Due to the items that I've just discussed throughout my portion here, this has really affected our net income, which declined in the first quarter to $140,000 from $558,000 per year.

At the end of March, our cash stood at $4.1 million, That's down from $5.4 million at the end of last year. The decline in cash reflects both an increase in accounts receivable due to growing sales and the timing of collections. We feel very good about the credit risk of our customers. We've worked hard in collections, That's just a timing issue. We also had an increase in inventory of $400,000 as we support the growth in revenue that you're seeing also working hard to improve in-stock positions in key items. We look forward to sharing our second quarter results with everybody in August. Again, any follow-up questions, I'm always available. Robert, I think that's a good recap.

It is. Thank you so much for sharing. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes, Your team works really hard to make sure all that does happen. Thank you for that great work there and reporting. This brings me to the final segment that we have, the Q&A, arguably my most parts I like the most. I love answering live questions. I love hearing from you, the investor. I want to remind you that there's a couple ways to ask questions. You can raise your hand, so if you go to the Teams window There's a button where you can hit raise, That'll allow you to speak live. I've got Devora helping me monitor that, We can kind of bring people on to speak and interact real-time, which is my favorite way. You can also type your question in the chat.

I've typed a couple question or some comments. Devora's had to comment. Please don't be shy. Ask the question. This is your time. We've got plenty of time. I've also, another way, is received questions ahead of this meeting. I've got a bunch of questions that I'm just going to answer, I'm going to give priority to the live questions. If you do have a hand raised or something typed in the chat, that's going to get priority over the list of questions that I'm going to go through here in this portion. With that being said, we'll go ahead and turn it over to question and answer. The first one I have from previous was comment, I think this may have already been answered, but I'll turn it over to you, Judy. Gross margins declined significantly. Should investors expect 57% going forward?

That's a great question, I think you touched on it a little bit. I'll give you a chance to kind of re-answer that here and address that.

Sure. Excellent question. We certainly don't expect it to permanently have a lower gross margin. Again, a lot of this will depend on tariffs and how they change when this round of tariffs expire. We feel very good about the health of our product, and what we're producing and shipping, so we certainly don't. We look forward to working hard to get those margins back into the 60s.

Good. Thanks. Great answer. I do have a question that came through the chat. What do you see as the key to a successful innovation strategy at Nephros? How do you balance innovation between the medical business and more commercial business? Great question. Thank you, Nicholas, for asking. What's interesting about innovation when I think about it, and Mike and Brianne touched on this quite a bit in the roundtable, key to that successful innovation strategy is execution. We really have to take what we get, listen to our customers, and create value. Us being who we are, we're smaller, nimbler with our expertise and knowledge in certain areas. We often can provide and solve solutions for our customers and partners that they didn't even know were options.

They'll come to us with, "Hey, we want to buy a filter that can do this." Then we right away start asking questions. What problem are you trying to solve? What is the ultimate goal for what you're asking us for? Because it may or may not be our filter. It may or may not be the flow rate or the size that you're looking for. That really is the key for how we are able to delight our customers and the value that we bring in providing those innovative solutions. To the second part, balancing between medical and more commercial, that's always a challenge. Fortunately, they're not always the same resources. We do have people that are good at commercial, and they're able to go and focus. We've got partners that that's what they do all the time, only what they do.

Whereas we have another core team that is really good at infection control, which you know your medical business listed here. It's not always a trade-off of one or the other. That's a good thing. I've got a lot of, I guess, bandwidth to or a desire to have the right product on the shelf, so we don't struggle with trading off inventory. Meeting the customer when they need us, where they need us, as Mike Kennedy talked about in the testimonial initially, is really how we delight customers as well. Great question. It's not necessarily a balancing act, fortunately. It's how we can delight them wherever they need to be and where we're going to grow the business most. All comes down to execution. Great question. Next question I see, "Infection control. Any sales given the recent Ebola outbreak?

Please provide an update on your initiatives in Mexico." Two questions. Thanks, William, for the questions. I'll take them one at a time. When it comes to infection control, and especially Ebola and things like that, or infection on a macro level, COVID, things like that, those are not always waterborne pathogens. Really what we focus on is water. That becomes dangerous or harmful when that water aerosolizes. When someone sneezes, cough, it splashes. You turn on a sink or shower and things get in the air, then they breathe in, and they get into your lungs where they can mix with your lung tissue, and that's how they enter your bloodstream and thus prevent an infection. In hospitals, when you're washing your hands, a lot of the viruses, rotavirus, norovirus, come from that handwashing exercise. Again, things become aerosolized, and they become inhaled or ingested.

When it comes to things like Ebola, method of transmission, whether it's human to animal to animal, human to human, the mechanism's a little different than a premise water source being the cause of the infection. We're really addressing that water supply, that thing that becomes ingested, and those outbreaks and things that you're talking about don't necessarily generate business for us because that's not the source of the infection. Hope that answers it, and happy to go into it more and maybe even pull some of my engineers in if I didn't answer that accurately or adequately enough. Second part of your question. Love these questions, guys. Keep them coming, keep teeing them up. "Please provide an update to your strategy on Mexico." Mexico is a pretty important initiative for us. Just an update on where that's going is Mexico's growing.

It's just under $10 million as far as where I think the market's going to be. It's important because it provides us a bulkhead for the Caribbean and other places in the region. With these types of sales, we have to do a number of things. We have to educate the market so they understand that there's even a need for water filtration. We have to have the proper support. I just realized I'm confusing Puerto Rico with Mexico, but the strategies aren't too different. Let me back up a second before I continue answering. The initiative we announced was for Puerto Rico, and I'm not sure if you meant Puerto Rico or Mexico, but we haven't announced any strategic initiatives for Mexico. I'll continue answering as if it were Puerto Rico, because I think that's probably what you meant.

In addition, we have to have materials, like support materials in Spanish that can accommodate the local languages. We have to have support that can service and install and also train the people that are installing and local inventory. All those things we have in place. It does take time to build it. This is a rather new initiative that we announced for Puerto Rico within the last few months. Stay tuned, and I'll continue to update us on future investor calls on how that's going. If we do decide to launch something for Mexico specifically. Live questions come in, as I mentioned before, I'll go to one of the ones that we've received previously, and it is, "How much of your growth came from core business versus one-time events? Is this growth sustainable?" Good question.

We do get questions often about the sustainability of this growth and is it a one-off. I'm not going to speak to what's going to happen in the future. I will always talk about how well we're executing and how well we're operating the business. Recurring growth or this programmatic sales revenue, really that's this core that we talk about so often. I shifted maybe two years ago to focus and kind of highlight the core as opposed to the emergency business, which is more of a one-time event, which often leads to programmatic business. That is not the reorder that we're looking for or that we can predict always when we're looking at core growth. So much of our business, I would say We didn't give percentages, did we, Julie, on how much?

No. I would say an increasingly large amount of our business that is growing is coming from this core repeatable business.

Just by the nature of there's not more emergencies just because Nephros is a bigger company. There's kind of a sustained, steady amount of emergencies. It's just becoming a smaller portion as we grow our top-line revenue more and more.

You know, Robert, we have shared in the past that historically emergency response ran about 15% of our business, but in the last few years, it definitely ran substantially less than that simply because we're growing the rest of our business so significantly.

Yep. Great portion. Great addition to that, especially when you think about the service program and- Yes.

The water stuff that's coming in.

The bulk and commercial stuff has been picking up.

We have commercial growth. Yes, as a result, that one-time sale becomes less and less impactful, which is ultimately a good thing as we have a business that's more sustainable and predictable over time. Good stuff. Okay. Next question that I received previously, "Why are you investing in services instead of just selling to builders?" This is a question I actually have gotten from some of my partners who in the past have traditionally thought of Nephros as a distributor, being that we just provide you a filter, you take the filter, and then go install it at a customer site. As you heard in the segments that were previously discussed, even from our partner who gave the testimonial, it is so important that we can not just sell a product, but build a relationship with the customer.

The way that I've really tried to focusing the growth is first educate the customer, then service install the customer, and then replace the filter when it breaks. Then through the tools like the tracking, all this is providing recurring revenue. We're investing in services because a lot of the barrier for installing this medical device, which does require some sanitization, it requires every six months or three months changing it. It's a little bit more than just changing a roll of toilet paper. A lot of people just don't have the staff or the dedication to treat the filter in the way that it's going to perform as designed and sold. By taking that onus off the customer, where they may want to put their staff on working on why the AC failed, we can do that for them.

As we start to build these contracts, maybe it's multi-year, it's a type of business that is more predictable, sustainable, and we can grow it. We're really excited about those services and investing in service, not just for the service revenue, but what it enables when selling the filter itself. Got another live question here I'd like to go at. Impressive presentation shows the passion of Nephros team. Question. Please talk about the efforts to grow in verticals beyond healthcare and what traction has been achieved so far. Can you share examples of recent wins outside of healthcare? Will these verticals also help in improving overall growth rates? Great question, Ankur. When I talk about the efforts to grow verticals beyond healthcare. You saw at the start of our business was articulated quite nicely with Mike Kennedy as far as how we started in dialysis.

That in itself, going outside to healthcare was a foray into a different vertical. Now beyond healthcare into what I like to sometimes refer to as patient care a couple of years ago, has now gone even broader. Whether it be places like government buildings, correctional facilities, universities, schools, airports. We're going into a lot more places that we hadn't had before. Even Mike Milman, our VP of Engineering Technology, talked about chicken coops and water filtration for pizza makers to have a consistent product. Unfortunately, I can't give a lot of names, but those are just examples of places where we're providing value, whether it be dental. Just a lot of customers are coming to us and are realizing the value of having water that is safe and clean, and that having a filter like what we sell, how it can help them achieve their goals.

It does involve often asking what problem they're trying to solve and then how do we get to a product that fits that problem, if we've got the product. If not, we can help them dissolve and solve the problem other ways. PFAS, microfiltration, nanofiltration, all those are beyond healthcare specifically, and they're showing ways that we get traction and wins outside of that space. We're continually having to evolve and adapt our business to be able to accommodate those types of customers. Very exciting stuff and all going to contribute to growth rate. It doesn't happen instantly. We have to build the market, educate the market, and make sure that we're aligned with delivering the service and value, because we're not going to do anything halfway.

We're really going to do it in a way that keeps and provides the Nephros quality, which this is a reputation that's too important for us to damage. Great question. Continue to look forward for me to sharing more as we do more work with different verticals. All exciting stuff to come. Next. How do you see hiring external talent in your efforts to build Nephros' capabilities? What does competition for talent look like? Great question, Nicholas. When I think about talent, and Judy, you can comment on this as well. This company is nothing without the people. It's our most expensive part of what we spend money on. It is Nephros. It's the passion, it's the intelligence, what expertise that this staff is bringing to this company and this product. That's really what's coming through.

I'm just here to remove a lot of the barriers that help keep our products from getting out and growing more. When I see what this team does, we've got low attrition rates. By all gauges, I guess, the people are pretty happy. It's very important to me that this is a place that, and I've said this before, that I would feel proud that my daughter could come and work. I think that when I think about hiring talent internally, my first goal is to have the talent in-house and to develop and grow, because we really want the people owning what happens. We do have a number of very good third-party partners that help us, and we have no problems with finding the right person, hiring the right talent.

The competition for people that are in this space, it's really weird, but there's not a whole lot of people that are experts in water, so it becomes a pretty small community, and we all get to know each other pretty well. We see each other at trade shows year after year, the competition. We even have sales with some of our competitors. It's all in the name of kind of solving some of the problems that our customers see. I think that the talent and capabilities, it's so important that we make sure that we nurture that. Great question, Nicholas, and I don't know if you have anything to add on that, but- No, I think we have added some key people in the last year or two, and we've been very pleased.

We run lean, headcount well under 40 people. To add one or two new people a year or whatever we need, we can be very selective and very careful. We get a lot of interest. People excited about coming to work for a public company, coming to work for a leader in an industry. They're intrigued by getting stock options. They're intrigued by how family-oriented we are. We've been very pleased with the talent we've been able to find.

Great. Next question I see from Jaime Santiago. "Greetings and salud. I live in Puerto Rico, private industry experience, and for the last decade or so, adjunct professor at the graduate level." Congratulations. That was very important work there. "The vast majority of technical documentation is dealt with in English, not Spanish. This includes marketing material. Granted, you may need some documentation in Spanish for an end-real customer, but it shouldn't be a big deal." Good comment. I will say that the first couple times I've been to Puerto Rico under the Nephros umbrella, when I'm working with people at the executive level, no problem. Even management level, no problem. The ones who actually have to work with, deal with, install, stock, purchase our filters, they want the information in Spanish. They look at pictures and try to work through it. Yes, they can translate it.

There's even some cool Google apps where you can take a picture and translate it. It's so important for them to understand every line of our instruction manual for installation. If they forget to sanitize that last line from the filter to the outlet of the spout, you've really negated the whole purpose of having a sterile system and process. The importance of having our filter, it being the medical device, FDA Class II cleared with all the different caveats that come with that, is critical. The training part is so important, following the instructions. We have felt that it is important to have their language locally. That's why we've hired somebody who is native to Puerto Rico, as well, to help service. It's something I'm taking seriously. Prior to Nephros, I've worked and lived in different countries.

I was in quite a bit of time in Europe. Was in charge of all of sub-Saharan Africa in 42 countries. I was in India for a year or so with my family. Having the local languages always meant so much more adoption, adherence to the way that things were cleaned and kept and maintained. I'm taking this, my lessons learned from the past, and that we also assume that we need that type of support in local language as well in Puerto Rico. If it proves that it's not important or that we can branch out into other places, no harm. We still have it locally. We still have the English versions as well. Thanks for reaching out. I appreciate all your background. Give me a call. I'd love to meet you down there someday and find out what other needs you might have and help me grow the Puerto Rico story.

Okay. Let's see. Joe Schuler. Good question here. "Recently, there's been a Legionnaires' disease outbreak at apartments in New York City. Is there a potential market for Nephros?" I'm glad you brought that up, Joe. Hi again. Let me tell you, I'm thrilled that so many of the investment community has been reaching out to me directly via email and also my team, sending me articles, letting me know that, "Hey, there's this problem here. These three blocks are shut down." The Legionnaires' outbreak in New York City is one gaining national attention, and it also thrills me even more that people think about Nephros when you hear Legionnaires' disease. That's the right answer. Yes, think about Nephros whenever you have waterborne-type pathogens.

The problem in New York City is a specific, unique, and regulated primarily around cooling towers. These are large flow rates. I don't know if you're familiar with the type of cooling tower there, where you've got water sprayed over louvers, which comes down and creates an aerated situation where what you see coming from a cooling tower, it's not smoke, it's actually water vapor, water droplets. That water droplet on the roof of many of these apartment buildings is also right next to the air intakes for much of the HVAC systems. You've got the water droplets, you've got the water circulating right around, and now it's being pumped into the buildings. Legionnaires' disease or the Legionella pneumophila, the bacteria that causes it, is very prevalent. It's in most cooling towers, actually.

Unless you've got a pristine cooling tower with no sediment, those things act like giant air scrubbers. I get less excited about the fact that there's a cooling tower with Legionnaires' disease and more excited that they don't have the louvers properly angled, that it's sat right next to an air intake that doesn't have the proper filtration on it. I don't think that there is a water play for Nephros in the fact that the cooling tower is going to spew out contaminated water vapor. I do know that when you are drinking water, when you are taking a shower, or when you're using potable water that aerates it, and it's a situation where you can breathe it in, then we get out. It's dealing more with the premise plumbing, which Brianne talked about earlier. That is where we have that initial play.

We can come in and evaluate and check it out. What other sources of Legionnaires' might there be in the building? What are you not doing or doing from a hygiene perspective? We have a bunch of partners who focus on this as well, and we call those partners in to help us address those needs too. Yeah. If you guys do hear about things like that, please keep those leads coming in. We do follow up on every single one of them. We might not always get back and close the loop, but they're always of interest, and my regional managers who live and breathe in those areas where these things are happening are on top of it. They see the news stories, and they really want to make sure that they solve and are being a good steward of their community as well.

Thanks for pointing that out, and keep those leads coming in. Okay. All right. I'll go to one of my other pre-questions. This one was interesting. "What makes Nephros different from much larger filtration companies?" I think what this was about was, we've got some competitors who have been doing this for a while, and they do lots of other things as well. What I've found is they often have a lot of problems, like maybe they ran out of inventory or here's what we're selling and that's it. Really what's different about Nephros is our technology, which we did highlight a bit today, our medical device quality. This hollow fiber unit here, this is an FDA Class II medical device. It's tested by a third party. This is very different than other filters you're going to see out in the world.

The education, we're going to come in and help and train your staff, teach you how to work with the filter, clean it. Service, we can come in, install it for you, change it out, and once it's expired, we can provide technical support if you've got a problem that you can't solve. All those different things build this relationship that makes Nephros very different than some of these larger companies that won't take that time and go through all of these different problems that you might have. I'm very proud of that and proud of what this team offers in those regards, and we look forward to continuing to do in that going forward. Okay. What does success look like five years from now? That's a good one. I believe Nephros has become or can become one of the most trusted water partners out there, not just healthcare, but commercial facilities, which we talk about, in most market segments where water matters.

Not just the scale, but I think industrial application, which I often get asked questions about, that's not on our short-term radar or even long-term radar. The addressable market segments where we do have patient care and all these other different places that I talked about, they're huge. We have a lot of room to grow, and we're trying to make sure we solve those needs and meet those needs as best we can. The team is really well-positioned to do that.

Just to add, to translate to financial results that we'd like to look like in five years from now, certainly continue to grow our active customer sites and continue to work on revenue per customer site. We hope to have significantly larger number of both. Obviously, that would translate to a lot of gross margin dollars that could come in, and we'd like to truly grow our cash flow and profitability. If we continue on this front alone, we could be self-sustainable cash flow from a cash flow perspective. Potentially success would be finding strategic opportunities that we could add to the mix, and there could be acquisitions that help broaden our product line to our existing customer base or potentially broaden the markets that we are serving.

Yeah. I think success also brings external strategic opportunities based on our positioning and knowledge of water that make us address a much larger market five years from now.

I love that point, Judy. That's a great addition. I think that's huge. Spot on. Oh, I do have our hand raised, I would like to give Ralph a chance to ask his question. Tori, if you can assist with that.

Ralph, I think you should be able to unmute and ask your question. If no. Okay. You talked about, or Norman talked about different areas where companies come in, and they work with you on finding a use for coming to you to help them with something that they want.

Are any of these potential areas where you feel that there's a much greater need than just for one company? Have any of these really materialized in any significant way where you feel you can branch it out to other companies?

Yes. Great question. Just to repeat the question properly, when Mike especially was talking about some of his OEM and other development for product, does that have room to grow? Can it branch out into other areas, other companies? Is this something that can scale into something larger? I'll say that just from a historical perspective, that's what we've done. We've had a number of these relationships, these OEM relationships, that become something greater. If I think about it loosely, Nephros kind of formed that way. We were solving a problem. The solution didn't exist, and that became an important basis for how the core technology was created, which something branched off to many others.

I know specifically there is an OEM we're working with right now that doesn't mind us, once the solution is developed, sharing with others because it helps them spread development costs out over a larger amount of products. To answer your question, yes and yes. We'd love to do that, whenever those opportunities arise and we're allowed to, we will take advantage of that every single time. I personally love the OEM development route. We can't usually talk about it much because it is very specific to customers and what they need and the problems we're solving for them. That's why we spent so much time on it today, just because as an investor, I think it's important that you realize that that's a way that we're generating a tremendous amount of value for customers, and that does scale up.

Just not something that I can share specifics. It's still a super exciting area. Okay, I see another question here from Nick. With rising consumer concerns around PFAS and nanoplastics, do you see a significant DTC opportunity for Nephros filters? Example, Amazon leveraging our superior removal capabilities, several similar products already show strong review traffic, suggesting an enormous TAM. What are your thoughts on testing this channel? Good question, Nick. When I think about microplastics, nanoplastics, PFOS, it's different than our typical clientele. Patient care in hospitals, they're dealing usually with more acute situations. Someone gets sick, and they can die within a week or two. Microplastics, nanoplastics, they're endocrine disruptors, for example, that take long times to impact, and impact children that are growing up and your ability to reproduce and things like that you don't always see in a short time period.

It's a different type of person. Tends to be more residential or high-end commercial areas. That is interesting. The channel to market or direct to consumer, as you say here, is something that it's not a muscle that Nephros has developed today. We're constantly evaluating, is this something that we want to develop? Is there a partner we can talk to? Is there a way to make that channel viable for us as far as distribution and getting our product out in the world? Those are all interesting. I won't comment further about it, but we are constantly exploring ways that we can take these products and solutions and open up our TAM and SAS even larger. I will say I will always make sure that we do have a focus and continue to support our core technology.

That is something that is very different and unique for us. It is very sustainable and hard to replicate. While doing both at the same time, because I think it's a different set of expertise, a different clientele. Very interesting and exciting area for us to, for future calls as we develop more into those areas. Good. I love the participation and questions that I get. Very good feedback from the group. All these are also making my head think about different ways that I can take Nephros in the future. Another question that came in from previous was, how are you thinking about capital allocation? I'll turn to Judy about that because this one's interesting for me, not just capital, but just how the company's run in general, and how we choose to run the company and keep it in a very healthy financial state.

Maybe touch on that, maybe what our priorities are and how we're thinking about company allocation.

Oh, I'd love to. That's a great question. One of the things we're very proud of is that we have a solid balance sheet. You saw about a little over $4 million in cash at the end of March. No debt. Obviously, leverage plays a point in growing companies when you think about your class of capital. Right now, debt is not inexpensive, as everyone knows, interest rates are fairly high. To bring on debt or line of credit, you do need to support it. There are opportunities to fund some type of line of credit against the inventory that we have. Frankly, what we're looking for our rock-solid balance sheet to do right now, A, is to give customers total confidence that they can do business with us and we will be there for years to come.

B, opportunistically, of course, we could do stock buybacks if we felt there was a time that our stock was really undervalued. To me, the greater opportunity is to use it for strategic growth initiatives. We've discussed publicly looking for acquisitions, merger partners, investing in business development opportunities, something with a significantly higher return on investment. We have been using it to invest in our people, which as you've seen, we've added select talent. I think we will look forward to using our balance sheet to strengthen our position in the strategic realm as we find opportunities.

Great. Another question. I haven't gotten more questions about this. I was a little surprised, the question I did get was, how is Nephros using AI today? When I think about artificial intelligence and all the hype around it and fast-growing, and it seems like any company that can attach AI to their name or something seems to be growing at incredible amounts, at least getting the investment. I do view AI as important, I view it more as a productivity tool rather than a product strategy. Today, we use AI to accelerate content development or support engineering research, also for maybe in customer communications, even some software type development when we're looking at the Filter Tracker type stuff. It does increase our internal efficiency.

As we continue to develop our digital platforms with the Filter Tracker app, we do see opportunities to incorporate it more into how we support our customers, maybe even predictive maintenance or data analytics. Today it's not a product per se. It's quite exciting, quite interesting. There's new development seems like every single day. The second part to that same question was, could AI become part of your products? That I'd say potentially yes, not necessarily inside the filter itself. It's more around that data generated by water management. I do think there's an opportunity to help customers maybe predict filter life, or maybe even identify water quality trends, help facilities improve what they're doing and how they're managing things, in those areas.

Interesting, and stay tuned if I find some ways to really make AI a larger portion, I would totally explore that and figure out how to use it to generate more value for our customers. Okay. All right. We're coming towards the end. I still do have a few more minutes left for questions that might come in live. Remember, feel free to raise your hand and ask it live or type it in the chat. Otherwise, I'm going to continue on with a few more of these questions. Judy did talk about tariffs earlier, so this question maybe is answered mostly, but I'll give you another shot. How should investors think about tariffs going forward?

Right. I think the critical event is, I think we want to see if these tariffs, which are due to expire in a few months, will expire or will they be renewed. If they expire, we can manage through this part of the process, potentially we'll be able to get a refund on the second round of tariffs. If they continue, we have discussed internally mitigations. We do have price increases every year, but we could have specific tariff surcharges. Certainly, it's affected us, as we've all seen in our gross margins. We're looking at different sourcing alternatives. Are there countries where we could do some sourcing with lower tariffs for part of our product?

We don't want to change the quality of our product or our long-term strategy, but certainly, if it's going to be a part of our life going forward, we believe we do deserve to have some ability to recoup some of that, and some customers seem open to talking about that. We will have those discussions as we see how this will unfold.

Yeah. From a business and a management perspective, I don't manage the business assuming that today's environment's permanent. We know things change all the time. We adapt, whether there's supplier diversification, pricing, operational efficiencies, or product mix. I just continue to adjust while protecting the long-term shareholder value as best we run a business as best we can. All right. A couple other questions here about a recession or Medicare changes. This one might be more interesting. Are changes in Washington affecting your business? Maybe you can talk a little about this, but the regulatory environment, I don't know.

We wish we had the ability to have a stronger lobbying effect. The things that we do are so important. We wish, frankly, that they were required and regulated. These needs to protect the water, particularly the patient population In hospitals.

We do what we can to support any efforts along those lines that would help drive demand for our products, and we monitor what's happening in Washington. Right now, we don't see anything to affect us in a negative way, and we certainly hope that more concern about these issues will come out of Washington to help us in a more positive way.

Yeah, totally agree. If I focus just on trying to follow that and create policy and how we run the business and change it all the time, it's impossible. The changes happen so fast. Really head down, and it actually plays well to this last question I was asked here is, what keeps you awake at night? It's not government policy, it's not tariffs, but it's execution. It's taking that Nephros ability to just make it better and larger than it's ever been. My focus is really just making sure we execute, that we continue to innovate, that we hire great people, that we serve our customers exceptionally well, that we just stay disciplined in how we grow. Those are the things that we can control, and ultimately, it's what's going to determine our success.

That being said, I think that's good for questions for now that I have pre. Last call for anything that people might have online if they want to share with us. Okay. In the meantime, I'd want to direct your attention to our website. This is something that I've been proud of. The team's worked really hard on it. Where you can find Nephros and our team, including myself. If you go to our homepage, www.nephros.com, just go to the About section and click Events. This is where you'll see us, where speaking engagements, what's happening. I'm going to be at the Minneapolis ASHI conference. I'll also be at the AWT, at the convention center here at the Omni Hotel. You can go and find one close to where you are. Reach out, go attend. You can click on any of these links.

It takes you into a little bit more detail about where, and how to attend the show and things like that. Lots of great stuff on here, on our resources on our page. Team spends a really lot of time, and they do a really nice job with this website. Please take some time and have a look. Last thing I want to share is the little QR code that you can go here and click on it and also join our investor relations team. I'll leave that up on the screen for a few moments as I just wrap here. I just finished just over three years with Nephros, and I wake up every day more excited than the day I started. I see the opportunities, I see the products. I work with great people, great investors. The team here is fantastic. They execute well. They work really hard.

They put in way more effort than I could ever ask them to, that shows. I think that shows in our product. That shows in why our customers stay with us, I think that really is why the Nephros product is so different and so special. It's what keeps me coming back every day. I really just want to thank everybody for joining the call, for your fantastic questions, for continuously reaching out to us. I want to thank Judy, my partner here, for really taking us through the financial world. It's so complicated being a public company. I think we've built something that you and we and all can be proud of.

Thank you again for joining, and I just hope you'll reach out any way you want to connect with us, and we'll look forward to doing this again sometime in the future.