Niagen Bioscience, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Niagen Biosciences Inc's second quarter of 2025 earnings conference call. My name is JL and I will be your conference operator today. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode and as a reminder this conference call is being recorded. This afternoon Niagen Biosciences issued a news release announcing the company's financial results for the second quarter of 2025. If you have not reviewed this information, Both are available within the investor relations section of Niogen Bioscience's website at www.niogenbioscience.com. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Kendall, Senior Director of Publicity and Public Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Niogen Bioscience, Inc. second quarter of 2025 conference call. With us today are Niagen Biosciences Chief Executive Officer Rob Fried, Chief Financial Officer Ozan Pamir, and Senior Vice President of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs, Dr. Andrew Hsiao. Dr. Hsiao will join the call for Q&A. Today's conference call may include forward-looking statements, including statements related to the company's research and development and clinical trial plans and the timing and results of such trials, the timing of future regulatory filings, the expansion of the sale of Niagen products and ingredients in new markets, business development opportunities, future financial results, cash needs, operating performance, investor interest, and business prospects and opportunities as well as anticipated results of operation. Forward-looking statements represent only the company's estimates on the date of this conference call and are not intended to give any assurance as to actual future results. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause Niagen Biosciences actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities and results anticipated in forward-looking statements. These risk factors include those contained in Niagen Bioscience's quarterly report on Form 10Q most recently filed with the SEC, including results of operations, financial condition, cash flows, as well as global market and economic conditions on our business. Please note that the company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements after the date of this conference call to conform with the forward-looking statements, actual results, or to changes in its expectations. In addition, certain financial information presented in this call references non-GAAP financial measures. The company's earnings presentation and earnings press release, which were issued this afternoon, are available on the company's website, present reconciliations to the appropriate gap measures. Finally, this conference call is being recorded via webcast. The webcast will be available at the investor relations section of our website at www.niagenbioscience.com. With that, it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Ron Freed.

Thank you, Kendall. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's investor call. For the second quarter, I'm pleased to share that we delivered yet another record performance with $31.1 million in revenue, a 37% increase year over year, and net income of $3.6 million compared to virtually break-even a year ago. We ended the quarter with $60.5 million in cash and no debt. Our e-commerce business remains the largest component of our business, with net sales of $18.1 million, a 39% increase year over year. Our food grade and pharmaceutical grade nitrogen ingredient business grew 135% year over year, with $7.4 million in revenue in the second quarter. Since launching last August, Niagen Plus continues to be a strategic focus of the company. As of today, we've onboarded over 800 wellness clinics nationwide to offer our Niagen Plus product line, which includes Niagen intravenous and Niagen injections. As the clinic's adoption continues to grow, we are seeing increased interest in the Niagen Plus injections. To build on this trend, Wells Pharmacy Network, our compound pharmacy partner, is launching an at-home injection kit. by the end of the year. We are exploring adding telehealth functionality to our website as a way for our valued customers to access Niagen Plus from our website. While the demand for Niagen Plus continues to grow, we are seeing increased scrutiny from the state of California around 503 outsourcing facility practices. Wells Pharmacy Network remains a partner for us to maintain a network nationwide, and we expect that to continue as our partnership grows the Niagen Plus business. The buzz around Niagen is strong and growing. We've been featured in the last quarter In major media outlets, including Business Insider, People Magazine, Vogue, LA Times, New York Post, US News and World Report, Everyday Health, Elle, Allure. We've been featured in top podcasts, including the All In podcast, Call Her Daddy podcast, and just this past weekend with Theo Vaughn. People are starting to realize that NAD is important for their health, especially as they age. But that by far the best, most tested, most trusted, legal, patented way to elevate NAD is with Niagen. And that Niagen bioscience is the gold standard in the NAD space. If it doesn't say Niagen, I would recommend you save your money. Niagen has also had a strong presence at major events and with some important influencers. We partner with some of our clinics to administer Niagen Plus IVs and injections. We attended the Miami Grand Prix Formula One event, and we gave out in partnership with our friends at the All In podcast to many attendees of F1, as well as the NFL training camp in Miami and the Sports Front Office Forum in Santa Monica. We attended Cannes Lyon Festival of Creativity. where we were featured on the panel discussion and we did an interview with the LA Times. We also administered IV and injections at an event hosted by Gary Vaynerchuk, two attendees at Cannes. We attended the Longevity Leadership Conference, which is a gathering of leaders and innovators in the longevity space and gave out some IVs and injections. We attended the Aflatech Innovation Summit, an event featuring wellness fitness leaders and periodically we go to the Allo Gym events in partnership with Allo Yoga and give out IVs and injections to influencers. We also have visited the homes and offices of numerous athletes and celebrities and rock musicians before they go on tour or before they perform or before they play. People are becoming very aware of Niagen in general, not just true Niagen but also the efficacy of injections and IV. and it is growing in popularity. And the reason for that is because we have the best product in the market, and we continue to represent the highest standard in NAD science, and we represent authenticity, transparency, and scientific innovation in the dietary supplement industry in general. We're consistently recognized by the industry, by trade associations, by third-party testers, the gold standard in the space and one of the very very few truly trusted brands that does the research does the science goes through the proper channels with the FDA and the FTC and Deliver something that actually works We also do many many actual clinical high-impact factor peer-reviewed published studies For example in the United States It is estimated that between 10 and 15 people are actively experiencing symptoms from what is known as long COVID, with a subset of this population reporting that symptoms significantly limit their daily activities. These are symptoms like fatigue and sleep problems and depression. A study conducted by Harvard University examined the effect of NR supplementation on reducing fatigue addressing these depressive symptoms, sleep quality, cognition. This study was completed recently and is currently going through the peer review publication process. There's also another long COVID study conducted in Norway as well, a slightly larger study, but the participants in that are slightly different. Their definition of long COVID differs slightly from the one at Harvard and here in the U.S., But we're looking forward to the results of those studies, and we will make them known to you when they are published. A notable article recently discussed the potential benefits of NAD supplementation and cellular health on fertility. Well, there's limited research on the effects of NAD modulation for fertility to date. We recognize but this is an important area of opportunity, and we're currently working with independent investigators through our external research program on a study looking at the potential for NR to support fertility and reproductive health. We understand that these egg cells, oocytes, have NAD as well, and at a certain point in the life cycle of these cells, the NAD becomes depleted, and the cells become less fertile, less healthy, and there might be an opportunity to elongate, lengthen the fertility clock by elevating NAD levels in these cells. Last month, we announced that the company entered into a worldwide exclusive license agreement with the Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, Norway. This arrangement grants the company exclusive rights to develop and commercialize its patented nicotinamide riboside molecule as a potential pharmaceutical therapy for Parkinson's disease or to sub-license the program to a strategic pharmaceutical partner. Partnership also provides the company exclusive access to the data resulting from this no-par clinical trial and data from previous related studies as well. This marks a meaningful step forward in Nitrogen Biosciences' pursuit of pharmaceutical applications of NR to benefit patients with Parkinson's disease and potentially other neurodegenerative disorders. This phase three no-part clinical trial was completed in June, and we expect the study to be submitted to peer review sometime in October. As it relates to NR for the treatment of ataxia telangiectasia, AT, we're actively engaging with the FDA to get our program ready for an investigational new drug application for the use of NR in the treatment of AT. We continue to have ongoing dialogue with the agency to address its comments and feedback. We hope to have an update later this year. In last quarter's call, I discussed the FDA's pending response to the litigation and citizen's petition related to its determination that NMN is not a lawful dietary ingredient under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. While the FDA's response has now been delayed until the end of September 2025 due to administrative disruptions, we continue to reaffirm our support of the agency's position, and we believe that the FDA must maintain its stance to ensure consumer safety and regulatory integrity. As I reflect on the progress we've made so far this year, I remain confident that we are well positioned to continue our growth trajectory and advance toward our key strategic goals. I am grateful for the dedication of our leadership and our team and their unwavering commitment to the company's mission to benefit the health and lives of every individual. As the global leader in NAD science, we will continue to reinforce Niagen as the gold standard and the premium solution to age better. I'd 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, and thank you to our investors, partners, and team members for joining us today. I want to echo Rob's sentiment that the company's performance in the first half of this year has been exceptional and is attributable to our consistent focus, dedication, and discipline. While we still have much of the year left, I have trust in our team to continue to execute on our key initiatives to drive results. Turning to our second quarter financial performance. In the second quarter of 2025, we brought in $31.1 million in revenue, up 37%, or $8.4 million from the same period last year. Our true nitrogen revenue grew by 22% to $22.7 million, a $4.1 million year-over-year increase. This was driven primarily by e-commerce revenues of $18.1 million, which was up 39%, adding $5 million year-over-year. Our nitrogen ingredient business was up 135% year-over-year and brought in $7.4 million, a $4.2 million year-over-year increase. Within the ingredients business, we delivered $6 million in food-grade nitrogen sales and $1.4 million in pharma-grade nitrogen sales. Tree nitrogen distribution continues to be an area of opportunity for our company. Watson's remains a reliable partner, contributing steady and recurring revenues with occasional quarterly fluctuations. In the first half of this year, we saw that Watson's sell-through was improved year over year, and we're actively working with their team to grow TruNige's brand presence in Hong Kong through joint marketing efforts and exploring expansion into additional markets across the Asia Pacific region. Our gross margin improved to 65% in the second quarter, up 480 basis points compared to 60.2% a year ago. This improvement was driven primarily by sales of lower-cost inventory along with changes in our product and business mix, including the benefit of higher e-commerce sales and continued sales of pharmaceutical-grade nitrogen. We expect gross margins for the full year to improve slightly compared to the previous year. Selling and marketing expense as a percentage of net sales improved to 26.4% compared to 30.6% in the second quarter of 2024. This improvement reflects our continued focus on scaling efficiently through measured high return investments. Research and development expense was $1.6 million, $300,000 higher year over year. The driver for this was the increased investment in continued NAD precursor development as we continue to invest in future innovation and IP portfolio expansion. G&A expenses were $7.3 million. a $1.6 million increase compared to the previous year. This increase is driven by increased share-based compensation expense and increased spend to support the overall scaling of our business. For the second quarter of 2025, our net income was $3.6 million or earnings of 5 cents per share, a significant improvement compared to approximately break even per share for the second quarter of 2024. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow, our balance sheet continues to strengthen. We ended the quarter with $60.5 million in cash and no debt. For the six months ended June 30, 2025, the net cash provided by operations was $9.1 million compared to breakeven in the same period last year. The year-over-year improvement was largely driven by a $9.2 million improvement in net income along with other positive shifts in working capital, notably improved collections on trade receivables and higher accounts payable compared to the prior year period. These were partially offset by increased inventory levels to support operational expansion. As it relates to our 2025 full-year P&L outlook, detailed information on the key financial metrics can be found in our earnings press release and the accompanying slide presentation. Following a strong start to the year, we are raising our revenue growth expectation from 20 to 25% year-over-year to a range of 22% to 27% year-over-year. This update reflects our continued execution and leadership in the expanding NAD market, as well as our confidence in the momentum across both our e-commerce and nitrogen ingredients business. We anticipate e-commerce to remain a steady growth engine, and we also anticipate growth in nitrogen ingredient and broader B2B sales. While revenue from certain tree nitrogen distribution channels as well as our pharmaceutical grade nitrogen ingredient channel may fluctuate quarter to quarter, we remain confident in our full-year outlook. We're also improving our outlook for selling, marketing, and advertising expenses. We now expect these expenses to be up in absolute dollars but down as a percentage of net sales year over year compared to the previous expectation of up in absolute dollars and stable as a percentage of net sales year over year. This change in outlook is primarily driven by our continued efforts to scale efficiently as our e-commerce business steadily grows. Our results to date reflect both the strength of our foundation and the consistent execution by the members of our teams. While we have work to do to continue the performance and momentum thus far, I have strong belief in the company's ability to execute efficiently and effectively. As Rob discussed earlier, there are many initiatives and strategic goals we are collectively working towards, and I look forward to joining him to share more positive news in the quarters ahead. Operator, you're now ready to take questions.

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. If you are called upon to ask a question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. And we would please ask that you limit yourself to one question for this session. Your first question comes from the line of RAM. So, for Raju of HC Wainwright, your line is open.

Thanks very much for taking my question, and congrats on all the progress. I just wanted to ask about the initiative with respect to Parkinson's disease and assuming positive data from the NOPARC trial, how you expect to proceed, and if indeed you would look at advancing nicotinamide riboside chloride or a different nicotinamide riboside analog? Thank you.

Thank you, Ram. It's a very important and good question. Of course, as you know, we don't know the results. It's a double-blinded study. We expect or hope to hear the results before the end of the year. Of course, we probably wouldn't have an opportunity to make those results public until it's published, which would be probably sometime next year. We have analogs for nicotinamide riboside, most specifically nicotinamide riboside triacetate, NRT, and we've done studies that show that it's bioequivalent, actually slightly biosuperior to NRC in certain ways. Our expectation is if we are pursuing FDA approval for Parkinson's in the U.S., we would likely pivot to NRT. And we would likely do so with a partner. And we've had some preliminary conversations with certain partners, but nothing to report at this point. In the EU, however, we may pursue provisional drug approval for NRC, depending on how these results play out. As you know, also, we set up a separate subsidiary, just for optionality purposes, obviously, the whole we own subsidiary. and we might at some point put the Parkinson's rights and other drug rights into that subsidiary just to maintain optionality for us corporately.

Your next question comes from the line of Destiny Hance of Leidenberg Thelman. Your line is open.

Hi, there. Thank you for taking my question. I'm curious, for Niagen IV, you've been able to grow the number of clinics so quickly. I'm wondering what kind of volume you're seeing in the more established clinics for those that came on earlier. And is there any opportunity for you to justify increasing pricing? I mean, is that something that you consider going forward?

Actually, that's a very good question, Destiny. The awareness level of NAD has gotten quite high, and quickly people are understanding that if you take NAD, especially orally, there's no reason to believe that it will have any impact on your cellular NAD levels. These IV experiences are also extremely unpleasant, but Niagen, which is the best precursor to NAD, we've shown is a much more pleasant IV experience and injection experience. It's much quicker and has much higher level of NAD afterward. So the clinics and the people who work in these clinics are very interested and very excited, I would say, about getting a supply of Niagen as opposed to NAD because they know these facts. And this is why we've been able to expand the number of clinics that have signed on so quickly. But What we've also noticed, and this has been a constraint for the real serious growth, is that these clinics are charging a very, very high number for these IV experiences. They also charge a high number for NAD, but in many cases, even higher for Niagen because it's such a better experience than NAD and such a better product. We think quite the opposite. We need to see clinics dramatically reduce the price to make it generally accessible to people. We think it's a great product. We think it had meaningful impact on people's health and how they feel, and even in many cases how they look. There's this thing called the Niagen Glow. People go into these clinics and they get Niagen IV, and we keep hearing these reports of they experience within a day or two this skin glow. We're going to investigate that further. There might be something to that. But no, we'd like to see the prices come down significantly, and we expect them to come down significantly in order to see dramatic volume increases in the Niagen Plus category.

Your next question comes from the line of Sean McGowan of Roth Capital Partners. Your line is open.

Thank you. Just back on the Parkinson's trial, I was wondering if you could comment on this. So if the results are encouraging, I know you don't have them yet and you can't really talk about them, but let's say it's good enough to really light up a lot of ideas in the FDA, could this get fast-tracked? I mean, is that a possibility?

In the U.S.?

Yeah, in the U.S.

I don't think so. I think that in order for it to be approved as a Parkinson's drug in the U.S., we're going to have to do a series of bridging, human clinical bridging studies to show the bioequivalence between NRT and NRC. Most of the drug companies and insurance companies with whom we've talked said that they would prefer to see NRT the molecule used for drug approval as distinct from NRC, which we sell as a dietary supplement. So there would be likely in the U.S. a series of studies that would need to take place before it saw drug approval. That's not to say that we wouldn't create some sort of a relationship with a more established pharmaceutical company as a partner to pursue them, which could have economic benefits to our shareholders here in the interim. In the EU, though, it's slightly different. There might be a way for us to fast-track even potentially provisional approval for NRC as an approved drug.

Your next question comes from the line of Susan Anderson of Canaccord Benuity. Your line is open.

Hi, good evening. Nice job on the quarter.

I was wondering if you could maybe just a little bit about kind of the drivers of the accelerated growth you saw in the e-comm business. I guess, are you starting to see, you know, a few of the new products that you rolled out really start to kind of drive growth, or is it new platforms or geographies or anything else driving that business? And then also, have you shared at all what percent of customers are using the subscribe and save feature of your online site? Thanks.

Hi, Susan, and welcome. Actually, no. The growth in the e-commerce business is just basic blocking and tackling of our existing customers selling our existing product line. We are seeing growth in the 1,000 milligram SKU. Most of our studies that we've published are at 1,000 milligrams, and most people who take it and email us about the impacts that they're experiencing say they notice the difference more dramatically with 1,000 milligrams, so we see that as our fastest-growing SKU. But it's not the new products that we've begun rolling out. It's basically still true Niagen as awareness of Niagen increases, awareness of NAD increases, and customers returning. We actually don't have detailed demographic information on the subscribe and save customers on Amazon. We know that they are an extremely educated group. We saw one study that showed that over 40% of them had graduate degrees and that it's also a very high average income consumer. But obviously, we understand that elevating NAD with Niagen has health benefits for everybody, so we need to make sure that it's not just the wealthy and highly educated that are taking advantage of the product.

Your next question comes from the line of Sean McGowan of Roth Capital Partners. Your line is open.

Thanks again for the follow-up. I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more color on what you think the series of steps are going to be for treatments of long COVID. Are there any milestones on that that we should be looking for, studies or product releases or something specific?

The main thing to look out for is the publication of the Harvard study. They've written the manuscript and they've submitted for peer review presently. If it gets accepted for peer review and gets published, we will then be able to make the results public to everybody. There are no known treatments for this condition and there are many people that believe that they suffer. It's a strange condition because it's a disease that you test negative for. If you have the symptoms and you have long COVID, it means you tested negative for COVID. So it's an odd situation here. But there are many people, if you go on ChatGPT or any AI platform, you say how many people in the United States are suffering from long COVID. The numbers are, you know, I've seen as high as 15 million people, 10 to 15 million people. But there are other indications that have comparable type of symptoms, Epstein-Barr or fibromyalgia or Lyme disease or mononucleosis, where people are just living with fatigue and depression and sleeplessness, and they're just finding sluggishness getting through the day. And, of course, we understand the mechanisms of action of Niagen. One of the things that it does, obviously, is it increases mitogenesis, mitochondrial biogenesis, as well as the output from mitochondrial function. So there is more actual energy in the body that by elevating NAD levels with nitrogen. So it is logical that these people who are experiencing fatigue would benefit from taking true nitrogen. In that Harvard study, they took very high doses of it. I think the key arm was two grams a day for 12 weeks of that study. That's a significant dose. As I said, most of us here at the company take a gram a day, 1,000 milligrams per day. But the thing to watch out for would be that publication. And, of course, the hope is that it's positive for those symptoms. And then the marketing team at Chromadex extracts in the event that it gets published and it's positive to make sure that we legally and responsibly communicate that that study was done and make sure that healthcare practitioners are aware of it and influencers are aware of it. And people who are generally suffering from this fatigue-related condition know that there's a legal, safe dietary supplement on the market that may benefit you based on this Harvard study if that's what the data shows. So number one would be the publication. Number two would be the marketing campaign that comes from Niagen Bioscience.

That concludes our Q&A session. I'll now turn the conference back over to Lauren Borzanski for closing remarks.

Thank you, Jean-Louis. There will be a replay of this call beginning at 7.30 p.m. Eastern Time today. The replay number is 1-800-770-2030, and the replay ID is 858-4242. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today and for your continued support of Niagen Bioscience.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.