General and administrative. General and administrative expense for the nine months ended September 30, 2023 was approximately $6,138,000, compared to approximately $7,625,000 for the same period in 2022. The overall decrease in general and administrative expense of $1,487,000, or 20%, was primarily driven by a decrease in professional fees offset by a slight increase in personnel costs.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
We have incurred losses since inception in devoting substantially all of our efforts toward research and development. During the nine months ended September 30, 2023, we generated a net loss of approximately $30.5 million, and used approximately $23 million in cash for operations. We expect that we will continue to generate operating losses for the foreseeable future. As of September 30, 2023, our consolidated cash balance was approximately $19 million. We believe our cash balance as of September 30, 2023 is adequate to fund our basic budgeted operations into the second quarter of 2024. Our ability to execute our operating plan beyond that time depends on our ability to obtain additional funding via the sale of equity and/or debt securities, a strategic transaction or otherwise. We plan to actively pursue all available financing alternatives; however, there can be no assurance that we will obtain the necessary funding. Other than the uncertainties regarding our ability to obtain additional funding and our ability to meet the continued listing standards of Nasdaq, there are currently no known trends, demands, commitments, events or uncertainties that are likely to materially affect our liquidity.
Change in Significant Accounting Policies
The Company's significant accounting policies are disclosed in Note 2 to the Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements included in this Form 10-Q. There were no material changes to the significant accounting policies during the nine months ended September 30, 2023, except for the addition of the accounting policies for warrants and preferred stock. See Item 4 below.
Item 3. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures about Market Risk
We are a smaller reporting company as defined by Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act and are not required to provide the information otherwise required under this item.
Item 4. Controls and Procedures
Management, with the participation of the Company’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer (its principal executive office and principal accounting officer, respectively) maintains “disclosure controls and procedures,” as such terms are defined in Rules 13a 15(e) and 15d 15(e) of the Exchange Act, that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by the Company in reports that we file or submit under the Exchange Act are recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms, and that such information is accumulated and communicated to our management, including our principal executive officer and principal financial officer, as appropriate, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.
Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures. Based on management’s evaluation (with the participation of our principal executive officer and principal financial officer), as of September 30, 2023, our management has concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Exchange Act) were not effective to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in reports that we file or submit under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms as a result of the material weakness identified below.
The material weakness described herein did not result in any identified misstatements to the financial statements, and there were no changes to our historical consolidated financial statements. Notwithstanding such material weakness, our consolidated financial statements and other financial information included in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q present fairly in all material respects our financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows for the periods presented in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States.
During the period ended September 30, 2023, management identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting due to the fact that we failed to design and implement adequate internal controls over financial reporting as it relates to the proper fair value methodologies and assumptions used to value Level 3 instruments. Our management, with oversight from our Audit Committee, is in the process of developing and implementing remediation plans in response to the identified material weakness described above.