Good afternoon, and welcome to the Aterian, Inc. First Quarter Earnings Report Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ilya Grozovsky, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.
Thank you for joining us today to discuss Aterian's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Results. On today's call are Yaniv Sarig, Co-Founder and CEO, and Arturo Rodriguez, our Chief Financial Officer. A copy of today's press release is available on the investor relations section of Aterian's website at aterian.io. I would like to remind you that certain statements we will make in this presentation are forward-looking statements, and these forward-looking statements reflect Aterian's judgment and analysis only as of today, and actual results may differ materially from current expectations based on a number of factors affecting Aterian's business. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.
For a more thorough discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with the forward-looking statements to be made in this conference call and webcast, we refer you to the disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements that is included in our 1st quarter earnings release, as well as our filings with the SEC. We do not undertake any obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. In addition, the company may refer to certain non-GAAP metrics on this call. Explanation of these metrics can be found in the earnings release filed earlier today. With that, I will turn the call over to Yaniv.
Thank you, Ilya, and thanks everyone on the call. Today on the call, I'm gonna go over the following topics. I'll explain the restructuring we announced today. I'll go over a few takeaways from the 1st quarter of this year, and finally, I'll discuss the strategic considerations we're focused on as we chart a path forward for Aterian in a rapidly changing e-commerce environment. Today, Aterian is making a very difficult decision to undergo a significant restructuring with over 70 of our employees and 30 of our contractors departing the company. My heart goes out to the employees affected. I'm deeply grateful for everyone's contribution and dedication through all the trials and tribulation we faced along the way.
We all worked hard during the last few years to overcome incredible challenges, and we should all be very proud of the resilience and heart we put into getting the company through them. As a leadership team, we always hoped that we would not have to reduce our headcount, and we worked very hard to look for a path forward that would keep us all together. Unfortunately, we're continuing to face headwinds, and we have to make the required changes to reach profitability. During the pandemic, we experienced rapid e-commerce growth and executed on aggressive M&A strategy that we believe would be accretive to Aterian. We believe that the trend would continue and that our current team was correctly sized to support Aterian's expected trajectory. Unfortunately, like many other retailers and e-commerce companies, we were wrong.
We underestimated the economic impact and of an overheating economy as a result of COVID-19. As I mentioned, we fought hard to keep our team together for the last two years through many obstacles, including severe supply chain disruptions, inflation, reduced demand for e-commerce goods, excess inventory, and reduced contribution margin. Since the beginning of the year, everyone on the team worked tirelessly to fix those issues while we were looking for additional M&A deal flow that would allow us to increase our contribution margin. We hope to jump-start the company's path to profitability and restart the growth flywheel.
Despite our efforts and exploration of several opportunities, we could not get comfortable with executing on a transaction that would get us to sustainability and ultimately decided it would make more sense to cut fixed costs to achieve adjusted EBITDA profitability starting in the 2nd half of this year. It's very important to clarify that we continue to be very optimistic about our M&A strategy, and we believe that we continue to be in the very position to execute it at scale. Unfortunately, just like us, many of the targets we're considering in these deals are dealing with similar challenges to ours, and the timing of the discussion has not been ideal. As normalization continues to happen in our industry, we believe that we will be in a better position to evaluate the acquisitions of some of these businesses in a much more stable environment.
While we continue to work towards these goals, today we're becoming a more efficient company and adjusting to a world where growth without profitability is no longer valued. We're focused 100% on getting to that goal first and working on a long-term plan where growth and profitability go hand- in- hand. It might take us longer to get what we hope to get, but we're patient and committed to our mission. With regards to our 1st quarter results, we continue to be pleased with our efforts to normalize our inventory levels and costs. Our inventory levels and cost basis entering the 2nd half are normalized versus where they were last year.
As a reminder, due to the shipping container costs skyrocketing in 2021 and 2022, consumer brands across our industry were forced to ship goods at an average cost of $17,000 per container to stay in business. These additional costs that we incurred as well forced us to increase our product prices of 20%, only to generate an average of 8% contribution margin, with some of our products seeing as low as 6% contribution margin versus a target of a 15% CM at a normalized price. As we enter the 2nd half of the year, our inventory cost basis has improved substantially as our average cost for shipping container has dropped to pre-pandemic levels.
We remain optimistic that the lower cost of goods, combined with our fixed cost cutting efforts, we will be able to deliver on our promise of the profitable at the adjusted EBITDA level in the 2nd half of 2023. I'd like now to speak a bit about the long-term strategy for Aterian and give our view of where we believe the industry is going. We'll continue to look for accretive M&A opportunities and have discussions with companies in our industry who are facing similar challenges as us. There are several active consolidation efforts that we're aware of within our peer group in the private markets, and we'll continue to follow those. We're also very carefully studying the new AI revolution led by breakthroughs in large language models.
We believe that the exponential progress achieved in this field in the last six months will have a massive impact on our industry and the world in general. As we look forward to the next five plus years, we believe that we need to take steps now to adjust to these changes as they will arrive faster than anyone expects. We're especially focused on what we believe will happen to the consumer journey of the future. Specifically, we believe that conversational product recommendation agents will play a very big role and potentially, in the long term, replace the way consumers search for products today. This is very meaningful for Aterian, given that our approach to launching consumer products has always been driven by the analytics and predictions related to consumer demand.
COVID and the ensuing economic woes have disrupted our business, we believe that over the next five years, our current position actually puts Aterian in a more favorable spot to make the changes that will give us an advantage in the industry. Strangely, had these events of the last two years not occurred and had our business thrived today, it might have even been more difficult to make the adjustments needed to adapt to a future that is barreling towards every company today at an incredible speed. It's a bit early to share what the changes we're working on mean for Aterian, and our focus is first and foremost on making our core business profitable. One aspect that we can speak about today is our belief that we should further balance our efforts with regards to brand versus performance marketing.
For those of us familiar with the distinction, performance marketing often refers to a more transactional marketing approach, where we look to convert consumers who are in the market for a product that will solve a problem for them regardless of a particular brand name. Brand marketing refers to the effort of making people think about our brand when they encounter a similar problem, as opposed to searching for the best possible product. Historically, Aterian has evolved a very performance-oriented consumer platform. Most of our brands are not well-known, but they perform well through our expertise in analytics and performance marketing for specific products. Going forward, we will balance this effort and build more brand awareness for several of our portfolio assets. To close my remarks on this call, this is a difficult day for our company, but also a step in the necessary direction to pursue our mission.
Despite the challenges we have and are facing, we believe that the efforts we're making will pay off in the long run. We look forward to sharing more details on our long-term strategy to become the leading e-commerce consumer platform in future quarters. With that, I'll pass it on to Arty to discuss our financial results.
Thank you, Niv, and good day, everyone. Here are the financial performance details of our 1st quarter. For the 1st quarter of 2023, net revenues declined 16.3% to $34.9 million from $41.7 million in the year ago quarter, primarily due to reduced consumer demand offset by our strategic initiatives to sell off higher priced inventory and normalize inventory levels. Looking at our 1st quarter net revenue by phase, the $34.9 million broke down as follows: $28.6 million sustain, $0.2 million in launch, and $6.1 million in liquidated inventory normalization. The year ago quarter net revenue of $41.7 million by phase broke down as follows: $38.0 million in sustain, $0.8 million in launch, and $2.9 million in liquidated inventory normalization.
Our sustained net revenues decrease of $9.4 million relates to some revenue shifting into liquidation phase and general consumer softness. Our liquidation net revenue increased by $3.2 million from our strategic initiatives to sell off higher priced inventory to normalize inventory levels. Our launch revenue in the quarter was slightly lower, and the revenue is attributed to new variations of existing products. We are planning new product introductions in 2023, though the timing will be opportunistic. Overall gross margin for the 1st quarter declined to 54.8% from 56.6% in the year-ago quarter, but increased from 37.1% in Q4 2022. Our decrease in margins in the quarter versus year-ago quarter is primarily attributed to our strategic initiatives to sell off higher priced inventory and normalized inventory levels.
Our overall Q1 contribution margin, as defined in our earnings release, was 5.9%, which decreased compared to prior year CM of 9.2%, but increased compared to Q4 2022 of a negative 11.5%. The year-over-year decline is primarily attributed to higher liquidation revenue from our strategic initiative to sell off higher priced inventory and normalized inventory levels. Our Q1 2023 saw our sustain product contribution margin essentially unchanged year-over-year at 12.6% versus 12.5% in Q1 2022. We expect our sustain contribution margin improve sequentially as we progress in the 2nd half of 2023.
Looking deeper into our contribution margin for Q1 2023, our variable sales and distribution expenses as a percentage of net revenues increased to 48.8% as compared to 47.5% in the year ago quarter. This increase in sales and distribution expenses is predominantly due to the product mix, an increase in e-commerce platform service provider fulfillment fees, and an increase in the last mile shipping costs, specifically for oversized goods. We do expect our sales and distribution expenses as a percentage of net revenues to improve as we progress in the 2nd half of 2023. Our operating loss for the quarter of $25 million improved by 30% from $36.2 million in the year ago quarter as we continue to normalize our business from the impacts of supply chain and strengthen our balance sheet.
Our 1st quarter of 2023 operating loss includes $2.3 million of non-cash stock compensation, a non-cash loss of intangibles of $16.7 million. Our 1st quarter of 2022 operating loss includes $2.8 million of non-cash stock compensation, a non-cash loss in goodwill of $29 million, and a positive change in fair value of contingent earnout liability of $2.8 million. Our net loss for the quarter of $25.8 million improved by 39% from $42.8 million in the year-ago quarter as we continue to normalize our business from the impacts of supply chain strengthen our balance sheet. Our 1st quarter of 2023 net loss includes $2.3 million of non-cash stock compensation, a non-cash loss from intangibles of $16.7 million, and a gain of $0.4 million of the fair value warrant liabilities.
Our 1st quarter of 2022 net loss includes a non-cash loss of goodwill of $29 million, $2.3 million non-cash stock compensation expense, impacts related to the equity issuance and warrants of $7.6 million, $2.0 million from the gain of settlement of the seller note, and $2.8 million gain on change in the fair value of the earnout. adjusted EBITDA loss of $4.3 million, as defined in our earnings release, improved from a loss of $4.5 million in the 1st quarter of 2022. Our strategic decision of liquidating higher cost inventory and normalizing our inventory levels impacted our adjusted EBIT in the period. This is very important effort that puts us on path to get back to stronger contribution margins and adjusted EBITDA profitability in the 2nd half of 2023 and strengthens our balance sheet.
Going to the balance sheet, at March 31st, we had cash for approximately $33.9 million compared to $43.6 million at the end of December 31st, 2022. This decrease in cash, as expected, is predominantly driven by our net loss in the period, $1.6 million in net outflows from working capital, and repayments of approximately $2.1 million of our credit facility. We continue to normalize inventory levels in the 1st quarter of 2023 by liquidating our higher cost inventory and are on track to completing this effort in the 2nd quarter. At March 31st, our inventory level was $40.4 million, down from $43.7 million at the end of the 4th quarter of 2022 and down from $75.4 million a year ago quarter.
Our credit facility balance at the end of the 1st quarter of 2023 was $19.1 million, down from $21.1 million at the end of the 4th quarter of 2022. As we look at Q2, 2023, taking into account the impacts of inflation and reduction in consumer spend, we believe net revenues will be between $37 million and $44 million. This represents a decrease in the same quarter last year of approximately 30% using the middle of the range. We expect to continue to see similar softness in the remainder of the year. For Q2, 2023, we expect adjusted EBITDA loss to be in the range of $5.2 million-$6.2 million, including the estimated restructuring impact of $1 million from our workforce reduction.
With our announced annualized savings of $6 million from our workforce reduction offsetting our continued expectation of softness in consumer spend, we continue to be on the path to reach our target of adjusted EBITDA profitability in the 2nd half of 2023. In closing, we announced difficult decisions which will impact our workforce. We will be saying goodbye to many colleagues. These impacts will ultimately make Aterian stronger. With our continued focus on efficiency, we continue to progress on our paths towards adjusted EBITDA profitability in the 2nd half of 2023. Past 12 months, we've spent a great amount of time focusing on strengthening our balance sheet to ensure we can navigate the uncertainties ahead. We believe we've accomplished this, and today our balance sheet is strong.
With our cash balance, our normalized inventory levels, and continued access to our credit facility with MidCap, we believe we have the flexibility to navigate the current macroeconomic environment as it continues to unfold and further allows us to be laser focused on driving our core business. With that, I'll turn it back to the operator to open the call up to questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. Our first question will come from Matt Koranda of ROTH MKM. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. It's Mike Zabran on for Matt. maybe just start by speaking to the overall demand environment that we're seeing. Are there certain product categories requiring deeper discounting than others? Have we noticed any price sensitivity on previously resilient products? maybe just elaborate on any new or persistent trends we're noticing from the end consumer.
Hey there, Yaniv here. Thanks for the question. Interestingly, you know, the weakness of consumer seems to be across the board. We don't have any particular category that we believe is down because of consumer issues. Really, you know, when you look across the board and you see overall less traffic to some of the biggest websites, like, you know, the big channels that we sell on. Overall, you know, consumer demand seems to be weak across the board.
Got it. Makes sense. Great to see margins recovering and coming in a bit better than expected. Help us understand to what degree does the adjusted EBITDA profitability target rely on less inventory liquidation versus overall demand normalization versus maybe new products driving incremental demand.
Arty, you wanna answer that?
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Yaniv. I think, listen, we said for the last few quarters that, you know, normalizing the inventory levels and clearing out much more expensive inventory was very key in us getting back to the adjusted EBITDA profitability targets that we've mentioned. I think we're saying that we believe we're on track to get to complete that mission, I think, by the end of Q2. In fairness, we're always gonna have inventory longness and, you know, normalization. It's just it was considering the supply chain issues that we ran into in 2021, it was just an exorbitant amount that, you know, was not accustomed to normal business. Now that we're kind of getting back to normal business, that's like step one in it. Getting back to inventory levels.
I think when we naturally do that, considering containers are back down to, I would say, you know, 2019 pricing, we do expect in the 2nd half of this year that our contribution margins will improve to get back closer to normal. I think those combinations are really the key drivers for us to get the profitability. Lastly, that last part of that question was just consumer demand. Listen, we made these fixed cost cuts. They were very difficult decisions. It does, you know, bring our fixed costs down by $6 million annualized on an annualized basis as including that, assuming that we continue to see some of the softness consumer demand that we mentioned, I think those three things are really why we can get back to that adjusted EBITDA profitability in the 2nd half.
Makes sense. That's helpful. Last one for me. Obviously, bottom line is still constricted a bit by selling and industrial expenses. Maybe just elaborate on what exactly needs to happen for us to see selling the distribution leverage in the back half of the year. Is 2021 a good proxy to use? I think we were floating around the 46%-48% of sales range, whereas for the past couple quarters, we've been kind of mid to five or mid to high 50s. Is 2021 a good proxy to use, and what exactly needs to happen to see meaningful leverage in the back half of the year?
Arty, you want to take that as well?
Yes. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks, Yaniv. No, I wouldn't necessarily say 2021 is a good proxy. I think those numbers that you mentioned there, we do see that, you know, getting below 50-ish%, right? I think we just did this past quarter 48.8%, and we just mentioned, gets us very close. I think the other side, as Yaniv has mentioned in the past, you know, the normalization of container rates will allow our gross margin to pick up a couple of points, allow us to get back to normalized pricing, which allow us to increase the velocity. All these things play into that. I don't know if we'll get back to, like, sub 46% that you're quoting.
I think, you know, high 40s is probably the right number, just like we did this quarter. Maybe you'll see that improve a point or two over the coming quarters. Certainly that's kind of the target we're going to be. I think you're right. In Q4 and Q3, we saw those numbers be as high as 50% or 55%, I think we're gonna be probably closer to the higher 40s like Q1 as you're seeing right now.
That's helpful. Thanks, guys. That's all for me.
The next question comes from Brian Kinstlinger of Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Revenue from sustain was down about 25% year-over-year in the 1st quarter and based on 2Q guidance, it appears a year-over-year decline, although you don't give guidance in each of the line items, is going to accelerate by a meaningful percentage. First of all, is that a sign that you think the economy is getting weaker, and traffic is going to get weaker? Then on the other hand, is that the kind of baseline we should think about for the next few quarters is a little more accelerated than the 1st quarter saw?
Arty, I think, good one for you to take as well.
Yeah. Thanks, Yaniv. Good, good question, Brian, and good to hear you. Listen, it's as Yaniv said, we've seen general softness across the board. Church volumes are down on some key sites that we sell on. I think if you go across, you know, other, you know, news announcements from other companies, you've seen that it's been very difficult and volatile to predict. I do think that we are guiding, and as we said, at the middle of the range, as I quoted, 30% would be the drop off. I think as you get into Q3 and Q4, that we're not guiding at those points. I would assume that we would see something similar, maybe a little bit less than 30%.
Maybe it's like 25%, 28%. Certainly that's kind of what we're looking at right now. Obviously the other side to be very careful about, you know, Q 2 and Q 3 is always a very, just driven by heat and summer and seasonality, and we sell a lot even of fires in the season, those periods. Depending on how that, you know, how the kind of summer unfolds, sometimes it unfolds later and you have a little bit more, you know, a little bit less numbers in Q 2, a little bit more in Q 3. I think right now, weather's been a little bit unpredictable, I think, in the sense that we've seen a lot of fluctuation there and across the country in general. We're not getting into reasons why we think that.
That's for another time. Certainly I think it does make that bit difficult. I think if you're looking at that similar number going forward, I think that would be conservative.
Great. Follow-up, clearly you've announced the difficult enacting of headcount reductions given the demand trends. Those cuts obviously implied some level needed to get to profitability of revenue. What is that new revenue target that gets you roughly to a break-even on adjusted EBITDA, either on an annual or quarterly basis?
Well, I guess this is not really a guidance question. You're asking for a number. Arty, any thoughts on how to answer that the best way?
You know, I think, Brian, good question. Listen, I think a lot of it depends on how our CM unfolds. Like, we've always had a target model CM of 15%, right? That's something we've talked about and publicly, it's in a lot of our investor presentations. I don't think we get there this year, but certainly I think we're heading in that right direction. A lot of it's really gonna be a blend. Like, and again, I'm making up numbers.
You know, if you look, you know, if you run rate our fixed costs from the last, you know, last couple of years, you know, you're kind of in those 30 numbers. We just announced we're saving $6 million or you're doing $24 million in fixed costs or something like that, right? I think, I think in some aspects, if you, if you look at, you know, $160 million-$170 million, depending on the CM, you can probably get to something that's above adjusted EBITDA, right? Pro-profitability, right? If you go a little bit lower, you're probably at a break even. I think we're not guiding to that right now because I think things are a bit volatile and we're still working on a lot of different things. We're launching some products that Yaniv's mentioned.
I think we're still focused on a lot of things, but I don't in that could change the numbers to the positive. I certainly think that it's gonna be a little bit of a, of a split, in a sense of how you actually get to that. I think we're not necessarily targeting what that break-even point is from a number perspective. We're just really focused on, you know, getting through this restructuring that we've announced, getting to, you know, the cleaning up the inventory. We're finalizing it in Q2, and I think hopefully the summer season goes as we expect, and we'll be able to give a little bit better information on those numbers, as we progress into August.
Great. Thanks. The last question I have, based on your comments on the M&A environment and being unable to complete some of the acquisitions you may have looked at, should we expect until the market's on stronger footing and the economy's on stronger footing, M&A's on hold for now? Is that what I'm reading into those comments?
Sorry, can you just repeat the last piece of the sentence? Should we expect...
Yeah, I'm just... Sorry. Yeah.
Go ahead.
I'm just wondering, is M&A essentially what you wanna communicate is on hold right now until the economy's on stronger footing?
No, I would not say that. I think, we're very actively looking at things. It's more that the same challenges we have are affecting others. There's still, I think, a lot of, You know, I think on every side, there's, I think, a little bit of wanting to understand what stability is and, you know, price discovery around what these assets are looking for forward. We just like, you know, again, as we continue to be very active in this environment, and we believe there's still a lot of opportunity and believe that, again, in the long term, it's still a very big part of our strategy. There's just too much noise for us in some of these situations right now to pull the trigger. That being said, everything's dynamic, right?
Just like we are dynamically moving and adjusting, these other companies and assets that we're looking at are also, quickly adjusting and, you know. I wouldn't say that we would have to wait for any type of normalization. It's more that, we're gonna continue to follow these opportunities very closely, and if the opportunity comes because of the stress or any other momentum thing that's happening in another company, we might still do something earlier if we can, right? We just need to get comfortable that, you know, that, that what we're looking at is in a position that we can take it on, right? Yep.
Great. Thank you.
No problem.
Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one. Our next question will come from Alex Fuhrman of Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. you know, I wanted to ask about the headcount reduction initiative. Can you give us a sense of what most of the eliminated positions are and your plan to absorb those responsibilities across the rest of the organization? It looks like you had two pretty senior positions eliminated as part of this restructuring. Are there going to need to be any hires kind of around the edges to re-replace, you know, some of what you've lost? Or is the thinking that, you know, your existing organization minus the 70 employees and 30 contractors can handle pretty much everything you're talking about now on the current revenue base?
A great question. I'll start with the end of it, which is in terms of hiring and plans, right? Like, right now there is no plan to hire any significant role or replace. We believe the current organization is capable of getting us where we need to get on the profitability side. As I mentioned in my remarks, right, the organization was sized and built and designed to rapidly scale to much larger numbers, based on the trends that we were seeing, you know, back in 2020. Really, what's gonna happen really is that, you know, the team that's left is just gonna have to work harder, for sure.
It's gonna benefit from a lot of things, you know, tools and infrastructure that we built to automate a lot of things. You know, had we grown at the speed at which we expected, you know, I think the team that was here before we had to unfortunately, cut our headcounts, you know, that team would have been in a good starting position to scale very quickly, right? For the current team today, you know, if all of a sudden we have the opportunity to scale at a hyperscale, right, which obviously the environment that we live in today doesn't allow for it, right, it would be much harder.
Whereas the team that was here before, you know, was able to do that and to very quickly adapt to, you know, you know, ingest more companies that we would buy, assimilate them, and then run them, as well as we can going forward, right. The difference is just we will not be able to go as fast if we had the opportunity to, but I just don't believe that the opportunity to move as fast as we thought we could back, you know, probably, you know, not too long ago, right, that doesn't seem to be there anymore. Right. Again, bottom line is the team that is today is sized correctly for, where we're trying to get to profitability.
From there, we expect to build and grow with profitability and growth kind of going hand- in- hand, right? Until the environment changes again, maybe and hyper-growth is all the rage, and we might reevaluate. Right now, we believe this is a better sized team for the environment we're in and to get us to our goals of profitability. Arty, I don't know if you wanna add anything.
Yeah, no. Great answer, Yaniv. Yeah, listen, we've made difficult decisions, but we still feel comfortable that this is a good size organization to do what we need to do and to provide growth. Maybe team is pointing out at the same speed and rigor that we were initially anticipating early in the year. Certainly we feel we have the talent and the dedication and the wherewithal to manage the business and grow the business with this team. Yeah, you know, we're all taking on additional responsibilities. I think that's kind of in our DNA. We kind of believe we can all do better and be more efficient, and we're gonna try that, and we're all up for the challenge.
We're kind of excited by this, though it's sad to see colleagues go. I think we got a lot of work to do, I think we're gonna be able to do some exciting things with this team.
Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you both.
Thank you.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ilya Grozovsky for any closing remarks.
Thank you. As part of our Shareholder Perks Program, which as a reminder, investors can sign up for at aterian.io/perks, participants have the ability to ask management questions on our earnings call. I wanted to thank all the shareholder perks participants for their loyalty, their participation in the program and their questions. I have picked a few of the most popular questions that they have submitted. First question is, please update us on the European expansion. Yaniv?
Yep. Thanks, Ilya. Yeah. The good news on that is we continue to add products, and we see a lot of opportunity for growth. As we mentioned in previous calls, right, that effort is going to take time just because of the nature of our business and the time that it takes to bring the products from a regulatory perspective to be compliant with European standards, to manufacture them, to ship them there. You know, Europe is again a very important opportunity for growth for us. It, you know, it's just gonna take time as we continue to add more and more products there, and we look forward to update everyone on future calls on the progress that we're making there.
Thanks. Next question is Aterian going bankrupt? Arty or Yaniv?
Yeah, let me take that. Arty, you can add also. The answer is, categorically, no. We are in a very, you know, strong cash position. We have minimal debt with only an ABL, and we're very far from any of the debt covenants. You know, we don't believe that we have any reason to be worried about anything close to bankruptcy at this point. We just are adapting to the environment, and we're adapting to an environment that favors profitability and making some tough calls along the way. Really that's it. Arty, I don't know if you wanna add anything.
Yaniv, well said. I mean, listen, we have a great partner with MidCap in our credit facility. We have access to increase that credit facility up to $40 million as needed. I think, you know, we have very light covenants on that. As Yaniv mentioned, I think we're in good shape. As we said, we spent the last 12 months really trying to clean up our balance sheet and strengthen it, and I think we've done a great job there. We got a good cash balance. We have good access to our, you know, good working capital access through our ABL with MidCap.
Ultimately, you know, we worked hard to normalize this inventory balance, which is gonna put us in a good position to continue to run the business and be nimble and flexible as the current environment unfolds.
Okay. Thank you. Next question is Aterian going to do a reverse split? Yaniv or Arty?
Yep. Let me take it, and Arty, you can add. I mean, so to remind everyone, we have 180 days to regain compliance with Nasdaq, then we will probably likely be granted another 180 days. We're not gonna comment, you know, further on the stock price. Again, the focus is really on just getting us to, you know, 2nd half adjusted EBITDA profitability at this point. Arty, I don't know if you wanna add anything to that.
No, I think there's. That's well said, Yaniv.
Thanks.
Great. This concludes the Q&A portion of the call. In terms of the upcoming calendar, Aterian management will be participating in the Sidoti Microcap Conference May 10th through 11th, which will be held virtually, and the Oppenheimer Consumer Growth and E-Commerce Conference, which will be held virtually June 12th to 14th. We look forward to speaking with you on future calls. This ends our call. You may now disconnect.