EMERYVILLE, Calif.—NovaBay Pharmaceuticals (NYSE American: NBY) reported sales of $2.8 million for the three months ended June 30, 2018, a drop of $1.3 million from second quarter 2017. The company attributed the decrease due to delays in hiring new sales representatives and increasing managed care coverage for its Avenova eyelid cleaner.“We see ample market opportunity with Avenova and we’re addressing areas of improvement that make us optimistic about returning to double-digit net sales growth in 2019,” said Mark M. Sieczkarek, NovaBay’s chairman, president and CEO.

He continued, “Among these, we’ve expanded our salesforce for the higher seasonality quarters, recently adding seven sales representatives with significant direct experience promoting ophthalmic products. We are deploying our entire salesforce more efficiently by targeting sales calls on high Avenova prescribers in areas of higher reimbursement with the aim to increase unit volume and net product revenue per unit. We also are making inroads with our program to obtain new or improved reimbursement for Avenova with meetings scheduled with a select group of top managed care organizations before the end of this year.”

NovaBay’s gross margin on net product revenue was 83 percent for the second quarter of 2018, compared with 83 percent for the prior-year period. The company’s operating loss for the second quarter of 2018 was $2.1 million, compared with an operating loss of $1.8 million for the second quarter of 2017.

The net loss for the second quarter of 2018 was $1.6 million compared with a net loss for the second quarter of 2017 of $1.7 million.

“Our outlook is for net sales to increase sequentially in each successive quarter through the remainder of 2018,” Sieczkarek said. “We will begin benefitting at the beginning of 2019 as our newer sales representatives become increasingly productive and we execute on our managed care strategy.”

NovaBay’s net sales for the six months ended June 30, 2018 were $5.7 million, compared with $7.8 million for the six months ended June 30, 2017. Gross margin on net product revenue was 87 percent for the first half of 2018, compared with 84 percent for the first half of 2017.

The operating loss for the first six months of 2018 was $4.5 million, a 20 percent decrease from an operating loss of $5.5 million for the comparable period in 2017. The net loss for the six months ended June 30, 2018 was $3.7 million compared with a net loss for the six months ended June 30, 2017 of $5.7 million.