All right, everybody. I'd like to introduce our next presentation here at the Planet MicroCap Showcase, Vancouver, in association with Small Cap Discoveries. Now presenting is Linda Kisa from Crescita Therapeutics.
Thank you. Okay, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us at our presentation. I have the pleasure to be here and share the podium today with, Serge Verreault, our CEO, and as we like to call him, our fearless leader. Also wanna give a quick shout-out to, Trevor and Paul, for the invitation, as well as, Robert Cross, to allow us, this opportunity, to present to the MicroCap community. So really quickly, Serge and I will be making some forward-looking statements, today, so, please make sure that you... Thank you. Sorry. Thank you very much. Please make sure that you refer to all of our SEDAR filings, for more fulsome disclosure. We'll also be referring to a non-IFRS measure, which is adjusted EBITDA. Again, please refer to our disclosures.
So our agenda for today, for the next 25 minutes that we'll spend together, Serge and I will share the Crescita story. I will go through the company overview, and then we'll pass it on to Serge, who will go through our growth strategies, some recent business developments, and what you should be paying attention to, in the near term, so for the next, you know, 12 to 18 months. So we'll start with a bold statement. We are a unique commercial dermatology or skincare company, in Canada. We are unique, why? Because of the combination of our capabilities, as well as our innovative and diverse product portfolio, where we're able to kind of set ourselves from the pack in the Canadian derm space.
So we address the aesthetics market, and that divides kind of in two subsets, which is aesthetic skincare and medical aesthetics. Our portfolio will cover a lot of skin concerns that many of us face, like hyperpigmentation, sun care, anti-aging, and acne, through dermocosmetic products that are topical. As well as on the medical aesthetic side, we are talking about things like dermal fillers, which we have one of, hyaluronic acid-based dermal filler, NCTF Boost, which is a topical beauty booster, that is really more for the medical aesthetic market, that are run by either physician-owned or operated, establishments. So not only do we have a diverse, innovative portfolio, we are also creators and innovators and manufacturers.
In-house, we have a team of formulators that are working to develop new products, innovative active ingredients that can be folded into our products. What's great is that we also can leverage these capabilities in our manufacturing facility. We run a 50,000 sq ft facility based in Laval. For those of you who don't know where that is, that's a little bit north of the Montreal city center, and our plant has a lot of excess capacity, so we do leverage those capabilities to produce for third parties in the skincare realm. We are fully integrated from a commercial standpoint, so essentially that's really conducive from bringing an idea to market very quickly and efficiently.
So we have our, like I said, our development teams, sales, marketing, training, and customer service all under the same roof, so we're able to give our customers a seamless experience at every touchpoint. So like every good innovation company in the derm space, we do have some technologies as well that we're able to leverage, for our own products, as well as in our CMO business, which is our manufacturing business. And what those technologies do essentially are help optimize the amount of active ingredients that can be put into a product. So that's really good from a cost perspective, for our customers. In terms of a quick summary of our kind of financial profile, so we have a market cap of CAD 12 million. This was about two days ago.
Our last year revenue was CAD 17.5 million, and we have CAD 9.1 million in our bank account as of June 30th. So the way we operate our business is through three complementary, business segments or growth platforms. On the Commercial Skincare side, that includes our aesthetic and medical aesthetic portfolio. So as I said, we have a curated, portfolio of products. Those products are sold, across Canada through a sales force of about 10 people, as well as inside sales. We sell directly, to consumers, online, but the bulk of our business is done, what we call B2B, so direct selling to, spas, medispas, and physician-owner-operated establishments. As I said, fully integrated with marketing and sales.
Just by way of, to give you kind of some context, we currently sell into about 1,400 doors across Canada with a lot of room to grow. On the Manufacturing and Services side, as I said, we operate out of a 50,000-sq ft facility. We have capabilities to produce pretty much anything that is topical, so creams, gels, serums and ointments, and we are able to manufacture different types of products, including cosmetics, natural health products, as well as DIN products. We'll see on the upcoming slide that our plant has had significant unused capacity, and we've been working very diligently to increase the volume with existing customers and diversify our customer base, as well. We'll see a little bit later, and Serge will address it.
Our CMO revenue, we've always kind of qualified as being lumpy. That's not a very elegant word, but it certainly does capture the challenge that we face, in that segment, which is that it's purchase order based, and so we can have really high revenue, and then there may be an event whereby there needs to be you know adjustment to that level, depending on how successful our client is with the launch, and so we're really dependent on that. We did have an announcement in 2023 at the tail end, where exactly this happened, and it was a setback from a revenue and profitability perspective, but we did announce some really good news this summer to be able to compensate for that, and Serge will revisit those shortly.
Last but not least, we also have a licensing segment. In this segment, we essentially license the IP related to Pliaglis. It's our lead prescription product, our only prescription product. And what Pliaglis is, is a topical local anesthetic. I mentioned earlier that we have some technologies. One of those technologies is called Peel Technology, which was proprietary to Crescita, and it was developed within or is used rather within Pliaglis. So Pliaglis is a numbing agent. It is made out of 7% lidocaine and 7% tetracaine, which are the highest concentrations of those two actives approved together by the FDA.
And what Pliaglis does is that you will apply that, to the skin surface that will be, the subject of a minimally invasive procedure, for a number of minutes, depending on the body part that's being treated. And what's special about Pliaglis is that it provides, occlusion or self-occlusion, which is really critical in getting the active ingredients to penetrate, through the skin and be, effective. So, Sorry about that. And, you know, with the effect of the tetracaine, we're really able to get, extended, numbing effect ranging from seven to nine hours. So again, setting that apart from some of its competitors like EMLA or even, certain compounded mixtures that are done in pharmacies. So Pliaglis is, under a licensing model.
Although our commercial skincare team does sell it here in Canada, it is under an international licensing model. It is currently licensed in 39 countries across the globe. It is approved in about 37 of those countries, and it is licensed to about seven partners. We have a number of launches that have happened in smaller European and Middle Eastern countries recently. But what we're really looking forward to, and that could have a meaningful impact, is the launch in China. So that is currently licensed to one of our partners. And we recently learned that there was a bridge study that was required for a Phase III bridge study that the partner is funding and is currently underway. But there's an opportunity there that is quite interesting and that we're looking forward to.
Maybe just really interesting to mention on Pliaglis, one of the first countries that we were able to license was the U.S., in 2017 to 2020, which was kind of the heyday for Pliaglis. We had licensed that to Taro Pharmaceuticals at the time, and we were able to monetize that quite significantly. We had some headwind with that, where we were notified at the tail end of last year that they would terminate that contract. So one of our near-term focuses that Serge will talk about is to find a partner in the U.S. So kind of important to keep that in mind. Talking about our markets, essentially, we are in growing markets. I think everybody can attest to some experience with skincare or self-care.
We're all very much have access to a lot of information. We're more aware of things that can affect our wellness, our skin health, including environmental factors like the sun, like aging, and I think that probably since COVID, we've all seen ourselves up close and personal and continue to do so on a lot of Zoom calls, so yeah, we're pretty much aware, so you know, statistics are showing that minimally invasive procedures are on the rise, and as a whole, we think that it's okay and it's acceptable to do so, so these are all kind of micro trends that, or macro trends rather, that are really helping us and giving us tailwinds in doing what we're doing and playing in the markets that we play.
Also, what we're seeing is, you know, the younger generation, generations are also investing in skincare, and they're not, and they're not stopping. They're starting as early as in their 20s , to, you know, prevent certain signs of aging as well. So on the Financial side, you know, I touched a little bit about the revenue profiles, you know, in Skincare and Manufacturing, so I'll go a little bit deeper here. You can see we've divided this into our three different business segments. So our dark blue is our skin care, and you can see that there's been, you know, healthy growth there, year-over-year. That's really due to launches and innovation, including the launch of our dermal filler in 2022 to 2023 .
But what's really important is to see that it represents roughly 40%-60% of our revenue distribution and is really our baseline recurring revenue. Our goal as a company, as you know, the recent events with Taro as well as our manufacturing customer, our real focus has really been to increase the amount of recurring revenue so that we are less reliant over time on, you know, lumpy revenue that is PO-based or simply milestone-based. Again, our EBITDA, Crescita has been in operations for about eight years. Probably five of those years were profitable, but largely due to milestones. Our goal really in 2025 and 2026 is to break through the profitability threshold once again, but this time with more sustainable revenue growth. Okay?
Maybe taking a little look at our balance sheet and capital allocation. So as I mentioned, we had monetized Pliaglis. We used that money to pay down the debt that we had, which was done in 2019 . So you can see when I compare 2017 to today, I have no long-term debt to speak of and a fairly healthy cash balance of CAD 9.1 million. As of June 30, I also have access to CAD 3.5 million on a credit facility that is undrawn. So we believe that that gives us the flexibility to not only execute on our strategy, but to remain opportunistic in capital allocation and growing the company.
What we intend or where we intend to put our money is really through organic growth initiatives, so that's reinvesting in our business, our people, our brands, M&A, which is an important pillar, and also share buyback. We have since 2019, we've repurchased about 2.5 million shares through our normal course issuer bid, and we currently have about 19.2 million shares outstanding. Like I-- when I started doing IR, I was told to never tell a group of investors that your company was undervalued. So when I'm asked why we're buying back shares, I never say that, but I do say that there may be certain signs that we are, but we'll never say it, okay? Great. So that does it for my section.
In terms of Crescita, I will now pass it over to Serge, who will talk about our growth strategies.
Thank you. Thank you, Linda. My name is Serge Verreault. I'm President and CEO of Crescita since 2017. When you have Linda on board, how can you compete with this nice presentation? When I joined the company back in 2017, we had no vision, no strategy, burning cash. In 2017, we burned CAD 5 million in cash, and we had approximately, as you saw, 12 months runway. We had to focus on rebuilding Crescita. We started by building a team. Also, we focus on cash, and we try to monetize all the assets. We built now, kind of, we rebuilt the company, and we have a clear strategy for growth. We can divide our strategy in three pillars.
The first one, we want to expand our commercial infrastructure footprint in Canada. Second, we want to capitalize on key assets, which are our manufacturing site, like Linda mentioned, as well as Pliaglis, which is currently licensed in more than 29 countries. And also, we want to use our cash in order to grow through strategic acquisition and also build a nice pipeline. If we're looking at the first strategy, we want to expand our aesthetic footprint in Canada. As Linda mentioned, we have a infrastructure ready to increase sales as well as to increase our network. Our first pillar is to commercial expansion. It would go through our rep to increase the network, to add more and more clinics to our portfolio, and also to add more product.
We just announced in June a new acquisition of Aquafolia that I will discuss later on, then we have to expand the channel. When I joined in 2017 , we were exclusively focusing on the network of professional healthcare practitioner. Now, we are selling online our cosmeceutical product, and we're increasing the channel with influencer as well as social media, and also we want to expand by expanding our portfolio. More and more consumer and customer are looking for new innovation, so we want to innovate in-house as well as license innovation for the Canadian market, so we're looking at China, Korea, Europe to bring more innovative product into our pipeline, so we just announced the license of Microinjector, which is a new medical device that will be used for physician to inject toxin.
This is the type of portfolio expansion that we want to do. Then this is an example of the new acquisition we did. This is Aquafolia, 120 clinics, approximately CAD 1.5 million. We did acquire this company through a bankruptcy process. We paid in total CAD 0.9 million, with a total value of assets of CAD 1.7 million and immediate synergy. We transferred the production in-house. We also transferred the network to our reps, and now it's integrated, fully integrated. Our second growth strategy is to capitalize on key assets. The first one is our plant. As we mentioned, we have a plant that is not utilized enough. We have approximately 30% utilization, and we need to increase and to build, increase the volume.
For the past three years, between 2020 and 2022, we're very expanding new acquisition, new product, and new customer. Then we got the hit with one purchase order, and now we need to redefine ourselves. We just announced a couple weeks ago that we signed a long-term four years agreement with a company for $2.5 million production for four years. This is securing the production capacity for at least four years, and our business development team is currently focusing on increasing the volume and new customer.
Also, we signed a five years contract with a leading Canadian healthcare service provider that is based here in Quebec, that is currently bidding with hospital for various sanitary products such as hand sanitizer and lotion. So with that, if they are successful, we will be able to add CAD 6 million more in production. And then the second pillar is also to increase our licensing deal. Right now, other than China and U.S., that we need to find a new partner, all the other countries are licensed, and now it's time for us to monetize. So we need to work with our partner for launches.
So right now, the product is launched in Italy, as well, currently launching in Poland, Middle East, as well as Brazil, and we would continue of looking for increased sales as well as increased revenue. All of these deals are based on milestone on sales, royalties, or based on markup, based on production. And then the third, and I'm going pretty quickly because I think I have two more minutes. So the third strategy is to grow through strategic M&A and licensing. So as Linda mentioned, we have CAD 9.1 million in cash, so we're focusing to increase or to grow through acquisition. But we're very disciplined, so we are looking for the right company with great product and at the right price.
For the past five years, we were not very fortunate to find the right company or the right product or the right price. Everyone was looking for high multiple. So for us, we're disciplined because we know that, we're looking for one thing: profitability and sustainable revenue. So we're very disciplined in that. So I know you will be spending two days to listen to many of presentations. So if I would like that you remember a few things. The first, Crescita CTX have both commercial and manufacturing capability, ready for growth. They have a strong balance sheet, CAD 9.1 million in cash, no debt, and cash available to execute our strategy. Then our near-term profitability, we're looking for 2024 , 2025 , and we have a team and very disciplined in what we're doing.
I want to thank you very much for the time today, and if you have any question, I think we have one minute and a half now. No question? Oh, thank you.
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Yeah. So we licensed to Taro Pharmaceutical, which is, we licensed in 2017 , and they had one hundred reps on the market. When the product was approved and ready for launch, they terminated their, their sales force, and then they turned to find a distributor to distribute the product in the U.S. They were very successful for the first two years, and then they found another distributor with the belief that they could do better, and then it was, they didn't succeed. So then they look at different type of strategies with their generic, I would say, portfolio, and they terminated the agreement after two years. Now, it's unfortunate because we're losing CAD 1 million minimum guarantee, but it's fortunate because we, we can find the right partner and increase our royalty stream.
What did you do to find the right partner?
You know, I spent more than 15 years in business development, so we're doing conference. I'm more, it's easier for me to do BD conference than to do investor conference, so we're doing a lot of investor BD conference. We're talking, we're cold calling, we're meeting. We have a great network. So for us, it's to find the right company in order to get the product and launch the product. The product is approved in the U.S. by FDA. It's a prescription drug, and we have the manufacturing supply, so it's just matter of finding the right partner to go with on. What do you mean?
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Yes. Yeah.
How long do you think that process will be [audio distortion] ?
For me, I'm an impatient guy, so for me, should have been tomorrow. Our goal right now, it's end of the year, but, you know, I cannot give any forward-looking statement. But, you know, our focus for 2024 and 2025 is to execute on the manufacturing side, to transfer the tech, to do the tech transfer of our contract of $2.5 million, to find a U.S. partner, and to push or help our licensed partner of Pliaglis to launch as quick as possible, because this is where the royalty will come from. Thank you very much.