Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology Inc

REPORT OF INDEPENDENT REGISTERED PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRM

To the Shareholders and Board of Directors of

Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology, Inc. and Subsidiaries

Opinion on the Financial Statements

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology, Inc. and Subsidiaries (the “Company”) (formerly known as Biostage, Inc.) as of December 31, 2023 and 2022, the related consolidated statements of operations, changes in stockholders’ equity (deficit) and cash flows for each of the two years in the period ended December 31, 2023, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the “financial statements”). In our opinion, the financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2023 and 2022, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the two years in the period ended December 31, 2023, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

Explanatory Paragraph – Going Concern

The accompanying consolidated financial statements have been prepared assuming that the Company will continue as a going concern. As more fully described in Note 1, the Company has suffered recurring losses from operations, has an accumulated deficit, uses cash flows in its operations, and will require additional financing to continue to fund its operations. These conditions raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. Management’s plans in regard to these matters are also described in Note 1. The consolidated financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of this uncertainty.

Basis for Opinion

These financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (“PCAOB”) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audits to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audits we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.

Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of a critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Share-Based Compensation – Performance-Based Awards

Description of the Matter

As described in Note 14 to the consolidated financial statements, the Company has 773,195 unvested performance-based options outstanding for which there is unrecognized compensation expense of approximately $2.8 million at December 31, 2023. No expense has been recognized for these unvested awards as of December 31, 2023 given that the milestone achievements for these awards have not yet been deemed probable for accounting purposes. As described in Note 2 to the consolidated financial statements, the Company measures all stock options and restricted stock awards granted to employees, directors and non-employees based on the fair value on the date of the grant and recognizes compensation expense of those awards, net of estimated forfeitures, over the requisite vesting period. Expense on share-based awards for which vesting is performance or milestone based is recognized on a straight-line basis from the date when it is determined that the achievement of the milestone is probable to the vesting/milestone achievement date.

We identified the Company’s expense recognition for share-based awards that contain performance-based vesting provisions as a critical audit matter. The principal considerations for our determination that the expense recognition for share-based awards that contain performance-based vesting provision awards is a critical audit matter are the assumptions and risk of bias related to the conclusion of the probability of achievement of the performance conditions impacting vesting of the awards, or more specifically, the achievement of the business milestones, as defined in the grant agreements. Auditing management’s assumptions regarding the probability of achievement of the business milestones defined in the grant agreements was complex and required a high degree of auditor judgment and increased audit effort.

How We Addressed the Matter in Our Audit

Our audit procedures related to the expense recognition of share-based awards that contain performance-based vesting provisions included the following, among others, (i) obtaining and analyzing the grant agreements for outstanding share-based awards with performance-based vesting provisions, (ii) recalculated the total outstanding share-based awards with performance-based vesting provisions at year-end based upon cumulative grants, net of cumulative forfeitures, and (iii) discussed with management and evaluated their conclusions reached on the probability of achievement of the business milestones within the performance based awards by assessing the Company’s liquidity requirements needed to fund the achievement of the milestones outlined in the grant agreements and reviewed the Company’s public press releases through the issuance date of these financials.

Marcum LLP

We have served as the Company’s auditor since 2022.

Boston, MA

March 28, 2024

(PCAOB ID #688)