Hello, and welcome back for another company webcast featuring ChromaDex, a trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker CDXC. For today's discussion, we have Rob Fried, CEO of ChromaDex, who'll be walking us through some slides, followed by a question-and-answer discussion. With that, Rob, welcome, and the floor is yours.
Thank you, Ben, and thank you for the opportunity to present ChromaDex to these investors. Usually, at these events, most of the listeners and viewers are existing investors and are familiar with the company, but there are sometimes investors who are new to the story and new to the company. So I'm going to spend a little time giving an overview of who we are and what we do.
ChromaDex is the premier NAD company globally. So NAD, which stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, is a coenzyme found in all living cells that recently has become quite popular in the healthcare community and wider consumer community because there have been literally dozens of clinical studies that have been published that show that there's a significant therapeutic or prophylactic benefit to elevating NAD levels, particularly in cells that are under stress.
So aging is basically the accumulation of damage at the cellular level and the diminished ability to repair that damage. What happens when you elevate your NAD levels is you increase your ability to repair damage or avoid damage. So in that sense, it is widely regarded, NAD, as an anti-aging coenzyme. It's actually more of a healing thing, but it has been widely adopted as an anti-aging coenzyme.
We have commercialized a molecule called nicotinamide riboside chloride, which we call Niagen, which is the best, the safest, the most legal, the most researched way to elevate NAD levels. There are numerous companies who have jumped on the bandwagon of NAD, but clearly the best way to do it is by taking our product, Niagen.
The goal of ChromaDex, as NAD gets bigger and bigger and more and more adopted, is for us to have a presence in every channel and every vertical where NAD elevation might be beneficial. That could be in the dietary supplement business, where we operate today. That could be in the IV or injection business, where we also operate today. It could be in the skincare business. It could be in the beverage business, or it could be in the pharmaceutical drug business and others.
We intend to have a presence in each and every one of them, either with our own consumer brand, which we call True Niagen, or our ingredient, which we call Niagen. Based on my experience in the industry in general, I will only, at this point, take products that say Niagen, seeing how people mislabel, misrepresent, race through the production process.
ChromaDex is the gold standard in our industry. Niagen is the most trusted brand, and we intend to stay that way. If you're interested in taking an NAD product, I strongly recommend that you not do it unless it says Niagen in some way. Not only is the company considered the gold standard in the NAD space because of its science, we are also considered the gold standard because of our business practices. I like to quip that our philosophy is at the ideation stage.
We are like a quantum superposition. We believe we can do everything all at the same time. All ideas are good, but at the execution stage, we are extremely conservative. So we operate this business with a keen focus on the bottom line. We have grown very well, but our primary emphasis is profits, not growth per se. We don't have any debt.
We are very obsessed with making sure we maintain a strong cash balance. We don't need to raise any money, but we understand that if you do need to raise money, the best time to do it is when you don't need it. So we are quite committed to retaining a very strong balance sheet and not needing the cash. You just never know when the markets are going to turn. So we are very conservative in our day-to-day execution, but very aggressive in our ideation and our business plan.
We have the best scientists and researchers and intellectual property and products on the market in the NAD space. Indeed, I would make the argument in overall the dietary supplement space. We are conservative in that sense. We are experts in that sense, and we are trusted in that sense.
As I said, our business presently, which is approaching $100 million of annual sales, and we have achieved profitability, is basically on the back right now of a dietary supplement. The ingredient is Niagen. The product is True Niagen, but in August, we announced that we launched an IV and injection business. So this is for people who are interested in receiving an intravenous dose of Niagen.
It is a very popular market already for people who get intravenous IV of NAD, but we have done a clinical study, and we have plenty of anecdotal research to show that Niagen is significantly superior to NAD. One, people who get an NAD IV take several hours for it to be ingested, and there are almost always major side effects. Niagen doesn't have those side effects and only takes minutes to ingest.
And as the resultant NAD levels are significantly higher with Niagen. Why is that? The reason for that is because NAD is a nucleotide, meaning it has a phosphate group on the perimeter of the molecule, and it's also a very large molecule. So there's no way for NAD itself to penetrate the cell. Indeed, there are no published clinical studies that show that NAD elevates NAD. You need a precursor to elevate NAD, and the best one is obviously Niagen. So when you see dozens and dozens of companies out there promoting or selling NAD, be skeptical because most of them are just basically selling snake oil, not us.
Since we introduced Niagen IV and Niagen injection into the market, there's been dramatic interest at the clinics, the health clinics. I'm sorry, I'm just talking off the cuff, and my colleagues are trying to bounce around in the slides. They have no idea where I'm going with this. It's okay. Thanks, Wesley. Since we've introduced Niagen IV in the market, there's been tremendous interest from the clinics and the physicians who offer NAD IV.
In fact, we haven't been able to keep up with demand on the supply side. Those supply issues, I believe, will be resolved in the first quarter of 2025, but there have been some supply headwinds. The Niagen IV product is a little different than the True Niagen dietary supplement product because it's pharmaceutical grade, not food grade, and is, in essence, a drug product.
But we did receive FDA approval to offer the ingredient via IV or, frankly, injection. But it's been a new experience for us, and meeting the demand with supply has been a years-long process, which we now feel that we have our arms around, but it's taken us a while. We have some excellent partners that we work with. We have a partner in Hong Kong called Watsons, which is the largest global retailer of health and wellness products, actually in the world, although they don't have a presence in North America.
They're very significant in Asia and in Europe. And we sell them True Niagen and sell it at retail. In the U.S., we have modest amounts of retail, but it's mostly an online business, our own website, trueniagen.com, and Amazon. And slowly, we've been rolling out onto other platforms as well, like iHerb and walmart.com.
There are also a small group of dietary supplement companies to whom we supply Niagen, notably one called Life Extension, which we've been in business with for many years, and they do quite well selling their Niagen product. Also, Nestlé, which owns several respected brands in the dietary supplement business, we supply to them. There's another company called H&H, which is in Asia and in Europe, a very important dietary supplement company.
They go by the name of Swiss brands in Asia. We supply to them and a few others. But most of our businesses are our own consumer product, as I said, True Niagen. Okay, I think that gives a quick highlight. If you want to quickly bounce through these slides, I can comment on them. Wesley, this slide here just shows the amount of press that NAD and Niagen in particular have been getting recently.
I'm sure if you're on this call, you are aware of NAD and how it's become extremely popular. Many, many athletes and actors and actresses and celebrities and biohackers and billionaires are on the NAD bandwagon right now and are regularly getting either NAD, Niagen infusions, or taking True Niagen. Do you want to just quickly go through the slides? I think I've explained what it is.
As I said, we intend to be in all verticals. You can keep going. This is our scientific advisory board. As I say, we are by far the world's leading experts in NAD science. Two of these gentlemen have Nobel Prizes. Their Nobel Prizes are in related fields. All these people are doing actual work on Niagen or NAD. Brunie is one of the world's leading cancer researchers in the space.
Rudolph Tanzi is the head of neurology at Harvard and is conducting two studies on Niagen. Vilhelm Bohr is also spearheading our efforts in ataxia and recently left the NIH as a senior member of the anti-aging group at the NIH. By the way, his grandfather was Niels Bohr. Of course, Charles Brenner is the inventor of nicotinamide riboside and the discoverer of it as an efficient precursor to NAD when he was at Dartmouth.
There are many, many studies that are being conducted with us on Niagen as an NAD precursor. 35 clinical studies have been published. Well over 100 preclinical studies have been published. It's extremely rare that you have an ingredient that is studied this much by these prestigious institutions and these researchers. What's particularly great as these studies come out is a very high percentage of them are yielding positive results.
It seems elevating NAD when you are under physical stress or aging, if you will, works. Okay. As I said, we're approaching $100 million annually, and we have achieved profitability, and we have a significant cash balance, and we expect to improve on this in the future. All right. Well, thank you, Rob. We have some questions for you. So you alluded to NAD, and many listeners here have heard of NAD, but not necessarily Niagen, especially in the IV form.
Can you tell us the difference between the two? Well, when you get an IV version of Niagen, and by the way, this year, we also will be offering injections for Niagen at-home injections. We believe that the GLP-1 products have become very popular. People want to be thinner, and they work.
We also think that the community of people that want to be thinner generally also want to be younger. So we think that Niagen injections at-home shots, as we call them Niagen shots, are a good complementary product to that. And we're already seeing some early significant demand for that as a possibility. So we're very excited about offering Niagen shots for at-home use. Presently, you have to go into a clinic or go visit a physician.
There are limited shots available, but mostly, it's an IV business, as you will, intravenous. It's a much, much purer form. When you take True Niagen as a supplement or Niagen as a supplement, it goes through the gut, then it goes through the liver, and then it's deposited into the bloodstream. So you get a much smaller amount of actual nicotinamide riboside that's circulating through the body.
We show that it crosses the blood-brain barrier and gets into the tissue quickly and works and elevates. But if you get it via IV or injection, it works significantly quicker and significantly better. And some people really are committed to their health and to their aging process. So that is essentially the difference. The ingredient itself is the same molecule, but the way it's manufactured with the pharma-grade is extremely pure and sterile because, as I said, it goes directly into the bloodstream.
Got it. You've talked about the demand sort of outpacing what you thought in terms of the clinics. How many clinics is the product being sold in now? Can you talk about the rollout going forward, and how do you see this over the next 12 months?
I think we issued a press release two months ago that said we had achieved 400 clinics in the first two months, and of course, that pace has continued. We haven't announced publicly where we are as of today, but we will at the next earnings call or put out a press release, but as I have said, the demand is fairly dramatic.
Most of the large chains of IV clinics have either already signed up to offer Niagen IV or would like to, and we've put out announcements listing many of the clinics that are offering it today, and there's a website, niagenplus.com, which you could go on that website and see. It's not a completely up-to-date list. We try to maintain it, but these clinics are signing up fairly quickly.
You could go on that website and see if there's a clinic near you that you'd like to go in and try it. NiagenPlus.com has a directory.
Many of these clinics, Rob, already offer sort of NAD just by itself, right? And so what are the advantages of Niagen IV versus NAD, both from the consumer standpoint, but also from the clinics themselves?
So at this point, we've had hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have done the Niagen IV or injection versus NAD. Plus, we did a clinical study where we compared them head-to-head. And as I said, because of the size of the NAD molecule and because of the structure of it being a nucleotide, it's very difficult for NAD to be taken up into the cell. Niagen is very easy to be upregulated into the cell, and then it converts into NAD.
The way that manifests is that if you go in for an NAD IV infusion, it takes a very long time for it to ingest into the system and almost always has very dramatic, unpleasant side effects, nausea, headaches. Those side effects don't exist with Niagen because it so easily gets taken up into the cell. We also believe that when you take NAD, because of that friction, it creates inflammation.
In the study, we showed that there were biomarkers of inflammation that suggested that the attempt to get NAD into the cell creates inflammation. That is not present with Niagen. Also, we did blood tests two hours after the infusion, and the NAD levels from the Niagen IV group were significantly higher than the NAD group. So it's a more pleasant experience.
It's a quicker experience, and it's a more effective experience, and it doesn't have the inflammation side effect. So it's a much, much better way to elevate NAD than pure NAD. Although that sounds funny, it's true.
Got it. Got it. You've had some nice growth over the last couple of years just purely on the one product, on the supplement. How do you see the growth going forward and the mix of your revenues with regards to True Niagen, the ingredient business, and Niagen Plus?
Well, we expect the supplement business to continue to grow in a very healthy way on both the ingredient side and the consumer side. Remember, we sell our product, True Niagen, and we sell the ingredient Niagen to certain other dietary supplement companies. We expect that to continue to grow.
We expect the IV and the injection business to grow at a much greater pace. It's an earlier-stage business. And then in the longer term, we are aggressively pursuing drug indications, two in particular, Parkinson's disease and ataxia. And we're fairly far along in our research in both of those areas. We've already published phase one or phase two clinical studies.
We are seeking approval for an IND for ataxia, which is an orphan disease. And in the first half of this year, we will complete a four-year study, phase three clinical study on Parkinson's disease for Niagen of 400 participants, 200 of which receive a placebo and 200 of which receive a gram of Niagen a day for a year. And the earlier clinical studies, as well as the preclinical studies, were very positive. So we're hopeful and optimistic about that.
We think if the results of that study come through, we've got two very, very important growth opportunities. One is we think that that will dramatically increase sales of our dietary supplement, True Niagen. There are 10 million diagnosed Parkinson's patients globally right now, and if the study works and it's published in a prestigious journal, it's being conducted by very reputable and well-respected researchers in Norway funded by the Norwegian government.
I think if that's published and picked up by influential media outlets, we think a very high percentage of those global patients will seek out True Niagen, especially if they know that it's safe and effective, and those numbers are fairly dramatic. Remember, we sell our gram-a-day product for in the range of $100 a month. If 5% of those 10 million people purchase the product, that's a very, very dramatic increase in revenue.
But in addition to that, we also will be planning to pursue drug approval in the longer term, perhaps in Europe first. The FDA might require yet additional studies. But again, both of those indications, ataxia and Parkinson's in the drug space, have very, very dramatic revenue opportunities if approved.
Okay. Great. Finally, I want to talk about something you mentioned earlier, which is sort of your philosophy on capital usage, growth spending, and sort of your balance sheet management. It looks like you have a lot of irons in the fire, both just from the core product as well as sort of the Parkinson's, ataxia, skincare, just so many there. Help us understand sort of how you want to balance the growth versus the cash flow and how can investors think about that?
Well, as I said, the ideation phase, we're extremely aggressive.
At the execution phase, we're extremely conservative. Our philosophy is we think of ourselves as almost like we're in a quantum superposition at the early stage. We can do everything all at once. All ideas are good ideas. There are no bad ideas.
We think that the NAD space is already quite big, but just at the absolute tip of the spear as people learn more and more how elevating NAD improves their health for specific indications, but also generally as well, not just as they age, but as they recover. Cellular health in general is becoming more popular, and mitochondrial health is becoming more recognized and appreciated and respected. We think that the opportunity is tremendous. It's our goal to make sure we are presently at the pole position, the leader in the space, and we always maintain that.
So at the ideation phase, we feel we can do anything. But then once we get into the execution phase, we let the realities of the rate-limiting factors like upside potential and resource allocation help us to prioritize. We all know what it's like to run businesses that are low on cash. We don't want to be in that place. We operate very conservatively.
We have no debt. We have no warrants. We have plenty of cash. We're cash flow positive. We make money. We're not obsessed with short-term announcements. We're not obsessed with things that will move the stock. Look, our stock has been very volatile. It's not because of us. It's because of all of you guys out there that like to buy and sell and trade and buy the stock when it's hot and sell the stock when it's not.
But we as a business operate in a very deliberate, slow, brick-by-brick conservative manner, but we think extremely big because we recognize the size of the opportunity that we're on.
All right, well, Rob, thank you and thank you, everyone, for watching. If you have any questions or would like to schedule a meeting with ChromaDex, please send me an email at shamsian@lythampartners.com. That's shamsian@lythampartners.com. We have another presentation and fireside chat coming up next, so please stick around for more and thank you, everyone, and have a good rest of the day.