Hello, everyone. Thank you again for coming on this wet and soon-to-be windy day. It is always my highest honor to introduce the companies that I feel that will make the biggest and most positive impact for society and the world. This is a very special company, because not only is it one of our longest term holds, I feel that these guys are still in the very early innings of building something that will truly be spectacular and beneficial for the health of everybody. Our presenter is a man that's comparable to me in the sense that he wears his heart on his sleeve, and I believe that he is positioning the company for greatness ahead. With that, I'd love everyone to give a round of applause to Mr. Rob Fried, the CEO of Niagen Bioscience.
Thank you.
Appreciate you.
Well, that was a lovely introduction. Thank you, Chris. Of course, we love this conference and love Chris, and intend to keep coming back here. We love meeting everybody here, and very appreciative of Chris, and are very proud of the success that he's shown, and hope that it continues. Quick show of hands, how many people here in the room know what NAD is? Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide.
Yeah, I actually took that before. It helps you stay younger.
Well, you're, like, 21? It makes you very healthy, right? NAD stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. It's a coenzyme that exists in all living cells, plant and animal, and is vital to all important metabolic processes inside the cell, but especially energy metabolism and the repair of cell damage. There are these organelles inside of cells called mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, as we all recall.
Mitochondria take the oxygen from air and the nutrients from food and convert it into ATP, adenosine triphosphate, which is basically molecules that carry energy throughout the rest of the cell. The process by which mitochondria do that is called the Krebs cycle or the citric acid cycle, and if you looked at an image of the citric acid cycle, you would see that NAD or some form of the NAD metabolome exists in every step of the way.
When you have a lot of NAD, you have more mitochondria and you have more efficient mitochondria. In essence, you have more energy, better energy metabolism, when you have a lot of NAD. But perhaps a more important function of NAD is cell repair. I do not know. Cell repair. The cell has a multitude of different types of damage. There is oxidative stress, there is inflammation, there is gene mutations and damages.
There is the presence of a virus. Sometimes there is actual physical damage to the cell, but the cell has mechanisms in place for repairing that damage. The repair of damage mechanisms are related to NAD. When your cell is saturated in NAD, it has a greater ability to repair damage, reduce inflammation, correct oxidative stress, correct gene damage. What is aging? Okay, I am sorry.
There is no direct relationship between the images and what I am saying. I will just riff. Aging is the accumulation of damage at the cellular level, but also the diminished ability to repair that damage. So when you see wrinkled skin or when you see inflammation or you see joint pain or you see memory lapses, these age-related conditions that we all live with, or even worse, diseases that are related to aging, all they are is cellular damage, but the inability to repair that damage.
Elevating NAD improves the cell's ability to repair the damage. So it goes to show that if you keep your NAD levels high, there is almost no age-related condition that we cannot improve. Indeed, we have done many studies at this company. Every age-related disease or condition that we have identified is also associated with a decline in NAD. Every one. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, arthritis, simple memory loss. What is this company?
This company has identified a series of molecules that very, very safely and very, very efficiently elevate NAD. Very effectively, very efficiently, very safely elevate NAD, and it does so in the more damaged cells. One of these ingredients is called nicotinamide riboside. We call it Niagen. Nicotinamide riboside. It is a magical, incredible molecule. It is actually found in trace amounts in milk. That is where it is found in nature. It is actually in the liquid that mom passes through to the baby.
It is very much the liquid of life. We have shown that it elevates NAD extremely quickly, extremely safely, and extremely efficiently. So we built our company around that idea. Yes, we do sell a dietary supplement, and I see there is lots of boxes out there of our dietary supplement, Tru Niagen. But we do not view ourselves as a dietary supplement company. We view ourselves as an NAD platform company, an R&D company, if you will, that is committed to learning as much about NAD, how to measure it, how to increase it, what is the best modality, what are the best conditions, which cell types work best, which molecules work best for different conditions. Then we have developed an ability to commercialize it in numerous verticals, not just dietary supplements. Yesterday, we launched a skin topical product. But before we launched it, we did two studies.
Well, Estée Lauder did one of the studies, and another third party did the second study. But what we proved is that a topical version of nicotinamide riboside, what we call Niagen, penetrates the skin, gets into the skin cells, elevates NAD in the skin cells. Actually goes past that and actually gets into the bloodstream. Estée Lauder proved that it actually does so better than niacinamide, which is considered one of the more popular ingredients in the skincare business. But what I'm saying is, if you take Niagen topically, and we now have a product that you can do that with, it's not about hydrating the skin so it looks a little plumper for three hours. It's actually repairing the cell damage, and that's what aging is. It's the accumulation of damage at the cellular level. You may have heard of something called NMN.
The way NR works, Niagen works, and one of our patents identifies that when a cell is under metabolic stress, it actually opens up a pathway, and that pathway is actually looking, searching for NR, or nicotinamide riboside, or Niagen. That Niagen enters the cell and converts quickly into NMN, and then converts into NAD. So some companies are saying, "Well, why not just buy NMN?" Because NMN does not have the ability to enter the cell. NMN is not bioavailable unto itself. It has to convert into something else. And what it converts into in the bloodstream is NR. So when you're buying NMN, you're buying a precursor to NR. There's another issue with NMN that we're concerned about, is that there's an enzyme called CD38, which is associated with inflammation and damaged old cells. NMN's a substrate for CD38, whereas NR consumes, depletes CD38.
So the long-term health benefits are also safer and clearer with NR. This is our scientific advisory board. It's the best NAD anti-aging researchers in the world. Roger has a Nobel Prize. Rudy is the head of neurology at Harvard and probably the world's leading expert on Alzheimer's. Charlie Brenner actually discovered nicotinamide riboside when he was at Dartmouth. Hassie Cohen is the world's leading authority on peptides. He actually was the discoverer of MOTS-c. That particular peptide, we think, is in some way related to NAD. NAD is not a peptide. Bruce German is the world's leading authority on milk, and as I said, it is found in milk. We've actually shown that when moms take Tru Niagen, they actually produce more milk.
And when they pass through the Niagen to the babies, the babies actually have larger brains and are physically larger and healthier because they have these elevated NAD levels. Brunie Felding is one of the world's leading researchers at Scripps Research Center on Cancer, because there are people who have written articles and are concerned, "If I take Tru Niagen, am I increasing my cancer risk?" Because cancer cells have NAD, too. So are you promoting the growth of cancer? And Brunie has shown no, that's not the case, because there are many, many more anti-cancer properties. You're strengthening your immune cells and your killer cells.
Then, of course, Will Bohr, who is the grandson of Niels Bohr, and who just stepped down as the head of National Institute on Aging at the NIH, world leading authority in aging, but in particular, and something I am going to talk about momentarily, which we think is the core of our company, these rare orphan diseases where children age so rapidly that they die of old age in their teens. This is an area of expertise for Will Bohr. It turns out that these kids have non-detectable levels of NAD. Think about that. This is a cohort group of humans where you can see the direct relationship between NAD levels and the way the body ages. These kids have non-detectable levels of NAD, and they age so rapidly, they die of old age in their teens.
We have done studies on most of these diseases and shown significant therapeutic benefits to these kids by elevating their NAD levels. This is the priority of our company, to get orphan rare disease drug approval for these kids. We operate as a biotech company that happens to sell a dietary supplement. This is why I say we are an NAD platform company that has researched all these modalities and have developed all these commercial abilities. This biotech space is very, very important for us as a company. Of course, it has become very popular. Many of you have heard of NAD. A lot of athletes and celebrities get these NAD IVs. We are the nucleus of all that research and all that attention.
All the companies that are selling these other ingredients are sort of piggybacking off of the work that we have developed over all these years. It does end up fitting into what is considered the longevity market, which is growing in popularity as you know.
This is the Tru Niagen product that we have talked about. We went to a consumer product conference in New York a couple of weeks ago, and I saw all these big healthcare consumer brands making presentations, and they would get up and they would say, "We did a clinical study." Or one of the big brands got up, said, "We did five clinical studies showing that our formulation of our food or our beverage is good." We now have 51 peer-reviewed, published high-impact factor clinical studies. 51. 45 relates to whether Niagen was the source of the NR. It is actually 51 that are NR studies.
There is another 30 studies that are ongoing right now. It is incomparable, which is why I say the company is not really a dietary supplement company. It is an NAD platform company, and we are very devoted and committed to understanding everything about NAD, when it works, how it works, why it works. This is the product we launched yesterday. It is this topical product called NanoCloud. I do not know if they are in your bag or not, but they are great, and they work really, really well. We are mostly in e-commerce. The dietary supplement business is mostly an e-commerce business, but we have expanded our retail distribution. We are very, very popular in Hong Kong at a chain of stores there called Watsons. Many people nowadays are self-injecting to stay young, a GLP-1, which is a form of a peptide.
We believe that if you're going to inject yourself to stay thin, you might also inject yourself to stay young. It took many years for us to get on the approved list by the FDA to sell our ingredient as an injectable or as an IV. But we did get on that key list. It also is a very different supply chain. This is a pharmaceutical-grade product, not a food-grade product. It's also a very different commercial platform. You're selling through clinics and telehealth companies. We also built our own capability where you can go on our website, niagenplus.com, get a prescription, and have a self-injecting home kit sent to you directly. The kinetics between injecting Niagen and taking it orally are quite different.
It's far more powerful if you inject it or get an IV, but it also goes directly to the tissue cells, the heart, the muscle, the skin, the brain, instead of going through the blood cells or the gut. The distribution of this Niagen IV product is now in about 1,700 clinics around the U.S., these IV clinics. Of course, I mentioned the pharmaceutical, which we are most excited about. These are rare orphan diseases, and we are not using the same exact molecule that we use to sell Tru Niagen. It's a differentiated molecule that we also have patented and control, one that is made synthetically. It's not found in nature. It's not found in milk. But we have found that it is significantly more bioavailable than the molecule we use in Tru Niagen.
Therefore, we are using that as the molecule that we are researching for this rare disease drug approval. We've published studies already on Tru Niagen molecule having real significant therapeutic benefits for several of these diseases, ataxia-telangiectasia, Cockayne syndrome, Werner syndrome. There are quite a few of these advanced aging rare diseases, and all seem to be benefited significantly by elevating NAD with our products. The economics are quite dramatic in that business, as you may know. If you get drug approval for a rare disease, there's a voucher that you get which enables you to move to the front of the line for your next drug approval process, and that is a sellable voucher. A few weeks ago, one sold for $250 million. We could get it conceivably for all six of those orphan diseases that I just mentioned.
More importantly than that, because the economics themselves are quite dramatic. In addition to actually helping these kids who are dealing with these horrible maladies, the economics of an approved orphan disease are quite extraordinary. There was a company three years ago called Reata that sold to Biogen, that got Friedreich's ataxia drug approved, and they sold for $7 billion to Biogen. Imagine we're pursuing a handful, several of these orphan diseases. There's a couple of public companies that are pursuing orphan diseases with molecules that we think are quite inferior to our NB4168, that have market caps right now. They're losing money every quarter, and they're out raising money, and they have market caps that are nearly double ours just for this drug approval process, and don't have a $100 million plus business that's cash flow positive and is funding that doesn't need any cash.
As I say, ataxia-telangiectasia is one of the key ones that we're pursuing. We did publish two really important studies that had extremely remarkable results for that particular disease. We think it's kind of de-risked as a process we're going through as we convert over from the existing molecule to the new molecule. It's not just ataxia. There's mitochondrial myopathy, there's Friedreich's ataxia, there's quite a few, there's neurodegenerative diseases. Every cell has NAD in it. When you elevate NAD, you're improving energy metabolism, but the cell's ability to repair damage and be more resilient. These are last year's numbers. We did approximately $127 million. We had net income of $16 million. We ended last quarter with a little below $67 million in cash. We have zero debt.
You've got a biotech company here that has all of that rare disease upside, but is cash flow positive and isn't raising money. Why exactly is this stock not at $20? What's the thesis? Oh, because NMN has entered the market and there's been a slight decline in growth? Guys, you're smarter than that. You can't just be investors that when a stock drops, we sell it, and when it goes up, we buy it.
There has to be some sense of where is the value going on here. There's real science here. There's real intellectual property here. There's real long-term growth here, and there's real financial discipline and fundamental focus in the way the company is operating, and a proven ability to execute. The addressable market is pretty darn big. I ask you this question. How big is the addressable market for a pill that improves the way people age?
Pretty big, I think. I realize whatever number we come up with is underestimating it, because pets age, too. I got you. All right. I'm going to wrap up now and give you three or four minutes, or five minutes if anybody has any specific questions. I'm happy to answer them. Please.
How have you been selling with your direct sales force? I mean, your direct sales force has. How do you get the volume of product you are selling at this point?
Good question. Last year, the sales were $127 million. It breaks down as follows. Approximately $97 million of it was the vitamin on your desk. Most of those sales are e-commerce sales through Shopify and Amazon. We also sell limited retail in the U.S., and then there is this partnership we have with this chain in Asia called Watsons. About $24 million of that was ingredient sales. As I said, we do not view ourselves as a consumer product company. We actually sell the ingredient to competitors. We have a deal with Nestlé, we have a deal with H&H, we have a deal with a handful of other brands that we consider to be quality brands that do not misrepresent the science and put in the bottle what is on the label. We also are ingredient suppliers of the business.
Then we have this burgeoning, growing IV and injection business, which was small last year, $4 million-$5 million, but we think the upside is quite significant in the coming years. We are starting to expand into retail. Because of all this competition from other companies making claims about NAD and this NMN issue that I brought up, we decided to do what is called a brand campaign. We started it just a couple of weeks ago.
It is mostly what we call the SuperAger campaign. People doing extraordinary things for their age that take Tru Niagen, and the first one is this guy named Kelly Slater. He is an extraordinary surfer. He is 54 years old, still the best surfer in the world, and was when he was 18, and is at 54. There are others that we have lined up afterwards. We are increasing our marketing for awareness. We recognize that the awareness of Tru Niagen is not as high as it should be.
Just one.
Go ahead. Quick.
Just a follow-up. Are you considering buying back any stock?
We did announce a buyback. We, to date, I think, have done $4 million or $5 million of a buyback.
$5 million.
$5 million. We're likely to buy more. Yes, sir.
Charles Rogovin, L.A. First, a couple questions. [inaudible] was slaughtered by China. What's your protection from China's raw materials coming in at a fraction of the price?
I would say that is the core issue that we're facing presently.
Any IP protection?
Yes. We have 100 patents that we have patented, and we have sued. We are well known as being MFs.
What is the status of stopping China?
Like I said, we sued the FDA. Or maybe I did not tell you. We can regulate this. These China manufacturers, when we talk to them, the first thing they say is, "Are you going to sue us?" We have spent years making it clear that we are protecting our shareholders' value vehemently, successfully. There is a point that I thought I made that I forgot to make, and I am sorry to pause, but it is part of your question.
That NMN ingredient that I mentioned before is an illegal ingredient. It is a patented ingredient. We own two patents, and there is another company that owns two patents, and neither of us have gone after the NMN people yet. Why? Because NMN was illegal because it was deemed a drug, not a supplement. A product that is deemed a drug cannot be sold as a supplement, and the administration reversed that.
Well, actually, not exactly deemed a drug. The way to say, Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, I think the label reads, is that if there is a new drug application and always observed in the breach, meaning the FDA has never adhered to the further requirement and substantial work undertaken towards the NDA-
Yeah
then it is-
Well, when a molecule- I am sorry, I only have 27 seconds left, but if you want to come up and present, I am happy to give you. But the way the rule works is that if a molecule is investigated as a drug first before it is sold as a supplement, it can never be sold as a supplement. But if it is registered as a supplement first, then it can be sold as a supplement. And in this particular case, it was in-
First case of that. Let us try that once.
But in this particular case, it was-
Have you done any SS or Seahorse studies on the effects of NR in mitochondria, for instance?
Yes. I am sorry to interrupt you. It is just I have limited time, but I will answer your question.
Or oxygen uptake.
Yes, we have. We appreciate your question, but the next presentation starts in two minutes, so if you could. I am happy to talk to you separately. But yes, we have great mitochondrial study. Thank you very