All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the INVO Fertility Fireside Chat. My name is Robert Blum, Managing Partner here at Lithium Partners. And today I'll be moderating a Q&A discussion with Steve Shum, the company's Chief Executive Officer. As a reminder, INVO trades under the ticker symbol IVF on the Nasdaq. Steve, thanks so much for joining us today.
Great. Thanks, Robert. Appreciate the time today. And good to see you again. Happy New Year. Belated New Year.
Happy Belated New Year to you as well. All right, let's dive into it. For those that may be less familiar with the company, can you start with a high-level overview and really talk about the mission here?
Yes, absolutely. So INVO is a specialty health care company focused in the fertility space. The company originally started as a technology company with a medical device for fertility treatment. We later expanded the company's efforts much more broadly within the sector as a service provider where we now own and operate clinics providing patient care. So we really see ourselves as both really having a dual mission, both providing patient care with our clinic operations as well as leveraging innovative technology that can help. We currently have three fully operational clinics and recently announced the signing of a purchase agreement to acquire a practice in Indianapolis. We also have our FDA-cleared INVOcell device, which is used in two of our existing clinics, as well as the soon-to-be-acquired Indianapolis clinic. And it's also utilized in a number of additional non-affiliated fertility clinics out there.
All right, great. Good overview there. We'll dive into the company more, but maybe taking a step back, looking at the market. How do you view the broader fertility marketplace today? Where does INVO sort of fit within that ecosystem?
Yeah, I mean, depending on your assumptions for average treatment costs against the number of treatment cycles being performed, I would say the U.S. market is anywhere between $5-$7 billion a year. That activity level is spread across approximately 460 clinics. The market has and really continues to be experiencing pretty steady growth, but cost of treatment remains high. And many of us here in the industry believe that there are a substantial number of patients that really go untreated each year due to those high costs, and they just simply can't afford it. So I would say we do appreciate the recent government initiatives to try to help with that affordability. Of course, those efforts do further accelerate demand. The current market infrastructure may struggle to handle a rapid increase.
This is why there has been, or I would say we believe there's becoming increasing focus on how to optimize resources, find efficiencies, expand the clinic network, really all toward an effort to expand industry capacity. Of course, these are activities that have really been ongoing within the industry for quite some time, but I think there's a greater focus on it of late. For INVO, as a clinic operator, we already are part of this current ecosystem. We've long had a goal toward providing more efficient, affordable care to patients. That was originally driven with our device technology, but I would say we maintain that goal within our clinic services now as well, and we're also very keen on using new or innovative technology, not unlike our INVOcell device, to try to help further enhance efficiencies and patient experiences.
Something you just touched on there a moment ago was affordability and access remaining major barriers in the fertility care space. You also referenced the U.S. some policy updates that have maybe impacted that outlook. Anything you can expand upon there?
Really, just quite simply, these policy updates are really targeted towards improving affordability for patients, which is likely to help fuel additional demand. We think that that's really just an additional tailwind in the industry and is really very quite positive overall.
All right, good. More to the company now. So at a high level, talk about sort of the key pillars to sort of the company's growth strategy as you look to scale this business both from an organic and maybe an acquisition standpoint. You talked about Indianapolis already. Maybe let's start first off on the organic side, and then we'll transition to acquisition second. What are some of the biggest drivers today, whether it's sort of expansion of clinics, patient volumes, new service offerings, geographic growth? Sort of talk about each of those.
I would say really we're targeting all of the above on those activities. We're actively working to ramp our outreach programs and increase patient flow at the existing clinics. We are looking to add additional resources. We've actually announced some of those additional services already. We have some additional ones planned that we're going to implement in the clinic. Additional service offerings are definitely part of our ongoing plan to expand the clinics. Of course, clinic expansion, adding staff, and potentially additional equipment goes hand in hand with the effort to really increase patient flow into the clinic. I would say this is a combined effort. We think all of our existing clinics have available ability to handle more volume. Those are definitely part of our organic approach to try to grow the existing clinic operations.
And then maybe transitioning to the acquisition side, talk about how acquisitions fit into sort of that longer-term expansion strategy. And again, maybe discuss a little bit more on the Indianapolis announcement here from, I guess, it's been a couple of weeks ago now.
Yeah, acquisitions are really a key near and intermediate term strategy and focus of ours. Acquisitions are inherently complex transactions, regardless of the size of the clinic, and they do take time to complete, which has been our experience with. We did an acquisition back in 2023, which was our first, and of course, Indianapolis that we've already announced and we're nearing completion on, and we're looking to, like I said, really complete that final steps for the Indianapolis acquisition very soon here, but as we've highlighted, for us, we think we have a very—we've said this in the past—we have a very robust pipeline of potential acquisition opportunities. And I would say even in the last few months that that pipeline has even further increased, so again, we see great near-term opportunities on the acquisition front.
But when you think long-term, we also recognize that there are really a limited number of potential deals to do in the space. There's only so many existing clinics out there. But relative to our size, there's plenty of activity to keep us busy over the next couple of years on the acquisition front. But again, when we think long-term, we see ongoing growth opportunities by way of building new clinics. And this is exactly what we did with two of our existing clinics in Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia. We built those as brand new clinics from the ground up. So we do have some experience in building new practices. And ultimately, we believe that is a source of significant long-term growth opportunity for the company. But again, in the more immediate term and short-term and intermediate term, we're very focused on the acquisition side of things.
All right, excellent. Let's dive a little bit here into the most recent quarter. To the point you referenced just a moment ago, you delivered organic growth during the past quarter. So this is the third quarter. So everyone's on the same page here. I know you haven't reported your year-end financial results yet. Talk about some of the specific initiatives that drove sort of the increased patient flow at the clinics and which of those are maybe most scalable going forward.
Well, we've been steadily working to increase our social media channels and will look to do targeted advertising within the local markets that we're operating to help get the word out directly to patients. We believe those activities are highly scalable, and we will continue to ramp those activities as we move throughout this year. And of course, we'll also look to continue to engage in further building of the referral program within our specific markets. And this is where our clinic operators will interact with OB-GYN practice and so forth, which are often the source of referring patients into a specialized fertility clinic.
Maybe talk a little bit. I know there was an announcement recently surrounding your, I think it was your Wisconsin clinic on telehealth capabilities and expansion of that. Talk about how those telehealth capabilities have maybe increased awareness, changed your ability to maybe reach new patients, broaden the geographic footprint.
Yeah, I would say this has been helpful. It's an ongoing trend even across other clinic operators as well, and these efforts really help create efficiencies and convenience for both the patient as well as our clinic operators, helps streamline the various sessions and processing steps that go on during a fertility treatment cycle, so if we can make that more convenient for patients for some of the initial consultations and some of the early work that's done, again, that's just a nice convenience for the patient, and it's a helpful efficiency tool for even our own operations, so it's really a win-win for both patients and us, and ultimately allows us to potentially see more patients as well.
Great. You mentioned at the beginning that the company started off as a technology company, right, sort of developing the INVOcell device. You sort of have expanded to provide the services as well, and that is clearly the bulk of your revenues. But you did see device sale year-over-year growth over the most recent quarter. Still remains a portion of the business, as you mentioned, selling into these third-party clinics. Talk about some of the actions that you've implemented around maybe training, support, pricing to expand INVOcell, the device itself, and how does that sort of fit into your long-term strategy?
Yeah. We ultimately just started putting some attention back on our device. As a result of priorities in the previous year, we had just been less active with it out there trying to promote the device. As we moved into 2025, we put more of a conscious effort to make sure the market was aware of the device and that it was still available. We also actually improved the pricing of the device in an effort to help drive awareness and interest in it. That seemed to have the desired effect for last year. We've also been trying to let the market know that we have training and support capabilities available to help support the device. These are things that we will continue to do as we move into 2026 in an effort to continue to really drive awareness and utilization of the device.
Remember, we use this device in two of our existing three clinics. Again, the Indianapolis clinic has also been a user of our device. So we'll continue to work to expand utilization within our existing clinics. This is also an effort that we sell this device to third-party clinics and trying to, again, make sure they're aware of our new pricing and support. That will be an ongoing activity for this year as well.
All right, excellent. Talk about some of the maybe the key challenges and the opportunities here as we enter 2026.
Yeah, I would say the biggest opportunity and challenge at the same time really does revolve around our acquisition goals. As I mentioned, we're seeing exceptional deal flow opportunities. That's the opportunity, but the challenge is navigating the complexities to close any deal. Acquisitions are inherently complex transactions to do. A lot of moving parts, a lot of negotiation, and so again, the challenge is moving through those opportunities and moving through a deal in a timely manner, so that's a challenge and putting all the necessary pieces together to be able to close a transaction. Those are always a challenge. I would say I believe that we have a team that has also gone through some experiences, and those learned experiences, which are also mistakes made, allow us to be better as we move forward. I believe that.
So I believe that we have the pieces in place and, again, the team expertise in place to meet at least our minimum objectives that we've set for ourselves on the acquisition front for this year. And if we do that, I think it will be a very successful year for the company in terms of further progress and something we believe will create real value from our current levels.
All right, great. Final minutes here. Final takeaways here for investors.
Yeah, I would say just to reiterate, I think that our team feels like we made a lot of great progress in 2025 that set the stage for even further progress and more success for 2026. I believe our team has never been more excited heading into a new year than this year. I think that our combination of our organic efforts to grow within the existing practice combined with our acquisition efforts will lead to some exciting growth for the company this year. And I would expect that we'll exit this year in the best position we've ever had and take the company to a whole new level.
All right, fantastic. Great way to sort of end it there. I guess I'll first, Steve, thank you so much for your participation in the summit here. I want to thank everybody, of course, for watching. If there are any questions or if there is maybe an interest in scheduling a meeting with Steve here or the management team, please feel free to reach out to me. That's Blum, B-L-U-M, @ lithiumpartners.com. Again, we have additional presentations, fireside chats coming up. So everyone, please stick around. Again, Steve, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
Thank you. Appreciate it, Robert.
All right. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you again, Steve, for the discussion. Your participation is always greatly appreciated.