NOTE 1 – OPERATIONS AND BASIS OF PRESENTATION

Principal Operations

Acura Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a New York corporation, and its subsidiary (the “Company”, “Acura”, “We”, “Us” or “Our”) is a specialty pharmaceutical company engaged in the research, development and commercialization of technologies and products intended to address medication abuse and misuse. We have discovered and developed three proprietary platform technologies which can be used to develop multiple products. Our Limitx™ Technology is intended to address methods of product tampering associated with opioid abuse by retarding the release of active drug ingredients when too many tablets are accidently or purposefully ingested. Our Aversion® Technology is intended to address methods of product tampering associated with opioid abuse by incorporating gelling ingredients and irritants into tablets to discourage abuse by snorting and provide barriers to abuse by injection. Our Impede® Technology is directed at minimizing the extraction and conversion of pseudoephedrine into methamphetamine.

Our Limitx Technology is in development with the immediate-release hydrocodone bitartrate and acetaminophen as a lead Limitx product candidate due to its larger market size than our prior lead product and its known prevalence of oral excessive tablet abuse.

Our Aversion Technology has been licensed to Egalet Corporation for use in Oxaydo® Tablets (oxycodone HCl, CII), and is the first approved immediate-release oxycodone product in the United States with abuse deterrent labeling. Oxaydo is currently approved by the FDA for marketing in the United States in 5mg and 7.5mg strengths. (see Note 3).

Our Impede Technology is used in Nexafed® Tablets (30mg pseudoephedrine HCl) and Nexafed® Sinus Pressure + Pain Tablets (30/325mg pseudoephedrine HCl and acetaminophen). We have licensed to MainPointe Pharmaceuticals, LLC our Impede Technology in the United States and Canada to commercialize our Nexafed products. (see Note 3).

Basis of Presentation and Substantial Doubt in Going Concern

The accompanying unaudited consolidated financial statements of the Company have been prepared assuming the Company will continue as a going concern and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of America for interim financial information, the instructions to Form 10-Q and Article 10 of Regulation S-X. Accordingly, they do not contain all disclosures required by generally accepted accounting principles. Reference should be made to the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017. In the opinion of the Company, all normal recurring adjustments have been made that are necessary to present fairly the results of operations for the interim periods. Operating results for the three month period ended March 31, 2018 are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for the year ending December 31, 2018.

The going concern basis of presentation assumes that we will continue in operation one year after the date these financial statements are issued and we will be able to realize our assets and discharge our liabilities and commitments in the normal course of business. As of March 31, 2018, we had cash and cash equivalents of $0.8 million, working capital deficit of $3.4 million and an accumulated deficit of $382.0 million. As of June 28, 2018 we had cash, cash equivalents, and refundable deposits of $0.7 million. We had a loss from operations of $1.4 million and a net loss of $1.5 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018. We have suffered recurring losses from operations and have not generated positive cash flows from operations. We had a loss from operations of $5.2 million and a net loss of $5.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2017. We anticipate operating losses to continue for the foreseeable future.

We have a term loan with Oxford Finance LLC (“Oxford” or the “Lender”) and as of March 31, 2018 and June 28, 2018, the outstanding principal balance is $2.1 million and $1.5 million, respectively. A $795 thousand balloon interest payment is due to Oxford on December 1, 2018. Our term loan agreement with Oxford contains customary affirmative and negative covenants. One such covenant is that the Company must submit on an annual basis to Oxford, within 120 days after the end of its fiscal year, audited financial statements, together with an unqualified audit opinion from an independent registered public accounting firm, or the Unqualified Audit Opinion Covenant. Per the term loan agreement an audit opinion with an explanatory paragraph noting substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue in business (the “going concern opinion”) is deemed to violate the Unqualified Audit Opinion Covenant. Failure to comply with the Unqualified Audit Opinion Covenant is a breach of the term loan agreement and unless such covenant or breach is waived, Oxford would have the option of accelerating the debt under the term loan agreement and initiating enforcement collection actions, foreclosing on collateral (which includes most assets of the Company) and, among other things, preventing the Company from using any funds in its bank or securities accounts. On March 16, 2017, we and Oxford entered into a third amendment to the Loan Agreement, or the Third Amendment. Pursuant to the Third Amendment (i) we granted Oxford a lien on our intellectual property, (ii) Oxford provided a waiver of compliance with the Unqualified Audit Opinion Covenant in connection with our receipt of our auditor’s going concern opinion for our 2016 financial statements and (iii) Oxford consented to the terms of the MainPointe Agreement.

During the second quarter of 2018, we borrowed a total of $1.5 million from John Schutte, a principal of MainPointe and our largest shareholder. In conjunction with such loan, we entered into of a fourth amendment to our term loan agreement with Oxford, pursuant to which Oxford granted a similar waiver of compliance with the Unqualified Audit Opinion Covenant for our 2017 financial statements and extended the period in which we could deliver financial statements for 2017 to 160 days after year’s end (instead of 120 days). (see Notes 9 and 15). On June 7, 2018, we filed our 2017 financial statements as part of our annual report on Form 10-K. With the net proceeds of approximately $1.5 million to the Company resulting from the loans from Mr. Schutte, we expect our cash will only be sufficient to fund operations into late July 2018.

These factors, among others, raise substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern. We must seek sources to raise additional financing and seek to enter into license or collaboration agreements with third parties relating to our technologies. The Company is exploring a variety of capital raising and other transactions to provide additional funding to continue operations. These include potential private offerings of common stock to accredited and/or institutional investors and licensing transactions with pharmaceutical company partners for our proprietary technologies, including Limitx. We are actively seeking a licensing partner for our Limitx technology, with the objective of receiving an upfront license fee, development milestone payments and royalties on the net sales of products utilizing the Limitx technology, similar to the Egalet Agreement. We are also exploring licensing or selling select assets and intellectual property in an effort to raise capital and reduce operating expenses. Finally, the Company continues to evaluate the potential for a strategic transaction which may involve the Company being acquired in a merger or asset purchase transaction. No assurance can be given that we will be successful in completing any one or more of such transactions on acceptable terms, if at all, or if completed, that such transactions will provide payments to the Company sufficient to fund continued operations. In the absence of the Company’s completion of one or more of such transactions, there will be substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern within one year after the date these financial statements are issued, and the Company will be required to scale back or terminate operations and/or seek protection under applicable bankruptcy laws. An extended delay or cessation of the Company’s continuing product development efforts will have a material adverse effect on the Company’s financial condition and results of operations.

In view of the matters described above, management has concluded that substantial doubt exists with respect to the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern within one year after the date the financial statements are issued. The recoverability of a major portion of the recorded asset amounts shown in the Company’s accompanying balance sheets is dependent upon continued operations of the Company, which in turn is dependent upon the Company’s ability to meet its funding requirements on a continuous basis, to maintain existing financing and to succeed in its future operations. The Company’s financial statements do not include any adjustment relating to the recoverability and classification of recorded asset amounts and classification of liabilities that might be necessary should the Company be unable to continue in existence.