Hello, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's virtual non-deal roadshow. My name is Noella Alexander-Young, virtual event moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we wanna thank everyone in Los Angeles and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of ChromaDex trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol CDXC. Presenting today is Rob Fried, Chief Executive Officer, and joining us for the Q&A is James Lee, Interim Chief Financial Officer, and Wesley Yu, Vice President of Finance. The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A session, for which you can participate using the chat box in the top right-hand corner of your screen. With that being said, I will now hand the floor over to Rob.
Thank you, Noella and Renmark. Hello, everybody. Many of you I know have seen our presentations before. If that's the case, welcome back. It's nice to be speaking with you again. I look forward to hearing your questions at the end, and to those that are new, welcome. We're excited to present to you this company, ChromaDex. We think we're in a very interesting place right now, and we think you've chosen a very good time to learn about us. I'm gonna go through this presentation as though you're unfamiliar with the company. Starting with this: ChromaDex is an NAD company. We are the world's leading NAD company with the authority on NAD. We have the best scientists, the most intellectual property, the most research, the best products, and the deepest portfolio of NAD precursors.
Recently, NAD, which, by the way, stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, has been gaining a great deal of popularity. These are articles just over the last maybe month, and it's hitting many verticals. Obviously, we sell a dietary supplement, but it's starting to gain popularity in other areas. Popularity in IV and injection, popularity in cosmetics, and popularity in pharmaceuticals and therapeutics. ChromaDex intends to participate in all of those verticals. So one of the things that has been confusing to some investors is because the base of our business is essentially, at this point, ingredient sales or dietary supplement sales, they don't quite know how to analyze the business. They just say: "Well, it's a consumer product company. This is your growth rate. This is your earnings.
We'll give you this multiple, compare it to these other comps, and this is what you're worth," but what they don't understand is that ChromaDex has a very deep patent portfolio. It's now over a hundred patents, licensed or issued, and we've been investing our R&D money in all of these verticals, not just dietary supplements, and for that work, we have not yet been given the credit, but that is changing quickly because we have made announcements over the last few months in the pharmaceutical space and in the IV injectable space, and people are starting to understand what we have been doing for many years because it is only beginning to take shape. What the heck is NAD?
NAD is a coenzyme that's found in all living cells, plant and animal, and is vital to all important metabolic processes, notably energy metabolism and cell repair when the cell is damaged. The Krebs cycle, which many of us learned about in biology, is the process by which mitochondria, organelles inside cells, convert nutrients from food and oxygen from air into energy. That energy is then transported via ATP molecules to the rest of the cell. We have shown that elevating NAD levels with our product, Tru Niagen, increases mitochondrial biogenesis. That's very, very important. You have more mitochondria when you take Tru Niagen, but you also have a higher yield from those mitochondria. But also, you increase PARP functionality. These are enzymes inside the cells that identify when there's a gene mutation or damage, and then heals that mutation or damage.
This is true not just for gene mutations. If the cell is injured, if there's inflammation or oxidative stress, NAD is essential in repairing that damage, reducing that inflammation. We now have seven peer-reviewed, published clinical studies that show that Niagen decreases inflammation in brain cells, in heart cells, in muscle cells. NAD, in essence, is a, is the core enzyme for life. The problem with it is that it declines with age. It also declines when the cell is under metabolic stress. So what we have created is a way to very, very safely elevate NAD levels in damaged cells. As I said before, ChromaDex's business plan is not just dietary supplements. We intend to pursue multiple verticals, which will benefit from NAD elevation. What we've done thus far, is we've created a consumer product called Tru Niagen.
We also supply Niagen as an ingredient to a handful selected group of dietary supplement brands. What we announced a couple of months ago is that four years of work have yielded success in our ability to get into a second vertical, that being the IV and injectable vertical of Niagen. Starting actually this week, Niagen, we call it Niagen Plus, is available at certain clinics around the country that provide IV infusions or injections. This is a very rapidly growing field, where people get IVs. Sometimes they get them at home, sometimes they go into clinics. People get injectable products. The peptide injectable business has grown and is popular, especially of late with Ozempic. Many of the people who like to inject with these GLP-1s wanna be thinner, also want to be younger.
We think Niagen helps them to accomplish that, so we think Niagen Plus, the IV injectables, has a significant upside potential as a business vertical. Also, many of these people who get GLP-1 injections experience a loss of energy. They feel lethargy, fatigue. Obviously, increase in mitochondrial biogenesis, increasing ATP yield, Niagen is a good complementary product for that. So we think that not only is there big upside for Tru Niagen as a consumer product, we also think there's significant upside for Niagen Plus, IV and injectable. And what we have also recently announced is that we received orphan drug designation for the disease ataxia, AT, a form of ataxia that we have been researching, and rare pediatric designation, and we are pursuing drug approval for ataxia.
That is interesting because another form of ataxia, called Friedreich's ataxia, has been pursued by several companies, one of whom got a drug approved in 2023 and sold to Biogen for $7 billion. Another is a public company called Larimar, which is a conventional biotech company, also pursuing orphan drug designation for Friedreich's ataxia. They have no revenue. They lose something like $14 million a quarter. They have a market cap of $500 million-$600 million just for that, and that's one piece of the ChromaDex business plan. We also have Parkinson's disease. We understand that Parkinson's disease is a mitochondrial disorder in the brain, and we have published two early-stage studies on Parkinson's. We understand the mechanisms of action of Niagen and of Parkinson's.
And Dr. Tzoulis out of Norway, funded by the Norwegian government, is now three and a half years into a four-year study on Niagen for 400 Parkinson's participants. This is a phase III clinical study. 200 of them receive a placebo, 200 receive one gram of Niagen a day for a year. The last participant was enrolled on May first, so that study will be completed May first of 2025. We think that is a very, very significant development for this company. We understand why Niagen might work for Parkinson's patients, so we are extremely hopeful. Again, if we were a pure biotech company that was that far along on Parkinson's research, would the market cap be $250 million?
That's aside from the fact that we are a cash flow break-even, if slightly positive, business on Tru Niagen alone, and also have the Niagen Plus vertical. In the future, we intend to investigate the skin care market. One of the leading ingredients in the skin care business is something called niacinamide, which is sort of an inferior form of Niagen. There are some issues that need to be addressed involving stability in liquid or when there's exposure to water, and we are working on that. We think that the skin care market is also a vertical that has significant upside for ChromaDex as a company. What is ChromaDex? Is it a consumer product company? Is it a biotech company? Is it an ingredient company? We think we're an anti-aging longevity company that is focused on NAD.
We think that NAD itself is going to be very, very, very large, and significant companies in many different industries will one day wake up and say, "We need to be in the NAD space." And when they do, they will find out that there is one company that from day one has done it the right way, created intellectual property, protected the intellectual property, done the studies, done the research, developed the products, and has a significant trustworthy brand. We've done this work with the advice of some excellent scientists. I am not a scientist, but I rely on the work of some very brilliant scientists... both internally at the company and through the scientific advisory board. Everybody here is doing actual work on Niagen. None of them are just name only.
Everyone here is doing or has done, or will soon be doing research on Niagen, either in the mitochondrial field or in the aging field or cancer. Rudy Tanzi has two studies, including a long COVID study, which we hope to see results on shortly. Bruce German is world's leading expert on milk. It turns out that oocytes, eggs, egg cells, have NAD as well, and we have significant reason to believe that by elevating NAD levels in egg cells, we can prolong the fertility clock. One thing that is interesting and unique about ChromaDex, as I mentioned a minute ago, Norway is funding that phase III clinical study on Parkinson's.
Because the ingredients, and it's not just Niagen, but it's mostly Niagen, that we have are so appealing to researchers around the world, that many have reached out to us and asked us if they, at their expense, could do research on our ingredient, if we would supply the ingredient, and generally, there's a sharing of the intellectual property that might result. That's how Parkinson's study happened in Norway. Just to give you some perspective, if you're a company with a patent portfolio around a certain ingredient, and you get a phone call like that, that's a great phone call. Because if the results are positive, your ingredient is that much better, and there's that much more interest in your ingredient. If it happens five or 10x , you have a blockbuster ingredient. ChromaDex has signed over 275 of those collaborative agreements.
This is quite unprecedented, and it's from some of the best researchers and research institutions on the planet. The company itself, as I say, is cashflow, break even, slightly positive. In the last 12 months, we've achieved over $85.5 million of revenue, which is paying our bills. It's very minor net loss. Last quarter, we lost $15,000. We've been adjusted EBITDA positive over the last year and a half, and we've been operating cash flow positive. We have no debt, we have no warrants, and we have about $28 million in cash. We operate the company quite conservatively. We pay our bills.
We have no plans to raise money for ChromaDex as a corporation, and yet we have these three or four shots on goal between Parkinson's, the Niagen Plus business, the injection business, ataxia, and the Tru Niagen brand itself, all of which could hit a tipping point and create significant shareholder value, all while we are maintaining a positive cash flow position, so the question, how many quarters left of cash do you have, is not relevant to this company, but the upside associated with that is. Just quickly running through these individual verticals. As I say, vertical one is the consumer product, Tru Niagen. We sell it. It's, we think, the best, certainly one of the best, dietary supplement products in the world that's on the market. It's the only thing we sell.
It's not like we're a dietary supplement company that has a whole line of dietary supplements. We don't sell magnesium or vitamin D or CoQ10 or vitamin C. We basically just sell Niagen. And Niagen works. A study came out at University of Pennsylvania last month that showed one dose of Tru Niagen increased NAD levels in the brain by 16%. One dose. That means if you bought a bottle today and you took a gram of it, tomorrow, you'd have a 16% increase in NAD levels. That means a decrease in brain inflammation, reduction in oxidative stress, increase in mitochondrial function, increase in energy, PARP functionality, one dose. And the e-commerce business, which we basically launched in middle of 2017, has steadily grown. We have some key partners. We're very selective about the partners.
One thing that some people who are new to the company notice is that we lost a lot of money because of significant legal expense when we first got here, when I first got here. First order of business was to take care of all the crooks out there who were stealing our ingredient, infringing on our property. There were some deals in place, a couple with companies that didn't pay their bills and tried very hard to steal the patents and steal employees. They realized what was happening, so that we had significant legal expense. There were four lawsuits against one company. We actually lost one of them, but we won three of them. So we've come through this process successful and in very healthy place. Our intellectual property is very deep.
We have a very deep bench of IP, and we've been very selective about the companies with whom we partner with going forward. We have a great relationship with Watsons, which is globally the largest health and wellness retailer in the world. They're not here in the U.S., but they are very significant in Asia and in parts of the EU. iHerb, you know, Sprouts is a recent deal we've announced. We're slowly getting into retail. We think that there's a big opportunity, but our business largely is based on e-commerce right now, which is great margins, and we know quite well. Sinopharm is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in China. We have a relationship with them. Nestlé has a 5% stake in the company. Also, we agreed to supply Niagen to Nestlé for certain of their brands.
Same with H&H, one of the most well-respected global dietary supplement companies in life extension here in the U.S. The injectable business, which we announced just in June and will be launching in clinics this week, as I said, is IV and injectable. We soon, we hope by the end of the year, certainly first quarter, we expect to be able to sell at-home injectables of Niagen. We think that that has significant upside potential. There's been a great deal of interest in the IV world. The NAD is not. NAD is the enzyme that we're increasing in people's cells, but we don't actually sell NAD. Niagen is not NAD. Niagen is a precursor to NAD. If you take Niagen, it will safely and efficiently elevate NAD levels.
So you say, "Why not just take NAD?" Because if you take an NAD pill, or tablet, or infusion, the molecule of NAD is so large, and on the perimeter of it, there is a phosphate group, meaning it's a nucleotide, making it virtually impossible for NAD as a molecule to upregulate, to be taken up by the cell itself. So you take a precursor, like Niagen, and it very cleanly and efficiently goes into the cell, converts into NAD. But the NAD IV business has gotten very popular in the United States, particularly among athletes, and celebrities, and workout buffs, and biohackers. What happens when they do these NAD IV infusions is because the NAD molecule doesn't cleanly get into the cell. It causes a great deal of stress.
It takes three and a half hours to get an IV of one gram of NAD, three and a half hours, and in almost all cases, there's extreme nausea and side effects. Yet it's very popular among athletes, and celebrities, and models, and biohackers. With Niagen IV, it takes just a few minutes, no side effects, and higher NAD levels. We got a home-run product here, so there's an established market out there for NAD IV people who are now starting to learn that there's something better out there. Instead of three and a half hours, less than a half an hour, higher NAD levels, and they don't have to go through the nausea, so we are excited by that opportunity, and as they have been getting aware of the availability of Niagen, the phone calls have been pouring in for us from these clinics.
I will also say that it took us many years to get FDA approval to do this. Everything ChromaDex does is very clean and crisp, and by the book, and gold standard, including IV, including dietary supplements, everything we do. We know we're sitting on something very special, so why risk it by cutting corners? We cut no corners. It took us many years to get this FDA 503B approval. We also did an independent third-party clinical test to prove that it was superior to NAD IV. It's a better NAD product, and of course, we filed for patents to protect it. As I say, we're out on the market this week. We also just launched a test kit.
Many people ask us, "Well, what are my NAD levels, and how do I know it's working?" so we took a couple of years to develop an NAD test kit. It's in very limited release. You can only buy it through a clinic right now, but we do have this product. We'll see how it goes. We may launch it further, at the consumer level on our website at some point. This slide just speaks to what I just said about the growing popularity of NAD IV. Pharmaceutical, I told you that we are pursuing Parkinson's and ataxia presently, that the Parkinson's study is nearing completion, and ataxia, we hope to submit the IND to the FDA very shortly, within a week or two, and then hope to get their response quickly, and we intend to pursue ataxia for drug approval.
But there have been many other diseases and conditions that have been studied through our CERP program. These are the two that were the furthest along, that we're working most aggressively on. It's not that NAD cures these diseases, we don't think, although perhaps if there's a mitochondrial disorder, it might. What it does is it strengthens the cell. You elevate NAD levels, you increase the cell's ability to manufacture energy and to repair damage. In essence, a younger cell. That's why we sell the consumer product as an anti-aging product. So that benefits. Think of all of the things, the conditions that, or indications that if you have as you're a young person is asymptomatic, but as an older person is heavily symptomatic, like sunburns could lead to skin cancer, or a sprained knee could lead to arthritis.
But when you're young, neither are really of concern. These are NAD-related issues. We've seen positive outcomes in many, many different indications on these clinical studies, and they continue to be studied across many, many areas. I talked a bit about Parkinson's. This slide just basically summarizes what I said, the state of it. Dr. Tzoulis is the researcher, 400 participants. And we also talked a little bit about ataxia already. This is a slide that just summarized the ataxia. Interesting thing about ataxia is that this is one of a handful of orphan diseases where children age very rapidly. In many cases, these kids have non-detectable levels of NAD. And in essence, it's a human cohort group that shows the direct relationship between NAD levels and the way the body ages.
In a sense, all of us have this disease, because NAD declines with all of us, and we are all aging. It's important to point out that although this business has been built on one ingredient, nicotinamide riboside, ChromaDex controls numerous others that we are researching, and that in the long run, may turn out to be better or perhaps different precursors to NAD. NAR and NRH, NMNH, NRT, they have different processes. Some have quite different pathways for entering the cell and elevating NAD, and ChromaDex controls all of them. The current management team, Andrew Shao is very deeply respected in the consumer products business. Carlos Lopez recently joined us from General Counsel of Vitamin Shoppe. James is with us on the call present.
As I said, the company has achieved cash flow break even, and we hope and expect to maintain that. We've had steady growth. We expect to continue to have steady and consistent growth, and then periodic significant jumps in growth as we roll out additional verticals and awareness of NAD continues. You can see that we have a healthy business, and that business pays for our R&D as we pursue other verticals, and the core of it is an e-commerce business. Watsons is an important part of it, and ingredient sales, where we supply it to certain select partners like Nestlé.
And as you can see here, we invested quite a bit in R&D and in legal early on, protecting our intellectual property and what we have, and we've stabilized this, continued to grow, and we've achieved adjusted EBITDA positive now for numerous quarters. So that ends the presentation. I fear that I didn't leave enough time for questions, but I got through it. If any of you have further questions, I'm always available, so are James and Wesley, if you want to contact us outside. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Rob, for the presentation. We will now begin the Q&A. Your first question is: Do you anticipate the Long COVID clinical results to be made available before possible review completion by the FDA?
There's a lot in that question. The study has been completed. It was done at Harvard, overseen by Rudy Tanzi, our SAB member. We have no idea what the results are. It's a completely blinded study. The last few months have been frustratingly time-consuming. They're measuring the NAD metabolome, and we still haven't seen the results, and they had to wait on a long waiting list at City of Hope to get the NAD metabolome measured, and that's essentially what we're waiting for. It's technically a phase IV clinical study, but that's a technicality. That's only because long COVID is technically not a disease. These are people who tested negative for COVID, and yet they're being tested for Long COVID, which has not been classified as a disease as yet.
So therefore, they call it a phase IV clinical, because these patients have, in essence, gotten past the disease. So we're gonna wait and see the results before we figure out our strategy going forward. This was not a commer— There was not a commercial IND filed for this. And again, long COVID is not technically classified as a disease. So we have to investigate the status of long COVID with the FDA before we decide our commercialization plans. At a minimum, it should be very, very helpful for sales of Tru Niagen if the results are positive. But again, we don't yet know the results. I do expect to know the results by the end of the year, however.
Thank you, Rob. Next is: I see that the NO-PARK trial has been upgraded from phase II to phase III, with a new anticipated completion date extended several months. Might the results of the NO-PARK trial be available before possible FDA approval?
Yes, they will be available before FDA approval.
Thank you for your response, Rob. Next question is: Assuming we get positive data on the phase III Parkinson's clinical trial next year, how are you thinking about the options to commercialize this opportunity?
... There are three possible pathways for commercialization. One is EMA approval as a drug in Europe, a second is FDA approval in the U.S., and a third is the sales of Tru Niagen as a dietary supplement, or perhaps a special version of Tru Niagen as a dietary supplement. Remember, we have achieved pharmaceutical-grade material here because of the IV business, so that represents an opportunity. And then there may be a combination. In other words, we may pursue a drug approval in one territory and dietary supplement in the other.
Thank you, Rob. The next question is: Why is a practitioner necessary for a consumer to get an NAD test? Can you describe the process by which NAD IV facilities were considered for inclusion of the NAD, Niagen Plus program?
Blood NAD levels are interesting, but they're not as interesting as tissue NAD levels. So if you take a blood test, it is interesting. You can show that it elevates NAD levels in the blood, even a couple of hours after taking Tru Niagen or certainly getting the IV infusion or an injection. But really, what's most interesting is when it gets taken up into the organ, the tissue of the, particularly the damaged cell, and that's very difficult to measure. You can measure it in the brain with an MRI, but for any other tissue, you actually have to do a biopsy. Blood NAD levels also can be varied. They can change even in the course of a day, depending on what you eat, and your performance, and how much you sleep, and other factors.
We wanna see how it plays out before we hit the gas pedal on the NAD test kit further. We think it's mostly useful as establishing a baseline blood NAD level for people before they get the IV or even before they start taking Tru Niagen, and then perhaps annually get another test and see how they've done, maybe semiannually. We're being cautious with this until we see the results. The reason why it's being sold to clinics is because they really want it. They've been very aggressive about getting us a test kit that they can sell to their patients.
Thank you for clarifying, Rob. The next question is: Does ChromaDex imagine that a $150 NAD test would be a useful weekly, monthly, or annual protocol for anyone supplementing, or is it just to demonstrate the efficacy of Niagen Plus treatment?
The latter is true. It does demonstrate the efficacy of Niagen Plus or even Tru Niagen treatment, and therefore, it is interesting: a before-and-after study. As I said, creating a baseline is a good idea. I don't think you need to do a monthly test.
Thank you for clarifying. The next question is: If Tru Niagen oral supplement and Niagen Plus injection/drip represent different markets, how would you describe those markets for the consumer's standpoint? Who should choose which?
I think that once we start to experience the indications of aging, for many people, that starts to happen at around forty. For women who are concerned about fertility, it starts earlier. They could start taking Tru Niagen, and that dose should probably increase as you get older or as you experience symptoms like traveling, disruption of the circadian rhythms, or lack of sleep, or exposure to the sun, or too much drinking, or even certain disease states, frankly, when the body is fighting inflammation or injury or damage or any kind of injury repair. IV, an injection, is literally mainlining, where a high percentage of nicotinamide riboside, when you take Tru Niagen, goes through the gut and goes through the liver. It still leaves NR into the bloodstream or Niagen in the bloodstream, but a smaller percentage.
When you get an IV and injection, it's 100%, so you see much more dramatic, many times more dramatic increases in NAD levels and Niagen levels in the blood and the tissue. These are for people who are, you know, very concerned about the way their body is healing or the way their body is aging.
Thank you, Rob, for that response. The next question is: What's new in China?
Sinopharm's CEO was replaced this week. We have had difficulty with the cross-border business that's being managed by Sino. It seems like it should have grown much more than it is growing. We also have not been able to make significant progress with Blue Hat approval there. It seems like we should have made greater progress than indeed that we have made, and the reason we did the deal with Sino was to get Blue Hat approval. We are currently contemplating whether we want to renew the deal with Sino, or perhaps find a different partner. We are obviously all disappointed by the lack of progress there. NMN got very big.
That's a competing ingredient in China, but it has declined very dramatically of late because the FDA ruled it illegal as a dietary supplement in the U.S., and China, because it's not a dietary supplement, also ruled that it could not be sold cross-border into China. Additionally, many, if not all, of NMN sellers are mislabeling, it's not made safely, it has the presence of endotoxins. Both the U.S. FDA and now the China FDA have taken action against these NMN sellers. There's still a few out there selling it. I wouldn't even go anywhere near a company who is selling NMN right now. It tells you all that you need to know. They don't care about the FDA, they don't care about manufacturing, they don't care about the rules. Stay away from it.
NMN, in its purest form, does elevate NAD. It doesn't do it nearly as well as NR, but it does do it. But NMN has declined dramatically in China, and that should have been an opportunity for Niagen to grow, and yet it has not. So this is an ongoing concern for us. We are in discussions with Sinopharm and other firms about how to pursue it. We did give H&H the right to sell their products with Niagen in cross-border into China, and they're doing very well, so that proves that the market is there. So it's, it's mostly an issue of how we're managing the cross-border, and do we have the right partners, or are the right partners assigning the right people internally, and are they sufficiently motivated?
But that's a lot of information I'm giving you about the challenges and headwinds that we're experiencing in China.
Thank you for the insight, Rob. The next question is: how are you thinking about skin cream now?
We need to solve the stability and water problem. Most skin creams are water-based, and as many of you know, when Niagen is exposed to water over a period of weeks or months, it, the nicotinamide and the ribose separate. So, that's why we call it unstable. It's not that it's unsafe, it's just not pure NR. So we either solve that problem scientifically, or we solve it mechanistically. In other words, a different delivery mechanism for NR, and we've investigated several, and we found a couple that works, where the cream and the Niagen are in separate chambers, and then they're combined on your hand, and then you apply it. That works. Another are these little pillows that we've identified and have tested, that are made...
tiny little pillows that are made out of hyaluronic acid, and inside the hyaluronic acid is pure Niagen powder. You put that on your hand, and you combine it with the cream, and then apply it to your face. We've investigated that. We intend to test that commercially later this year, and then, of course, we have to do studies. There have been two studies that were done by third parties that were very promising about NR on wrinkles and age spots and elasticity. We'd like to do one ourselves to validate it, so good claims can be made, so we think that the skincare market is probably something we'll aggressively work on in 2025, but we are doing some work on it now.
Thank you for that response. Next, why was there a huge clinical trial of NAM and skin cancer ten years ago, but no subsequent clinical trials of NR and skin cancer?
There hasn't been a CERP that has approached us to say, "We'd like to do a skin cancer study on NR," and we're not going to invest the capital in pursuing that. We don't think that NR is curative for skin cancer. If it is, we'd love to find that out, but we think that the other indications that we're pursuing have a greater chance of succeeding and are further along.
Thank you, Rob. Next is: Could you update us on the status of the W. R. Grace and Elysium lawsuit over NRCl? Is the case still pending a decision, or has it been settled out of court?
It has not been settled. As you know, the jury decided in favor of W. R. Grace. Elysium willfully infringed on the W. R. Grace patent. They tried to have it invalidated. The courts decided it was a valid patent. What they're waiting on now is the judge to decide whether what the total damages to Elysium might be, and if there's an injunction against Elysium, if there's not an injunction, what Elysium is allowed to do going forward. In any event, we don't consider Elysium to be a major player in the business.
Thank you for your insight on that. The next question is: As the business grows, there will be more resources to invest back into the business to drive further growth. How do you think about the relative merits of investing in marketing, business development, and R&D, or perhaps elsewhere?
Can you read that to me again, please?
Certainly. As the business grows, there will be more resources to invest back into the business to drive further growth. How do you think about the relative merits of investing in marketing, business development, and R&D, or perhaps elsewhere?
That's a big question. We are committed to not losing money, so if we need to pare back on R&D or overhead or marketing in order to maintain either cash flow positive or near cash flow positive, we will do that. We have these other verticals that we think have tremendous upside. We've identified them, and we are investing in those specific verticals. We don't wanna spread ourselves too thin. In terms of marketing, the bulk of our marketing dollars goes to e-commerce, which is mostly performance-based marketing. So if it's converting, we invest more, if it's not converting, we invest less. It's all about ROAS, retention, and long-term value in the e-commerce business....
So if we find a vein, in other words, a message, a messenger, and a channel that's particularly effective, we hit it hard and we spend more, but if not, we pull back. We do find that we do extremely well with Amazon and continue to, but of late, Shopify has finally started growing again for us. And this is after a couple of years of really stagnation, but we're seeing improved metrics in the performance of Shopify of late. So we're optimistic about that, and if that continues, we'll invest more in marketing and on our website, as well as Amazon.
Thank you for that response. Next, a viewer asked: Can you talk about the recent NMNH patent? Are all current NMNH products infringing on this patent?
All of them are. There were many companies who were selling NMN, that when they realized that it was illegal, they started pivoting over to NMNH. What they didn't realize is that ChromaDex controls NMNH, and we are currently evaluating how we wanna proceed with that strategy. The numbers aren't big enough to matter one way or another. So, the question is, you know, whether we want to stop it entirely or allow it to grow to a certain level and collect royalties. We're currently evaluating that. There's another company that promoted, that advertised that they had developed a dog product that reversed aging in dogs and marketed that, got quite a bit of publicity.
That company is also infringing on one of our other patents, the NAR patent, and again, we're currently evaluating whether we wanna shut them down or just simply allow them to continue and charge them a fee or a royalty.
Thank you for elaborating on that. Next, has there been any progress in liquid stabilization for beverages?
No, not meaningful progress.
Thank you, Rob. Next, in order for NAD boosting to become very large, there needs to be some watershed moment to trigger mass adoption. How do you envision that watershed moment happening?
I don't necessarily agree that there needs to be a watershed moment. I think it's accretive. I think it's a lot of little things, and then, like Malcolm Gladwell wrote, we never know when you're gonna hit that tipping point. It's usually the accumulation of many little things, but you're starting to see mass understanding of NAD. Like, the press this summer has been very prolific about NAD, and we think that the Niagen IV thing is a good story, and that's, we think, accretive to this narrative about the importance of NAD and the importance of IV. I think the potential connection to GLP-1 is interesting. You're seeing many, many more celebrities, and podcasters, and influencers do NAD IV, hopefully soon Niagen IV, or understanding the importance and the value of NAD in general.
and anyone who's interested in NAD that does any research, finds out that by far, the gold standard in the industry, by far the best company in the industry is ChromaDex and Tru Niagen.
Thank you, Rob, for that response. The next question is: Can you say what percent of the consumer cost of Niagen Plus IV would be revenue for ChromaDex?
All we have said is that the gross margins are higher than the company's present gross margins of around 60%.
Thank you, Rob. Next, can you speak on ChromaDex's plan to raise awareness for the IV Niagen Plus product?
It's a lot of events, and it's a lot of influencer adoption, and we've been doing that all summer. In fact, as we speak right now, there's a wedding in Norway, where the Princess of Norway is marrying another well-known celebrity, and it's heavily covered by global media. And we have a presence there, and we hope to be giving IV infusions to the entire wedding party. There was two episodes of Beverly Hills Housewives of Beverly Hills, where they received Niagen IV infusions, and we hope to see that on air in the next few months. There are many celebrities who have done it and have talked about it. Whitney Cummings is very excited about it, and she's been doing it and talking about it.
We know many celebrities do NAD IV, and we're gradually, and many, many, many athletes, and we've been talking to them, getting them to try the Niagen. If you like NAD IV, you'll love Niagen IV. It's just a few minutes instead of hours. There are no side effects, and you have higher NAD levels. We just need people to try it, and it kind of sells itself. So it's an influencer, celebrity strategy, and then the hope is that that then has a halo effect on Tru Niagen as a dietary supplement.
Thank you for elaborating on that. The next question is: Does NAD have FDA 503B approval for compounding? In other words, is Niagen superior to NAD IV in that way?
Actually, NAD did have it, then it was removed, and then recently it was put back, but because NAD is not made via pharma grade, many states have outlawed it, including California, because they're not meeting their regulatory standards. So NAD has another regulatory problem, but it is on the 503B list today.
Thank you for clarifying. Your next question is: Has the year-over-year revenue growth of 10%-15% been attributed to the growth of the e-commerce business or other opportunities?
An interesting thing that one of our ingredient customers who sells Niagen in their brand recently got very aggressive in their marketing on Amazon. We're somewhat indifferent there. We know that it eats into our top line consumer revenue growth, but it increases our ingredient sales growth, and the margins are good, and we don't have to invest concurrent marketing dollars. We are, for now, continuing to allow them to do that. It's partly ingredient growth, and it's partly e-commerce growth.
Thank you for that response. We're now coming up to your last two questions. The first one is: Is there any openness for special dividends should any large milestones occur?
There's openness to it, but we haven't discussed it seriously at the company.
Thank you, Rob. And the last question is: What is your revenue growth strategy?
I think I've spent the last 45 minutes explaining that.
Excellent. Thank you very much, Rob, for your answers to the questions today, and thank you to everyone who submitted your questions. If you did not get a chance to submit your question, you can reach out to the appropriate account manager here at Renmark. That concludes our presentation for today, but before we go, I will turn back the floor to Rob for final remarks.
No final remarks, except for, as I always say, if you look at ChromaDex, and you're evaluating ChromaDex, and you're considering investing in ChromaDex, and you choose not to invest in ChromaDex, the one thing I urge you to do is at least take the product. Tru Niagen is very good for your health, for you and your family, and anyone who's either recovering from something or is managing the issues of aging. So if you're not gonna buy the stock, buy the product, please.
Thank you, Rob. And once again, this was ChromaDex, trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol CDXC. Thank you to everyone in Los Angeles and surrounding areas for joining us today. The playback for this virtual non-deal roadshow will be available on our website, 24-48 hours after this presentation, under the VNDR Library tab. Please stay tuned for other presentations in your area, and see you next time.