is being recorded on Thursday, May 15, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jason Westfall, Senior Director, FP&A. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Zomedica's First Quarter 2025 Earnings Results and Business Update call. Joining me on today's call are Zomedica's Chief Executive Officer, Larry Heaton, and Mike Zielke, our Vice President of Finance and Corporate Controller. Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that on this call, we will be making various remarks about future expectations, plans, and prospects that constitute forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions, and there are risks that results may differ materially from those statements. As such, Zomedica cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statements will materialize, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on them. We refer current and potential investors to the forward-looking information and risk factor sections of our public filings available on Cedar Plus at www.cedarplus.ca and on Edgar@sec.gov.
Forward-looking statements made on this conference call represent Zomedica's expectations as of today, May 15, 2025. I will now pass the call over to Zomedica's Chief Executive Officer, Larry Heaton. Larry?
Thanks, Jason. I'd like to start by thanking our shareholders for your support, wishing prospective investors, analysts, and others a good afternoon, and welcoming all to our Zomedica First Quarter 2025 Earnings Results and Business Update call. I'll start today by providing an update on our recent operational performance, followed by a financial update from Mike Zielke, our Vice President of Finance and Corporate Controller, and then we'll open the line for questions. Mike is representing Zomedica Finance since, as previously announced in an 8-K filing, our Chief Financial Officer resigned for personal reasons in late April. We and you are in good hands with Mike leading the finance team. The first quarter marked yet another period of solid execution across our business, resulting in the 17th quarter in a row of year-over-year record revenue for the quarter.
We delivered revenue of 6.5 million in the first quarter, reflecting 4% growth over the prior year quarter, primarily driven by the continued strength of our therapeutic devices segment as a result of our well-established leadership position with our PulseVet platform, as well as strong performance within our Truforma and Truview product lines. We made continued progress within each of our key initiatives throughout the quarter to help drive growth and ultimately reach cash flow break-even and GAAP profitability. I'll start with our continued push into the equine market. In the quarter, we bolstered our commercial organization with the addition of key roles, capital equipment specialists, who will work with our full-line salespeople to accelerate the adoption of our PulseVet platform, along with our other capital equipment products, and an additional equine professional services veterinarian.
In combination, these roles will help drive both accelerated adoption of PulseVet therapy within the equine market while also driving increasing utilization of our consumable PulseVet TRODES. To that end, we continue to increase the utility of our technologies within new equine-focused indications, including the application of PulseVet to treat asthma, for which we just launched the Equine Asthma Clinical Registry, as well as a broader range of Truforma assays, including our EACTH assay for the diagnosis of PPID, or Equine Cushing's Disease, which affects over 30% of horses over 15 years of age, our Equine Insulin Assay for the diagnoses of Equine Metabolic Disorder, which affects 15% of horses over 7 years old, our Cortisol Assay for Distressed Foals, and coming soon, our Equine Progesterone Assay used in breeding.
We've already seen the positive impacts of these initiatives during the first quarter and expect to see continued growth within the equine market across our applicable product offerings. Our next initiative has been expansion into key international markets and associated revenue growth. With the significant work done by our clinical, regulatory, and commercial teams during 2024, our entire portfolio is eligible to be sold into markets in the EU, as well as other countries that accept the CE mark, and we made significant headway in developing relationships with leading distributors in new international markets. These efforts will allow us to tap into incremental revenue opportunities that we haven't had access to previously. We're already seeing the benefits of these efforts as international revenue grew approximately 32% year-over-year, a metric that we expect to remain strong as we move through the balance of 2025.
Another key component of our growth strategy is the expansion of our Truforma platform. In 2024, we launched five new assays, all of which are performing well. With the demand for these new assays alongside the broad menu of assays currently available on the platform, we were able to drive 41% year-over-year growth during the quarter. We continue to bring new assays to market in 2025. Following the launch of our initial EACTH assay in September of last year, we leveraged data collected from its use in the field to expand its capabilities and potential utility. During the first quarter of 2025, we launched an enhanced EACTH assay, which now exclusively provides distinct values for both full-length EACTH and its derivative CLIP, in addition to the combination of the two values that are offered by Reference Labs.
This advancement provides new insights that you can only get through the Truforma platform that we believe will lead to a significant advance in the diagnosis of Pituitary Pars Intermediate Dysfunction, or PPID, a common endocrine disorder, which, as I mentioned, affects 30% of horses over 15 years of age. In case you were wondering, horses generally live to around 30. Beyond innovation within our core product lines, we continue to look for ways to expand our portfolio of innovative products to help veterinarians provide the best care possible for your pets. In January, we announced a distribution agreement with Cressilon, a biotech company, for its Vetagel hemostatic gel product line. The agreement granted us exclusive rights to distribute Vetagel hemostatic gel in the United States and a non-exclusive right to distribute it in the rest of the world.
While revenue in the first quarter from Vetagel was limited, we're excited about the potential for it to contribute more meaningfully throughout 2025 as we now have our salesforce fully trained on the product. I'll turn now to an operational update. Over the last three years, we have invested in our infrastructure to be able to accommodate growing demand for our products while at the same time allowing us to improve efficiency and reduce costs as we continue to scale the business. These investments and strategic decisions will support our growth and improve our overall cost structure, a critical component of our strategy to drive towards cash flow break-even and GAAP profitability as soon as possible. Our expanded manufacturing and distribution facility in Roswell, Georgia, as well as the automated robotic manufacturing line in our Minnesota plant, are already paying dividends.
In the first quarter, we also relocated our headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to a smaller facility, which has allowed us to cut costs and improve efficiency, which will reduce overhead costs by over 200,000 annually. As we mentioned during our last call, we're focused on reducing our operating expenses, both in real cash terms as well as in its percentage of revenue. During the quarter, we made progress in this area as we reduced actual cash operating expenses, which excludes impairment, by $1.2 million, or 10% compared to the first quarter of last year, and 1 million, or 9% compared to the last quarter of last year. Both year-over-year and sequentially, our cash expenses are down. This remains a major focus, and we expect to continue to reduce our cash operating expenses throughout the year, both in real dollars and as a percentage of revenue.
The first quarter represented another solid period of execution for Zomedica. The groundwork laid in 2024 and early 2025 have set us up to deliver accelerating year-over-year growth throughout the balance of this year and position us well to drive increasing operational efficiencies as we move towards our path to profitability. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike for a financial update. Mike.
Thanks, Larry, and welcome to all our call participants, and thank you for your continued interest in Zomedica. I'd also like to say thank you to our shareholders who continue to support the long-term strategy of Zomedica. Total revenue for the first quarter was a first-quarter record of $6.5 million, an increase of 4% driven by double-digit growth of consumables as a result of the increasing utilization of Truforma assays and PulseVet TRODES. Capital revenues in the first quarter were 2 million as we continued to execute our PulseVet commercial strategy. In the first quarter, consumable revenue was $4.5 million, an increase of approximately 13% over the first quarter of 2024. Consumables revenue represented approximately 70% of total revenue in this quarter, which is largely a result of the growth in capital equipment sales throughout the past year, which, once installed, provide a new stream of consumables revenue after installation.
Therapeutic devices segment revenues from the PulseVet and ACC products were 5.9 million, and diagnostic segment revenues were approximately 600,000, which was a decrease of 25%. There was strong growth in both Truforma and Truview, which were offset by a tough comparable quarter for VetGuardian. Although we continued to see solid VetGuardian performance in the quarter, we had a very strong quarter in 2024, first quarter of 2024, as a result of initial distributor orders placed during that quarter that did not recur during the first quarter of 2025. In the quarter, gross margin was 68%, in line with our previously communicated target range of gross margin, and slightly up from 66% in the first quarter of 2024. Total operating expenses net of impairment wer $13.2 million, a decrease of 9% over the prior year.
Research and development expenses were 1.9 million, a 5% increase over the prior year quarter, primarily due to the continued buildup of internal capabilities to develop, test, and manufacture our next generation of therapeutic and diagnostic products. Sales and marketing spend was $5 million, a 22% increase over the prior quarter, primarily due to the increased headcount of our sales department as we continued to build out our staff through recent hiring campaigns. General and administrative expenses were $6.3 million, down approximately $2.3 million, or 27% compared to the prior year quarter, driven by the non-recurrence of professional fees for specialized accounting services and development work associated with acquisitions in 2024, the non-recurrence of one-time special meeting and proxy fees incurred in 2024, and lower stock-based compensation. Net loss for the quarter was $63.8 million, compared to a net loss of $9.2 million in the prior year.
This was primarily a result of a $55.8 million non-cash impairment expense realized during the first quarter of 2025, triggered by the decline in the company's market cap as a result of the company's share price performance during the first quarter. Non-GAAP EBITDA loss, which includes adjustments for stock compensation, was $61.7 million, which again includes the $55.8 million of non-cash impairment charges just discussed. When adjusting for non-cash and non-recurring items, our adjusted non-GAAP EBITDA loss was approximately $5.7 million, compared to an adjusted non-GAAP EBITDA loss of $5.3 million in the first quarter of last year. Quickly turning to the balance sheet, Zomedica ended the quarter with $64.6 million in cash, cash equivalents, and available for sale securities. Cash used in the first quarter, which is historically higher than subsequent quarters, was approximately $6.8 million.
We remain well-positioned to fund our growth initiatives, and as a reminder, we have essentially no debt. With that, I'd like to hand the call back to Larry for closing remarks. Larry?
Thank you, Mike. We're very excited about the opportunity that exists for Zomedica during the balance of 2025. During the year, we'll continue to focus on a number of key revenue growth catalysts. First, our continued push into the equine market. This includes driving the growth of equine Truforma assays, such as EACTH, increasing PulseVet TRODE consumable sales, the introduction of equine ultrasound technology, and the launch of our VetGuardian platform for install use planned for late in the year. Second, continued international expansion and revenue growth. With our significantly expanded international footprint, we expect to see increasing contribution from our international markets throughout the year. Third, growing the adoption and utilization of our Truforma platform and associated assays. With our expanded menu of assays, along with new assay launches and the introduction of combination or multiplex assays in 2025, we expect to continue to see strong revenue growth.
Fourth, we're planning on a full launch of the Truview digital cytoscopy and telepathology platform as we complete development of our AI reporting function, which has been coming along nicely and is nearing completion to enable an early third-quarter launch. Fifth, we expect our Vetagel distribution agreement to drive increasing revenue throughout the year as our salesforce has additional quarters with this innovative technology in their bags. Finally, the maturation of recently added commercial roles, including our corporate account leader and capital equipment specialists, should pay dividends as we move through the year. Along with accelerating top-line growth, we expect to continue to see the benefits of our optimized infrastructure. We've already begun to see operating leverage as a result, and expect that as revenue grows, we'll be able to deliver increased leverage to move us closer to our goal of being cash flow positive and GAAP profitable.
During the quarter, as I mentioned earlier, we made progress in this area as we reduced actual cash expenses, which excludes impairment, by 1.2 million versus last year and 1 million versus the fourth quarter of last year. We expect to continue to reduce our cash operating expenses throughout the year, both in real dollars and as a percentage of revenue. Turning to our communication strategy, we've decided to focus on prioritizing communications with our existing shareholders. To that end, we'll be kicking off our fourth Friday at 4:00 P.M. webinar series, which begins on May 23rd. We mentioned this in our last quarter call and decided that rather than doing it on the third Thursday, which would have been today, we decided to wait till after we had earnings.
We'll start with an in-depth dive into our PulseVet product line on the first call on May 23rd, the fourth Friday of May at 4:00 P.M., followed by a monthly cadence covering each of our product platforms along with the company's infrastructure, capacity, and opportunities for growth. Each of these monthly sessions will include a Q&A session with management. With this monthly series in place, we'll be discontinuing these quarterly calls. These are termed analyst calls as they are generally for the purpose of allowing institutionally focused analysts to engage in a Q&A session with management. Given where our shares are traded, their share price, and the fact that institutionally focused analysts are not participating, we'll be suspending these calls for the foreseeable future. We will, of course, continue to file all appropriate documents with regulatory bodies and issue timely quarterly press releases to announce earnings as in the past.
On the first monthly call, post-earnings release of each quarter, we'll cover the topics on that call that we cover here quarterly. Of course, we welcome any analysts interested in the company to join our monthly shareholder calls, which will actually offer more frequent opportunities to interact with a deeper set of Zomedica's management team as they will include not just Mike and I, but also the team responsible for developing, manufacturing, marketing, and selling our products. Finally, as a reminder, we continue to have a very supportive balance sheet with roughly 65 million in liquidity and no debt. We will remain opportunistic as we evaluate business development opportunities which fit within our portfolio and would help drive both increased revenue and improved profitability.
I once again want to thank our shareholders for your support, our employees for their dedication, and our customers who trust us to help provide the best possible veterinary care around the world. With that, I'd like to open the line for questions. Operator?
Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your touch-tone phone. We'll now open up for questions. Should you decline for the polling process, please press star followed by the 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift up the handset before pressing any keys. We'll just wait to compile the Q&A roster. I don't see anyone raising their hands for Q&A. There are no questions. Please continue.
Okay. Thank you, Operator. There are a number of questions that are with us on the web, and we will just go to those. Let's start. Here is a multiple-question question. Why have management options not been repriced or new options issued instead of salary? Shareholders do not get to go back in time and change the price that they paid for our shares. It would not be, in our view, appropriate for us to change the strike price of options. We have not done that, and we will not do that. We do periodically issue option grants to employees. It is a standard practice in ours and pretty much every public company business. Our employees look forward to building value in the company, building the share price so that those options can be profitable for them in the future.
Why are marketing costs much higher than the industry averages? That's a fair question, and it really depends on what you're comparing. I think what you're looking at there is marketing costs as a percentage of revenue, and I agree ours are high, sales and marketing costs overall. To answer this question, let's create a scenario, right? If you're starting a brand new business, you have a brand new product that you're introducing into the market. You spent money on developing it, and now you're manufacturing it. Now you start to market it. You hire some salespeople to sell it, but you haven't sold any yet. Your percentage of costs are super high. That's a startup. Zomedica's products are essentially startup products. Take that single company example, multiply it by five because that's what we have. Each of our products are innovative. They're proprietary.
They're new to the marketplace. To that point, Zomedica was new to the marketplace. We had no products on the market until mid to late 2021, and then it was a very small amount. When you compare us to other startups, I think you'll see the ratios are very similar. When you compare us to somebody like Idexx or Zoetis, Elanco, I would say that comparison is a bit premature. Hopefully, one day we stand with them, but not now. Are you looking to expand into retail vet stores? We currently sell one product line, the ACC product line that is available for purchase by retail buyers, consumers. We sell that online through all the online channels: Chewy, PetSmart, Pet Wishes, Walmart, and so on. I do believe we have actually ACC products in a couple of brick-and-mortar stores, but it's not a significant amount.
We decided maybe a year or so ago that we would not drive into the retail market with its associated sort of really high advertising costs to reach consumers and instead are primarily focused on selling to vets and then through those online channels. Why is investor relations nonexistent? I would not say it's nonexistent, but it's certainly not well-staffed. The IR director is one of the positions that we eliminated in an effort to reduce costs. When you think about it, the IR team traditionally is focused on institutional investors because they have the deep pockets to be able to make meaningful investments into the market in Zomedica stock. We've cut back significantly on conference presentations and attending conferences that are geared towards these institutional investors because at this point in time, they simply can't consider a purchase of our stock in the open market.
We do not see the need for that. I personally take calls. Mike takes calls from investors. I know that sometimes the phone tree can be a little daunting. You have to dial the number and then go to corporate and then go to whatever. For those that are interested, my direct line is 734-489-6485. If I am busy, it will take a message, and I will get back to you. I talk to investors frequently. Is there a strategy for getting institutional coverage, investment banking relations, and so on? With respect to institutional coverage by analysts, they simply will not cover a stock that is below $1. Some of them have a higher threshold, a stock that is on the OTC. Any effort in that regard at this point in time would be a waste of resources.
With respect to investment bankers, frankly, we get calls very frequently from a variety of investment bankers that all have a great suggestion on what we should do to help increase our stock price and so on. It begins with reverse split, and the conversation generally ends just after I remind them that our shareholders are not in favor of going that route. We do have relationships with various investment banks, especially when it comes to them bringing potential acquisitions to our attention. Let's see. The CFO appointed in December said a buyback was in consideration. He recently resigned. Is it because Larry is against a buyback and holds resentment toward investors for downvoting the reverse splits? If so, why? As I mentioned in my remarks, Scott left for personal reasons. They had their personal reasons. He's back now in Chicago living there full time.
His reasons, I will assure you, had nothing to do with Zomedica, our financials, or our opportunities for growth. I will leave it at that. I will say, however, that he was not against a reverse split, and he was not pushing for a buyback. That is really neither here nor there. He is back in his former business, and you feel free to reach out to him individually. Are you using or planning on using AI to expand the number and rate of discovery of new assets for Truforma? I do not think we are. I do not know for sure. I know that we have a really good cadence of assets under consideration for development, and we actually could be developing a lot more than we are now. However, there are costs associated with each new asset.
It's a lot less than we were paying before we acquired Corvo Biotechnologies, but it's still a significant number. To keep costs and spend down, we're limiting it to about four assets this year. Please do attend our fourth Friday at 4:00 P.M. session on Truforma, and I'll have our Head of R&D, Dr. Ashley Wood, go into the potential use of AI in that area. How profitable has the new Vetagel product been, and are there any other consumable product lines you can add to leverage existing client base? Really good question. It's good from a profitability standpoint. We have a very good relationship with Cressilon. We have a good margin; in pretty much any company, it would be viewed as a very favorable margin. Here, we get higher margins on products that we manufacture ourselves, and we're not going to manufacture this product ourselves.
It won't be as good as some of our products, but it's still very desirable. With respect to consumable product lines that can leverage our existing client base, absolutely. That's the focus of our M&A activities. The thing is that we need to be able to bring them on board with minimal or no upfront costs and no ongoing operating expense costs so that they can contribute to getting the cash flow positive sooner. Why are you focusing so heavily on equine when it's only 5% the size of the domestic animal market? Is the adoption rate so good that it merits the effort? With respect to that, actually, equine's probably around 14% of the total number of clinics in the United States. Really, the reason is of those accounts, we have really high penetration with PulseVet.
Probably over half of the total equine vets, and certainly a much higher number of equine sports and performance vets pick up PulseVet and use it on average three times a week and potentially even more. We have products that are really custom-designed for them. There are no other laboratory point-of-care devices for Cushings and insulin and others of these. As a result, we have a good relationship, and we're able to penetrate that market. That is why we're doing it. What is the status of Truview? Are you monetizing it via premium subscription or per-use basis? As I mentioned, we're darn near done with the AI. We should have a full suite of AI reports and either late this quarter if something's fallen our way, but certainly early next quarter, we'll be doing a full launch of the Truview system.
We charge a subscription, a minimum monthly subscription that is paid, and then they pay extra for each AI report that they get from each slide that's entered into the machine with just a few exceptions. For those that they want a pathologist to report back to them, they pay an extra amount for that as well. When you purchase RevoSquare, you got the MicroView, but also IP for their Sonoview ultrasound and so on. We haven't talked about those. That is because initially, we wanted our sales team to focus on those products that here at Zomedica, we manufacture and those that provide the biggest margins, get them trained and really equipped to be able to sell those.
As we have done that and as we added capital equipment specialists in the first quarter, we've begun now to sell some of the RevoSquare ultrasound and X-ray devices and expect for that to contribute to sales as we move through the year. Do you plan on hiring a new CFO to replace Scott, or will you cut expenses by not adding a new CFO? I personally think Mike is doing a really nice job. He did it before we brought Mike before we brought Scott on board, and he's doing a nice job now. While I think eventually the company will look to fill that seat, it's not something that we're prioritizing now, and it does represent cost savings for the company. Let's see. Are there any plans in place to try and increase the stock share price? There's a number of questions in that vein.
Mike, do you want to take that?
Sure. I would put that as an update to Q1 where we talked about plans around regaining compliance with listing standards for a major exchange for which stock price is the most material hurdle. As we talk about it, I would think about our plans around regaining compliance and stock price appreciation on two fronts. The first would be the steps we have taken immediately or we have taken internally to deliver accelerating growth as well as bottom-line results that result in cash flow and eventually get profitability as quickly as possible. As Larry stated in his prepared remarks, we are aggressively pursuing continued growth in our revenue through a number of channels, whether it is increased indications of use like equine asthma for PulseVet, new assets for our Truforma platform, international expansion, or the full launch of an AI-enabled Truview platform as examples.
Noting that our current scale can support up to five times the volume it supports today, this will lead to improved gross margins. While doing this, as we emphasize, we are maintaining focus on the reduction of actual cash operating expenses, which were, again, 10% lower year over year and $1 million less than Q4 of last quarter. We expect to continue to reduce our cash operating expenses throughout the year. We understand the importance of demonstrating progress towards an attainment of cash flow profitability and are confident that the steps we have taken to date and future steps we may need to take will fuel the achievement of that metric, which should drive stock price appreciation.
Second, as we mentioned on the last call, beyond the operational steps, we continue to evaluate all other options that could aid the stock price appreciating to an acceptable value for listing on a major exchange.
Thanks, Mike. There are a number of questions here about a stock buyback. Can you comment on that, please?
Certainly one of the options that we consider and discuss. I think it is important to know when it comes to a buyback that timing is important. Typically, I think buybacks are best suited where it follows some kind of attainment of cash flow break-even, but I would leave it at it is one of the options that we are considering and we will continue to consider in the future.
There are also a number of questions around a reverse split.
I think there's one that talked about, "Let's address the elephant in the room," and then there are a number of other ones that ask about that as well. With respect to that, we attempted to gain approval for a stock reverse split last year, as y'all know. We expended a considerable amount of resources. We contacted shareholders. Some of you got phone calls. We reached out significantly to the shareholder base and attempted to get that passed. It not only failed, but it failed by a considerable margin. As responsible stewards of your company, it's not something that we would expect would be approved by shareholders one year later.
You will note as we have sent out the proxy documents for our upcoming annual meeting on June 10th, it does not include any proposal for a reverse split, and we have no immediate plans to seek one. You surely can take from the fact that we spent so much time and effort last year seeking a reverse split that we felt like it was the best thing to do for the company. I am not going to sit here and say that, "Oh, golly, it is not a good idea." I will say that we have no plans to seek one at this point, and it is just one of the options just as a share buyback that Mike just mentioned is one of the options. Again, it is timing, right? We get to cash flow positive, then we are generating our own money, our own cash.
We're not in a position where we would ever, at that point, once we're cash flow positive, need to go out and raise funds through additional sale of shares or through debt, which would incur interest expenses and increase our operating expenses and extend our timeline to profitability. We will continue to examine all of these. We certainly hear about it from investment bankers and so on and so forth. At this point, we have to balance the desires of our shareholders with the sort of the technicalities or the theory of a reverse split. What you should take from that is that while we're not seeking to do a cash buyback right now, we're also not seeking to do a reverse split right now. Let's see.
Why doesn't the company leverage debt so that the company doesn't continue to spend cash on hand, specifically when expenses outspend revenue? Because we have the ability to not have to take on debt and not have to take on. Debt for a company that's not yet profitable is relatively high-interest debt, and that would increase our operating expense. That is not something that we're looking to do at this point. You said you would update each month on the last call. I think I explained that, but maybe I went quickly on that. The third Thursday of the month is today. We decided that instead of trying to do two webinars or a webinar and a call, that we would wait. Plus, we just think it's beneficial to have the earnings behind us.
We've switched it to the fourth Friday at 4:00 series, and the first one begins on May 23rd, which is just a week and a day from now. We would encourage you to join us. We'll be doing these monthly. You can put them on your calendar, and we'll have opportunities to interact and engage with shareholders, investors, and whoever. There are a couple of questions here about the cancer assay. The cancer assay was a concept. It generated one patent. It was something that never before my time never came to fruition and something that was determined by the company that was engaged in developing with us that it wouldn't work. Yes, it's definitely off the table. Have the tariffs affected the international expansion at all? I think a little bit.
We've been in since we got everything done last year with respect to getting on the market from a regulatory standpoint, we've been in really robust conversations with a number of distributors, particularly in the EU. I will say that those slowed down a bit as people just tried to figure out what the tariff situation was going to mean. Our existing customers have not really been affected, both for two reasons. One, a lot of the business, remember, 70% of our revenue for PulseVet, which is what's primarily sold outside the US now, 70% of that revenue comes from the consumables, which means customers have the devices and they're using them. If they don't get that TRODE refurbished, then they can't use the system, which they invested in. That business, we think regardless, will come through. We haven't seen tariffs hit that.
New capital sales, I have to imagine that people might be afraid of tariffs. That could work both ways. If there's no tariffs yet, maybe they bought one sooner than they would have. Maybe they bought one later. I don't think it really had much of a negative impact on us. However, I think with respect to tariffs, it's just not possible to predict what exactly is going to be the situation in a month, six months, or I think probably a year from now. My personal opinion is it'll probably get sorted out by a year from now, but don't know what will happen in between now and then. It hasn't affected us from a cost of goods standpoint because we use very little material. All of our products are made here in the U.S., and we use very little materials from outside the country.
We do expect to continue selling in international markets. We do expect to increase the number of distributors that we have, particularly in the EU, and expand the number of products that are sold outside the US as well. As I understand, you've only specifically outlined $200,000 reduction in expenses for 2025, and can you lower expenses on an absolute basis? The answer to that is yes. As I mentioned earlier, we already have last quarter. In the fourth quarter, we spent $1 million less than we did in the third quarter of last year. In the first quarter, we spent $1 million less than we did in the fourth quarter of last year. We spent $1.2 million less than the first quarter. Yes.
$200,000, so $50,000 of that would be our first quarter contribution of that $200,000 reduction by moving into a smaller facility here in Ann Arbor. The remainder of that is from a variety of initiatives. We've reduced headcount a bit, not in sales and marketing because that's like sort of strangling the golden goose. We need the sales and marketing. We built that sales and marketing team so that we can have people come to us and say, "We want to sell. We want you to sell our product and to be able to sell our own products for that matter." We're not looking to cut that, but various support positions throughout the company have been reduced or eliminated. There are other things that we have done in various departments to be able to reduce costs by that $1 million in the quarter. We're not done yet.
We expect to continue to reduce operating expenses in absolute cash terms and certainly as a percentage of total revenue. Let's see. Somebody wants my direct number again. Happy to give it to you. It's 734-489-6485. And my email is lheaton, H-E-A-T-O-N, at zomedica.com. Let's see what else we have here. There are a number of questions on providing guidance. It was our plan with Scott on board to be able to provide guidance. With his departure and Mike stepping into some additional responsibilities, we're going to defer guidance until a future date. Let's see. Okay. Someone reinforces that reverse split will never be approved. Thank you, Justin. I mean, really, most of these, somebody said, "How could I ask for a raise?" Didn't ask a raise, didn't receive a raise. People here, I think, are compensated fairly and appropriately.
Generally, they fall into the lower percentile in terms of comparable companies, but no one is complaining. We will continue to compensate people fairly. Me personally, I did not ask for it, nor did I receive a raise. That question, actually, they misunderstood our proxy statement. That is not my salary. Let's see. Will the new study with equine costs of volunteers for the study anything? Right. That is the Equine Asthma Clinical Registry. That is a really—I mean, it is a short name, but it is really big in terms of potential impact. Equine asthma is treated pretty much like human asthma is with Lasix, which is bad news for horses that are competing, and also with inhalers, which you could imagine the difficulty in getting a horse to wear that inhaler.
For many, many years, Zomedica PulseVet, the PulseVet was, out of an abundance of caution, contraindicated for use on the lungs, which is what you need to treat to treat asthma. Yet there were equine veterinarians that understood the physics and the concept and the mechanism of action of PulseVet and decided that they would go ahead and try it on the lungs of horses. They did it on their own. We did not pay them to do it. We did not sponsor that research. They did it responsibly with horses that were not going to be living for a variety of reasons in a scientific way.
It determined that it was safe, did a pilot study on EIPH horses, demonstrated absolute safety of the procedure and effectiveness, understood the mechanism of action was the treatment of the underlying asthma of horses with EIPH, and now have done a pilot study on asthma with really good results. When I and others within the company met with some luminaries in the field of equine medicine, we asked what guidance could they give us on introducing this into the market. They said, "Keep doing what you're doing. Get a bigger study and a lot of data." We thought, "Okay. That study is underway." Also, this idea of a clinical registry. Veterinarians who are treating horses with asthma are going to have the ability to enroll their patients in this registry.
This will contribute to the body of data around this procedure. Eventually, once it gets to a certain power, it will be publishable and will be a benefit to all equine veterinarians. They get a chance—these veterinarians get a chance to get in on the sort of the early front of being able to offer this therapy. It provides really great results, at least six, maybe nine months, maybe longer of relief from coughing and other symptoms associated with asthma. It is being done in a responsible way. As far as our contribution, we are not charging the veterinarians. The veterinarians are not charging us. They are charging the horse owners for the asthma treatment, which they should.
As they do a number of horses, we're offering them on their next Trode refurbishment to give them a relatively small number of pulses in addition to the pulses that they're paying for as they get their Trode refurbished. It is a really good example, I think, of partnership between equine veterinarians and the company where it is to the benefit of both parties. What do you see the company in 2027? Profitable. How about assays for humans? Not, right? We're not in the human health business. We do own Corvo Biotechnologies. It did receive the human version of our Truforma device, received FDA emergency use authorization for the treatment of COVID. They also had it geared up for flu A and B, and something else, RSV. Because that represents a significant investment, we stopped that program, which they never finished and deployed.
We preserved all of the assets, meaning not just the instruments and the cartridges that they had developed, but more importantly, the clinical data and the regulatory approvals. We preserved that in a pristine fashion. It is our expectation that as we build a track record of Truforma in the animal health space, that at some point we will be able to monetize that asset for somebody that is interested in that for use in the human space, in the human market. The other asset that we have for that is the Truview device, which currently we are deploying in the animal health industry or in the animal health market, but can also be put into the human market in the future if we decide to go that route. It will not be Zomedica doing it.
We would look to monetize that with either a partner or a whole different company or what have you. Can you explain how you plan on entry and expansion into the small animal market? Yeah. In 2021, we launched our first assays. I joined the company in October of 2021. We acquired PulseVet, PulseVeterinary Technologies. That was primarily in the equine market, but had a product which we felt would be really good in the small animal market. You look at PulseVet, PulseVet has grown to, in my estimation, over 50% penetration of the applicable equine vets. It took them 10-12 years to do that, right?
You're probably familiar with the concept of an inflection point where you get out there and you build and you build, and at a certain point, the market sort of takes over and starts pulling, demanding the product as opposed to us pushing it. We entered the small animal market. The reason why we did that is because if we got to 50% penetration of the small animal market, that would be 15,000 installations. Really, really big numbers. The other corollary to this, in the small animal market, a similar type of a product would be therapy lasers. If you've taken your dog to the vet and had surgery or the cat, they use the laser on the incision line following the surgery. If you've got some dermatologic issues, then they might lase the surface of it. Therapy lasers.
Fifteen years ago, there weren't any in the animal health market. Today, probably, I don't know, three-quarters of small animal vets have one of these. And they cost around $20,000, maybe more. Early on, they were probably $30,000. I think you'd probably buy one inexpensively for maybe $20,000, but that's the range of pricing. Again, it took 10-12 years. Importantly, they didn't have an equine base of use that's already demonstrated significant efficacy and cost-effectiveness and good return on investment. Yet, they still were able to penetrate that. They didn't have clinical data in animal health. Yet, they were able to penetrate that market. You have two good comparables, one with our exact product in a related market, in a corollary market, equine, and one in the same market in a similar type of a technology.
That's why we wanted to get into that business, into the small animal market business. Now, in order to do that, we deployed a sales organization because this is not a product that you can sell over the phone or online with a picture. If you're going to a small animal vet that's not heard of PulseVet before or maybe just knew it as an equine product, you've got to get in front of that vet. We deployed a Salesforce. We hired the former head of sales from Heska, which had deployed a Salesforce across the country, similar size to what we now have. We deployed a Salesforce.
We invested, as some of you point out appropriately, invested heavily in marketing the company and the products by attending trade shows for veterinarians, horse owner shows, and dog owner shows, pet parent shows, to be able to introduce a technology at the pet parent level or the horse owner level, to be able to then influence the veterinarian to be interested in the technology and be receptive to the sales reps as they walk in the door. All of this with a brand new product like this into its particular market, it takes time. It takes resources. We've deployed those resources. I think we're seeing results, frankly. We went from $4 million in 2021, $19 million, $25 million, $27 million with this variety or this basically bag of products, so.
There is a question here that talks about, "Have we been approached by other companies that want us to sell their products?" The answer to that is yes, we have been. Sometimes those products are really out there in terms of—I probably cannot mention some of the specifics, but there are products that would be used rarely in procedures that would cost like $20,000-$30,000 for a heart condition or something like that. We are not into that business. It is easy to understand why we are attractive to companies that have products that they want to get on the market. That is because we are bearing the cost of our sales and marketing organization now for the benefit of our products. They would like to benefit from that as well. In some cases, it makes sense.
Vetagel was a product that only will be able to generate revenue from that at a good margin. In addition, that's a door opener for our sales team. Maybe the vet hasn't heard of this product or that product. If they have an interest in Vetagel, that requires a conversation not with the gatekeeper at the front desk, but with the vet themselves. Once they're in there with the vet, then it's fair game to talk about our other products and so on. We expect to continue to look at these opportunities. For those that don't cost us money upfront and will contribute to revenue at good margins, you can expect to see some of those in the future. I mean, there's a bunch more, but they're kind of repeating. I think we're kind of up on time.
With that, let me just, again, thank you for your support of the company. Thank you for your interest and for your questions. Those that are really constructive and even those that are not because those are instructive to us as to how you are feeling about your company. We have come a long way in the last three and a half years. We have ways to go. Here, we are dedicated to being responsible stewards of the capital and growing this business for the benefit of your pets and ours. With that, I will thank you. Have a wonderful evening. Operator, thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.