26 earnings conference call. My name is Karina, and I will be the conference operator today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Earlier today, Niagen Bioscience issued a press release announcing its financial results for the first quarter of 2026. If you have not reviewed this information, it is available within the investor relations section of Niagen Bioscience's website at www.niagenbioscience.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Lauren Brzozowski, Assistant Controller. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and welcome to Niagen Bioscience Inc.'s first quarter 2026 conference call. Joining me today are our Chief Executive Officer, Robert Fried, Chief Financial Officer, Ozan Pamir, and Senior Vice President of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs, Dr. Andrew Shao. Dr. Shao will be joining the call for Q&A. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's call may include forward-looking statements. These statements relate to, among other things, our research and development activities, clinical trial plans and timing, regulatory filings, expansion into new markets, business development opportunities, and our expected financial and operating performance. These statements are based on our current expectations as of today and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For a discussion of these risks, please refer to our most recent Form 10-Q and other filings with the SEC.
We undertake no obligation to update these statements except as required by law. In addition, we may reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in today's earnings release and presentation, both available in the investors relations section of our website. With that, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to our CEO, Robert Fried.
Thank you, Lauren. Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for joining us on today's investor call. In the first quarter, we delivered $31.5 million in revenue, a 5% year-over-year growth excluding revenue from the recently divested reference standard business. We generated net income of $6.3 million and ended the quarter with $66.5 million in cash and no debt. We had an increase in working capital of about $5.4 million from the prior quarter, leaving a total of $82.3 million. The core e-commerce business grew 14% year-over-year. The direct-to-consumer website grew twice as fast as Amazon. As anticipated, two of our customers did not order this quarter as much as they did a year ago, which impacted overall growth. We do see promising indicators to start the year.
The awareness around Niagen and the benefits of NAD supplementation continues to gain media attention. Over the last year, we've garnered many features with major media outlets, including a cover feature in the Business by LA Times Studios and additional digital features on LA Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Business Insider, People Magazine, GQ, Vogue, Vanity Fair, BioTuesdays, The New York Post, U.S. News & World Report, Everyday Health, Elle, Allure, and others. These features serve as a powerful validation that overall awareness of the importance of NAD is growing stronger, and major media outlets are recognizing the strength of our science and the quality of our products and our leadership in the industry. An example of why experts and industry journalists understand Niagen to be unique in this space is our recent launch of the Niagen Plus at-home injection kit and our telehealth capability.
There are numerous federal and state requirements that had to be met in order to offer a product such as this, and the ingredient itself must be pharmaceutical-grade. It must conform to very high purity and sterilization standards, and it has taken many years and countless hours from the exceptional Niagen Bioscience team to get here. I am very proud of this achievement. It is the first product launch through our very own telehealth platform and places us firmly in the heart of a growing and important longevity trend. Of course, as we do with most things, we're approaching this new endeavor carefully and methodically, and I expect it to iterate and improve with time. Niagen Plus is not our only new development in our product pipeline. In March, we pilot launched the Niagen NanoCloud, our first skincare topical product.
Early demand has been extremely strong. We're already nearly sold out. The wide launch will be in October. Surveys of the early adopters of Niagen NanoCloud has yielded enthusiastic results. They see visibly more youthful, smoother, and more moisturized skin and improved skin texture. These results are consistent with a recently completed independent study. In addition to our own Tru Niagen consumer products, we expect to supply Niagen as an ingredient to reputable and trustworthy skincare brands. Last month, we announced that NR chloride, patented as Niagen, has achieved a published USP dietary supplement ingredient monograph. A USP monograph is usually reserved for approved drugs and rarely dietary supplements. There is now a global benchmark for what high-quality NR chloride should look like in dietary supplements, and that benchmark is Niagen. Niagen is the only ingredient among the NAD and NMN companies to reach this standard.
This is merely one of many examples of our dedication to investing in science and innovation and in high quality and makes our company truly unique in the NAD space. NAD science continues to evolve, and as the leader in NAD science, we take pride in contributing to research that advances the understanding of NAD and its implications for human health. In March, we were the lead sponsor of the inaugural NAD for Health scientific meeting hosted by the University of Copenhagen. This brought together world-renowned researchers, clinicians, and industry partners. A prominent discussion at this conference was a new development in the understanding how, when, and where different NAD precursors exhibit their effects. We learned that while whole blood NAD remains an important biomarker, tissue NAD may be the key determinant of functional outcomes.
Emerging evidence suggests that NR administered through IV or injection can support more rapid, direct, and substantial NAD augmentation in peripheral tissues such as the liver, kidney, brain, skeletal muscle, and skin. Additionally, recent evidence suggests that combining NAD-boosting supplementation with exercise may produce additive or potentially synergistic effects on certain functional outcomes such as blood flow and aerobic capacity. These learnings will require further validation in human clinical trials, and we look forward to this next phase of research. We continue to make steady but deliberate progress towards pharmaceutical applications of our NAD precursor portfolio in orphan indications, particularly ataxia-telangiectasia. We are working with CROs to design and execute key IND-enabling preclinical studies, a portion of which were initiated earlier this year, and I hope to have more updates or key developments on future calls. Niagen Bioscience continues to set an example in the industry.
We are dedicated to doing things the right way, to advancing the science, and to promoting the understanding of how Niagen plays a critical role in improving health. This is what sets us apart from all other NAD companies. I would now like to hand the call over to Ozan to run through the quarter's financials and then on to Q&A and closing remarks. Ozan?
Thanks, Rob. It is a pleasure to once again address our investors, partners, and team members today. We had a solid start to the year with strong e-commerce growth, coupled with exceptional net income. In the first quarter of 2026, we delivered $31.5 million in revenue or $31.1 million, excluding the reference standard segment, an increase of 5% year-over-year. Tru Niagen revenue grew by 4% to $22.4 million, a $900,000 year-over-year increase driven primarily by e-commerce revenue of $19.2 million, which was up by 14% or $2.4 million. Our Niagen ingredient revenue was $8.2 million, up 2% or $185,000 year-over-year.
Within the ingredients business, we delivered $7.3 million in food-grade Niagen sales to key partners and $850,000 in pharma-grade Niagen sales. Tru Niagen international and domestic distribution is an area of opportunity for the company. Sales to Watsons and other B2B partners were down by $1.5 million year-over-year due to timing of orders and changes to inventory management. We can continue to expect quarterly fluctuations in sales to Watsons, a valued partner and an important component of our international distribution strategy. We do expect sales to Watsons to increase during the year based on their forecasts. Gross margin improved to 63.5% in the first quarter, up 10 basis points compared to 63.4% a year ago. This improvement was driven primarily by changes in product mix and business mix.
Selling and marketing expense as a percentage of net sales was 30.7%, compared to 26.6% in the first quarter of 2025. The increase in selling and marketing expenses reflects investments in marketing and advertising to drive e-commerce growth, brand awareness, and to support commercial launches of new products. Research and development expense was $1.5 million, $220,000 higher year-over-year. The driver of the increase is continued investment into clinical studies for new product launches and providing materials and resources to support external research. General and administrative expenses totaled $7.2 million, a $2.1 million increase compared to the previous year.
The increase in G&A expenses is driven by the absence of a $1.3 million recovery of credit losses related to our legal settlement with Elysium and higher share-based compensation. Finally, our net income for the quarter was $6.3 million or $0.08 per share. An improvement compared to $0.07 per share for the first quarter of 2025. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. Our balance sheet remains strong. We ended the quarter with $66.5 million in cash and no debt. For the three months ended March 31, 2026, net cash used by operations was $1.2 million, compared to net cash provided by operations of $7.9 million in the same period last year.
Cash used by operations was driven primarily by investments in inventory of $3.6 million and timing of customer orders and collections, and a larger outstanding balance from a partner, which was subsequently collected in April. Trade receivables was also impacted by an updated Amazon policy, where a seven-day hold on sales proceeds is implemented, which was a one-time impact on operating cash flows. We expect inventory levels to decrease throughout the remainder of the year. Cash from investing activities is primarily comprised of the sale of the Reference Standards business for proceeds of $5.8 million. Cash used in financing activities include $2.4 million of common stock repurchases during the first quarter as part of our increased share repurchase program of $20 million.
Regarding our full year 2026 outlook, detailed information on key financial metrics can be found in our earnings press release and presentation. For our top-line growth, we are reaffirming our guidance of 10%-15% growth year-over-year. Awareness around NAD+ has yet to reach its peak, and we remain confident in our opportunities for growth in this year and beyond. We anticipate that our e-commerce channel will be a consistent growth engine, and we expect that our innovative launches will provide upside. While sales to certain distribution or ingredient partners may fluctuate quarter-to-quarter, we remain confident in the year ahead. We're also revising our outlook for selling and marketing expenses to increase in absolute dollars and increase as a percentage of net sales compared to our previous expectation of remaining stable as a percentage of net sales and increasing in absolute dollars.
While we're not ready to commit to a broader brand initiative or investment, we are expecting to invest in marketing to generate refreshed creative assets to push brand awareness on all channels. Finally, we're revising our outlook for general and administrative expenses. We now expect G&A expenses to be up $3 million-$4 million in absolute dollars year-over-year compared to the previous expectation of $4 million-$5 million. This change in outlook is primarily driven by shifting our investments from infrastructure to supporting brand awareness efforts. With the first quarter behind us, we are focused on building on the momentum we have established. We have the right operational foundation and focus to position the company for a strong year and for longer-term success. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. A kind reminder to please pick up your handset when asking a question. 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 Jeffrey Cohen with Ladenburg Thalmann. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, Rob and Ozan. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking our questions.
Sure.
I guess big picture, could you talk about the FDA and the last motion and the ramifications of NMN as far as its sales as well as its sales through Amazon? What's the impact there upon your business? What's the outlook there as well? Thank you.
Sure. Well, we think NMN is a good ingredient. It does effectively elevate NAD. Doesn't do it nearly as well as Niagen. There was a study published this quarter out of Norway that showed that NR increased blood NAD levels 2.3x of the equivalent amount of NMN. Every NMN product that we have tested infringes on existing patents for NMN. We've also done studies, others have done studies that shows that percentage of NMN products in the market that meet what's on the label is very low. We think that the reversal of the drug preclusion ruling by the FDA in September was a bad decision and a questionable decision. We think it has a very good chance of being reversed yet again. For all those reasons, we're not bullish long term on NMN.
Unquestionably, we are seeing an increase in NMN sellers and NMN sales on Amazon and elsewhere, and it is impacting our sales. In fact, there's more than 300 SKUs now on Amazon, whereas in September there were zero.
Rob, what would you speculate the ramifications to Niagen have been over the first quarter?
Well, I can't give you a precise number. We see an increase in bidding costs for keyword searches on Amazon and elsewhere, and we see more difficulty getting new-to-brand customers. Many of the NMN sellers are selling at a very, very cheap price, which probably coincides with the fact that, look, some of these companies that come out of Belarus or China, they don't have any scientific research. They don't meet label claims, they charge a very small amount. For those buyers that are basically price influenced, I think a lot of those are going to NMN. As I say, I don't think it's a long-term thing, but it has affected us.
It is, I can't give you a precise amount or number, but it is creating some headwinds for us that did not exist a few months ago.
Okay. That's super helpful. As a follow-up, could you talk about the IV locations? Out there, I know you were in approximately 1,200 locations last quarter. Could you talk about any trends there as far as placements, utilization, pricing, demographics, anything there you can give us some color on?
Yeah. As you say, it's in 1,200 clinics now. We're seeing the order rate is very strong and the repeat rate is strong. It tends to be a more affluent consumer, and they're in the major cities, most of them. It's very well represented in the larger cities. We're also in these cruise ships and seems to do very well on these cruise ships. They still charge a great deal for it. The average price is still, you know, between $800 and $1,000 per IV. People do experience a benefit, and they're very enthusiastic about it. We have some partners like Restore that are doing an excellent job of educating the consumer when they come in of the benefits of Niagen IV over NAD IV. They tell us that they're having a great success and great repeat purchasers.
Super. Thanks for taking the questions. Nice quarter.
Thanks, Jeff.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Susan Anderson with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions.
Hi, Susan.
I know it's early days. Hi. Any initial thoughts on the Niagen Plus IV injectable launch, I guess, you know, any initial consumer response? Do you have plans in place yet to roll it out to other telehealth platforms? If so, like, what would the timing of that be?
Thank you. Very good questions. As you know, we launched over the weekend of our Niagen at home injection kit. It's taken us many years, yet we're very, very excited to be there. It's only four or five days, but it's been, I would say, outstanding those first four or five days in terms of traffic and conversions. Our expectations obviously are low. There's no marketing yet. The only marketing that we're doing is, you know, email, some email campaigns and some media, you know, press releases, and it's been picked up in some media. We haven't done any paid ads at all as of yet, but the response is right out of the gate, quite enthusiastic, so we're extremely encouraged.
We're not yet available in California, which represents a very, very disproportionately large percentage of the consumers of products such as these. That's because our primary 503B pharmacy, Wells, is not licensed to supply in California. They believe that this problem will be resolved in the next few weeks. We're hopeful for that.
Okay, great. That sounds good. Then I guess just thinking about the distribution of the consumer products, so Niagen supplements, etc. I guess, how are you thinking about just the channels as we look forward? I guess, will you eventually maybe go into retail with things like the core Niagen supplement? Are there other channels that you're looking to go?
Yes, we do expect to broaden the footprint, the distribution footprint in other countries and also in retail in the United States. There are a few new companies in the dietary supplement space brands to whom we will be supplying Niagen as an ingredient. We will be expanding the distribution. Additionally, we will be rolling out additional products. As you know, we launched the Niagen NanoCloud product recently, and that's done extremely well. We expect to do a wide release of that in October. Similarly, we expect to supply Niagen as an ingredient to other skincare companies. As always, we'll be very careful about the companies to whom we supply Niagen as an ingredient. They'll be reputable, trustworthy companies with existing brands. We see an expansion in that regard as well.
I guess, what's the demand been from, you know, other skincare beauty companies for the ingredient? I guess, especially after you rolled out your own Niagen NanoCloud. Have you seen, you know, any of those companies, like, kind of come to you or, you know, interested in also, you know, adding the ingredient to their products?
Yes. We've been in discussions with two major skincare brands.
Great. That sounds good. Thanks a lot. Good luck the rest of the year.
Thank you, Susan.
Your next question comes from the line of Sean McGowan with Roth Capital Partners. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hi, guys.
Hey, Sean.
A two-part question for Rob, and then a couple of clarifications for Ozan. Rob, what do you expect is going to be the impact, kind of in the near and midterm, of adding the new compounding pharmacy? When do you think we'll see that impact?
We're hopeful for two things. One is a wider distribution of sales to clinics. We're in 1,200 clinics at this point, but there are several thousand addressable clinics. We're hoping to expand the number of clinics to whom we're selling. Also we're hoping that the ultimate price point to the end consumer comes down. We think we $800 is a lot to pay for many people. We think if we can get that price down through, you know, more clinics, more competition, and more pharmacies, that we can expand the addressable market.
Okay. Do you expect to increase beyond these two? It's Wells and Olympia, right? Will you be expanding beyond those? When do you think we'll see that impact?
I think we'll see the impact of Olympia in the summer, the end of the summer. It's possible we would talk to other pharmacies. There are 503B pharmacies and 503A pharmacies. At this point, we don't know.
Okay. It takes a while to ramp them up anyway. Okay. A couple of points of clarification for you, Ozan. One, was the increase in the inventory number, what drove that? Is that any indication of, you know, acceleration in your expectation of sales, or was there something else going on there? Then in your commentary on G&A and sales and marketing and the outlook, would you expect the reduced outlook for spending in G&A to be kind of offset by the increase in sales and marketing, so we wind up, you know, effectively with the same operating income level?
Hey, Sean. Regarding the inventory level, the main driver is that we have made commitments to make these purchases from our primary supplier, W. R. Grace, about six months ago. This was all scheduled inventory that was coming in to support us for the year. We do expect that throughout the remainder of the year, the inventory levels will come down.
Okay.
I think you were asking, can you repeat the other two questions?
Well, it's in the outlook. Will the You effectively raised the outlook for sales and marketing spending, right? By saying it's gonna be increasing as a % of revenue.
Correct.
Do you think that's going to offset the savings or, you know, reduced spending outlook for G&A?
Yes. That's a fair assumption.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Raghuram Selvaraju with H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. John V sitting in for Ram. Thank you for taking my questions.
Sure
how have recent developments on the compounded GLP-1 front affected demand for Niagen+ IV?
We only know in the sense that we get many calls and inquiries from these clinics and these compound pharmacies, especially the compound pharmacies who often are saying, "What's the next big thing after GLP-1?" It seems like NAD is teed up for that.
Got it. How do you think the telehealth initiative will impact operating efficiency? What emerging promotional strategies do you expect to deploy under the scope of this approach?
We're going to market it similarly to the way we market Tru Niagen. It's mostly an e-commerce business, so it's the use of social media, paid ads, free media PR, the use of influencers, and we do studies, and we publish these studies, and these studies tend to get picked up by people who pay attention. We've already put out two studies, and there are several more ongoing. As we learn them, we put them out, and there's a network of people that absorb this information 'cause they're very curious about how they can improve the way their body ages.
Got it. Okay. Lastly, would you be able to go into what the status of the complaint aimed at removing NMN products from the U.S. market is?
We sued the FDA because we think that their ruling, reversing the drug preclusion ruling was incorrect. The FDA replied to that lawsuit recently, like last week. We're awaiting hearings on that reply and then the judge's decision. We think his final decision will be within a year.
Got it. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Bill Dezellem with Tieton Capital. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Relative to the Nano Cloud skincare product, would you walk us through how you are marketing that and how you ended up getting such great traction so early on? Secondarily, what you are learning from having that product in the market.
We're marketing very little at this point. It's mostly existing Tru Niagen consumers that are also purchasing Nano Cloud as a bundle. They're seeing it on the website when they order Tru Niagen. There is some social media discussion about Nano Clouds, but the amount of our actual paid advertising is very small at this point. We've done surveys of these consumers, 'cause it's now been on the market almost two months. The people that purchase once, we send out a survey, and we've gotten some extremely positive responses from these early consumers on the impact that it's had on their skin.
Rob, as you see the consumer behavior, has that led to any learnings in terms of how when you do your commercial launch in October, how you want to approach it? What are you seeing or learning from any of the social media that's taking place?
We're learning that it's predominantly a female product, at least so thus far. It seems like there's a very high repurchase rate. We also realized that we can change the pricing a bit. We'll probably increase the pricing a bit for the product. There's been some interest from retail on Niagen NanoCloud and skincare products. We're considering that. Yes, in terms of the effectiveness of the advertising, of course, we buy these ads, and we track their performance, and we optimize it, and those learnings will inform the larger ad campaign that happens in October.
Just following up on the retail stores, how the Niagen has had a couple of, I'll just call them fits and starts, in I think it was Walgreens many, many years ago and Walmart many years ago. How would this launch be different if you were to go that route, and how would you convert that to a greater level of success than you were able to have the first couple of times?
There weren't a first couple of times. We did try once in Walmart. We were never in Walgreens. That was just about timing. It actually sold quite well in Walmart, extremely well in Walmart. It's just that it took us a year to get our TV campaign going in conjunction with the launch of Walmart. Took too long. What we learned from that experience is that there needs to be marketing in connection with a retail launch. You need to have that marketing campaign ready to coincide with the retail launch. There's not going to be a wide retail launch. It will be slow. I mean, we're in certain retail locations now, and outside the U.S., we're in Watsons locations in Hong Kong, Singapore. We are in Vitamin Shoppe presently. We're in a few specialty shops as well.
I expect that it won't be a broad, wide retail launch. It'll be partner by partner and regional.
Great. Thank you.
Sure.
Our last question comes from J.P. Mark with Farmhouse Equity Research.
Hi, good afternoon, Rob and Ozan Pamir.
Hi.
A quick question for you, hi, about Niagen Plus and really about the three customer segments. Do you see a meaningful overlap between the oral supplement user, the high-end IV user, and this newer at-home injectable user? Are they completely distinct populations, or do they overlap, do you think? I know it's early for the. What's your thought on them?
It's a bit early to know that. We think that the Niagen injection product is more of an acute product. In other words, we understand the NR pathway that Dr. Charles Brenner discovered, which he called the NR kinase pathway, is located mostly in certain types of cells. That's skeletal muscle cells, brain cells, spleen, kidney, and skin cells. People that are interested in some sort of acute therapy are perhaps more likely to go with the injection. The oral would be more of a maintenance product. We do think that some people will use both intermittently. We don't yet know because the at-home kit is only recently on the market. We will see how it plays out.
In terms of the marketing to different segments, have you already identified what you think are the most promising social media tasks or specific opportunities that you think that you can sort of tap into? I think you mentioned influencers. Are there certain kinds of influencers or certain influencers specifically who are more likely to reach your target market?
Well, in the early stages, we know that the biohacker community, the strong anti-aging community, the peptide community, if you will, are more inclined.
Yeah
Try the Niagen at home injection product. Indeed, even the IV product, although to a lesser extent. We think that's our early stage primary addressable market. In the longer run, though, you know, we think that elevating NAD with Niagen IV or injection or Tru Niagen has a beneficial impact on things like fatigue or muscle repair or even inflammation in general across many cell types and organ types. Overall, we think it's it serves well as a anti-aging product. We think it's complementary to GLP-1s. We're hopeful that in the long run, the at home kit becomes addressable and as a complement to people who are presently self-injecting a GLP-1 agonist.
Rob, last question. I just wonder, are you keyed up on a bunch of podcasts? Because that's the best marketing you could possibly do, I think.
We've done a few, and I think we've signed up a few more. There are many podcasters that have requested an IV or an injection that we're supplying to them, and we'll hear back from them and see if they want to follow it up with an interview.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. Good quarter, and wish you the best for the rest of the year.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back to Lauren Brzozowski for closing remarks.
Thank you, Karina. There will be a replay of this call beginning at 7:30 P.M. Eastern time today. The replay number is 1-833-461-5787, and the replay ID is 828848803. Thank you for joining us today. We look forward to updating you again next quarter.
This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.