Jeff Dunn, president and CEO of SI-Bone broke down the company's performance during his second quarter conference call and outlined development plans for its expanding sales force.
SI-Bone posted a net loss of $8.7 million during the second quarter, a 175 percent increase from the same period last year.
Total operating expenses increased 61 percent from $14.2 million during the second quarter of 2018 to $22.9 million in the most recent quarter. The company primarily attributes the increase to a rise in sales hiring, marketing and surgeon training.
Jeff Dunn on growing sales force and the development of iFuse: "We are starting to see the impact from growing payer coverage and sales force expansion. We expect further productivity gains in the back half of this year as our newer sales reps ramp toward full productivity … iFuse has now been used in more than 40,000 procedures by more than 1,900 surgeons worldwide.
JD on sales and marketing: "We ended the second quarter of 2019 with 50 direct sales reps and 37 clinical support specialists. We're encouraged by these quality additions to our growing sales team and are firmly on track to reach our goal of adding 10 to 15 direct sales reps and 25 to 30 new customer sales and service representatives by the end of the year."
JD on new surgeons: "Our medical affairs team remains focused on training, educating, and supporting new surgeons. We are on track to increase the number of active surgeons from 450 during the fourth quarter of 2018 to 550 by the fourth quarter of 2019."
JD on drop in performance in Germany: "We experienced some residual weakness in Germany related to our previous revenue issues from the second half of 2018 … our new head of sales has made significant changes in the field personnel that were necessary to drive the business forward. This transition resulted in a few open territories during the second quarter, which impacted the region's performance."
JD on expected European growth: "Our operations in the U.K., France, and Italy are driving growth in line with our expectations … we expect international second quarter revenue to be relatively in line with the second quarter, and we anticipate incremental improvement over the next 12 months as the new German team ramps to full capacity while other countries continue to execute."