Item 1A. Risk Factors
Item 1A. Risk Factors.
For a discussion of risks that affect the Company’s business, please refer to Part I, Item IA, “Risk Factors” in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, as filed with the SEC on March 9, 2021. There have been no material changes to the risk factors as previously disclosed in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, except as follows:
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A pandemic, epidemic or outbreak of an infectious disease, such as COVID-19, may materially and adversely affect our business and operations.
The outbreak of COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has since spread around the globe. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the United States and global economies and is likely to continue to affect our operations and those of third parties on which we rely, including by causing disruptions in our global supply chain, our ability to obtain raw materials, the manufacturing of and short-term demand for our lead product, CytoSorb, the commercialization of CytoSorb, our research and development activities and the conduct of current and future clinical trials. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected and is likely to continue to affect the operations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other health authorities, which could result in delays of reviews and approvals, including with respect to CytoSorb and our product candidates. The evolving COVID-19 pandemic has impacted and is likely to continue to directly or indirectly impact our clinical trials, including but not limited to, the anticipated completion date of these trials and the pace of enrollment in our clinical trials for at least the next several months and possibly longer as patients may avoid or may not be able to travel to healthcare facilities and physicians’ offices unless due to a health emergency and clinical trial staff can no longer get to the clinic. Such facilities and offices have and may continue to be required to focus limited resources on non-clinical trial matters, including treatment of COVID-19 patients, and may not be available, in whole or in part, for clinical trial services. There may be further delays in patient enrollment in the REFRESH 2-AKI, CYTATION and STAR clinical trials. For example, in April 2021 we stopped the TISORB single arm study due to continued delays and poor enrollment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.K., in favor of redirecting those resources to the U.S. STAR-T randomized, controlled trial. In addition, employee disruptions and remote working environments related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the federal, state and local responses to such virus, could materially impact the efficiency and pace with which we work and develop our product candidates, our ability to execute and invoice upon government grants and contracts, and the manufacturing of CytoSorb. As of the date of this filing, our manufacturing facilities remain operational and we have resumed certain research and development activities that were temporarily suspended as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, however we have experienced, and may continue to experience, challenges in hiring necessary staff members to conduct our research and development activities, including technical staff. We have also experienced, and may continue to experience, disruptions in our blood supply used for research purposes and we cannot predict when this supply will stabilize. Further, while the potential economic impact brought on by, and the duration of, the COVID-19 pandemic is difficult to assess or predict, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global financial markets may reduce our ability to access capital, which could negatively impact our short-term and long-term liquidity. Additionally, the stock market has been unusually volatile during the COVID-19 outbreak and such volatility may continue. Macro factors have impacted, and may continue to negatively impact, our critical care and cardiac surgery markets, including in certain geographies such as Germany, For example, increased hospital restrictions resulting in decreased access of our sales representatives to hospitals and fewer sales meetings with physicians resulted in lower-than-expected sales of CytoSorb during the quarter ended September 30, 2021 and may contribute to lower-than-expected sales of CytoSob in the future. To date, during certain periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, our stock price fluctuated significantly, and such fluctuation will likely continue to occur. The ultimate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is highly uncertain and subject to change. We do not yet know the full extent of potential delays or impacts on our business, financing or clinical trial activities or on healthcare systems or the global economy as a whole. However, these effects could have a material impact on our liquidity, capital resources, operations and business and those of the third parties on which we rely. The Company estimated that approximately $9.4 million of its 2020 product sales and estimates that approximately $1.1 million and $4.6 million of its product sales in the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, respectively, were related to the treatment of COVID-19 patients. As the pandemic continues to ease, it is uncertain whether the Company will be able to replace some or all of this revenue in the future.
Our operating results are subject to seasonal fluctuation.
Our total revenue and product sales are subject to seasonal fluctuation. Our sales seasonality is affected by a number of factors, including but not limited to, hospital budgets and buying patterns, customer and healthcare worker vacation schedules, religious, national, and state holidays, scientific and medical conference schedules, seasonal illnesses such as influenza, seasonal or weather-related differences in hospital admissions and the timing of insurance benefits, among others. Our normal seasonality cycle has also been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and related events, making it more difficult to predict and determine a more consistent seasonality trend. See “A pandemic, epidemic or outbreak of an infectious disease, such as COVID-19, may materially and adversely affect our business and operations.” As a result, seasonality has had, and we expect it to continue to have, an impact on our results of operations.
Item 2. Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities and Use of Proceeds.
None.
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Item 3. Defaults Upon Senior Securities.
None.
Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures.
Not applicable.
Text extracted from the filing as submitted to EDGAR. Formatting, tables and exhibits are simplified for reading; the original document is authoritative for anything you rely on.