Greetings. And welcome to the InspireMD First Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. David Waldman. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. And thank you for joining InspireMD's first quarter 2018 business update conference call. On the call with us today is Jim Barry, Chief Executive Officer of InspireMD and Craig Shore, Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of today's prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. If anyone has any questions after the call, please contact Crescendo Communications at 212-671-1021. Before we begin, let me take a minute to note that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. Such information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could influence actual results or events and cause actual results or events to differ materially from those stated, anticipated or implied in the forward-looking information. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information as no assurance can be given after the future results, levels of activity or achievements. With that out of the way, please let me now turn the call over to Jim Barry, CEO. Go ahead, Jim.

Thanks David, and thanks everybody for joining us this afternoon. Let me first start by saying that we appreciate the continued support of our investors as we continue to execute on the strategies that I have laid out on our previous conference calls. It is clear our plan is working and in fact for the first time since we implemented our new strategy, we are reporting sales in excess of $1 million for the quarter. Sales of CGuard EPS, the company's lead product designed to prevent stroke during the treatment of carotid artery disease, increased 132% over the same period last year, an increased 37% over the fourth quarter of 2017, which marks our fifth consecutive quarter of double digit growth. This result is due to our continued progress in established markets like Germany and Italy, as well as our expansion into new markets in Asia and Latin America. Additionally, CGuard continues to gain significant visibility at the top industry conferences and continues to be features in leading pre review publications. As an example, the CGuard Embolic Prevention System was recently features at the ICCA Stroke Conference held in Warsaw, Poland, in five separate talks and a panel discussion that consisted of thought leaders from all over the world focused on the treatment and prevention of stroke. CGuard was also prominently featured in two live case transmissions at the LINK 2018 Interventional Conference held in Leipzig, Germany. Both ICCA Stroke and LINK are two of the premier conferences in Europe targeting clinical specialties that treat carotid artery disease and stroke. In additions to conference presentations, physicians are approaching us unsolicited to be involved with our program and with CGuard. They are even spending their own time and money and purchasing product to run independent trials involving CGuard. As an example,…

Thanks Jim. Revenue for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2018 was $1 million compared to $569,000 during the same period in 2017. This was primarily due to an increase in sales of CGuard as we transition from our prior exclusive distribution partner for most of Europe to local specialized distributors, continued focus on expanding existing markets such as Germany and Italy, and expanded into new geographies such as India. Total operating expenses for the quarter were $2.2 million, a decrease of almost 10% compared to $2.5 million for the same period in 2017. This decrease was primarily due to a decrease in share based compensation expenses and a decrease in salary expenses primarily due to a salary related accrual in 2017, partially offset by an increase in legal expenses. Financial expenses for the quarter ended March 31st, 2018 were $436,000 compared to $154,000 for the same period in 2017, largely due to a non-cash expense associated with our preferred stock. Net loss for the quarter ended March 31st totaled $2.4 million, or $1.08 per basic and diluted share compared to a net loss of $2.6 million, or $28.31 per basic and diluted share in the same period in 2017. As of March 31, cash and cash equivalents were $4.6 million, compared to $3.7 million as of December 31st, 2017, which we believe will be sufficient to meet our operating requirements for approximately 12 months from the balance sheet date. At this point, we'd like to open up the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from [Ellen Litvak] with Forest Capital. Please go ahead.

Thank you and congratulation guys on a very strong quarter, good job. I see that you guys signed up a lot of new distributors recently which is great, but which markets do you see as the strongest contributors to growth? And what other markets are you targeting?

So, yes, as you've seen we signed up numerous distributors as we were expanding, but we're also expanding within those various regions. So take Germany for example, Germany really didn't start implementing its distribution until Q3, and we've seen terrific growth in Germany. And there's no reason to believe that would be any less. I would say it's also very similar in Italy. And Italy as you may know is one of the first countries that we actually introduced the device and have had solid growth since that time in 2014 when we started in Italy. So we still expect to see some growth in all of these established countries, but I think the other thing that just generally speaking I think our growth is going to come from converting vascular surgeons to use CGuard. As I think I mentioned in the script today, the current gold standard is a surgical procedure called carotid endarterectomy. And if - and that's done by surgeons who are concerned about potential embolic events from conventional stent. So if they start looking at the CGuard data I think we can start converting them over to the minimally invasive process of implanting CGuard. So I think a lot of the growth generally across the board is going to come from our ability to actually convert those vascular surgeons.

There doesn't seem to be any further questions. I would like to turn the floor over to Jim for closing comments.

Okay. Thanks again everybody for joining us this afternoon. I just wanted in enclosing reiterate that I'm happy to report a $1 million sales quarter and our fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth with sales of CGuard increasing 132% versus the same period last year. At the same time, we've cleaned up our capital structure and now strengthen our balance sheet. Overall, I'm very encouraged by the outlook for InspireMD. The strategy we put in place in 2017 was clearly the right decision and continuous release of highly supportive clinical data demonstrates that we have a very important product for patients suffering from carotid artery disease. Obviously, we're not happy with the share price but we will continue to do the things we believe will bring this turnaround to a conclusion, so that we can focus all our time on further building this company and reaching the full potential that I know it has. Thank you again and have a nice evening.

This concludes today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.