Thank you, Victor and good morning to all. I appreciate everyone being here and those choosing to listen later online. We're happy that you're able to join us to discuss our fourth quarter 2017 and record full-year 2017 financial results, along with some exciting business updates.
As you may know, Nanophase has hired a new CFO, Jaime Escobar, who will begin his employment on Monday. We are all excited to have him begin what we know will be a productive and successful career at Nanophase. In addition to having solid financial and accounting skills, Jaime has specific industry experience that will allow him to make an outsized contribution to our growth plan over the next several years. He has a strong background in manufacturing, costing and growth companies that we plan to leverage, throughout our business. As we expand our marketing and production of fully formulated finished sun-and skin-care products through our Solesence subsidiary, his specific experience in this area will be an excellent addition to our Company's skill set.
Given the timing of our new CFO's start, I am "flying solo" on this call. During the call, I'll be giving an update on our strategic approach to new business development, particularly within Solesence, along with updates on our existing business and of course, 2017 results.
Our 2017 total revenue was $12.5 million, a new all-time record. It was up by 16%, or about $1.7 million dollars from 2016. The increase was driven by strength in our coatings business, and some growth in our Personal Care active ingredients business. Throughout 2017, we continued to invest in product development for our Solesence suite of fully formulated skin care products. This investment partially reduced our earnings improvement, but also laid the groundwork for greater top-line, and bottom-line, growth in 2018 and forward.
Let me give a quick overview of financial results, then I'll follow with more discussion of our strategy, its execution, and our business development. Please remember that all financial information is stated in approximate terms.
Our fourth quarter revenue was $2.6 million in 2017, compared to $2.4 million in 2016. We had a reduction in our net loss quarter-over-quarter, which decreased the net loss to $200,000 in 2017, compared to $700,000 for the same period in 2016. This improvement was a function of higher revenue volume contributing more margin, coupled with a temporary reduction in R&D and SG&A expenses.
For the year, 2017 revenue increased to $12.5 million, achieving a new Nanophase record, up from $10.8 million in 2016. Our full year Adjusted EBITDA, which is essentially cash flow from operations, amounted to a negative $240,000 for the year, an improvement of $350,000 from 2016's number. This remains an excellent indication of our progress going forward.
As further evidence of the strength of our year, we achieved this growth while still making significant investments in research and development to build Solesence. We expect this to build a product base to help us achieve even more promising growth in the future. I'll expand upon this after I finish with the numbers.
As reported, we completed an equity transaction in December 2017, selling 2.5 million shares of unregistered stock for $1 million dollars. This reflected a price of $0.40/share, which we viewed as an efficient transaction in terms of total cost and dilutive impact. It was also completed in a manner that limited management distraction at this critical time in the growth of our Company.
After this transaction, we ended 2017 with about $2.0 million in cash and cash equivalents.
It is worth noting that the overwhelming reason for this funding was to avoid triggering the tech transfer that is embedded within the BASF agreement. Under this agreement, we are required to maintain a minimum of $1 million in cash at the end of each quarter, which is well beyond what is required to run this business. Given our expectation of continued growth, working capital is a bigger issue now than it ever has been, which creates "trigger risk" that, today, represents strategic risk. Growth is the solution to this issue and we are pursuing it aggressively.
Going forward, we will refer to our base business as the "Advanced Materials" business. The Advanced Materials business is composed of our personal care ingredients business and the materials businesses related to coatings, solar control, a diverse grouping of customers buying higher value specialties, and, of course, the polishing business where we have partnered with Eminess.
Our revenue growth in 2017 was driven by several factors, the leading of which was growth in our coatings business, which also resulted in greater customer diversification in 2017, a stabilizing factor we like to see. We expect our Advanced Materials business to continue to be solid going forward.
That said, the time is ripe for continuing our Personal Care and Solesence push. As we reported previously, our strategy is to streamline our focus toward Personal care and Solesence products to enable your Company to more rapidly grow.
In the Personal Care space, the market continues to demand more and better solutions incorporating minerals-based sunscreens, which is good for our Advanced Materials business, and, most importantly, our new Solesence subsidiary.
As a reminder, Solesence is our wholly owned subsidiary that develops, and manufacturers, fully formulated beauty products for Brands, using what we refer to as our Active Stress Defense technology. We created Solesence to maximize the value of our patented technology. All of our formulations will be created using minerals-based active ingredients as their backbone, which is what the consumers and dermatologists generally want, for best health benefits, but have been limited by many of the existing technologies in the market.
To support the growth of our Solesence subsidiary, and help our customers more effectively differentiate the products we develop for them, we continue to build externally derived in-vitro, ex-vivo and in-vivo clinical data that support proofs for product features and consumer claims.
Some of these key benefits we have proven are:
These claims for Solesence products help the Brands to provide evidence of "anti-aging" benefits, which continue to be one of the biggest drivers of demand from consumers. The Solesence customers typically sell the products we produce to consumers through specialty retail stores like Sephora or Ulta, through professional channels like spas and dermatologist offices, and through their websites and other online venues.
I suggest that any of you who have not been on our Solesence website in the past few months, visit us at: www.solesence.com. We continue to update and improve our site, which includes some videos, and an abundance of compelling information.
From a top-line perspective, in 2017, we enjoyed over $50,000 in Solesence related revenue. During 2018, we expect several products produced by Solesence to launch during Q2 and Q3, from both small and mid-sized brands. While we don't provide guidance, we can say that the revenue from these Solesence launches will be a meaningful multiple over 2017's.
While I am unable to disclose the exact details until after the products are launched, everybody should be able to start seeing these products in the marketplace over the next few months. I will be better able to share more with you, both on the products, and sales volumes, over the next few quarterly calls.
I believe that Nanophase and Solesence are in the right place at the right time, right now.
Although most of our investors listen to the webcast, or review the transcript, after the live call, I'd like to invite those participating in today's call to ask any questions you may have, or to share your comments.
Victor, would you please begin the Q&A session?
Q&A SESSION
Thank you, Victor. And thanks to all of you, who have taken the time to listen and to support Nanophase and Solesence.
These are exciting times for me, and for all of us at your Company. Internally, we're working hard to capitalize on a series of opportunities that exceed any I've seen in my history with Nanophase. I believe 2018 will be another year of firsts, and that you will begin to see external evidence of the transformation of our Company.
I'm looking forward to the opportunity to discuss the business with all of you again soon. Have a great day everybody.