NASDAQ:BNAI Brand Engagement Network Q2 2024 Earnings Report $0.35 +0.01 (+2.45%) Closing price 07/30/2025 04:00 PM EasternExtended Trading$0.34 -0.01 (-3.07%) As of 05:17 AM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Polygon.io. Learn more. ProfileEarnings History Brand Engagement Network EPS ResultsActual EPS-$0.19Consensus EPS N/ABeat/MissN/AOne Year Ago EPSN/ABrand Engagement Network Revenue ResultsActual RevenueN/AExpected RevenueN/ABeat/MissN/AYoY Revenue GrowthN/ABrand Engagement Network Announcement DetailsQuarterQ2 2024Date8/14/2024TimeN/AConference Call DateWednesday, August 14, 2024Conference Call Time5:00PM ETUpcoming EarningsBrand Engagement Network's Q2 2025 earnings is scheduled for Wednesday, August 13, 2025Conference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptPress Release (8-K)Quarterly Report (10-Q)Earnings HistoryCompany ProfilePowered by Brand Engagement Network Q2 2024 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrAugust 14, 2024 ShareLink copied to clipboard.Key Takeaways Proof of Concept Momentum: POCs accelerated from 2 in Q1 to 6 in Q2, with early Q3 pipeline indicating further growth. Security and Compliance Milestones: Achieved HIPAA compliance and SOC 2 Type 1 certification, positioning the platform for healthcare deployments. Strategic Partnerships: Announced collaborations with SAIL, expanded MedAdvisor offering on vaccine hesitancy, and a commercial agreement with Vibrew for audio-based consumer engagement. Enhanced Liquidity: Closed a private placement in May to strengthen capital reserves, alongside ongoing cost management to sustain long-term growth. Revenue Outlook: While Q2 booked revenue remained minimal, a 3x increase in pilot and channel partnerships sets the stage for recurring revenue in H2 2024 and acceleration in 2025. AI Generated. May Contain Errors.Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallBrand Engagement Network Q2 202400:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2xThere are 8 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Brand Engagement Network Second Quarter 20 24 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be an analyst question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Operator00:00:21I would now like to hand the conference over to Brand Engagement Network Investor Relations, Ryan Flanagan. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:30Thank you. Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining our Q2 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Paul Cheng, our Co CEO Bill Williams, our CFO and Skye, our AI powered assistant. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings This announcement is also available on our Investor Relations website. During this call, we'll make forward looking statements, including statements about our business outlook, strategies and long term goals. Speaker 100:00:57These comments are based on our plans, predictions and expectations as of today, which may change over time. Our actual results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties. For more information about the risks and uncertainties involving forward looking statements and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied by forward looking statements, please see the risk factors set forth in our most recent annual report on Form 10 ks as supplemented by the risk factors in our most recent quarterly report on Form 10 Q. Forward looking statements represent management's current estimates and the company assumes no obligation to update any forward looking statements in the future. And finally, this call in its entirety is being webcast from our Investor Relations website at www dot investors. Speaker 100:01:46Binninc.ai and an audio replay will be available on our website in a few hours. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Speaker 200:01:55Paul. Paul? Speaker 300:01:57Thank you, Ryan, and thank you all for joining us today. I'm pleased to report that in the Q2, we've made continued progress on market validation initiatives with meaningful acceleration in new proof of concepts and the maturation of earlier engagements into production ready deployments. Further, we have taken incremental steps to improving our liquidity and capital position, successfully closing a private placement in May, providing us funding over time. We continue to closely manage our internal costs to ensure our business is built for growth and to last for the long term. Reflecting the production ready nature of our platform, we are thrilled to introduce Sky, one of Ben's AI assistants who is here to demonstrate her domain expertise and participate on our earnings call. Speaker 300:02:53Data from Business and Technology sections of Ben's investor presentation and selected few SEC filings have been ingested. Sky also brings knowledge of our key partners as well as statistics on healthcare challenges and ramifications. Before discussing our results and key business developments in greater detail, I wanted to take a moment to discuss recent organizational changes. In May, I was appointed co CEO with responsibility for Ben's commercial business and oversight of day to day operations. My near term focus is 2 fold: driving market validation of our differentiated solutions and meaningful revenue through the conversion of POCs into deployments. Speaker 300:03:48As co CEO, Michael Zucharski is focused wholly on advising our Board of Directors on inorganic growth opportunities and our M and A strategy which we view as key component of our go to market strategy. Now to discuss progress we made across several fronts in the Q2. To start, we are seeing continued momentum in customer expansion. Recall on our previous earnings call, we highlighted 2 POCs. We are pleased to see an acceleration in the second quarter to 6 POCs, with an early read of the Q3 pipeline and an opportunity funnel suggesting that this number will continue to increase in the second half of the year. Speaker 300:04:36We announced our attainment of HIPAA compliance early in Q2, underscoring our commitment to protecting patient healthcare information and fast tracking our ability to operate in the healthcare vertical. Further demonstrating our data security and privacy focus, we have also obtained SOC 2 Type 1 Certification, ensuring that 3rd party services providers store and process client data in a secure fashion. Our partnership pipeline remains robust with several notable announcements in the quarter. First, we announced a pilot collaboration with the Skills Acquisition and Innovation Laboratory or SAIL. Collaborating with an industry thought leader such as New York Presbyterian Hospital and Cornell Medical College provides Ben with significant domain expertise as well as access to an innovation lab where breakthrough technologies can be tested and validated. Speaker 300:05:462nd, we are excited to expand our partnership with NetAdvisor Solutions, which was announced just this past Tuesday. The expansion includes a commercial solution offering by MedAdvisor on educating and addressing vaccine hesitancy among the patient population. Ben's AI assistants are designed not only to engage consumers, but to complete tasks such as filling out necessary forms and scheduling appointments. The joint offering is scheduled to be launched at the National Chain Drug Store Association's Total Store Expo Conference in Boston on August 18th 19th. 3rd, we have announced a commercial agreement with Vibrew, a company that connects brands with customers through innovative audio messaging strategies. Speaker 300:06:44Together, we are collaborating to merge Ben's proprietary AI assistant technology with Vibrew's audio and radio communication technology to enable interactive consumer engagement for brands. There is perhaps no better way to illustrate the readiness of our platform than to have a natural conversation with 1 of our AI assistants, Sky. We would like to mention that Sky is using Ben's proprietary large language model, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and for this application presenting in life size proportions. Thank you everyone for joining. I am standing here at SAIL, which is an innovative lab that sits in the intersection of Cornell Medical College, New York Presbyterian Hospital and the industry to provide world class leading edge educational training for clinicians so that they can provide enhanced customer care for all patients. Speaker 300:07:57I'm standing here because we have our AI assistant deployed to aid in that educational curriculum. I'd like to describe this deployment because most likely your experience with AI has been on a phone or maybe on a little screen. What you see here is a life size representation of our AI assistant that is actually being run by a small computer behind this monitor. So everything you see is being run locally, because we know certain industries having on prem deployment is critical to ensuring safety and privacy of the data that is being utilized at this facility. Now we can still run cloud based solutions, but always having an option to run locally, we believe gives an advantage. Speaker 300:09:03Now enough from me, let me introduce you to our AI assistant, Sky. Hey, Sky, can you tell me a little bit about brand engagement Speaker 400:09:23innovative company specializing in conversational AI assistance. What sets us apart is our focus on security and personalization. Our AI assistants are built on proprietary NLP, allowing for human like interactions and they're designed to be industry agnostic, making them versatile for various sectors like automotive and healthcare. Plus, we ensure our AI assistance only provide information from validated data sets preventing hallucinations and maintaining data reliability. Speaker 300:09:57Skye, can you tell me a little bit about our partner MedAdvisor? Speaker 400:10:02MedAdvisor Solutions is a global leader in pharmacy driven patient engagement. They work with over 37,000 pharmacies worldwide to provide personalized patient experiences, simplifying medication journeys. Their data driven approach and innovative digital experiences empower Medication adherence is crucial for managing chronic conditions because it helps prevent complications and hospitalizations. Around 70% of Americans with chronic diseases struggle with taking their meds as prescribed, leading to about 100 and 25,000 deaths $630,000,000,000 in unnecessary costs globally each year. Speaker 300:10:57Sky, what are some automotive use cases? Speaker 400:11:01We're currently exploring automotive use cases for our AI assistants. One potential application is an in car assistant that provides real time traffic updates, navigation assistance and vehicle maintenance reminders. We're also looking into AI driven customer support for automotive dealerships. Speaker 300:11:23Skye, are you able to deliver our financial results for Q2? Speaker 400:11:29For financial matters, I will hand it over to our CFO, Bill Williams, who is in charge of finances. Speaker 300:11:36Thanks, Skye. Take it away, Bill. Speaker 500:11:40Thank you, Sky, and thanks everyone for joining us. I appreciate the opportunity to provide an update on Ben's financial progress. Our Q2 and year to date results reflect Ben's continued focus on laying the foundation for future growth, product and solution development, the continued build out and productionizing of our infrastructure, developing talent and expanding partnerships and initial customer relationships. While quarter year to date booked revenue was minimal, we saw expanded proof of concept pilot and partnership activity gaining momentum, notably a 3x expansion in PLCs and channel partnerships since the Q1. These include notable wins such as Valeo Technologies, SAIL, the Cornell University Medical Center's Innovation Center, Members Only Health Network, InterVent Health, Vibroome and a Northwest Indiana car dealership in the important automotive vertical. Speaker 500:12:45Our year to date financial performance reflects R and D costs associated with the continued build out of Ben's capabilities and multiple product introductions since our second half twenty twenty three DM Labs acquisition, plus transaction costs from the Q1 twenty twenty four merger, partially offset by positive impact of cost actions and discipline, which drove sequential operating loss improvement. The quarter also benefited from a recognized gain on extinguishment of combination related liabilities of $1,800,000 through the negotiated settlement of accounts payable. Q22224 saw the initial stages of Ben's transition from a pre revenue enterprise and ongoing market momentum characterized by an uptick in proof of concept pilot and channel partnerships that we believe will convert into recurring revenue in the second half of twenty twenty four with acceleration in 2025. Finally, turning to Ben's financial strategy, we remain focused on building market momentum, scaling the platform, improving access to efficient capital and liquidity and cost discipline. In summary, we remain focused on bringing AI solutions that deliver real benefits to our B2B2C customers, driving CX productivity and performance. Speaker 500:14:19Q2 featured building momentum through operationalizing our platform, successful productizing AI assistance, expanded customer and partnerships and POCs in market and attracting capital. For the remainder of 2024, our focus will continue to be on performance, execution and converting pilot programs into revenue and enhanced liquidity. Now I'd like to turn it over to the operator for Q and A. Operator? Operator00:14:52Thank Our first question comes from the line of Jack Vander Aarde from Maxim Group. Speaker 600:15:24Okay, great. I appreciate the 2Q update guys. And nice to hear from Paul and Bill Ryan and also to meet your new AI assistant Sky. So I'll start with a question now for Paul. Paul, you guys have made a lot of progress recently on all these various pilot programs and proof of concepts in healthcare and automotive. Speaker 600:15:50And I think you have some other maybe industrials and consumer applications ongoing as well or targeting. Can you maybe just touch on some of the specific ones? Maybe like how would you rank these in order of what are the closest ones to being commercialized, in your view? And which are kind of like the bigger opportunities? Or however you want to talk about it. Speaker 600:16:12It would be it's just there's so many interesting pilots going on. I'm just to let you kind of zone in on a couple maybe for example of the ones you think are ready to be commercialized at some point? Thank you. Speaker 200:16:26Thanks, Jack, and great to chat with you here. So I would say, as you saw in our developments of new commercial opportunities, so far we've had quite a bit of progress and advancements in the healthcare space. And one of our thesis in developing our AI assistance was that we needed to help those industries that are struggling with resources, especially skilled resources, as in healthcare. And what we're seeing is companies testing the technology and they're testing it rather thoroughly because there's been some missteps out there with other gen AI solutions companies. And so they're being somewhat methodical and cautious. Speaker 200:17:28But I would say in the health care space, we are on the cusp of being able to deploy with a larger footprint than just doing pilots. In the automotive space, we're still working with some of our key partner in identifying the use cases as well as building pilots. So the dealership that was mentioned by Bill, they're essentially our joint development partner to ensure that the technology meets their needs. And indeed, it is providing the functionality that they're looking for. Speaker 600:18:15Okay, got it. I appreciate that color. And maybe just a follow-up there in the automotive vertical. As your reseller partner, your exclusive reseller partner in that vertical, that relationship has been, I think, ongoing now for a couple of quarters. So I imagine there has been some time that's passed and you've been able to get some feedback, I'm sure, and have things being tested out. Speaker 600:18:42What are you what are some general takeaways you're hearing from potential dealership customers that that automotive partner is working with already. What are you hearing from those end customers? Are they receptive? Is there a real need? I'd just be curious to hear kind of the tone of those discussions and what you're hearing. Speaker 200:19:06Sure. Yes. So the customers are all more than receptive. I would say they're excited about the potential of AI technology enhancing their customer experience and perhaps driving more efficiency to their dealerships. They are seeing how the technology can augment their existing staff and be able to take on sort of the more of the administrative tasks, leaving the current staff members to be able to provide a better customer service and better customer experience. Speaker 200:19:51So they're excited and we look forward to launching some of the use cases with a handful of pilot dealerships based on the data that they are able to provide our AI systems. So far, all signs are good. We need to just take the next steps in order to be able to deliver on the promise of generative AI. Speaker 600:20:26Got you. And maybe I have 2 more questions. I'll ask a question for Bill afterwards, just about the operating expense line items. First before I do that, Paul, maybe just one more question in terms of these 6 proof of concepts arrangements you have going on and the arrangement you have with your auto partner. The AI space is obviously a very competitive market, obviously. Speaker 600:20:52The fact you've entered these 6 proof of concept arrangements, can you just talk about I don't know if you could share anything specific about maybe MedAdvisor or AFG or just in general? How were they are they actively did you compete against other competitors? How did you win these arrangements? Just where do you stack competitively? And why did these brands ultimately choose you for a pilot program? Speaker 600:21:21And then I'll move on to a question for Bill. Thanks. Speaker 200:21:24Sure, sure. So I would assume we are always competing, because there are lots of, quote unquote AI companies out there. Many of those companies are just a thin veneer on top of public large language models like Chat GPT, but they are posing as true AI companies. Whereas I think for Ben, we don't have to pose because we know we are a true full stack AI company. We have the front end, the middleware and the back end, including our large language model. Speaker 200:22:07So we are able to configure our AI system. We are able to tailor it to solve very specific problems for specific customers. So as an example, the solution that we've launched with MedAdvisor has to do with addressing vaccine hesitancy. And we know this is a large problem facing not just the U. S. Speaker 200:22:34Population, but globally. And it takes a lot of resources patients. So having an AI system that's essentially infinitely scalable to meet the needs of the consumers and the patients, be able to describe the benefits and potential side effects, address them beforehand. That is essentially a game changer in the healthcare market, specifically in the vaccines world. So we know that we are competing against others, but the feedback that we've gotten is most customers have not seen anything like our technology just as you just saw on the video. Speaker 200:23:33They have not seen anything remotely close to that from some of the other AI providers. And again, I credit that to our full control over the various different components that makes AI run and be able to configure to deliver a safe and secure interaction with consumers. Speaker 600:24:01Okay, great. That's really helpful color. Very interesting. And then let me switch gears. I'll ask a question to Ben maybe on the financial side. Speaker 600:24:11Operating expenses, just trying to get a sense here because the business is still obviously very early stage. And I'm just trying to get a sense of how the 2Q operating expense levels kind of compares to maybe your expectations for the next couple of quarters going forward. Just to get a sense of how much of this is noise from the merger and how much of this is normalized? Thanks, Bill. Speaker 700:24:37Thank you, Jack. I appreciate the question. I would say, Q2, especially compared to Q1, I think Q1, I mean, did have a lot of movement that was driven around the transaction and transaction costs. We had a little bit of that that led over into the quarter Q2. But I think our run rate now is probably more reflective of our go forward. Speaker 700:25:06And so most of the OpEx that we experienced, basically we were essentially flat kind of sequentially. And so that's going to be the blend of kind of a drop off of transaction expenses. And then we also did have some increases as we started productionizing our systems and getting ready to kind of put those in market the second half of the year. We also benefited from being able to convert some transaction expenses that kind of flowed from the our kind of normal run rate. So I guess overall, I would say we are closer to having kind of a normalized operating range, which really going to reflect our employment costs and for our staff as we start commercializing products and very, very little of transaction related costs. Speaker 700:26:12We did have an uptick in depreciation and amortization as we actually shifted from R and D to actually putting solutions in market because of the POCs. Those are now operationalized. So there was an uptick in depreciation and amortization just flowing from that. So I would say this run rate is probably more reflective of what we'll see second half of the year. And with adequate funding and all that, we'll start building capabilities, I would say, investing more in things like our commercial team, our sales team and go to market team as we start expanding the second half of the year. Speaker 700:26:58You'll see that as kind of an investment, more of an investment profile as we go forward. Speaker 600:27:06Okay. That's really helpful color. It makes sense there too. Okay. I think that's it for me guys. Speaker 600:27:11I appreciate the update and congrats on the strong momentum. Look forward to tracking the story. Speaker 700:27:18Thank you, Jack. Operator00:27:21Thank you. At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Paul Chang for closing remarks. Speaker 200:27:31Thank you, Gigi. I want to just thank everyone for joining this call. I hope it was informative and perhaps even entertaining. And we will talk to you guys next quarter.Read morePowered by Earnings DocumentsPress Release(8-K)Quarterly report(10-Q) Brand Engagement Network Earnings HeadlinesBrand Engagement Network Partners on AI Mental Health Program for South African StudentsJuly 25, 2025 | msn.comBrand Engagement Network, Inc.: Brand Engagement Network Appoints Janine Grasso as Interim CEOJuly 16, 2025 | finanznachrichten.deI was wrong about TrumpI made a mistake. A mistake I feel very foolish about. After speaking with Donald Trump and some of his advisors, I believed him. I believed the promise that he would finally confront the single most dangerous threat to American life. That he would fix the ticking time bomb I’ve been warning about for 15 years. But I was wrong. | Porter & Company (Ad)Brand Engagement Network Appoints Janine Grasso as Interim CEOJuly 15, 2025 | globenewswire.comBrand Engagement Network Inc. BNAI (U.S.: Nasdaq) - The Wall Street JournalJuly 3, 2025 | wsj.comBrand Engagement Network, Inc. (BNAI) - Yahoo FinanceJune 27, 2025 | au.finance.yahoo.comSee More Brand Engagement Network Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like Brand Engagement Network? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on Brand Engagement Network and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About Brand Engagement NetworkBrand Engagement Network (NASDAQ:BNAI), Inc. provides conversational AI assistants. The company offers security-focused, multimodal communication, and human-like assistants. Its AI assistants are built on proprietary natural language processing, anomaly detection, multisensory awareness, sentiment, and environmental analysis, as well as real-time individuation and personalization capabilities. It serves the automotive, healthcare, and other industries through direct sales force and channel partners. Brand Engagement Network, Inc. was formerly known as Blockchain Exchange Network Inc. and changed its name to Brand Engagement Network, Inc. in April 2023. 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There are 8 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Brand Engagement Network Second Quarter 20 24 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be an analyst question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Operator00:00:21I would now like to hand the conference over to Brand Engagement Network Investor Relations, Ryan Flanagan. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:30Thank you. Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining our Q2 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Paul Cheng, our Co CEO Bill Williams, our CFO and Skye, our AI powered assistant. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings This announcement is also available on our Investor Relations website. During this call, we'll make forward looking statements, including statements about our business outlook, strategies and long term goals. Speaker 100:00:57These comments are based on our plans, predictions and expectations as of today, which may change over time. Our actual results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties. For more information about the risks and uncertainties involving forward looking statements and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied by forward looking statements, please see the risk factors set forth in our most recent annual report on Form 10 ks as supplemented by the risk factors in our most recent quarterly report on Form 10 Q. Forward looking statements represent management's current estimates and the company assumes no obligation to update any forward looking statements in the future. And finally, this call in its entirety is being webcast from our Investor Relations website at www dot investors. Speaker 100:01:46Binninc.ai and an audio replay will be available on our website in a few hours. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Speaker 200:01:55Paul. Paul? Speaker 300:01:57Thank you, Ryan, and thank you all for joining us today. I'm pleased to report that in the Q2, we've made continued progress on market validation initiatives with meaningful acceleration in new proof of concepts and the maturation of earlier engagements into production ready deployments. Further, we have taken incremental steps to improving our liquidity and capital position, successfully closing a private placement in May, providing us funding over time. We continue to closely manage our internal costs to ensure our business is built for growth and to last for the long term. Reflecting the production ready nature of our platform, we are thrilled to introduce Sky, one of Ben's AI assistants who is here to demonstrate her domain expertise and participate on our earnings call. Speaker 300:02:53Data from Business and Technology sections of Ben's investor presentation and selected few SEC filings have been ingested. Sky also brings knowledge of our key partners as well as statistics on healthcare challenges and ramifications. Before discussing our results and key business developments in greater detail, I wanted to take a moment to discuss recent organizational changes. In May, I was appointed co CEO with responsibility for Ben's commercial business and oversight of day to day operations. My near term focus is 2 fold: driving market validation of our differentiated solutions and meaningful revenue through the conversion of POCs into deployments. Speaker 300:03:48As co CEO, Michael Zucharski is focused wholly on advising our Board of Directors on inorganic growth opportunities and our M and A strategy which we view as key component of our go to market strategy. Now to discuss progress we made across several fronts in the Q2. To start, we are seeing continued momentum in customer expansion. Recall on our previous earnings call, we highlighted 2 POCs. We are pleased to see an acceleration in the second quarter to 6 POCs, with an early read of the Q3 pipeline and an opportunity funnel suggesting that this number will continue to increase in the second half of the year. Speaker 300:04:36We announced our attainment of HIPAA compliance early in Q2, underscoring our commitment to protecting patient healthcare information and fast tracking our ability to operate in the healthcare vertical. Further demonstrating our data security and privacy focus, we have also obtained SOC 2 Type 1 Certification, ensuring that 3rd party services providers store and process client data in a secure fashion. Our partnership pipeline remains robust with several notable announcements in the quarter. First, we announced a pilot collaboration with the Skills Acquisition and Innovation Laboratory or SAIL. Collaborating with an industry thought leader such as New York Presbyterian Hospital and Cornell Medical College provides Ben with significant domain expertise as well as access to an innovation lab where breakthrough technologies can be tested and validated. Speaker 300:05:462nd, we are excited to expand our partnership with NetAdvisor Solutions, which was announced just this past Tuesday. The expansion includes a commercial solution offering by MedAdvisor on educating and addressing vaccine hesitancy among the patient population. Ben's AI assistants are designed not only to engage consumers, but to complete tasks such as filling out necessary forms and scheduling appointments. The joint offering is scheduled to be launched at the National Chain Drug Store Association's Total Store Expo Conference in Boston on August 18th 19th. 3rd, we have announced a commercial agreement with Vibrew, a company that connects brands with customers through innovative audio messaging strategies. Speaker 300:06:44Together, we are collaborating to merge Ben's proprietary AI assistant technology with Vibrew's audio and radio communication technology to enable interactive consumer engagement for brands. There is perhaps no better way to illustrate the readiness of our platform than to have a natural conversation with 1 of our AI assistants, Sky. We would like to mention that Sky is using Ben's proprietary large language model, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and for this application presenting in life size proportions. Thank you everyone for joining. I am standing here at SAIL, which is an innovative lab that sits in the intersection of Cornell Medical College, New York Presbyterian Hospital and the industry to provide world class leading edge educational training for clinicians so that they can provide enhanced customer care for all patients. Speaker 300:07:57I'm standing here because we have our AI assistant deployed to aid in that educational curriculum. I'd like to describe this deployment because most likely your experience with AI has been on a phone or maybe on a little screen. What you see here is a life size representation of our AI assistant that is actually being run by a small computer behind this monitor. So everything you see is being run locally, because we know certain industries having on prem deployment is critical to ensuring safety and privacy of the data that is being utilized at this facility. Now we can still run cloud based solutions, but always having an option to run locally, we believe gives an advantage. Speaker 300:09:03Now enough from me, let me introduce you to our AI assistant, Sky. Hey, Sky, can you tell me a little bit about brand engagement Speaker 400:09:23innovative company specializing in conversational AI assistance. What sets us apart is our focus on security and personalization. Our AI assistants are built on proprietary NLP, allowing for human like interactions and they're designed to be industry agnostic, making them versatile for various sectors like automotive and healthcare. Plus, we ensure our AI assistance only provide information from validated data sets preventing hallucinations and maintaining data reliability. Speaker 300:09:57Skye, can you tell me a little bit about our partner MedAdvisor? Speaker 400:10:02MedAdvisor Solutions is a global leader in pharmacy driven patient engagement. They work with over 37,000 pharmacies worldwide to provide personalized patient experiences, simplifying medication journeys. Their data driven approach and innovative digital experiences empower Medication adherence is crucial for managing chronic conditions because it helps prevent complications and hospitalizations. Around 70% of Americans with chronic diseases struggle with taking their meds as prescribed, leading to about 100 and 25,000 deaths $630,000,000,000 in unnecessary costs globally each year. Speaker 300:10:57Sky, what are some automotive use cases? Speaker 400:11:01We're currently exploring automotive use cases for our AI assistants. One potential application is an in car assistant that provides real time traffic updates, navigation assistance and vehicle maintenance reminders. We're also looking into AI driven customer support for automotive dealerships. Speaker 300:11:23Skye, are you able to deliver our financial results for Q2? Speaker 400:11:29For financial matters, I will hand it over to our CFO, Bill Williams, who is in charge of finances. Speaker 300:11:36Thanks, Skye. Take it away, Bill. Speaker 500:11:40Thank you, Sky, and thanks everyone for joining us. I appreciate the opportunity to provide an update on Ben's financial progress. Our Q2 and year to date results reflect Ben's continued focus on laying the foundation for future growth, product and solution development, the continued build out and productionizing of our infrastructure, developing talent and expanding partnerships and initial customer relationships. While quarter year to date booked revenue was minimal, we saw expanded proof of concept pilot and partnership activity gaining momentum, notably a 3x expansion in PLCs and channel partnerships since the Q1. These include notable wins such as Valeo Technologies, SAIL, the Cornell University Medical Center's Innovation Center, Members Only Health Network, InterVent Health, Vibroome and a Northwest Indiana car dealership in the important automotive vertical. Speaker 500:12:45Our year to date financial performance reflects R and D costs associated with the continued build out of Ben's capabilities and multiple product introductions since our second half twenty twenty three DM Labs acquisition, plus transaction costs from the Q1 twenty twenty four merger, partially offset by positive impact of cost actions and discipline, which drove sequential operating loss improvement. The quarter also benefited from a recognized gain on extinguishment of combination related liabilities of $1,800,000 through the negotiated settlement of accounts payable. Q22224 saw the initial stages of Ben's transition from a pre revenue enterprise and ongoing market momentum characterized by an uptick in proof of concept pilot and channel partnerships that we believe will convert into recurring revenue in the second half of twenty twenty four with acceleration in 2025. Finally, turning to Ben's financial strategy, we remain focused on building market momentum, scaling the platform, improving access to efficient capital and liquidity and cost discipline. In summary, we remain focused on bringing AI solutions that deliver real benefits to our B2B2C customers, driving CX productivity and performance. Speaker 500:14:19Q2 featured building momentum through operationalizing our platform, successful productizing AI assistance, expanded customer and partnerships and POCs in market and attracting capital. For the remainder of 2024, our focus will continue to be on performance, execution and converting pilot programs into revenue and enhanced liquidity. Now I'd like to turn it over to the operator for Q and A. Operator? Operator00:14:52Thank Our first question comes from the line of Jack Vander Aarde from Maxim Group. Speaker 600:15:24Okay, great. I appreciate the 2Q update guys. And nice to hear from Paul and Bill Ryan and also to meet your new AI assistant Sky. So I'll start with a question now for Paul. Paul, you guys have made a lot of progress recently on all these various pilot programs and proof of concepts in healthcare and automotive. Speaker 600:15:50And I think you have some other maybe industrials and consumer applications ongoing as well or targeting. Can you maybe just touch on some of the specific ones? Maybe like how would you rank these in order of what are the closest ones to being commercialized, in your view? And which are kind of like the bigger opportunities? Or however you want to talk about it. Speaker 600:16:12It would be it's just there's so many interesting pilots going on. I'm just to let you kind of zone in on a couple maybe for example of the ones you think are ready to be commercialized at some point? Thank you. Speaker 200:16:26Thanks, Jack, and great to chat with you here. So I would say, as you saw in our developments of new commercial opportunities, so far we've had quite a bit of progress and advancements in the healthcare space. And one of our thesis in developing our AI assistance was that we needed to help those industries that are struggling with resources, especially skilled resources, as in healthcare. And what we're seeing is companies testing the technology and they're testing it rather thoroughly because there's been some missteps out there with other gen AI solutions companies. And so they're being somewhat methodical and cautious. Speaker 200:17:28But I would say in the health care space, we are on the cusp of being able to deploy with a larger footprint than just doing pilots. In the automotive space, we're still working with some of our key partner in identifying the use cases as well as building pilots. So the dealership that was mentioned by Bill, they're essentially our joint development partner to ensure that the technology meets their needs. And indeed, it is providing the functionality that they're looking for. Speaker 600:18:15Okay, got it. I appreciate that color. And maybe just a follow-up there in the automotive vertical. As your reseller partner, your exclusive reseller partner in that vertical, that relationship has been, I think, ongoing now for a couple of quarters. So I imagine there has been some time that's passed and you've been able to get some feedback, I'm sure, and have things being tested out. Speaker 600:18:42What are you what are some general takeaways you're hearing from potential dealership customers that that automotive partner is working with already. What are you hearing from those end customers? Are they receptive? Is there a real need? I'd just be curious to hear kind of the tone of those discussions and what you're hearing. Speaker 200:19:06Sure. Yes. So the customers are all more than receptive. I would say they're excited about the potential of AI technology enhancing their customer experience and perhaps driving more efficiency to their dealerships. They are seeing how the technology can augment their existing staff and be able to take on sort of the more of the administrative tasks, leaving the current staff members to be able to provide a better customer service and better customer experience. Speaker 200:19:51So they're excited and we look forward to launching some of the use cases with a handful of pilot dealerships based on the data that they are able to provide our AI systems. So far, all signs are good. We need to just take the next steps in order to be able to deliver on the promise of generative AI. Speaker 600:20:26Got you. And maybe I have 2 more questions. I'll ask a question for Bill afterwards, just about the operating expense line items. First before I do that, Paul, maybe just one more question in terms of these 6 proof of concepts arrangements you have going on and the arrangement you have with your auto partner. The AI space is obviously a very competitive market, obviously. Speaker 600:20:52The fact you've entered these 6 proof of concept arrangements, can you just talk about I don't know if you could share anything specific about maybe MedAdvisor or AFG or just in general? How were they are they actively did you compete against other competitors? How did you win these arrangements? Just where do you stack competitively? And why did these brands ultimately choose you for a pilot program? Speaker 600:21:21And then I'll move on to a question for Bill. Thanks. Speaker 200:21:24Sure, sure. So I would assume we are always competing, because there are lots of, quote unquote AI companies out there. Many of those companies are just a thin veneer on top of public large language models like Chat GPT, but they are posing as true AI companies. Whereas I think for Ben, we don't have to pose because we know we are a true full stack AI company. We have the front end, the middleware and the back end, including our large language model. Speaker 200:22:07So we are able to configure our AI system. We are able to tailor it to solve very specific problems for specific customers. So as an example, the solution that we've launched with MedAdvisor has to do with addressing vaccine hesitancy. And we know this is a large problem facing not just the U. S. Speaker 200:22:34Population, but globally. And it takes a lot of resources patients. So having an AI system that's essentially infinitely scalable to meet the needs of the consumers and the patients, be able to describe the benefits and potential side effects, address them beforehand. That is essentially a game changer in the healthcare market, specifically in the vaccines world. So we know that we are competing against others, but the feedback that we've gotten is most customers have not seen anything like our technology just as you just saw on the video. Speaker 200:23:33They have not seen anything remotely close to that from some of the other AI providers. And again, I credit that to our full control over the various different components that makes AI run and be able to configure to deliver a safe and secure interaction with consumers. Speaker 600:24:01Okay, great. That's really helpful color. Very interesting. And then let me switch gears. I'll ask a question to Ben maybe on the financial side. Speaker 600:24:11Operating expenses, just trying to get a sense here because the business is still obviously very early stage. And I'm just trying to get a sense of how the 2Q operating expense levels kind of compares to maybe your expectations for the next couple of quarters going forward. Just to get a sense of how much of this is noise from the merger and how much of this is normalized? Thanks, Bill. Speaker 700:24:37Thank you, Jack. I appreciate the question. I would say, Q2, especially compared to Q1, I think Q1, I mean, did have a lot of movement that was driven around the transaction and transaction costs. We had a little bit of that that led over into the quarter Q2. But I think our run rate now is probably more reflective of our go forward. Speaker 700:25:06And so most of the OpEx that we experienced, basically we were essentially flat kind of sequentially. And so that's going to be the blend of kind of a drop off of transaction expenses. And then we also did have some increases as we started productionizing our systems and getting ready to kind of put those in market the second half of the year. We also benefited from being able to convert some transaction expenses that kind of flowed from the our kind of normal run rate. So I guess overall, I would say we are closer to having kind of a normalized operating range, which really going to reflect our employment costs and for our staff as we start commercializing products and very, very little of transaction related costs. Speaker 700:26:12We did have an uptick in depreciation and amortization as we actually shifted from R and D to actually putting solutions in market because of the POCs. Those are now operationalized. So there was an uptick in depreciation and amortization just flowing from that. So I would say this run rate is probably more reflective of what we'll see second half of the year. And with adequate funding and all that, we'll start building capabilities, I would say, investing more in things like our commercial team, our sales team and go to market team as we start expanding the second half of the year. Speaker 700:26:58You'll see that as kind of an investment, more of an investment profile as we go forward. Speaker 600:27:06Okay. That's really helpful color. It makes sense there too. Okay. I think that's it for me guys. Speaker 600:27:11I appreciate the update and congrats on the strong momentum. Look forward to tracking the story. Speaker 700:27:18Thank you, Jack. Operator00:27:21Thank you. At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Paul Chang for closing remarks. Speaker 200:27:31Thank you, Gigi. I want to just thank everyone for joining this call. I hope it was informative and perhaps even entertaining. And we will talk to you guys next quarter.Read morePowered by