Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Valeo Pharma Inc first quarter results conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Friday, March 25th, 2022 . I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Frédéric Dumais, Director of Communications and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Present with me today on the call are Mr. Steve Saviuk, our CEO, Mr. Frederic Fasano, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Mr. Luc Mainville, our Senior VP and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin with our first quarter 2022 results conference call, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain certain forward-looking statements regarding the company's expectations or future events. Such expectations are based on certain assumptions that are founded on currently available information. If these assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements contained in this conference call. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, other than as required by securities law.
I'd like to pass the call over to our CEO. Please go ahead, Steve.
Thank you, Fred. Good morning, all, and thank you for joining us on our first quarter 2022 results and highlights conference call. I will start by quickly reviewing the first quarter highlights and recent milestones, then I'll pass the microphone over to Fred Fasano. Our President and COO will take you into more details on our commercial achievements and some of the milestones hit this quarter. Following which our Senior VP and CFO, Luc Mainville, will give a short review of our 2022 results. In our view, management's view, we had a very strong first quarter. Revenues grew to CAD 4.2 million, an increase of 128% compared to the first quarter of last year. More importantly, 25% compared to the previous to our fourth quarter of 2021.
Our margins also improved to CAD 1.4 million, an increase of over 260% compared to last year and over 100% compared to our fourth quarter. Margins or margin improvement in both dollar terms and percentages are leading to a steady reduction in our operating loss. The numbers don't tell the full story. These numbers are rendered all the more impressive against the backdrop upon which they were attained. As we all know, Omicron has had over the last 24 months a profound effect on our markets, on the economy, and on our way of life. The first quarter saw us see Omicron at full force, lockdowns, reduction of visits, access to hospitals.
Positively, we're seeing that starting to recede in the second quarter, and we have great expectations that as the year goes on, that finally the coronavirus will become less of an impact upon ourselves and our peers and on the country as a whole. Despite that, revenues of Redesca grew, and that's against the backdrop of a reduction of staff in hospitals and priority shifts, which have caused some delays in the implementation of agreed-upon switches to Redesca. This is very positive as we start returning to some sense of normalcy that we expect Redesca sales to continue and to actually accelerating their growth based on agreements we currently have with hospitals that are not yet implemented, in part because of Omicron.
Prescriptions for Enerzair and Atectura, and Fred will get into that in more detail, have grown at a very interesting pace, a very strong pace, despite the fact that there are challenges with patient visits and there's a historical low in the number of new prescriptions and prescription switches which are being written by doctors. Doctor visits by our staff are increasing. We expect this year to have approximately 50,000+ interactions with physicians. That's a fairly broad number. We're very encouraged to start seeing patients coming back with physicians both online and in person. You know, the personal visits are key in terms of getting prescription growth back to typical historical levels for all pharma companies.
Achieving positive cash flow by the end of this year is a key and resolute objective of our company, and we're well on track to attain that. Luc will get into more details on that in his portion of the call. It was a very strong and pivotal quarter from a reimbursement point of view. Redesca is reimbursed across Canada as we speak. Enerzair and Atectura, missing BC, which we expect to have within the next 60 days. Again, strong private reimbursement, public reimbursement. Over 90% of Canadian lives now have access to all of these drugs on a funded basis.
We were successful in the first quarter in completing a CAD 25 million convertible debenture funding, and even more importantly, this was led by institutional debt investors that took up about 75%-80% of that funding. We now welcome new investors that will support Valeo in the years to come as we execute on our plan and continue to grow. During the quarter, we also continued to actively pursue various business development initiatives. While our focus remains on our key products of Enerzair, Atectura, Redesca, we are continuing to look at ways to leverage our corporate infrastructure and to expand our revenue base. With that, I'll pass the microphone over to Frederic, who will give you a bit more detail and color on our latest operating and operational accomplishments.
Thank you, Steve, and good morning to all of you. It's again my pleasure today to report on the first quarter results and on milestones that we have reached during the same quarter. I will also report more in detail on where we are in terms of commercial and medical activities and on the context we are facing out there with hospitals, clinics, and healthcare providers. As Steve mentioned, the Q1 sales results are showing a very nice progression on many fronts as compared to those quarter one of last year, as well as quarter four, the previous quarter of last year. We see great momentum behind our key product, and this is despite facing a complex environment due to COVID.
The main contributors in terms of uplift are now our strategic product, while we see a stable but frequent contribution of the rest of our product portfolio in our sales results. In a nutshell, Redesca is our best-selling drug and the largest uplift as compared to the previous quarter, Q4 of last year. Our respiratory franchise, including Enerzair and Atectura, is the second-largest uplift on the same period of time. Therefore, Q1 shows a steady growth, which is even accelerating, but also well-aligned with our strategic products and priorities. Let's start with Redesca first, and as you know, this is our low molecular weight heparin biosimilar. We have recently reported the completion of the reimbursement process with the addition of British Columbia on the list of provinces covering publicly Redesca.
Interestingly, BC PharmaCare decided at the same time to delist the enoxaparin originator product, but also to expand the coverage of Redesca for cancer patients carrying a higher risk of thrombosis. These patients were previously covered only when treated with a competitive product, dalteparin. We see here materializing an opportunity to bring other heparins, what we call our secondary market, to enoxaparin biosimilars. We expect now more provinces to delist and strongly move the needle towards biosimilar adoption. Québec and New Brunswick have started the process, and we expect also Ontario to delist the originator product very soon.
The latest market insights have confirmed that the low molecular weight heparin market continues to grow, adding approximately 400,000 prefilled syringes on a yearly basis, which drive the overall market actually up to 17.2 million prefilled syringes for the overall market per year. Half of that growth is coming from enoxaparin. On top of that, enoxaparin biosimilars are growing as well, already awarding 26% of the total enoxaparin market. Among all biosimilars, Redesca is the best-selling one with 61% market share. On the hospital listing front, we have found many situations where tender processes have been postponed due to the pandemic and the subsequent lack of personnel. Furthermore, in some places, even when the hospital contract was signed, we saw delays in the transition process from the originator enoxaparin to our biosimilar.
However, it's not true everywhere, and we see good results coming out from Québec hospitals with major institutions like the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Québec or the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal having already completed their transfer process to Redesca. Now we are focusing our work and attention on Ontario, as many large hospitals will finalize their decision process in the coming months over there. These hospital listings, as you know, are signed most of the time for a period of three years. It is definitely a recurrent market. Overall, in this tough environment, we succeeded to maintain an intense field activity with our key account manager team.
If Q1 ex-factory sales did close with a strong month of January, we expect Q2 to take full advantage now of the completed public coverage, the new hospital listings, and also the COVID-19 conditions being progressively withdrawn on a provincial basis. That this will help to get back to more normal activity, especially within hospitals. Q2 results, as we have started to see, will show again great momentum behind this product. On the respiratory side, we also announced complementary public coverages of Enerzair and Atectura coming from Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island. The reimbursement process is almost completed as well, since only British Columbia and Newfoundland remain to be finalized. Yet again, in seven months' time from PCPA letter of intent, we have achieved 90% of public coverage and over 90% of private coverage. It is an absolute time record in my own experience.
Our Q1 results on Enerzair and Atectura are showing great uptake and acceleration, and even more so in what we see as a trend for Q2. Ex-factory sales in Q1 have totalized 2,465 units for those products, which with weekly trends reaching over 300 units. If we look at the same weekly trend now, it is already above 400 units per week. As of January 2022, 200 doctors generated over 2,000 prescriptions of Enerzair and Atectura, which is 50 doctors more than the previous months. 160 in December 2021, and 950 prescriptions more than December. Not only do we gain in number of prescribers and prescriptions taken separately, but we also gain in the number of prescriptions per doctor.
It means that doctors prescribe Enerzair and Atectura more frequently months after months, and this is a very healthy sign of adoption for those products. As of January 2022, already 4% of the uncontrolled asthma patients who receive a new treatment to improve their level of control do receive indeed Enerzair or Atectura. We aim to take the lead of this new prescription segment with Enerzair becoming the number one triple therapy used in uncontrolled patients, as well as Atectura being soon among the leading dual therapies used for treatment adaptation. Now, the COVID, now the impact of COVID-19 on the management of asthma has been huge, like for many other chronic diseases. Doctors seeing less asthma patients in person were also less inclined to change their therapy when poorly controlled.
Many primary care physicians have tried instead just to keep their patients under the same treatment to avoid discontinuation. As a result of that, the number of treatment adaptations has drastically decreased, and it was cut approximately by 50% during the pandemic. There is probably out there a situation where the number of uncontrolled patients has dramatically increased as a result of a reduction of the level of care received by these patients. We are trying to quantify what the impact of the pandemic has been on the level of control of asthma. Excuse me. Because we think that there is a strong call for action to help these patients getting to a better control of their disease. Another impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we interact with the healthcare providers.
We have worked diligently and efficiently with our team to be able to generate interactions remotely during the pandemic, and we are proud to report that we were able, over the course of last month, to recover 80% of what was a normal field activity before COVID. It translates actually into an average number of calls per day between four and five for primary care physicians and three and four for specialists. It is now getting better as provinces are progressively reducing the constraint, and doctors experiencing more and more Zoom fatigue are willing to reopen their offices. Launching new products has certainly helped our team and generated a lot of interest, but the pandemic has also reduced the access of patients and to treatment adaptation course.
This is the reason why we evaluate our current performance and Enerzair and Atectura as being robust and promising. The environment will become more favorable while doors will reopen as the pandemic is declining. The public coverage of Enerzair and Atectura will help accelerate our growth. Our medical and commercial team is now operating full-fledged since last fall with an improved level of expertise in this field, with a greater access to healthcare providers, and a better knowledge of the competition. Current trends are projecting 8,000 units per month by the end of our fiscal year 2022, but because of all those factors that we mentioned before, we aim at over-delivering and beating those numbers by the end of this fiscal year. Finally, I want to comment shortly on our business development activities.
We are making progress on that front as well to source new opportunities and bring complementary products to our portfolio and business, and business lines. Our priority is to source innovative products which can be rapidly accretive on the revenues front. The recent deals we have been able to close have obviously provided credibility and visibility to Valeo as one of the go-to Canadian pharma companies. We intend to fully leverage our medical and commercial platform, not only to deliver significant growth in 2022, but also in the subsequent years. We also want to accelerate our time to breakeven to become a profitable company, which will deliver significant value to patients, employees, and shareholders. For that, we benefit from the right corporate structure and team, the right product portfolio, the right investors supporting our growth and mid-term vision.
If quarter results of Q1 are robust and promising despite this complex environment, we now have to build on the current momentum behind our lead product to consolidate our company performance and to reach our commercial and financial objectives. 2022 is the consolidation year for Valeo, where we will start to see the benefits of all our hard work and the strengths of our business model. I want to thank all our employees at Valeo for their commitment and hard work, but also for their leadership and winning spirit. They all want to make a difference for patients, for their community, and for Valeo. This concludes the product and business review section of our call, and I will now pass it over to Luc for a complete review of our quarter one results. Thank you.
Thank you, Fred. In summary, our Q1 2022 results reflect the added revenue and margins contribution of Redesca and Enerzair and Atectura, our three transformative products launched during fiscal year 2021. During the course of last year, Valeo's results have been impacted by costs related to setting up the new organization, structure and commercial team. Already, our Q1 2022 results are indicative of the progress made towards covering those incremental costs with growing product margins and achieving profitability. Also, our financial results show the full impact of the CAD 25 million convertible debenture financing completed in December 2021. I'll go into details regarding our performance, financial performance. Our net revenues in Q1 2022 increased significantly over Q1 2021 at CAD 4.2 million compared to CAD 1.9 million.
The 128% increase resulted mainly from the strong contribution of Redesca, launched in Q2 2021, and also the strong contribution from other products in our portfolio. As predicted, our Q1 2022 sales of Redesca have bounced back to a solid growth after a softer Q4 2021. Indeed, following a strong start in Q3 2021, resulting from low molecular weight heparin shortages in some provinces, our Q4 2021 sales of Redesca declined over the prior period, despite continuous progress with GPO and hospital contracts. Our Q1 2022 results have been positively impacted by stronger Redesca sales, driven by recurrent and growing demand. Enerzair and Atectura contribution to our revenue is also growing weekly, and we will have material impact on our results over the coming quarters.
As mentioned during our year-end conference call, we posted a strong revenue growth over the prior quarter, despite late Q1 orders totaling CAD 0.8 million, which were only delivered in the first few days of Q2. Our Q2 2022 numbers will now benefit from this early start in addition to revenue momentum evidenced in Q1. During Q1 2022, the contribution of new products was partly offset by the negative impact of the Atiena license termination in Q4 2021. Sales of Aemcolo for Q1 2022 were nil compared to 2% of our revenue in the corresponding period last year. Our gross margin ratio increased in Q1 2022 compared to Q1 2021 at 33% versus 21%, which is indicative of the improvement in our product mix.
Due to the significant growth of our revenue and improvement of our product mix between Q1 2021 and Q1 2022, our gross margin contribution has increased significantly from CAD 0.4 million - CAD 1.4 million, representing a 266% increase. Our total operating expenses in Q1 2022 were CAD 6.3 million compared to CAD 2 million in Q1 2021, representing a CAD 4.3 million increase. The cost of implementing our new business and commercial infrastructure is now fully accounted for, and we anticipate that the sequential revenue growth of our lead products will expand our operating margins and help cover our operating expenses going forward. Those expenses will remain stable and will decline as a percentage of revenue. OPEX for Q1 2022 were down 19% compared to the prior Q4 quarter and dropped 35% as a percentage of revenue.
Sales and marketing expenses for Q1 2022 were CAD 3.8 million compared to CAD 0.6 million for Q1 2021. The increase between the two reported periods resulted from the creation of our respiratory business unit as well as staff and other expenses related to the commercialization of Redesca and Enerzair and Atectura. Sales and marketing expenses for Q1 2022 were down 9% as compared to the prior quarter. General admin expenses for Q1 2022 were CAD 1.3 million as compared to CAD 0.9 million for Q1 2021. The increase in G&A expenses resulted from the addition of HO personnel and new staff over the last year, which was required to support our growth. General admin expenses for Q1 2022 were down 33% compared to Q4 2021.
Our medical affairs and regulatory expenses have increased from CAD 0.3 million - CAD 1 million between Q1 2021 and Q1 2022. Medical affairs and reg expenses in Q1 2022 were down 19% as compared to the prior quarter. Our financial expenses in Q1 2022 were CAD 1 million compared to CAD 0.2 million in Q1 2021, representing a CAD 0.8 million increase. Compared to Q4 2021 our financial expenses increased by CAD 0.5 million. The increase was due to a series of debenture financing closed over the past year, including the CAD 25 million financing in December 2021, as well as the incremental lease interest charges which resulted from the expansion and extension of our head office lease. I'll now comment on our operating loss in EBITDA.
In Q1 2022, the growth of our revenue and margins have contributed to reduce our quarterly loss compared to the prior Q4 2021 period. While we are making strong commercial gains, our net loss in Q1 2022 was CAD 5.9 million compared to CAD 1.7 million in Q1 2021. Our net loss in Q1 2022 has improved 31% compared to the prior Q4 2021 per quarter performance. EBITDA loss in Q1 2022 was CAD 4.6 million compared to CAD 1.4 million in Q1 2021.
Same as for our net loss analysis, our EBITDA loss reflected the net impact of the creation of our new commercial and corporate structure in fiscal year 2021, which has not yet been fully offset by the growth of our revenues and margins. Our EBITDA loss in Q1 2022 was down CAD 2.1 million compared to Q4 2021, representing a 31% improvement, which is indicative of our progress made towards our objective of achieving EBITDA profitability before year-end 2022. Our adjusted EBITDA loss in Q1 2022 was CAD 4.4 million, compared to CAD 1.1 million in Q1 2021, representing a CAD 3.3 million increase, but was down CAD 1 million or 19% compared to the prior Q4 2021 quarter. Cash used in operations in the first quarter of 2022 was CAD 9.1 million compared to CAD 2.7 million in Q1 2021.
The CAD 6.4 million increase came from a CAD 4.1 million increase in net loss and a CAD 3.1 million increase in non-cash working capital, mainly due to a CAD 5.5 million reduction in trade payables and accrued liabilities in Q1 2021, compared to CAD 1.1 million in Q1 2021. This was partially offset by the increase in items that are affecting cash by CAD 0.9 million. Cash used in investing activities was CAD 0.2 million for Q1 2022, mainly for adding IT equipment compared to CAD 0.1 million in Q1 2021 for a nominal addition to our intangible assets. During Q1 2022, financing activities provided CAD 19.2 million compared to CAD 0.7 million in Q1 2021.
During Q1 2022, Valeo secured CAD 23.5 million from the net proceeds of the convertible debenture financing closed in December 2021, less CAD 4.3 million representing repayments or conversions of prior existing debentures. In Q1 2021, the corporation secured CAD 0.7 million from the issuance of shares following conversion of warrants and exercise of options. At the end of Q1 2022, our cash was CAD 12.1 million, compared to CAD 2 million at the end of fiscal year 2021, representing a CAD 10.1 million increase. Working capital improved from CAD 3 million deficit at year-end 2021 to a CAD 15.2 million surplus at the end of Q1 2022, representing an increase of CAD 18.2 million. The CAD 25 million convertible financing, convertible debenture financing completed in Q1 2022 significantly improved our financial position by strengthening our balance sheet.
We believe that based on our cash on hand, access to our operating line of credit, current and projected revenue growth, we have adequate capital to support our operations and working capital requirements until we meet our break-even objective at the end of the current fiscal year. This concludes the financial review part of our call. I will now turn back the call to Steve.
Mr. Saviuk, your line might be muted.
Excuse me. Thanks. Thank you, Luc and Fred. We are now ready to open the call for questions. Although this portion of the call is reserved for questions from financial analysts, we invite all our shareholders or any other interested parties to contact us directly with any questions they may have. We will endeavor to get back to you as quickly as we can. Operator, you may now proceed with the questions part of this call.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from Scott McAuley with Paradigm. Please go ahead.
Morning, gentlemen. Congrats on the quarter, and thank you for taking the questions. First off, I just wanted to dig a little bit deeper into the numbers around the prescription numbers for Enerzair and Atectura. I know it's mentioned in the filing, you know, about 2,000 prescriptions. Fred, I think you were talking about, you know, currently at a run rate of about 400 units per week currently. You know, 2,455 units as of kind of January. Just wondering if you could, you know, dig into that a little deeper, as to where those are coming from and how those are growing.
Yeah. Thank you, Scott. Maybe Steve, if you're okay, I'm gonna provide some info around the numbers. Sorry, Scott, we are sharing a lot of numbers. Maybe let's start again with what is our ex-factory sales. It is what actually is exiting our warehouse to wholesalers. For the three months of the Q1 results, those sales have totalized 2,455 units cumulative of both products. Now we are also monitoring a trend of what wholesalers are sending to pharmacies and hospitals. In this case, for respiratory product, it is mainly pharmacies, and we are able to track that on a weekly basis. When we are saying 300 units, it was the trend we saw at the end of Q1 on a weekly basis coming from, again, wholesaler sales to pharmacies.
Now some weeks down the road, this rate has increased up to 400. That's telling us that, especially now in provinces benefiting from public coverage for a certain period of time, we start to see interesting acceleration rate on a weekly basis. That's about number of units. Now we are able, as you know, to track prescriptions as well. All the data that I mentioned for prescriptions are related to the last set of data we received and it is, you know, it's coming from IQVIA, and the last report is from January 2022, so basically the end of our Q1. At this point in time, 200 doctors did generate overall a bit more than 2000 prescriptions of both Enerzair and Atectura.
Great.
Is that clear?
Yeah. No, that clarifies it a lot. Thank you. And I think you kind of touched on this briefly, but in terms of the acceleration of that, accompanied with the reimbursement announcements, can you speak to, you know, with the recent kind of expansion, like you're seeing that pickup as new provinces come on, you see in those provinces either more doctors prescribing or current doctors that are prescribing kind of accelerating their prescription rate?
Yeah. It's probably the number one kind of impact on our sales that we are monitoring on a weekly basis. There is no doubt that when we get public coverage, it's really kind of relieving a barrier to prescription. Some doctors are telling us, "Yes, interesting product, but we will wait for public coverage to come in." Mainly, that is because doctors have no time or few times to check if their patients are privately covered or not. Most of them are saying, "Okay, I will start to consider product once we get a public coverage.
At this point in time, I don't have to worry too much about whether it's covered or not because it will be either by private or public. The public coverage is definitely giving a credit to our product. What we have seen in progressively or across the provinces receiving this public coverage is definitely an interesting impact. I would say now by numbers, we expect Ontario and Québec in particular to kick in as both provinces are representing 65% of the total market. Big numbers. We see movement. We see momentum, definitely. That's interesting here because it's not only gaining number of new prescribers, but it's also getting more confidence in prescribing those products.
That is why we are also monitoring the number of prescriptions of prescribers as a kind of marker of the confidence that doctors find in our product. Actually, both items are increasing. Again, momentum. The question is how fast I get, I guess in the upcoming weeks and months especially, we're gonna be able to push our line. We are already among the fastest-growing product in this market.
That's great. Thank you. Just to switch over to Redesca, and this kind of switch, you know, the interesting delisting of the originator products from coverage. In terms of kind of the current concentration of Redesca sales and kind of the biosimilar switch market in general, is it really kind of concentrated in those provinces that have completed or are in process of that delisting? Or are you seeing kind of interest nationally, without kind of too much significant concentration in one province or another?
I would say delisting is coming as a result of the public coverage deciding to delist. It means that within the retail channel, you're not gonna be listed anymore. You're not gonna be covered anymore if you're prescribed the originator. Now, the hospital business is driven by other parameters, and, you know, it's a biosimilar market, so it means that first off, you need to be strong in supply. As we have always said behind Redesca, you need to be strong in supply, and you need to have a team in place, and you also need to have a competitive offer from the financial standpoint. But again, what is the additional factor is that when you get a product delisted in the retail channel, hospitals are worrying because they don't want to disrupt their course of treatment.
Continuity of care is also a consideration for hospitals, whereby they tend to include in their own listings products that are covered also in retail. That's what we expect now to see as an impact of those delisting, accelerating hospital decision-making process in terms of switching to biosimilars. Certainly BC has been leading the pack, but as I said, Québec and New Brunswick have gone the same path. We are now expecting Ontario to do the same, and that will trigger certainly another kind of boost in the sales of biosimilars, that we are expecting to see in the coming months.
Right. Got it. Just lastly, before I kind of hop back in the queue. In terms of overall costs, you know, great to see that kind of quarter-on-quarter decline in kind of SG&A. I know you've said in the previous call and reiterated in this call that kind of you see, you know, that now that the platform is set, that costs should kind of be at least kind of maintained. Going forward, should we think of kind of the current quarter costs as kind of that baseline moving forward, with last quarter having kind of some of that residual setup, kind of setup costs baked into it and kind of this Q1 as, you know, the kind of true going forward run rate for your SG&A costs?
Yeah. I'll take that one, Steve. Yes, Scott, I guess, Q4, there was, you know, several things that happened in Q4, including, of course, we don't want to go back on the fraud situation that impacted our numbers.
A couple of, you know, setting up the structure had some early, you know, I would say front-loaded expenses that are not recurrent. Yes, you're right. Right now, if you look at our OpEx, we're budgeting on a stable OpEx at that level. Of course, if there's gonna be some, I don't wanna say seasonality, but as you execute certain programs and marketings and med affairs with doctors and in the industry, you're gonna have some of those expenses switching from one quarter to another. On average, that should be your base for budgeting go-forward.
That's great. Thank you, Luc. Thank you, gentlemen. I'll hop back in the queue.
Thank you.
Thanks, Scott.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Chelsea Stellick with iA Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning. I know most of the questions and sort of focus have been on the three. I'm curious about some of the other assets in your pipeline. Speaking of Yondelis in particular, sort of the challenges that were faced in terms of public reimbursement, could you just give us more color on your patient support program that you plan on setting up this year?
Yeah, maybe I can share more about this question, Chelsea, and have a good morning. We are less talking about those complementary products. As you know, we made effort to align our strategic priorities on the high potential product. It remains that Yondelis is an interesting product, I would say. You know that it is indicated in soft tissue sarcoma with this kind of specific feature that you need an infusion over 24 hours.
Over the past months, what we have been hearing from sarcoma centers is that it was difficult for patients, first off, to get access to the product because it is still not covered, but also because it's a long time of infusion. That set the scene actually for designing the patient support program. We are actually working probably to complete the setup and starting these patient programs in a matter of one or two months. Therefore, we're gonna be able to provide this support to sarcoma centers. It remains still that the product is not covered. We hope to be able to grow the sales, but clearly it won't be a drastic growth behind this product.
However, working to set up this patient program in terms of supporting the access, probably co-sharing part of the cost of the drug, supporting the infusion, we have set up this patient support program on the basis of assuming the 24 hours at home injection of the product, and that should start again at probably around beginning of May.
Perfect. Thank you for the color. On Hesperco and sort of the uptake in Loblaws, what can we see or how can I look at, you know, average sales per store? What are you seeing in terms of traction at Loblaws? I guess any updates on other retailers and if it's gonna be something you announce.
Yeah. Maybe,
Go ahead.
No, just so it was interesting that the banners, so, you know, Hesperco was pushed towards the banners, and Loblaws actually was the first one to accept to list the product. What we see for now, honestly, is not a big ramping up of the product. Once you get listing, you need to maintain some activities in terms of building the brand and pushing the brands toward direct-to-consumer kind of campaign. It is, the product is available. Certainly what we have done so far in terms of sharing the information on the results of the clinical trial, you know, it has supported the idea that the product may be helpful in terms of supporting COVID-19 related symptoms relief. That's what we have been.
We don't see a great level of traction so far, but we have also to decide where are our priorities and where do we want to invest. That's also part of the reflection today.
Okay. Thank you so much for the color. I'll jump back in the queue.
Thank you, Chelsea.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Saviuk, you may proceed.
Thank you, operator. Again, we're very thankful that all of you were on the call. What can we look forward to coming up? Well, continuing quarterly revenue growth is certainly something that we foresee. As Fred gave us more insight, as the provinces open up and as the reimbursement starts to trickle through in terms of knowledge to physicians, and that they're made aware that it's now publicly reimbursed, we expect that there'll be a stronger acceleration of our revenue growth in the quarters to come, in the foreseeable quarters, actually, for the coming years.
Margin expansion both in dollars and percentage is on its way as our product mix shifts more towards our newer, higher growth, higher margin products. Active cost management, as you, Luc mentioned, trying to keep our costs now that we did. There's been a significant increase in costs as we referred to in another press. We see that as an investment in the future of our company. But now it's clearly something that we have to make sure that we keep a tight handle on. Reduction of our loss, as we've seen in this quarter. Loss came down about CAD 1.8 million. We continue to see quarter-over-quarter loss reductions until reaching profitability by the end of this year. Listing on the TSX.
Our discussions continue very favorably with the TSX, and we should be in a position in the coming weeks to have more information for our shareholders about the timing of our transition to the TSX. Once again, thank you for your continued interest and support. We look forward to keeping you up to date, both by way of press release and future events such as conference calls such as this in the months to come. A big thank you for being part of our Valeo shareholder group and interested stakeholder group. Operator?
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.