EMERYVILLE, Calif.—NovaBay Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NYSE American: NBY), a biopharmaceutical company that markets prescription Avenova lid and lash hygiene, reported Monday that its fourth-quarter sales are expected to slightly exceed $6 million, an increase of more than 49 percent over the prior-year period. Total revenue for the full year of 2017 is expected to be approximately $18 million, an increase of 51 percent, according to the company’s announcement. “We capped a highly productive year reporting record quarterly Avenova sales with 84 percent of those sales coming from our higher-margin, retail-pharmacy channel,” NovaBay chairman, president and chief executive officer Mark M. Sieczkarek said in the announcement.

“We are entering 2018 well positioned for continued growth with a product that physicians are using to manage the underlying cause of dry eye and blepharitis rather than simply addressing the symptoms.”

Sieczkarek also noted that the company’s new strategy is under way with “sales and marketing resources more precisely targeting select prescribers in higher reimbursement regions, allowing us to cost-effectively optimize the number of units per prescriber and at higher rates of reimbursement.”

NovaBay said it expects to report Q4 and year-end results for 2017 in March.