Good morning, and welcome to the BioHarvest Sciences First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to Dory Kurowski of LifeSci Advisors. Please go ahead.
Greetings, and welcome to the BioHarvest Sciences First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. With us on the call this morning are Dr. Zaki Rakib, Chief Executive Officer, Bar Dichter, Chief Financial Officer, and Ilan Sobel, Director of the Board and Co-founder. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will be making projections and forward-looking statements on the call today regarding future events. Any statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are made pursuant to and within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We encourage you to review BioHarvest Sciences' SEC filings, including the company's most recent Form 6-K, which identify risks and uncertainties that may cause future actual results or events to differ materially.
These filings can be found on the company website as well as the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Please note that the forward-looking statements made during today's call speak only to the date they are made. BioHarvest Sciences undertakes no obligation to update them. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Dr. Zaki Rakib, Chief Executive Officer of BioHarvest Sciences.
Thank you, Dory, and thank you all for joining us this morning. BioHarvest Sciences is an industrial plant cell culture biotech company and a leader in Botanical Synthesis, which is a patented non-GMO platform technology that industrializes what nature otherwise does slowly and produces high-value plant-derived compounds and botanical compositions without growing the plant itself. Using proprietary plant cell biology, elicitation technologies, AI-driven development, and industrial-scale bioreactors, BioHarvest creates highly consistent, bioavailable, and patent-protected precision botanics or compounds possessing enhanced potency and purity compared to the original plant, along with the characteristics for commercial scalability. The platform has already demonstrated significant commercial validation through VINIA, BioHarvest's flagship blood flow health product, while also serving as the foundation of the company's rapidly expanding CDMO business across pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, nutrition, cosmetic, and fragrance markets.
With more than $100 million invested in its platform technology, 15 patents, multidisciplinary scientific capabilities as demonstrated in various clinical publications, and proven industrial scale manufacturing, BioHarvest has two businesses representing its dual growth engines. The D2C business that has already generated cumulative VINIA-based sales of close to $100 million and the CDMO business that is well-positioned as a strategic partner for next-generation plant-based innovation across the nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, cosmeceutical, and nutrition industries. These two businesses have different operating models that have compelled the operating changes we have recently communicated. The two-lens framework for managing the company is designed to optimize performance, capital allocation, and growth execution. As such, and as announced last quarter, we will be reporting revenues and operations with this two-lens approach. With this, Bar will provide a more detailed summary of our numbers for this quarter. Bar?
Thank you, Zaki, and good morning, everyone. I will provide you with a succinct review of our financial results. A full breakdown is available in our SEC filings and in the press release that crossed the wire before market open today. Please note that all figures are in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise. Revenues for the first quarter of 2026 increased 8% year-over-year to $8.5 million from $7.9 million in the same year ago quarter. Cost of revenue was $3.5 million compared to $3.3 million for the same period last year. Gross profit in the first quarter of 2026 is $5 million or 59% of total revenue as compared to $4.6 million or 58% of total revenue in the same year ago quarter.
Sales and marketing expenses totaled $4.1 million for the first quarter of 2026 compared to $3.7 million for the same period last year. General and administrative expenses totaled $1.4 million for the first quarter of 2026, aligned with the same period last year, but reduced on a percentage of revenue basis to 16% as compared to 18% in the same year ago quarter. Total operating expenses for the first quarter were $6.9 million, compared to $6.3 million for the same quarter last year. The increase in operating expenses was primarily due to increased marketing spend and higher expenses for the CDMO services division.
Net losses for the first quarter of 2026 totals $2.6 million, or $0.11 per basic and diluted share, compared to a net loss of $2.3 million or $0.13 per basic and diluted share for the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA loss, a non-IFRS measure, totaled $1.2 million, aligned with previous period last year. Under the two-lens approach, the adjusted EBITDA loss for the CDMO services division is $904,000, and $286,000 for the products division for the first quarter of 2026, compared to $953,000 and $235,000 in the same year-ago quarter, respectively. Cash and cash equivalents, together with bank deposit as of March 31st, 2026, totaled $20.2 million, compared to $3.4 million as of March 31st, 2025. I would like now to pass the call back to Zaki.
Thank you, Bar. As we announced on April 29th, in accordance with our new 2-lens approach, a leadership transition was put in place to optimize the performance of the two businesses. This transition reflects BioHarvest’s strategy of maximizing the value and efficiencies of its Botanical Synthesis platform. Prior to the transition, I was able to convert the R&D group from a one project at a time set up to a simultaneous multi-project development organization. The successes announced recently in all of our four projects that have been advancing in parallel are the fruits borne by this conversion. The consolidation of manufacturing, quality control, quality assurance, and regulatory affairs under a unified leadership as part of this transition will allow for the future production of multiple compounds simultaneously in the new facility scheduled to operate in the second half of 2027.
The need for that has become even clearer with the completion of stage I and now with the stage II contracts that we announced for both the fragrance and saffron projects. In my new role as CEO, I plan to utilize my decades of executive leadership experience and proven track record of growth performance to enable high shareholder value creation. Ilan's focus as Co-Founder and a member of the company's board of directors is on growing the D2C business. With his decades of experience in the fast-moving consumer goods, or FMCG sector, he will guide the implementation of high-yield marketing initiatives as well as entering the retail sphere for augmenting the online sales. Turning now to the CDMO business.
This past quarter in March, we announced completion of what we believe to be the first-ever successful stable cell culture development of a rare scent-producing plant used in the global fragrance industry as part of the multi-stage development program. This phase of the process is considered stage I, where a stable cell bank of a unique cell culture-based composition containing rare molecules was successfully produced. Notably, this particular scent is widely regarded as one of the most valuable fragrance raw materials in the world, with premium grades commanding prices exceeding tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram and demand growing across the Middle East, Asia, and luxury Western perfume markets. On Tuesday, we announced that our CDMO division signed a $1.2 million stage II contract as part of this development program.
Importantly, these milestones collectively bring BioHarvest closer to entering the growing premium fragrance segment, estimated to represent a $23 billion market opportunity within the global $58.9 billion scents and fragrances industry. Stage II means that we have crossed the tallest technological hurdle of this development. It also means that we can be ready for production in the second half of 2027, in tandem with the manufacturing capacity increase due to the commissioning of the second factory. Importantly, under the terms of the Stage II Agreement, BioHarvest retains 20% ownership of the compositions developed, creating a long-term royalty stream. The major principle of the partner firm, which is a prominent United Arab Emirates-based investment group, has said that they will be soon initiating a commercialization program to bring the product to market in the second half of 2027.
We expect this contract to serve as a catalyst for engaging additional potential customers in other future fragrance programs using BioHarvest's Botanical Synthesis platform. We believe that the unique scalable capability of our technology significantly expands the addressable market opportunity for our CDMO division and further strengthens our long-term royalty-driven growth strategy. Like our fragrance program, our collaboration with Saffron Tech is a prime example of our Botanical Synthesis platform can redefine the economics and accessibility of high-value compounds we call precision botanics that I explained earlier. Saffron Tech is a company pioneering advanced cultivation methods for saffron, one of the world's most valuable and health-promoting botanic. As you may know, it's among the most researched of plants with multiple health attributes to its active components such as crocin, picrocrocin, and safranal. We have partnered with them to develop and commercialize saffron-derived botanical compounds using BioHarvest's patented Botanical Synthesis platform.
Yesterday, we announced the completion of stage I of a multi-stage development program with Saffron Tech. As a result of the successful completion of stage I, BioHarvest has subsequently moved to stage II under this development agreement to generate enough material expected to support future sustainable pre-commercial testing of saffron. The successful completion of stage I, the most crucial stage for advancing the program, resulted in the creation of a stable saffron cell bank using BioHarvest's proprietary Botanical Synthesis platform. This means that the cell cultures we developed demonstrated the molecular profile of the key active ingredients naturally found in saffron that I just mentioned, including crocin, picrocrocin, and safranal. Compounds widely associated with saffron sensory characteristics as well as its scientifically researched health attributes. This is yet another important validation of the power and versatility of our Botanical Synthesis platform to create sustainable cell banks from scarce botanicals.
There are multiple programs we're excited about, as well as new prospects and additional advancement being made with other existing programs that we will be able to provide an update about in the coming months. The combination of existing projects and new ones expected to be added before the end of the year will generate a total revenue as previously guided between $4 million and $6 million. Despite quarterly fluctuations in CDMO revenue, total CDMO revenue is expected to remain as guided previously. Total CDMO 2026 revenue, including intercompany VINIA production, is expected to be between $12 million and $14 million. Total adjusted EBITDA loss for the year, as previously guided, is expected to be between $4 million and $5 million. Turning your attention to the D2C business.
Today, we have more than 90,000 active users of the VINIA brand, supported by recognition from a myriad of medical experts on the importance of arterial health and blood flow. We believe that we have a best-in-class dilation and blood flow delivery nutraceutical, which has the capacity to positively impact the health and wellness of millions of consumers. As you know, we have recently made great strides with our VINIA Blood Flow Hydration product, which has experienced rapid consumer adoption and high customer satisfaction ratings, which are the top in its category. To date, VINIA Blood Flow Hydration remains the number two contributor to incremental new customer sales with 20% of new customer revenue year-to-date on vinia.com and Amazon, ahead of all categories except for capsules.
With more than 100 consumer reviews on vinia.com and more than 60 reviews on Amazon for our key variety pack package, VINIA Blood Flow Hydration product has achieved an average rating of 4.7 out of 5, living up to its promise to consumers of delivering superior science, superior efficacy, and superior taste. Importantly as well, VINIA Blood Flow Hydration is gaining positive traction in new key scaling channels of TikTok and our health pros channel. In Q1, we started implementing significant changes in our marketing and sales approach, aiming at improving the profitability of the D2C business. While it has created a one-time decline in revenue in Q1 2026 compared to Q4 2025, we expect for the remainder of the year a quarter-over-quarter revenue growth with improved metrics such as the ratio of the lifetime value of the consumer or LTV over customer acquisition cost or CAC.
Revenue guidance for 2026 for the D2C business remains ranging from $38 million-$42 million with adjusted EBITDA profit of $0.5 million-$2 million. I would like now to turn the call over to Ilan to provide additional elaboration on Q1 outcomes related to our D2C business and the 2026 marketing programs that are influencing our outlook for healthy revenue growth in this division over the next few quarters. Ilan?
Thank you, Zaki. VINIA delivered modest year-over-year revenue growth in the first quarter. Whilst we are not satisfied with the level of growth delivered in the quarter, we believe that the quarter must be understood in the context of the deliberate steps we took to begin resetting and optimizing our direct-to-consumer growth engine. Q1 was a deliberate period in which we took important actions to better understand, refine, and optimize our marketing engine for stronger and more efficient growth over the balance of the year.
In January and February, we undertook a comprehensive review of our marketing mix with a clear objective: reduce Customer Acquisition Cost, improve conversion, and better understand the true incremental contribution of our core acquisition channels, including TV, Meta, and YouTube. To do this properly, we needed to test channel performance in a disciplined way, including reducing or pausing spend across specific channels during defined time periods.
As expected, this significantly reduced overall marketing investment in the first two months of the quarter, which directly impacted near-term revenue growth. In March, we began scaling investment again behind a revised marketing mix. This included a strategic reduction in our reliance on TV and a greater shift toward digital channels, which better align with where we are taking the VINIA portfolio, particularly with the launch and scaling of VINIA Blood Flow Hydration, our electrolyte product designed to reach a broader and younger consumer base. Q2 will be an important quarter of continued testing, learning, and refinement as we continue to aggressively optimize every element of the marketing mix, including channel allocation, creative performance, funnel conversion, our offer structure, media efficiency, and our customer retention strategy.
Our focus is not simply to spend more, but to spend better, as well as to build a more scalable, more diversified customer acquisition engine. As a result, we expect Q2 results to improve versus Q1. However, we believe the full impact of these actions, including the refined marketing mix, new product launches, channel expansion initiatives, and positive impact of VINIA Blood Flow Hydration seasonality will be most meaningfully reflected in the second half of the year. On a personal level, as I move into my new role within the company, I remain fully focused on working closely with our highly talented marketing and sales team to deliver the guidance we have provided, while also architecting the next phase of the VINIA Growth Blueprint, one that we believe can accelerate the brand towards $100 million in annual revenue over the next three years.
In summary, Q1 was a reset quarter for VINIA. Q2 will be an important quarter of further testing and optimization, and we expect to see improved results versus Q1. However, we believe the full benefit of the actions we described will be felt in the second half of the year. We believe the actions we are taking are the right ones, and that they position VINIA for stronger, more efficient, and more diversified growth going forward while forming the foundation for our ambition to build VINIA into a $100 million revenue brand over the next three years. Now I'll turn the call back over to Zaki.
Thank you, Ilan. Before turning to Q&A, I just want to add how invigorated I am after returning from the Vitafoods Europe Conference in Barcelona. This conference brought together approximately 1,800 exhibitors spanning functional foods, nutraceuticals, ingredient suppliers, finished product companies, and CDMOs. Our participation was strategically important since it provided direct access to many of the world's leading nutraceutical, functional ingredient, and consumer health companies actively seeking next generation innovation partners. At the conference, we conducted approximately 30 highly meaningful meetings over three days with prospective partners and customers. The consistent message we heard and what was visibly evident across the exhibition floor was that much of the industry is currently offering highly similar products and formulations, resulting in an increasing urgency among companies to find genuine innovation and meaningful differentiation.
In that context, BioHarvest Sciences proprietary Botanical Synthesis platform and CDMO business model were repeatedly viewed as a highly differentiated and compelling proposition capable of introducing entirely new plant-based compositions, improved efficacy profiles, sustainability advantages, and defensible innovation into the marketplace. Overall, the conference significantly reinforced our confidence in the growth potential and strategic positioning of BioHarvest Sciences CDMO business. At Vitafoods, I had the pleasure of having with me our new Head of Business Development, Mrs. Nedira Salzman-Frenkel, who started with us in March. We're very excited to have her with us and want to stress that her appointment underscores our efforts to support BioHarvest Sciences as a true strategic partner in collaborative development versus simply a service provider. We plan to participate in similar subsequent events like the upcoming BIO US convention being held in San Diego in June.
In summary, I'm excited about the growth opportunities that lie ahead with BioHarvest striving for optimum execution in both businesses for the creation of significant shareholder value. With that, I'd like to open the floor to questions. Operator?
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Sameer Joshi with H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hey, good morning, good afternoon, Zaki , Bar, and Ilan . Thanks for taking my questions. Zaki , congratulations on your new role, and I'm sure Ilan will be around. My first question is about the size of the market that the saffron opportunity affords you. It seems like it is a multi-billion dollar market, and I just wanted to see what kind of entry you are going to get. What is the actual addressable market that you can supply? Just metrics on the market would be good.
Thanks, Sameer Joshi, actually, right? Maybe I'll take the opportunity to share something with everyone on the call and I'll address your questions directly. You know, a couple of days ago, I had the opportunity to smell success and see success. I smelled the fragrance that we are developing and for which we've made the announcement, and I also saw the saffron with the beautiful color of that substance. Really, I was very encouraged, and I just wanna talk about it today, and then your question is really enabling me to discuss the saffron in particular because like you said, it's a multi-billion dollars market.
The initial focus would be on the dietary supplement segment, basically addressing health-related indications, from a nutraceutical perspective, which is, as you know, is a faster to market. The arrangement we have with Saffron Tech would allow for us to be actually becoming an integral part of bringing it to market. In a way, we would have more control over the speed at which we bring it or the regulatory approach to it, as well as targeting which indication we should go after initially. One of the things about saffron, as you know, is really addresses a lot of areas, cognition, ADHD, PTSD, among other things.
What we're doing now is, as we analyze the results, we're looking for the possibility of having multiple compositions, Because as you know, there are, and I mentioned that in my speech earlier about the three major ingredients. Interesting enough, the ratio between these ingredients may target, depends on which ratio, you could target one indication better than the other. We're gonna put everything into our AI models to try to come up with which combination we think fits better to which market. In terms of time to market, and efforts, we expect to soon be done with stage II so that we can have enough samples, so we start doing some possible trials.
My goal is to start manufacturing the product the second half of next year in tandem with the factory that we're building, as you probably know. As such, we think towards the end of next year, we should be starting marketing and selling the product as a dietary supplement, most likely to be in the form of a capsule. You may have heard Ilan, and he may echo that as well, that we're looking at possibly also the combination of saffron and VINIA because VINIA, it's kind of an adjuvant basically to every dietary supplement you can think of because of its ability to conduct better the substance into your bloodstream. That's kind of the approach we have and the timeframe that we have in mind. I will probably need another quarter before I can tell you which indication we're likely to be focusing on.
Understood. You know, this was helpful and, the saffron target is really a well-chosen target. Congrats on that.
Thank you.
Touching on the CDMO pipeline, so to speak, I know you gave a outlook of around $12 million-$14 million, and there will be some of it, a meaningful portion from intercompany VINIA. The rest of that outlook, does it include two or three or four additional, sort of relationships that you would be announcing between now and the end of the year?
The answer is yes. We on purpose segregate between the third party, call it, or revenue, which is service for 2026. It's all service, all development, right? The production, which is internally right now, and hopefully in 2027, we're gonna produce not just VINIA, but other substances. In 2026, we guided for $4 million-$6 million stemming from some of the projects as we advance them and then we can recognize more revenue related to the products that we have, and we know that we're doing four molecules right now in simultaneously. At least 3-4 additional projects, allow me to call them projects, and these will be across the next three quarters, including this quarter. Of course, we'll announce them as soon as we sign the appropriate agreement.
Our pipeline now calls for a minimum of 3-4 new projects that will go in. Interesting enough, some of them might be from an existing substance. You know, part of the assets of the CDMO, and I think I'll probably need to do better work to clarify it, there are molecules that we are owned by the CDMO part of the business that are in a more advanced stage. Basically more of a de-risking. As you know, stage I in our development with the Botanical Synthesis process is a stage with a little riskier. By bringing to the market or bringing to the customers something that has already been de-risked, we can command higher prices to start with and of course, time to market would be shorter. I mean, hopefully in 2028 I should be able to produce at least four different substances in our new factory.
Sounds really good. Thanks for that color, Zaki. Just one more question on B2C actually. Ilan, maybe you can remind us what is in the pipeline of new product development, and should we expect anything over the next 12 to 18 months to hit the market?
Thank you, Sameer. When it comes to the DTC business and from a new product perspective, I first wanna just talk about our VINIA Blood Flow Hydration product, which is still a new product, and we've seen really significant success. We're getting on to delivering $1 million in sales of the product since we launched the product in late November. I think that's, you know, quite a significant achievement. We should get to that by the end of May. It's always good to have your first $1 million of a product, that's pretty quick and the ramp-up's going really well. The consumer feedback is really overwhelming. The reviews are 4.7 out of 5, from now, you know, close to 160, 170 verified reviews.
Feedback on a consumer level regarding the efficacy and regarding the taste is super strong, and we're very, very bullish about VINIA Blood Flow Hydration, and we continue to put more spend behind it and broadening the channels of distribution. We've opened up TikTok. Again, great feedback from TikTok, and we're ramping up quickly in TikTok. Our Amazon business is also ramping up. It's a significant, you know, we're talking multi-billion-dollar category just on Amazon. Our rankings are improving day by day on Amazon. What's amazing about this product, which we don't have in the rest of our business, is there's a seasonality curve.
As we now are moving into May, June, July, August, September, this is when it starts to obviously get extremely hot in the U.S., and we literally see significant benefits that we will be able to enjoy as we have the growth of the brand plus the seasonality impact, which is gonna significantly drive the second half of the year for us. Very, very encouraging on Blood Flow hydration. I think it's all anchored in the fact that we have the best nutrient delivery system as a result of our VINIA Blood Flow dilation and delivery system. I say that very, very purposefully. We're now coining the literally the machine that VINIA puts inside your body, the VINIA Blood Flow dilation and delivery system.
Ultimately, by dilating your arteries, more blood flow, where in the case of our electrolytes product, we're delivering the electrolytes and fluids faster and deeper to all of your cells, and that's why we're getting the feedback from consumers to say, "Wow, efficacy, this is amazing." Obviously, we always are very focused on delivering superior taste, which is anchored in all the consumer research we do before bringing products to market. As we look at new products coming to the marketplace, we will again double down and focus on Blood Flow Hydration. Secondly, we will be bringing an additional chew product to the marketplace. We have our 2X double chew in the market targeting elite athletes, which is going very, very well. Now we're bringing a single chew into the marketplace.
I'm sure you've seen the chew category is growing like, is growing significantly as a, as its, fair share representation increases of the total supplements, pie. That we will bring into the marketplace in the 3rd quarter. As I said in the last earnings call, you know, we are targeting a number of, you know, multi-billion dollar categories that we will leverage our VINIA Blood Flow dilation and delivery system on to be able to really deliver a superior efficacy and superior taste in these categories. I talked about some of those categories on the last earnings call. We're now doing a lot of product development, and towards the back end of the year or early next year, we will be bringing, one of these, you know, breakthrough products to the marketplace.
Understood. Thanks for that color, Ilan. As Zaki also highlighted, the VINIA is a adjuvant and can be combined with even saffron when that product comes online. Looking forward to that. May I squeeze one more on the financials? I think you have hired some new business development persons or team for CDMO. Should we expect the SG&A or marketing expenses to slightly increase as the next three quarters unfold?
The answer is no. No, that's been.
Just modest.
That's no, that's a very modest increase as a result of hiring. In fact, I did have last year. It's actually a replacement of someone that I had last year. It's actually not even a new additional.
Okay
Person in overall in the budget. No. I mean, for purpose of what we're trying to do this year, there will be no increase in the marketing costs for the CDMO.
Understood. Good. Thanks for taking my questions. Congratulations on all the progress, and good luck.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Nicholas Sherwood with Maxim Group. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for answering my question. You know, kind of looking at the CDMO business, how are you evaluating your pipeline of opportunities on who you wanna add? You know, I know right now it's like you have an agreement with a food ingredients company with Tate & Lyle. There's a pharmaceutical company, there's a saffron, and then there's the fragrance company. Are you looking for, you know, trying to keep things broad and, you know, make sure that you're not putting everything into one basket, you know, looking at these pipeline of opportunities? You know, how should we think about your thought process?
It's a great question, and thank you for asking because, I mean, one of the advantages of BioHarvest technology, fundamentally the Botanical Synthesis, it's agnostic to which industry really. We can serve pharma, nutraceutical, cosmeceutical, you know, fragrances as well as nutrition. Each one has its own characteristics. For example, nutrition would be the one with the largest volume, lower margins. We don't expect to be active too much in the nutrition space just because capacity constraints until the next factory coming to be commissioned. We're happy with what we do now with the Tate & Lyle, you know, in terms of the molecule we're developing, in terms of where it is right now in the development stage, and when we can bring it to market and build the volume.
I'd say our sweetest spots are in the nutraceutical and the area of fragrances. Really, this breakthrough in fragrance is going to create an increased pipeline in that area. Those are interesting because on the nutraceutical, it's kind of mid volume, really good margins and speed to market, meaning those don't require long cycles of regulatory approvals to bring to market. That shrinks, once we're crossing phase II, trials can be conducted, so the cycle is shorter. The fragrances is even shorter from a regulatory, and they bring in great margins. Those are the spots where I believe the pipeline is converging faster. We are a little more selective.
We're trying to gravitate our attention to those two markets. Then on pharma, there is a lot of interest. We are trying to be very selective just because again, where we are in terms of capacity on development, as well as where we think the pharma opportunities in terms of manufacturing. Now, we're not saying no to pharma, but we're a little bit more selective in timing of bringing them in. What you will see more likely in the next few quarters would be more nutraceutical and call it cosmetics in general. Then progress that we would be making in the area of nutrition with Tate & Lyle, you'll be hearing more about it in the next couple of quarters.
Okay. Kind of a follow-up question on the cosmetics, scent agreements. You know, do you think you'd be doing more of these through your current partner, and then they would potentially be, you know, along with you selling the product onto, you know, whether it be a house or do you think you'll be kind of going directly to some of these larger, you know, brands that are creating, you know, whether it be like a perfume or, you know, a scent and a lotion? You know, like, how should we kind of think about?
So the current fragrance that we're talking about has multiple applications. It's a very big market. I think we've sized it in one of those news releases in billions of dollars. Some of it is serving as an incense, and that's billions of dollars in that market, as well as ingredients for the fragrance market. It's really not just what people buy in the store in terms of spray or perfume. It's more than perfume. The partner that we have has an approach of more likely B2B, and then, you know, some lined up companies that would be buying what we produce.
As you know, we're at 80/20, so 80% is owned by the partner, 20% is owned by BioHarvest, which will increase our stream of revenue. I believe that this fragrance can start getting into the market in the second half of next year. I don't think we're gonna have a lot of capacity initially, requirement to support that effort because in the sampling, in the market, et cetera.
You'd see a mix of businesses that will be taking the raw material that we'll provide and then integrate it, either selling it directly for incense purpose or as an ingredient into the fragrance stream, like creating an oil out of what we produce to serve the fragrance industry top brands that are looking into this particular fragrance ingredient, and name it, and they're all looking into that particular source. Unfortunately, I will not at liberty yet to disclose the name of that ingredient, but it's a well-sold ingredient, and it's part of the luxury fragrance and, you know, hitting the Western market recently with many designers, major designers basically adding it to the line of fragrance products.
Understood. Thank you for that, gentlemen. My last question is, you know, I know that it was presented as a, you know, very long-term opportunity, you know, a couple of years out. What sort of interest have you seen in the plant-based exosome extraction, you know, breakthrough that you announced last year? Just kind of give us as many details as you can on, you know, that, how that's developed.
A great question. It's actually not so much of long term. This is part of the CDMO assets. We are in the midst of testing now quantitatively, the exosomes that we have. We do produce exosomes. Not only do we produce exosomes, but we produce them at commercial quantities in our bioreactors. Now we're in the process of characterization of the content of those exosomes to decide which markets they best serve. Exosomes are not, you know, as we study better what they can do. By the way, I mean, for plant-based exosomes, we need to call them something different. They're called extracellular vesicles. Those extracellular vesicles and the content that they will have may target even dietary supplements.
We can decide for the case of VINIA, do we wanna double down and have additional dietary supplement that are based on red grape but with various ingredient. I think we did talk about viniferin as one of the ingredients that is very interesting and/or to go after the topical markets with those exosomes 'cause, you know, exosome have the advantage of better penetration of the skin, just because of their size, about one over 100th of a cell size. We're weighing our opportunity based on the results, and hopefully in next quarter, by this time that we do our earning release, I'll be able to expand on the exosomes from a quantitative market.
We're also looking at we're now already looking at the downstream processes. You know, our exosomes are kind of a benefit. We're getting them as gravy out of the media, right? When we dry our material, we have a lot of media left that normally we throw. Now we can use it further downstream. So for an industrial process, we need to do some additional downstream work that we're assessing now. We certainly would be able to speak about it next quarter more from a quantitative standpoint of the what does it mean, what would a 1 mg of that material contain in terms of viniferin, and then talk more about when can we bring this to market and what would be the best vehicle to do that.
I would just add that it's a very important asset that the CDMO has. Now when we engage with customers in this area who are starting a project with us, they have ability to be able to develop a unique molecule at a cellular level. With that, they also have the potential of developing one of these extracellular vesicles in addition. It's like a 1 + 1, which makes our CDMO proposition to customers extremely compelling when you think about the initial stage I costs and the ability to really drive significant value for our customers.
Yeah. I'm looking forward to hearing more. Thank you for answering all my questions. I'll return to the queue.
Your next question comes from the line of Matt Hewitt with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Matt, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for the update. Regarding the Barcelona conference, it sounds like you had some really active dialogue. How quickly would it be before you start to see some contracts come out of that type of an event? I'm just trying to think. You've got 3-4 more potential CDMO contracts before the end of the year. Is that Barcelona conference, does that create maybe a second tier for early next year? I'm just not sure how quickly those types of conversations turned into actual business.
Actually, in terms of, there are two elements to take into consideration here. My capacity of development, although I have increased it dramatically, but still not I can't run 20 projects simultaneously yet. I now have the ability to select which projects are better to bring in this quarter, next quarter, and the one after, right? If we look at 3-4 , which I have in the bucket, let's say, for the remainder of the year, I may reorder them in a way where one of the 3-4 would be the one from Barcelona. Actually, you'd be surprised that there's a faster conversion of the through the Barcelona meetings as to the urgency of people want to differentiate themselves.
I would say probably one of those Barcelona opportunities would be with one of the already pre-developed molecule that we have. As you know, we have a series of molecules that we've already had developed, that would be a faster process, that's why I can sign those deals a little faster because I have de-risked, especially the first stage, which is the cell bank. I would say Barcelona contributes one out of those four, the rest are part of the pipeline that exists. The others from Barcelona can be put into the pipeline that can start creating more projects into 2027 and beyond.
Got it. Maybe a question regarding the new marketing strategy. Given that, you know, January, February, you were kind of tweaking some of the go-to-market strategy there. March, you went, you know, kind of initiated the new strategy. What are some of the initial feedbacks or metrics that you were tracking in March, and how does that shape up for the rest of the year? Thank you.
Ilan?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Matt. When we looked and we stepped back and we looked at, you know, what the mission was for the team, we were very, you know, focused on driving the metric of cost of acquisition as a ratio to lifetime value. This is really a critical metric that is so important in the business. If you look at the recent acquisition of Grüns by Unilever for $1.2 billion. Happened the last four weeks. You have a ratio of lifetime value to cost of acquisition of 3:1 . This is like the sweet spot. We're doing pretty good as it relates to this, but we've got a little bit to go to be able to get into the zone where we wanna be best in class.
The work that we're really trying to do now is all anchored in this mission of getting that ratio right and ultimately moving our business to a best in class business, as a way to move from 90,000 customers to 500,000 customers and from, let's say, $35 million of revenue with the ambition to get north of 100 million. Matt, not to do it, you know actually two days ago, so today's Thursday, so on Tuesday was our five-year anniversary of entering into the U.S. business. In the five years, you know, we built a significant business, number one resveratrol polyphenol brand in the U.S. We don't wanna take, for the next milestone, which is that 100 million, we don't want it to take another five years. No ways.
That's part of me stepping into this role to build the architecture and the blueprint to be able to go from $35 million - $100 million fast. Really, really fast. That really is the kind of the ultimate key metric. In doing that, obviously, we're working on improving our cost of acquisition, which is based on a number of critical areas from really focusing on specific personas, which we believe are the hero personas that are most relevant to our brand. It's also we're working on improving our product messaging, which translates into better creative. You're gonna see us coming out with a much stronger offer in the marketplace to improve conversion and then improving the critical flows of email signups, post-purchase flows and really optimizing our broader ability to retain customers.
We have a very high retention levels, but we wanna do better. We're unleashing now. We did some great test and learn in January, February. We saw encouraging results as we moved into March and April, and now we're getting ready for phase II, which will be implemented in the first of June, where there will be even more fundamental changes that we're making, not just in the marketing mix, but actually in what hits the consumer, which I'm really excited about, and we believe will have significant impact on our overall conversion.
Got it. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Sean McGowan with Roth Capital Partners. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hello, everybody. A couple of financial questions. Can you talk a little bit about the or remind us of the financial impact of the shift from stage I to stage II for not just Saffron Tech, but for, you know, any of those businesses? You know, what happens financially there?
Phase I normally is in the vicinity in terms of contract size of half a million dollars. Entering phase II is normally a contract between $1 million and $1.5 million, depends on the molecule. Then there's another $1 million to $1.5 million in stage III. Overall, we're doing our best to try to shrink development within 24 months from zero to get finalized stage III. When you finish stage III, you're basically ready to go into production. That's how the way you should be looking at it, phase II, $1 million to $1.5 million, phase III, $1 million to $1.5 million .
What happens to expenses during that transition?
When completing phase II, meaning I have biomass that not only validates the proposition, but enough to be able to let the customer do whatever trials, perception trials, clinical trials, whatever pre-commercial trials, that would be yet one more big step towards de-risking the proposition. Normally, stage I is the riskiest. We haven't seen anything in the past that shows that stage II, if you have stage I, if you cross stage I, you can do stage II. Then you have the final. End of stage II, you know what the final product is. You know exactly what the COA is going to be. You know what the cost structure is, and you know the efficacy because you can start sampling, testing, et cetera.
We're looking at the difference between having milligrams or grams and having a few kilograms at the end of stage II. And normally people making their mind about the move from So, for example, you see that between completion and stage I and signing an agreement on stage II, sometimes it's a matter of a few weeks. I expect between stage II and stage III, maybe a little longer, maybe a month or two, or maybe even three months lag between the two. What the good news is, we're able, before the end of a stage, we're able to provide some material so people can start doing some tests and not necessarily waiting until the end. What we optimally is we wanna make sure that people can move as fast as possible between one stage and another.
Thank you. That's very helpful. Shifting gears for a second, can you give us an update on the status of the development of the new plant, both from an operational standpoint as well as a financial standpoint?
The new manufacturing facility you're talking about, Sean?
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. We are looking at starting to produce in the second half of next year, which means that I still will run in parallel the two facilities. Ultimately, the goal is down the road because the new facility is a more efficient facility. Hopefully, you're gonna see that in terms of gross margin, et cetera. Sometime in 2028, we're looking at reducing capacity in the first facility in favor of increasing capacity in the second facility. We're starting to add capacity in the second half above what we have in the 1st one in the second half of next year.
Okay. In terms of cash flow and investment, I thought there'd be more investment reflected in the cash flow as well.
We're looking at what we have in our coffers, and we believe we have sufficient funds. We're doing some prioritization and trying to live within what we currently have. We're optimizing a few areas and so that what we have can suffice to be to complete at least the first step required to start producing. Now, we may want to do additional things down the road that may require more capital, and then we'll see where we are in terms of, you know, earnings that we produce and the speed at which we need more capacity. My feeling is that the CDMO may actually be the contributor to try to get additional capital towards the second half of next year because of the faster requirement for capacity.
That would, to me, would be good news, and that would be something that we would be able to finance in different ways. 'Cause remember, CDMO manufacturing would be done under contracts. It's not a D2C situation, but it would be done under contract. Ilan, do you?
Yeah. Sean, I just wanted to add that, you know, the focus of the team now, and this is something that Zaki's, you know, spending a lot of time getting into, is we're now finalizing the detailed engineering design drawings. I mean, you can imagine it's a very serious undertaking that we are working through here to build this facility. This is the next generation of our technology.
New layers of technology. The engineering work and the technical design, detailed technical design work is paramount. We need to get it right, and that's why you're not seeing yet any of the long lead items from a CapEx perspective, because we're now working through making some of those tough decisions as it relates to final technologies, final suppliers for specific technologies. There's a lot of testing that's going on across the world with different types of technology that we're looking at bringing into the facility from a harvesting perspective, as well as drying, etc. You should start to see that CapEx build in the second quarter and third quarter of this year.
Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. My final quick question maybe for Bar is, when will the SEC filing hit? 'Cause I don't see it yet in.
I-
On the website or on the SEC.
It should be out very soon.
Okay. Thank you very much. Best of luck.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sean.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Dr. Zaki Rakib for closing remarks.
I'm gonna say what I said earlier in the call. I smelled success, I saw success, and I hope I was able to speak about success. I'm really feeling strong confidence, high confidence in the prospects of the business on both segments. The latest success in CDMO have not only technological meanings but financial meanings. Hopefully, we'll roll those soon with models that will be able to explain to you guys and to the market what they mean and when manufacturing starts kicking in, etc. Once again, I wanna thank everyone here and looking forward to our next earning in August, I guess.
Yeah, August 14th.
Yeah. Thanks, everyone. Enjoy the rest of the day.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.