Hello, welcome to the Q1 2023 results presentation for BioSyent Inc. My name is René Goehrum, and I'm the President and CEO of the company. After drawing your attention to our disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements, I'm gonna dive into the presentation with a look first at a breakdown of our contributors to our sales in the first quarter of 2023. As we normally do, we've segmented this into Canadian pharmaceutical, international pharmaceutical, and legacy business. There's a couple of things I'd like to comment before I go down on a by-brand basis. What we saw in the Canadian pharmaceutical business is strong end market demand growth, and that is a growth of shipments from our wholesale customers to retail pharmacy and to hospitals that was not translated to primary sales, that is our shipments to those wholesalers.
What we witnessed at the end of last year, late in the fourth quarter, was some late-year shipping or order demand that then translated to shipping on our part to customers. As our customers worked through that inventory, we had soft sales to start the quarter, that is January. As the quarter built and has continued beyond the quarter, our demand sales have pulled through that inventory. We record sales and report it as primary sales. That is our shipments to customers, and we've seen strong demand in pharmacies pulling through the wholesalers that did not translate to revenue. We were somewhat disappointed by the Canadian pharmaceutical performance, up 1% versus the year ago, and you can see that on a by-brand basis, FeraMAX, Tibella, and Cathejell were all positive to the year ago, Combogesic and RepaGyn down.
One other note on Combogesic, in the year-ago comparable period, we had one significant customer with literally 100s of pharmacies that pushed product to the pharmacy ahead of demand, and that was all bunched up into the first quarter of last year. We're not really surprised that the comp is down versus the year ago. Overall, revenue in the Canadian pharmaceutical business is not as strong as one would expect, but the demand sales have been strong, and we're feeling quite confident that we're on a growth trajectory as we move into second quarter. In fact, we've seen that demonstrated in orders from wholesalers that we've shipped as we've gone through April and now heading towards the end of May. We think we're on a good trajectory for the Canadian pharmaceutical business.
You can see here that the international pharma business did not have any shipments, and recorded sales in the first quarter. We've talked for years about the lumpiness in both, the timing and size of orders to international customers. I can tell you that our order book for that business is building, and that it appears a demand for products in end markets are strong, and that on the basis that we can ship the orders that we've got in the order book, this year, that we expect revenues for the international business to comfortably exceed what we did on the business last year. Obviously, working against a donut, no sales in the, in the quarter puts us a little bit behind.
The history of lumpiness in that business, if you look back at kind of how the business performed in the past, we would have had some quarters with very large sales and some quarters with relatively small sales. We're not unduly alarmed by what that looks like at this stage. The legacy business, as a percent variance to the year ago, is large, but the absolute dollars are small, and that's because Q1 is never really a significant quarter for us on that business. How did this then translate into sales, recorded sales, that is EBITDA and Net Income After Taxes? As I pointed out, Canadian Pharma business up 1%, contributing to sales just under $6.5 million dollars for the quarter. Overall, down 8%. That is overall sales when we add Canadian Pharma, International, Legacy.
Sales down 8% to the year-ago. One other thing on this chart, just to point out, in the year-ago period, we were adjusting or essentially comparing to a previous year, so 2021, where we had more products in the portfolio. We right-sized the portfolio with products that were more growth drivers as we move forward and more profitable. We went through that exercise in the year-ago period, and that explains, just to refresh your memory, why that period was down 5% versus the prior year. On the earnings side, both EBITDA and NIAT, you can see we're down versus a year-ago and not really surprising on two counts. One, it's hard to comp against CAD 0 sales and the profit that that would have represented for the international business.
Secondly, and then also importantly, is that we're leaning into our launch initiatives. We increased our selling and marketing spend in the first quarter versus the year ago by 14%. This was on both launch and pre-launch expenditure. Products that launched in 2023 already, and I will be talking about that in a couple of slides. A product that we launched in March. We also have a new women's health product that's coming to market. It's imminent. We've been launching both in terms of interaction with key opinion leaders and influencers in the marketplace, advisory boards, preparation of all of our launch materials, and all of the support materials and training for Salesforce to get ready to both launch and be ready to launch. This includes some marketing support, marketing intelligence, and market research.
One other thing to point out on the bottom line is that our strong cash position has benefited from a high interest environment, a 395% increase in our interest income flows through into the NIAT line, but not into the EBITDA, obviously. How does this all flow through into our earnings per share on a fully dilated basis? The first quarter delivered CAD 0.10 per share. That compares to CAD 0.13 in the year ago. If you follow from the previous slide, the relative change in NIAT, this is a slightly better than, that's because we have been buying back shares, and the number of shares outstanding has been reduced. On a trailing 12-month basis, our earnings were CAD 0.41 per share, that compares to CAD 0.49 in the year ago period.
On the news side, in May, this month, we announced that FeraMAX had been named the most recommended iron supplement in Canada by pharmacists and physicians, for the eighth consecutive year. This is support and confidence from healthcare practitioners and in counseling and making recommendations to their patients and to their customers. We had some more news on the FeraMAX brand, and that is the launch of a new product. Before I go into that, let me set that up for you. You'll recall that in late in 2020, we drove a reformulation of the FeraMAX brand, and with the express intent of using that as a foundation for future product innovation. We restaged FeraMAX 150 into FeraMAX Pd Therapeutic 150, FeraMAX Pd Powder 15.
We made way in the way we expressed our brands, the way we named the products within our brand nomenclature, to make room for FeraMAX 45, and that product was launched in March of this year. FeraMAX 45 is a product that was developed under the auspices of BioSyent, obviously with assistance with a contract development and manufacturing partner. This is our third product incorporating PDIC, so that's the formulation platform, polydextrose iron complex. Now, what's truly unique about FeraMAX is its formulation. It's an iron product that is chewable and has a pleasant taste. You really have to try it to believe how good this product is. We've been out detailing it to healthcare practitioners, so doctors and pharmacists. We're getting a very positive feedback. We've got broad-scale wholesale distribution at this stage, and the product is making its way into the local retail pharmacy.
The product itself is designed to fill a gap in treatment between therapeutic iron, that would be FeraMAX 150, and other iron products are included at a lower dose, a lower amount of elemental iron. This product is really intended to maintain iron health and healthy iron levels. As we look forward to what's driving our business for the balance of 2023 and into the next several years, we've now obviously added to our lifecycle strategy in terms of being out with the news on FeraMAX 45. We think there's more growth coming from FeraMAX 150 and Powder 15. Obviously, we expect to be out with the news on FeraMAX 45, and for us to be introducing that product both to healthcare professionals and to patients and consumers.
We expect that to contribute to growth moving forward, and we are in development of a new product to address an unmet need in the area of iron therapy and iron health. That product won't see market likely for about two years, maybe just less than that. Of course, we have Tibella on the market, an agent for menopause therapy, Combogesic, and pain relief coming shortly. We've had a couple of supply hiccups on a new women's health product that we expect to have available to launch shortly. We announced in December of 2022 that we had then licensed a new oncology supportive care product to take us into a new area. It's our intention that that product will be flanked with others to really build some critical mass with that call point.
Finally, our business development activity targeted to acquisition and in-licensing is an ongoing process. We have got significant deal flow on both of those fronts, and our team is working through that process on a number of opportunities. We'll have news when we bring the next asset to completion. A quick look at our cash balance. On March 31st, we had a little over CAD 26 million in cash on the balance sheet. You'll be aware that we have no debt in the company. In the last 12 months, ending March 31st, operations generated CAD 4 million of cash. We bought back shares to a value of CAD 2.8 million.
I will speak a little bit in more detail on the new dividend policy, but we paid out dividends in that 12-month period of time of about CAD 1 million. Our balance sheet is strong. We are leaning into investment in new growth opportunities, as I've been talking about, not just in this quarter, but in previous quarters, about increasing capacity of our sales organization to increase the number of call points, both in the pharmacy and in the doctor's office, to promote our growing portfolio of products. When I meet with shareholders, they do ask me, with CAD 26.2 million of cash on the balance sheet, what is our approach to capital allocation? I use this graphic often to help explain our approach. Our first use of capital is to generate revenue growth and portfolio diversification.
The graphic you see on the right-hand side of your slide, growth is a priority for the company. We've been talking about new products, product innovation, new in-licensing initiatives, and products coming to market now for several years, and that's gets the first dollar spent. That has meant an increase in capacity of our sales organization. Advertising to build awareness and sampling is a big driver of spend for several of our products. We're also very focused on diversifying our portfolio. That is, finding new assets that would bring us to potentially new customers and new markets, and to describe markets within Canada. This effort is really to not just grow revenue, but to diversify their revenue streams within the market, and that's the first dollar of capital that we allocate.
If you've been following us for a while, you know that we have an asset-light business model. We've been generating cash for years. We have been buying back shares now for four and a half years to buy back 2.3 million shares. The net effect of that has been to enhance the earnings per share for the remaining shareholders and shares by 18%. Of course, late last year, in the fourth quarter, we announced the board had adopted a dividend policy, and we initiated a first quarterly dividend that was paid out in December. Subsequently, we paid out a dividend in March, and you will have seen earlier this week, the board has declared a dividend of CAD 0.04 per share to be paid on June 15th.
We think we can continue to lean into our growth and diversification strategy, thinking about our business long term, and still continue with share buybacks, and obviously with our payment of a dividend. Quick look at stock information as of May 23rd. I land on this one here as a way to reintroduce and/or remind you of our approach for equity compensation. We have paused the use of options as a tool for compensation. The last option that was issued by the company was in 2019. We've replaced that with RSUs, and one step further, is we're using our strong balance sheet to actually go into the open market and buy BioSyent shares and hold them in trust so that we can meet the obligations of our RSU program. It's a shareholder-friendly, non-dilutive approach to managing equity compensation.
I think you can see the net effect of that in terms of the number of shares that we have outstanding relative to our growing business. I wanted to thank you for your time and attention, for your support of the company. We're feeling good about both our growth prospects as we move through the balance of this year and into the next couple of years. The company is well capitalized. We have a strong balance sheet. We are able to add assets that we think can help us grow the business long term and maximize return to shareholders. Thank you.