Ending our conference. I'm Susan Anderson, one of Canaccord's Analysts in the consumer space. We're very excited to have Niagen Bioscience here with us, in particular to host CEO, Rob Fried. Niagen Bioscience is a global bioscience company dedicated to healthy aging, and they're the global authority on NAD+. With that, I'll turn it over to Rob to give us a few details.
Thank you, Susan. Thank you, Canaccord. Thank you, everybody, for attending. There is a molecule that is found in all living cells called Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide, NAD. If you pay at all attention to popular culture right now, you've now heard of NAD because it's pretty much in the zeitgeist of popular culture in fashion and beauty and healthcare and longevity. Recently, it's been popping up on podcasts, on television, everywhere else. Why? Because NAD is involved in every important metabolic process inside the cell, plant, and animal, all living cells. Notably, energy metabolism and cell repair when there's damage. The thing about NAD is that as you are damaged or are healing, or as you age, NAD levels decline significantly. What we've shown is that if you elevate NAD levels in the cell, it has significant therapeutic and prophylactic value. Niagen Bioscience is a company specifically devoted to NAD.
We have a portfolio of molecules that elevate NAD, but one in particular called nicotinamide riboside, which is remarkable, almost miraculous in its ability to safely elevate NAD levels in all cells. We have 40 peer-reviewed, published, high-impact factor clinical studies that started first at safety, then showed that it elevates NAD, and now have advanced into dramatic indications in disease states like Parkinson’s disease and advanced aging orphan diseases like ataxia- telangiectasia, but also peripheral artery disease. There are studies being done on Alzheimer's. Here's the thing. When NAD levels are high, cells have a high ability to repair damage and prevent damage. They also have a high ability to increase what's called mitogenesis, mitochondrial biogenesis. You have more mitochondria when you have high NAD levels, and you have higher output per mitochondrion when you have high NAD levels. With that basic thesis, the idea is very simple.
If you maintain high NAD levels, the body is better equipped to deal with the vagaries of aging. All aging is, is the accumulation of damage at the molecular and cellular level. That's all it is, and the diminished ability to repair that damage. If you elevate NAD levels, you not only have higher mitochondrial function, but significantly improved ability to manage damage. That could be DNA damage, it could be the presence of a virus, it could be actual physical damage. If we maintain high NAD levels, the body is better equipped to deal with the problems of the metabolic and physical problems that we have to deal with in life. That's pretty amazing. I say we have 40 published clinical studies. There are another 40 ongoing. These are high-impact, peer-reviewed, published studies. These aren't bullshit studies like you see with supplement ads on TV.
This is not a bullshit ingredient. This is the real deal ingredient. Everybody who's listening to this and watching this, if you are not concerned about managing your NAD levels, you're just allowing your body to deteriorate. I look at it somewhat akin to exercise. Do you think that it's important to exercise? If you don't, then you're probably somebody that wouldn't be interested in taking Niagen. With that basic thesis, if the basic idea here is that elevating NAD levels by taking Tru Niagen is important for your metabolic health, we see it as an enormous industry. Therefore, we've created a business model that pursues it in multiple verticals. We started with our dietary supplement, and to date, it's an extremely successful dietary supplement. It's the most successful launch of a dietary supplement in that industry in 50 years.
We also see it important in what we call Niagen Plus, which is the IV and injectable market. Recently, in the past few years, what we've seen is that it's become commonplace for people to actually at home inject themselves with certain peptides or other ingredients for their health. We think that anybody that would be willing to inject themselves at home to stay thin might also be willing to inject themselves to stay young. We've gotten the appropriate FDA approvals, and we've done studies to prove its efficacy, and we've now launched on the market an IV and injectable business for Niagen, what we call Niagen Plus. We are also working aggressively in the pharmaceutical space. In June, we completed a four-and-a-half-year phase three clinical study on 400 participants on Parkinson’s disease. That's a four-and-a-half-year phase three clinical study.
200 participants received a gram of Niagen a day for one full year, and 200 received a placebo. That's a double-blinded placebo study. We won't know the results till October, but if it's consistent with the phase one and phase two clinicals that have been published, we could have something very exciting for Parkinson’s. We're also pursuing other, as I say, age-related orphan diseases. In the long run, we think it could be a great product for topical as well. A related but inferior ingredient called niacinamide is very popular in the skincare ingredient. Anything niacinamide can do, Niagen can do better. We see skincare also as an important vertical. We have taken, as a company, a very slow, long-term approach. We have great intellectual property. We have excellent research, top-level R&D and research here.
We don't view ourselves as a dietary supplement company, even though that's the source of our primary source of our revenues presently. We see it as an R&D NAD company that's built to take advantage of this incredible opportunity in all these verticals. The Scientific Advisory Board is some of the most elite scientists in the world for the space. Roger Kornberg has a Nobel Prize. Dr. Charles Brenner is the inventor of nicotinamide riboside. Rudy Tanzi is the Co-Head of Neurology here at Harvard. Brunie is an important researcher, a cancer researcher at Scripps. Dr. Cohen is the Head of Gerontology, the School of Gerontology, the Dean at USC. Will Bohr, whose grandfather, by the way, was Niels Bohr, recently stepped down from the National Institutes of Health in the National Institute on Aging division. Bruce is the world's leading expert in milk.
Our ingredient is found in trace amounts in milk. It's actually the elixir of life. As I say, we have 40 peer-reviewed clinical studies and another 40 ongoing. We also have several hundred preclinical studies that have been done or have been published. Just a quick snapshot of the last trailing 12 months of revenue. This is a profitable company. We have over $60 million of cash on the balance sheet. We have no debt. Our last quarter, which was announced last week, was a 37% year-over-year growth rate. The company is extremely healthy from a financial strategic standpoint, and we are sitting on a very large opportunity, and we are the leaders, in fact, indeed the creators in this NAD craze. As you can see, the core economics are very strong and have been stronger. We've had 70%+ compounded growth rate over the last 10 years.
These are just some of the highlights that I've just talked about. I want to leave enough time for Susan's questions. Let me leave it at that and maybe take a seat with you, or?
Yeah, go ahead.
Great.
I guess maybe we could start out just on the consumer products and Tru Niagen and maybe talk about kind of the growth there that you've seen and what channels you're in now and where the opportunity lies ahead.
As I said, we're pursuing multiple verticals. Right now, the bulk of our business is in the dietary supplement space, and we've bifurcated that in that we have our own consumer brand, which is called Tru Niagen. It is the dominant player in this NAD space that we've created. We also supply the ingredient, which we call Niagen, to certain select actual competitors in the dietary supplement space with various parameters and restrictions. We've done that so that we could build the word on NAD in general, build the market. We have this patent portfolio around it, but we realized that if we do it all alone, we might not get there in time. We chose to hedge the bet, and we picked certain partners, and so far that strategy has worked. Our primary sales channel is Amazon. Our second is our website.
We also sell in very limited fashion to certain retailers. Internationally, we sell to a chain called Watsons, which is really largely based in Asia. We do very well specifically in Hong Kong, but certain other territories as well. We've begun to roll out on a very limited basis to certain retailers, Vitamin Shop, and one or two other specialty places.
Great. Maybe if we could just talk about the product offering. I think more recently you mentioned that a lot of consumers are moving into the 1000 mg, which is also helping to drive sales, but also the other products that you've rolled out, such as the Stick Pack and then supplement with the immune defense part of it and maybe other opportunities also to continue to expand the product offering.
These are more experimental. We know that we have an extremely loyal consumer base who really like the product of Tru Niagen. Basically, it's a single ingredient, Tru Niagen. We have come up with a couple of formulations of things that we ourselves would take. What would we ask our scientists, what would you recommend that we take in combination with Niagen? There was an immune formulation that includes vitamin D and vitamin C and a couple of critical ingredients that we could source, that we would trust the source of the ingredients and what was on the label. We created an immune product, which is a complement to Tru Niagen. We tested a product which we call Tru Niagen Beauty, which has hyaluronic acid and grapeseed extract and a couple of other things that our scientists said were good for those that are concerned with nails, skin, and hair.
We will be rolling that out in the U.S. as well. There is a certain segment of the population, particularly a younger segment, that are really fitness-oriented, that are less worried about aging and more concerned about healing and repair. That community, it's mostly young men, but young women as well, like to take their supplements in a stick pack form in their drinks. We have recently rolled out a stick pack version that you could put into a mix. There has been a lot of data recently about fertility and Niagen. It turns out that oocytes, egg cells, also, as all cells, have NAD. For women concerned about the biological clock, sometime in their 30s, we see a dramatic decline in NAD levels.
We have good data to support the thesis and several studies ongoing right now that by elevating NAD in those egg cells, you could prolong the fertility clock. We are seeing lots of younger women also flocking to the product who are interested in that indication.
Interesting. You recently rolled out Niagen Plus, the first ever Niagen IV. Maybe if you could talk about that and how many clinics you're in right now, what the goal is longer term.
We have said we would be in 1,000 clinics by the end of the year. We said that in the first quarter we were in 850 as of today. We should dramatically surpass 1,000 clinics. This idea of going into these wellness clinics and receiving IVs or injections has become quite popular of late. We got appropriate FDA approvals to provide this ingredient to them to be delivered via IV and to injection. It has to be pharmaceutical grade. It took us a few years to figure out how to go from food grade to pharmaceutical grade, but we've accomplished that task. We've begun supplying it to these clinics with great popularity. When we came up with the idea initially, we didn't know about GLP-1s. We didn't know about this idea of self-injecting at home.
We realized that the approvals and the processes that we went through, pharmaceutical grade and FDA compliance, would qualify us for at-home injections. We see in the coming months an opportunity for us to offer a product that people can go to a website, get telehealth approval, a doctor's prescription, and that we would ship to them at home a kit for them to self-inject. Those that are interested in self-injecting to stay thin might also be interested in self-injecting to stay young. We see that as an important growth initiative for us.
When is that going to be rolled out, do you think?
The product itself will be available in the next few weeks.
Okay.
We don't think it will be on a scale meaningfully available to the general public probably till the fourth quarter.
Okay. Maybe if we could move on to the clinical studies that you're working on for certain diseases, such as Parkinson’s, which I believe just wrapped up, but we may not know the results for a while. Maybe just talk about those few that you're focused on.
As I said, we have 40 clinical studies that have been peer-reviewed and published and several ongoing. The initial ones were just to prove that it was safe, and then they pivoted to just show that it elevates NAD. Initially, just NAD in the blood, but then we proved that it elevates NAD in tissue as well. It crosses the blood-brain barrier and safely elevates NAD levels in brain cells, muscle cells, lung cells, and heart cells. Four of those studies that have been published showed that it dramatically reduces key inflammation markers: IL-2, IL-6, IL-11. These are the key disease-related inflammation markers. Elevating NAD by taking Tru Niagen dramatically lowers inflammation. Inflammation is a very, very key component to our general health, particularly as it relates to aging and healing. This Parkinson’s study is a very unique and very special study.
We published three studies already on Parkinson’s at different doses and different sizes that have shown at key Parkinson’s indications a positive statistically significant benefit. This study is a very, very large study, 400 participants, and technically qualifies as a phase four, actually, a study. It is double-blinded, so we don’t know the results. We’re hoping if they’re consistent with the previous smaller studies that have been published, we actually might be able to provide a benefit to people who are suffering from not only Parkinson’s, but other neurodegenerative diseases. There are others as well, like ALS and Alzheimer’s, that are inflammation-related, neuroinflammation-related, that we think elevating NAD levels with Niagen could have a positive impact. From a commercial standpoint, we’re extremely excited about that Parkinson’s study.
Also, from the mere fact that we have the opportunity to really help these people who are inflicted with these conditions, it’s really a blessing that we are in this position.
I guess the thought process is if that does come back positive, the supplement business potentially would benefit from that. Maybe longer term, you would create a drug around it.
Correct. Now, as I say, we have a portfolio of molecules that elevate NAD, not just the one that we are commercializing with Tru Niagen. There's one in particular called Nicotinamide Riboside triacetate that we've already shown to be bioequivalent, indeed slightly biosuperior to nicotinamide riboside chloride, which is the ingredient we use in Tru Niagen in the supplement. Our plan would be to use this other alternative molecule, this prodrug, as the drug and the existing nicotinamide riboside chloride for the dietary supplement. The hope is that they both could be available on the market.
Okay, great. Maybe if we could go back and talk a little bit about the patents you have in the competitive landscape, because I know there's a lot of, you know, NAD+ out there that says they are and they're not. Maybe if you could just lay out that landscape.
Let me be clear, they are not. If you are interested in an NAD product, and a lot of people are now, and that product does not say Niagen, the chances are very high that you're not only going to pee it out, but you may be damaging yourself. Why do I say that? NAD, the molecule NAD, Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide, does not get into cells. If you're swallowing a supplement that says NAD, it's not going to increase your NAD levels. The molecule is too big, and the molecule is a nucleotide, meaning there's a phosphate group on the perimeter which blocks entry into the cell. By trying to get into the cell and failing, it creates inflammation. These companies that are selling NAD are selling sawdust, and the FTC should put them to bed. These are fake, phony marketing companies. You need a precursor.
You need a molecule that enters the cell and converts into NAD. That's a complicated story to tell to people, but it's the scientific truth. You see lots of ads, even from paid influencers out there saying, "Take my NAD product," or I've even seen ads saying, "NAD doesn't work, but this NAD product works because it's Liposomal NAD." It's horse manure. It's not true. If it doesn't say Niagen, I wouldn't trust it. We've done studies on all the NAD products that are out there on the market, and a very, very small percentage of them actually meet label claims. This is a larger problem for the dietary supplement industry in general.
This company, Niagen Bioscience, is working with government officials and the FDA and certain key retailers like Amazon and congressmen and senators to try to help the industry self-police because it is very disturbing how many dietary supplement companies come out, make false claims with no science, no research, no safety studies, and the FDA is just not budgeted well enough to police this. Until somebody gets actually physically hurt, they generally won't do anything. We think that that's an important contribution we can make and are trying to make to the business in general. If you're interested in NAD, just make sure it says Niagen somewhere.
Okay, great. I guess on the marketing front, to follow that up, what are you guys doing to reach consumers? Are you utilizing influencers, physicians, traditional marketing, and also to combat that narrative out there?
The thesis at our company behind marketing is fairly simple. How do you sell a dietary supplement that works like a drug? How do you sell a dietary supplement that actually has a level of research that is unparalleled from any of the companies that are out there, that's real, and that's genuine, and that actually works? The answer is to be very authentic and to be very, very genuine and just put it out there. It is a very conservative marketing strategy, and it's an understated marketing strategy. It is not a sensationalist marketing strategy. If there is an influencer or a celebrity that wants to do a deal with our company, it's very difficult for us.
Literally, some of the most famous humans in the world have approached us quite directly saying, "We take the product, and we'd like to make a deal." We have passed on all of them because we know that Niagen works. We know that it will have an impact on you if you take it for a period of time. You may not feel it like caffeine, but you will notice it if you keep track of your general health over a period of time. We do not have endorsement deals with big famous people or athletes or anything like this.
However, if they really take the product and they know what they're talking about and they want to be behind it, we will have an arrangement with them. It is going to be economically unsatisfying to them, but the idea with our company is to be patient, to be genuine, to be real, and let people discover it for themselves. That has so far worked out fairly well for us.
Okay, great. Maybe two final questions. One, because it's such a hot topic this year, I have to bring it up, even though I don't think you're that impacted, the tariff issue. Maybe talk about just if you're at all impacted. I'm curious just what you're seeing from a consumer perspective. I think consumers have maintained that health and wellness spend. I think you haven't really seen, you know, clearly in your results, you haven't seen a slowdown, just if you're seeing anything different out there.
You know, we make it here in the U.S., so we're not affected by the tariffs at all. We do have some business in Hong Kong, but it's not affected by tariffs at all. We haven't seen any impact whatsoever from the tariffs. Of course, we've not seen a slowdown. In fact, quite the opposite. I mean, our business, knock wood, is growing and hopefully will continue to grow as awareness for NAD increases and discerning people who take the time to research realize that if you're in NAD, this company, Niagen Bioscience, and this product, Niagen, is the real deal.
Great. Thank you so much, Rob, for joining us. Thank you, everyone.