Earnings Labs

Niagen Bioscience Inc (NAGE)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, Mar 21, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the ChromaDex Corporation’s Year-End 2015 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Latoya and I will be the operator today. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded. On Thursday, ChromaDex issued a news release announcing the company’s financial results for the year-end 2015 and filed their Form 10-K. If you have not reviewed this information, both are available within the Investor Relations section of the ChromaDex website at chromadex.com and the Form 10-K is also available on the SEC’s website. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Andrew Johnson, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Andrew Johnson

Analyst

Thank you, Latoya, and good morning and welcome to ChromaDex Corporation’s year-end 2015 results conference call. With us today are ChromaDex’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Frank Jaksch; and Chief Financial Officer, Tom Varvaro. Today's conference call may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to ChromaDex’s future business prospects and opportunities as well as the anticipated results of operations. 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 ChromaDex’s actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities and results anticipated in forward-looking statements. These risk factors include those contained in ChromaDex’s annual report on Form 10-K most recently filed with the SEC. 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 of the financial information presented in this call references non-GAAP financial measures. The company’s earnings release, which was issued Thursday afternoon is available on the company’s website, presents reconciliations to the appropriate GAAP measure and an explanation of why the company believe such non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors. Finally, this conference call is being recorded via webcast. The webcast will be available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.chromadex.com. With that, it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Frank Jaksch and Tom Varvaro.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Thank you, Andrew. 2015 was a breakout year for ChromaDex as all significant business units posted record revenue. I’m also pleased to announce that we are on track to report record revenue for Q1 2016. Now before I get into the highlights of 2015, I would like to turn the call over to Tom so he can provide you details on our year-end 2015 financial results. Tom?

Tom Varvaro

Analyst

Thank you, Frank, and good morning, everyone. For the year ended January 02, 2016, ChromaDex reported record net sales of $22 million, an increase of 44% as compared to $15.3 million for the year ended January 03, 2015. Our ingredient segment generated record net sales of $12.5 million for 2015, an increase of 83% compared to $6.9 million for 2014. The core standard and service segment also posted a 12% growth, as it generated record net sales of $8.4 million for 2015 as compared to $7.5 million for 2014. The scientific and regulatory consulting segment net sales increased 9% from $1 million in 2014 to a record $1.1 million for 2015. Gross margins for 2015 were 39% versus 35% for 2014, an 11% increase over 2014. Net loss for 2015 was minus $2.8 million versus minus $5.4 million in 2014, which shows a 48% reduction over 2014. EBITDA adjusted for non-cash charges associated with share-based compensation, which is a non-GAAP measure, for the year was minus $789,000 compared to minus $2.471 million for 2014, a 68% reduction. Cash on hand at the end of 2015 was $5.549 million versus $3.964 million at the end of 2014. Our operating infrastructure expenses are largely fixed with the exception of research and development. The company expects that further increases in sales and gross margin dollars will improve operating results, depending on the amount of R&D spend going forward. With that, I will now turn the call back to Frank so he can provide our 2015 highlights.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Thanks, Tom. We accomplished a number of important milestones in 2015. 2015 is the first year that the ingredients segment has accounted for the majority of the company’s revenue. The $20 million revenue mark is also a significant milestone for any growth company, not just our industry, but companies in just about any industry and we are now comfortably above that annual revenue run rate. Two years ago, our entire business was $10 million and this year the ingredient business alone was over $12 million led by our lead ingredient, NIAGEN. We reported our first human clinical trial deal in 2015 for NIAGEN, which demonstrated that even a single dose of NIAGEN can raise NAD substantially. We received NDI status for NIAGEN in November, which is a very important regulatory milestone for the company. We also reported our first significant licensing agreement for NIAGEN with the joint development agreement we signed with P&G. Activity in the new business development area remains robust and we expect strong revenue growth in 2016. As I mentioned earlier, Q1 2016 revenue is tracking towards another record quarter. On the business development front, activity for NIAGEN up to now has been largely – or the customer base has been largely focused on a narrow group of what I will call direct-to-consumer supplement companies. And importantly, with our recently announced deal with BPI Sports, we expect in 2016 nutritional supplement products featuring NIAGEN will for the first time populate the shelves of tens of thousands of major branded retail locations throughout the U.S. BPI has plans to introduce dietary supplement products featuring NIAGEN in a large number of retail outlets, including Costco, Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Target, Meijer, and a host of others as well. As we signed in our deal with BPI in January, we expect to…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And the first question is from Todd Harburn of Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Todd Harburn

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Hi guys, congratulations on 2015. As a longtime shareholder, it has been terrific to watch a company both develop its unique business model and grow its revenues over the past few years at least. I was wondering about the volatility of the revenues quarter over quarter. Third quarter was higher than the fourth, and yet I think you're expecting revenue to be record breaking in the first quarter of 2016.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Yes, that's right. Todd, thanks for your question. Also, thanks for your support as a long-term shareholder. We appreciate that. I believe this is an important item for shareholders to understand, so I’m going to take a little while here to probably answer this in pieces for you. So, we’ve had exceptional revenue growth over not only the past one year, but actually over the past two years, and this is the first year, of course, that the majority of our growth is now coming from the ingredients business and it is pretty much right on pace that we thought 2015 was going to be that year and it was, which is great. This is a validation of our business model, now that the sales from the ingredient now represents the majority of our revenue, so again it was a good turn for us in 2015. And with respect to the volatility of quarterly revenue, it is important to understand that throughout 2014 and 2015 we had a fairly narrow customer base. As I outlined in the call, we only had five NIAGEN customers really coming into 2015. And we had a lot fewer than that going into 2014. So, we are still in a very narrow base, and given that small number of customers, we're going to be susceptible to timing of purchasing decisions for one or two customers making a decision to buy or not buy or the volume that they buy is going to have an impact on quarter, on the quarterly revenue, whether it could be positive or negative in terms of their purchasing decisions. As you noted, Q4 was down, but it’s still important to note that Q4 also, even though it was down compared to Q3, was a record revenue quarter for us in…

Todd Harburn

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

No, that was good. I did have another question, with regard to the orphan drug, the Cockayne Syndrome. I am just trying to figure out how you as a Company value that future possibility here. I don't know about the cash flows to develop it and what you think the ultimate market size is for the drug.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Well that's a great follow-up to the first question. The orphan drug, I don't think there is really any value in ChromaDex's stock right now to the opportunity to the business - some of the business development opportunities that we are working on that are going to be difficult to see in the quarterly revenue, and the orphan drug is one of those. You're not going to see an impact of quarterly revenue for the orphan drug opportunity. Although I think it's something that we are definitely working on right now as I've been giving updates on where we are with that, but it’s not going to take a lot of money for us to do this development. It is not going to be some incredibly dilutive deal where ChromaDex is going to have to go raise money to continue to support the development of NIAGEN as an orphan drug. And again, I still think that we don't have any real value in the stock right now until we start really materializing that opportunity and it starts to show. And that's really the comment I have on that, so I hope that answers your question.

Todd Harburn

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

It does, thank you. No more questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And the next question is from Ram Selvaraju of H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open.

Ram Selvaraju

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Hi. Thanks very much for taking my questions. Frank, can you hear me?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

I can hear you. Hi, Ram.

Ram Selvaraju

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Hi. So, I had two sets of questions. One pertains to the clinical development of nicotinamide riboside in these orphan indications that you previously described. And the two questions I had there were in Cockayne Syndrome, could you maybe give us some background on the nature of this disease, how chronic it is, how debilitating it may be, and the prevalence and incidence of it both in the U.S. and abroad? And then, secondly, you alluded to other orphan diseases that might potentially be indications within which NR could be developed therapeutically. Could you give us some color and some sense of what those diseases are and collectively, along with Cockayne Syndrome, what kind of patient population we might be talking about in total? And then, thirdly, with respect to the clinical trial that you were alluding to earlier that is currently ongoing, could you give us a better sense of the efficacy-related endpoints that are being measured in this study? And then the second set of questions is related to financial metrics. Firstly, do you anticipate that the company might be able to eke out a profit this year if we look at the year in total? And secondly, what do you anticipate is likely to be the ramp between the first quarter of this year and the second half of this year with respect to top line? Thank you.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Okay, let me organize these. So Cockayne Syndrome is a rare pediatric orphan disease. It is a very small population, so you're talking about less than 1,000 kids in total that may have been diagnosed with the disease. And Cockayne Syndrome is a rare genetic abnormality and the genetic abnormality essentially causes an accelerated aging condition in these kids. So the genetic abnormality upregulates PARP. They have a significant PARP response to the genetic abnormality. The PARP cannot repair the gene, and it just keeps on trying to repair the gene over and over again, and the PARP actually depletes NAD and it depletes it so severely that you end up with a lot of the accelerated aging problems. So these kids essentially die of old age by the time they are 12. The average age of a Cockayne child is about 12 years old. And there is currently nothing out there that successfully treats this. So, we are looking at it as nicotinamide riboside in this case is addressing the side effect associated with the disease, which is the NAD depletion or massive NAD depletion. And these kids show all the hallmarks of an accelerated aging condition, the loss of vision, loss of hearing, Alzheimer's like or neurodegenerative disorders by the time they are 5 years or 6 years old. Muscle wasting, they never really fully develop so they don't necessarily experience the typical growth, so they tend to be a little stunted in terms of growth as well. And again, eventually it is going to get them in the aging process in terms of the fact that they don't really live very long. So, we have been looking at the use of nicotinamide riboside to essentially repair the NAD depletion. It’s not going to necessarily cure the disease itself, but can we impact and repair the NAD depletion and affect the quality of life of the these kids as they suffer from the disease and maybe potentially have some sort of an impact on life span and the other side effects that are associated with that. So, again, it is a very small population there, but I hope that at least addressed the majority of your question there.

Ram Selvaraju

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Yes.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Okay.

Ram Selvaraju

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Yes, that's very helpful.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Okay, the second - I will go into the second portion of that, which is the other diseases. So the other diseases that we are currently looking at are things like, progeria is another example. Progeria is very similar to Cockayne Syndrome. It is basically - I mean, they're exactly the same. It is just a different genetic abnormality. And again, that's a very small population as well. And the reason why we are focused right now on Cockayne is that we have support at NIH. They have done a lot of the preclinical proof of concept. We have access to the advocacy group who can bring the kids into the study and NIH is prepared to basically facilitate that study. And they're really motivated right now to do that, both from the advocacy group, as well as from NIH to get that going. So, that's why we are - from a low-hanging fruit standpoint, we are focused on that first. The other areas that we are looking at outside of even progeria, and I’ll talk about one, which is a much bigger opportunity, is mitochondrial myopathy. And mitochondrial disease or mitochondrial myopathy is really starting to gain momentum. There are some other companies out there with drugs either moving toward the clinic or already in the clinic right now. Edison Pharmaceutical may be the best example of a company that is focused on the mitochondrial myopathy area. There has been a lot of data published on nicotinamide riboside for mitochondrial disease or mitochondrial myopathy. And we are currently working on a grant, working closely with MRC in the UK on a potential of a grant funding of the initial stages of what I will call a Phase I/Phase II trial for nicotinamide riboside in mitochondrial myopathy. And that's a more sizable opportunity for us because you're talking about 50,000 patients versus 500 to 1,000, so it's a much larger, a much more significant market opportunity for us as well.

Ram Selvaraju

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Just to be clear, progeria, the other orphan disease that you mentioned, it’s effectively a disease of extremely accelerated aging, is it not?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

It is. It’s caused by the genetic abnormality causing a PARP response and the PARP response causes NAD depletion, and a lot of the accelerated aging is linked to that part of the process.

Ram Selvaraju

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

So not to get too far off track here, but could you perhaps speculate on the general and broader applicability of NAD and the use of NR within the context of potentially antiaging therapy?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Yeah, absolutely. That is a big piece of our story moving forward because in a much lower regard people suffer that same process that these kids in progeria or Cockayne suffer just in a much slower time line. NAD is something that declines as you age and NAD or low NAD is linked to a whole range of energy metabolism breakdown – issues with energy metabolism breakdowns in energy metabolism that also relate to mitochondrial performance. And mitochondrial performance is a failure of mitochondria or energy metabolism is linked to progression of a lot of age-related diseases. So, this is something you can’t really look at as a – in the sense that resveratrol took off with this Ponce-de-Leon we’re going to repair aging and make people feel or look younger. That is not the story that we are moving forward with here. We’re moving forward with a story where, look, we are repairing the nutrient deficiency of the aging process, low NAD, and by repairing that you are potentially combating some of the age-related issues that may be linked or age-related diseases that could potentially be linked to low NAD or progression of low NAD or failure of mitochondrial performance. And that is gaining a lot of traction in the research community right now and that’s the story that we want to be linked to in the aging – and as the aging story develops and NAD becomes linked to that.

Ram Selvaraju

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Very helpful. The financial questions, if you may?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Tom, do you want to jump on real quick and answer the financial question? It looks like Tom may have dropped off the call, so could you – the financial question you had was related to profit – it was a profitability related question I think.

Ram Selvaraju

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Yes, profitability, whether or not that might be achievable this year, whether on a full-year basis or in one of the later quarters, and then what you anticipate the ramp in top line to be looking like between the first quarter and the second half of this year?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Okay. So the first piece, I will just allude to what you saw potentially in Q3. As you know, we don’t give guidance on these things, but I will do my best to answer your question. We were tracking – we did generate positive cash in Q3 and we also were very close to GAAP breakeven on a $6.3 million number in Q3. So, the short answer is that if we continue on the track that we are on right now, which is potentially growing past that $6.3 million per quarter, we should continue to generate positive cash over the course of the year, but the profitability is going to be a little lumpy over – as we spend some money. We actually increased our research budget. I’m not going to get specific on what our research budget is, but it is significantly higher than we were last year and a lot of that is associated with the clinical spend. And depending upon when we have to make the payouts for that, it could potentially impact quarterly cash flow and profitability. But our target is to move in the direction of profitability this year, but there is going to be several factors that are going to dictate whether or not we’re actually going to get there to GAAP profitability this year. Cash flow positive is going to be a little bit more – or being cash flow positive is going to be a little more easier for us to manage this year. And the other question was regarding where we are in Q1 and where we expect the second half of the year. If we keep going the way that we are going right now and based on what we did in 2014-2015 and based on our customer count coming into this year and the business development activity that we have, our expectation is that the revenue is really at least for Q1, Q2, Q3 is going to continue to grow quarter-over-quarter, which is going to put us in a nice growth position, probably pretty consistent – at a minimum consistent with what we have done over the past couple of years in terms of top line growth over the past – year-over-year for the past two years.

Ram Selvaraju

Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open

Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I will jump back in the queue.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Michael Kay of Kay Associates. Your line is now open.

Michael Kay

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

Hello, thank you very much. Could you mention something about how are things going in terms of pterostilbene because that was supposed to be very important revenue driver as well since it seemed to be synergistic with resveratrol or even better? And secondly, do you think there would be some studies in which you combine NR with pterostilbene to see if you get an enhanced synergistic effect which one cannot get from each of the individual ingredients as such?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

Right. Okay, that’s a good question. We still continue to promote pterostilbene. NIAGEN or the importance of NIAGEN in the portfolio has I wouldn’t say gotten in the way of but we continue from a sales and business development standpoint to go after it, and we have been saying for the past couple of years that the best of pterostilbene is really going to come more out of the potential skin care opportunities and there is a lot of benefits in skin care. And that definitely on a business development standpoint is where we are spending a lot of time. But from a research standpoint, the limited budget that we have, a majority of our budget right now is actually going into NIAGEN because it is a more sizable opportunity. But to the point that you just made, I think this is very important to highlight because it is public now. If you look, there was an 8-K filed not that long ago with Elysium Health and Elysium have launched a product that is in fact a combination of nicotinamide riboside and pterostilbene. And they are in the process of actually taking that combination to the clinic, so they are going to evaluate in a human clinical trial the combination of our nicotinamide riboside and pterostilbene for the combination of their product, which is on the market already, called BASIS. And so, right now, the good news is that combination is going to the clinic.

Michael Kay

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

Well, that's very good. Also, I noticed like in Life Extension’s two-a-day multiple, they just have 1 milligram of NR. Could you indicate in terms of human use what would be the minimum amount of milligrams necessary for it to have some type of positive effect on human beings?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

Sure. The 1 milligram or the small amount that they are putting in is a multi – that is more of a multivitamin product.

Michael Kay

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

Right, that's in their…

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

So multivitamins typically are not going to contain a therapeutically effective dose of everything, although 1 milligram may be a little bit short. But anyway, they were one of the first to put it in a multivitamin format and we appreciate the opportunity. Although right now, all I can tell you is that we do have clinical data at 100 milligrams, 300 milligrams, and 1 gram. So we feel comfortable with 100 milligrams a day at least at the low end, and our second clinical trial which we just announced as starting, what, a couple weeks ago now, we are doing this a much longer – it is an eight-week study in 140 people that we’re going to evaluate the same doses that we did in the first study, 100 milligram, 300 milligrams, and 1 gram. And that longer study should give us a bite at or a better indication of what the dosing is going to look like when we do dosing over eight weeks versus the single dose that was done in the initial study. So, we still have some dialing in to do on the dosing, but I can tell you that 100 milligrams will deliver. It will deliver a benefit in terms of raising NAD. Personally, I take 500 milligrams a day, and I – several of us at ChromaDex who have been taking the product now for three years or so, coming up on three years, are taking somewhere in the range of 250 milligrams to 500 milligrams a day.

Michael Kay

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

And there's never been any indication that such a dose could have any type of negative side effects, right, if you take 500? It would be still looked upon as safe?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

Oh, yes. We have the data that supports that. So, we have no real concerns over the dosing and even up to – one of the clinical studies. If you look the Copenhagen study, which is underway right now, it started in January, they’re dosing 2 grams a day in that study.

Michael Kay

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

And it makes no difference which company one gets it from because ChromaDex is the only company that could produce it or have it licensed? Is that correct?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

That's a good point actually and nobody has brought that up, so I will talk about that. That is correct. Nobody else has nicotinamide riboside but us. There are – any product that is advertising nicotinamide riboside in their – although there has been a few rogue companies that have appeared with products that claim to have nicotinamide riboside. One of them was on Amazon. If anybody saw it, it disappeared pretty quickly because we were all over them about that. But any legitimate product in the market that has NIAGEN, claims our brand NIAGEN or uses the compound nicotinamide riboside has our stuff in it. And just to let you know, we do aggressively pull products off the shelf, even our good customers, and we test those products in our own laboratory to ensure that they contain the amount that they are supposed to.

Michael Kay

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

It may be a good idea to have on your website something that is a bit consumer oriented with a list of companies that sell your product so consumers would not be deceived in any way. I think you once mentioned, Frank, in the last conference call you were going to have some section on the website which would be more amenable to consumers who want to buy the pterostilbene or NR.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

So pterostilbene, that’s a good point. Pterostilbene has its own consumer-facing pTeroPure site, and we haven’t created or finished the site. We are going to create a more consumer-facing site for nicotinamide riboside and that is something that we expect to launch this year as well.

Michael Kay

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

I would think that any of the companies like Life Extension, Jarrow which have been in the area for a long time, that they would be legitimate if they claim they have NR in it, right?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

Without a doubt. The brand value – look, we’re still in the early stages of this whole thing, but yes. Those guys are – a lot of the other companies who don’t have nicotinamide riboside, even some of the bigger brands, are eventually going to pick up nicotinamide riboside as it gains momentum. It is a good idea for us to have a consumer-facing website that can point people to the products that contain our material.

Michael Kay

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

And one last question, do you anticipate any need for additional financing either via debt or equity or a secondary offering, which would create dilution or do you think the company is pretty well set as far as that is concerned?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

No, I think we are pretty well set. As some of you guys may have noticed, we did a small amount back just about a week or so ago, and that was just largely something we needed to do in part of this uplisting process that you all know that we've been going through for the past several months. And I am not going to talk specifically right now about that process, but we are in the later stages of the uplisting process right now. But outside of that, no. We are comfortable with the cash position we have, based on the forecasts in the budgets that we've put together. Even including our R&D spends are based on covering that. We do have a small amount of debt, but that was two years ago that we took that down and that was largely necessary for just funding our – the biggest cash need we have had over the past couple years really was more inventory based. But we are comfortable with the cash position that we have right now.

Michael Kay

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

Thank you very much. I appreciate very detailed substantive answers to not just mine, but other questions as well, and it seems the company is clearly on the straight – on the right track for huge profitability and revenue as well as doing good for people.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

That's exactly right. Thanks.

Michael Kay

Analyst · Kay Associates. Your line is now open

Bye.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Jack Grimaldi of Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open.

Jack Grimaldi

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

Hi, thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to clarify one thing. You mentioned record revenue for Q1. Are you talking about for any Q or just for Q1s?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

More in line with any Q.

Jack Grimaldi

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

Okay. Can you give us any update on the stability, progress you have with NR for P&G?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

I can't – no, I can't give much of. That was pretty easy. No, we are not in a position to really give an update on the progress of that and if you remember, even the press release that we put out last November announcing the deal was rather light on details about what the whole agreement was. And although it did talk about stability, that is the main thing that we are working on or the major challenge we have right now is the stability issue and that is a chemistry issue. And we are working closely with them on that and that is about all I can really update you on, at least at this point.

Jack Grimaldi

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

Okay. And then, can you help me understand why you lump Q4 numbers in with the full year and not break them out?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

If you look back, that is how we have always done it.

Jack Grimaldi

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

That's true, but others break it out. It would be helpful if we can get – receive a breakout on that.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

That may be true and we’re looking at that moving forward, but again historically, we have always just reported the year-end because, again, we are not a quarter-over-quarter revenue story, although our revenue has been growing fairly nicely and the trends have looked really good over the past 18 months or so. Just historically, we haven’t done it that way and we did it much the same way that we have done in previous years. So if you look at 2013, 2014, and now of course, 2015, they were exactly the same in terms of the way we have carved it out.

Jack Grimaldi

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

I agree.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

But point taken. Point taken.

Jack Grimaldi

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

Okay, thank you. It would be helpful. Others do do that. I had a question on the consumer cost side. In the past, you basically – you generally compare NR to omega-3, but omega-3 you can get for anywhere from $0.08 to $0.20 a day and NR is around $1.20, so it is quite a bit more. With the average family income around $51,000 a year for couples purchasing NR, they are going to be spending about $1,000 a year and it seems like that is an awful high hurdle for that kind of a market. So I was wondering if you can give us any idea what you eventually think you can get your costs down to or where you think – what kind of a market you're actually looking to get on the mass side?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

That's a great question actually. It is a premium product right now, and we are very happy with where the pricing is, considering how early stage we are with it. So, although it is far from what I will call mass appealing in terms of the costs that you outlined are exactly correct. We are very happy where we are right now with bringing the cost – our production cost down, based on the scale that we are at today and we have a pretty good view towards the future in terms of what the cost is going to be and strategies that we have in terms of reducing our production cost so that we can bring the pricing down to make it more mass-market appealing. And that's going to be very important. And you are going to see that strategy come to light a little bit in BPI. BPI is launching a product that is designed for the mass market. When they are going into Wal-Mart and Walgreens and Costco and those types of outlets, they are coming out with a product or products, plural actually, that are going to be price point designed to be in the lower range so that they have more appeal towards that, and we are very much cognizant of that. And I'm very comfortable with where we are in the developmental stage of that in terms of costs and where we are going to be able to go, and this is – we're pretty confident that this is going to be cost – it will be approachable by the mass market as we move this thing forward.

Jack Grimaldi

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

Okay, and then as you do that, then – so, obviously, per-unit costs will be going down. Will you be able to start giving out sales instead of just revenue by some kind of unit of measurement so we can see your units are going up, even though average sales per unit will be down?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

Yes, we will be able to give more of that guidance as it starts to smooth out. As we have more customers with predictable revenue at predictable price points, it is going to make things a lot easier. It is pretty incredible, by the way, just to highlight the point you said about the omega-3, but the revenue that we've been able to get to in a matter of what I will call two years in terms of where we are with revenue of nicotinamide riboside is pretty incredible. It is not normal, let's put it that way.

Jack Grimaldi

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

It's very good. Agreed, agreed, it's very promising and longtime stockholder myself also. So I'm very pleased and the long term looks very encouraging. But that’s all the questions I had for right now. Thank you.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Grimaldi Investment. Your line is open

Perfect, thanks, yes.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And the next question is from [Anthony Golo] of independent broker. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you for taking the call. Frank, congratulations on a wonderful report. It is an extremely exciting itinerary that you have outlined for us. I do have a number of quick questions for you. Vis-a-vis production, gluten free, is that something that we can claim?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Well, yes, we could claim gluten free – there is a whole range of things we could claim, and gluten free would be one that we could claim, although that – there is no gluten. It doesn't come from wheat, right, so –

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Could that be put on the label in order to make it more attractive for a certain segment?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Well, that would be not for us to make that claim. It would be for our customers to make that claim. Some of our customers do make those types of claims on their products, but again we really don’t get engaged with our customers on exactly what they're going to claim in terms of, say, gluten free as an example. But there is 1 million different things that people can claim these days. Gluten free obviously is one of those taglines. If our customer wanted to make that claim, they could. You could also claim GMO free, too, if you wanted to, because it is not made with a genetically modified organism. But with all of these growing list of acronyms out there, it is getting a little crazy these days.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

In terms of our customers, BPI, CVS, Jarrow, GNC, is there an educational perspective in their sales to customers? Are they going to give a little bit of a tutorial on the efficacy of NIAGEN in preparation of the products?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

So, I will highlight two of them. That's a very good question, actually, because education is – most of the time it is hard to sell product at retail because if the bottle is just sitting there, staring at you at the face, it doesn't tell you anything, right? So, we're going to be relying on, in particular I would say in that regard, Thorne Research from a -- who sells direct to physician. They sell through the physicians' channel, so a physician can tell the story, okay? And if you take BPI, though, if we go to retail, BPI and the first product from Specialty Nutrition Group are the best examples because both of those companies are preparing a lot of educational material. In the case of the GNC product, Greg Horn's group at SNG have pulled together very technical briefs that are used to then train the staff at GNC so they can then push that information to customers. But, again, that's a very new – that program has only been in place really since December. But there is – it is a very education-driven model that SNG has with their first product, the NIAGEN product they have at GNC. BPI, a slightly different twist because they are not going to be able to have that, call it, training that you could do at the GNC chain if you have a product on the shelf at Wal-Mart or Walgreens. They're going to relying more on educational materials in terms of videos, YouTube videos, social media, advertising, and various other things that are going to come into play with the type of style that they are going to use in terms of educating or drawing customers to the value of nicotinamide riboside with the benefits of their products. And, again, those are two very new examples of that, but -- and then, there is a third piece. ChromaDex also is in the process of trying to garner some media attention to the science. Science drives media attention, media attention brings consumer awareness, and that's a very important element of what we have to do as a company to drive awareness toward the benefit of our ingredient nicotinamide riboside. So, those are the – at least an update on that aspect of it, but education is a huge piece of it, no doubt about it.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Frank, there is one final question I would just like to get a little bit of clarification on. I appreciate very much the sensitivity and confidentiality that we have to maintain with P&G, but my question is this. Assuming, let's be positive, that they in fact do accommodate one of our products in their product line, would there be anything that we would have to do from an investment perspective in order to accommodate what they might be planning?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

That’s a good question. I don’t believe that we would – there would be a lot that we would have to do. Because you’re talking about – we already have a good idea if this were to move forward that we've already been given some indication of the types of volumes that they would require, and so we already have a good idea of what sort of revenue and what the timing of that would look like. We have a pretty good idea of that. And as of right now, I don't think there would be anything substantial that we would have to do to accommodate their needs. But we haven't gone into the granularity of what that would look like over what time frame it would ramp up yet, either.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you so much, and continue the great work that you have been doing.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And the last question is from Issac Benilansky, a Private Investor. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

I will repeat a question from the past, which wasn't answered yet. My question is, when do you plan to register the company on the AMEX, and by this more institution will be able to follow us?

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Well, we haven't gone – I can't get specific, but we are in the late stages of – and I wouldn't say AMEX or NASDAQ. I will be more – less specific, but we have been in the process of a national market uplisting for several months now and we are in the late stages of that process, and I really don't want to get into any specific discussions about that right now because of that.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, so I will ask next quarter again.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Let's put it this way. Hopefully, we won't have to have a discussion next quarter.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, I hope so. Okay, thank you very much and good luck.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And at this time, this concludes the Q&A session. I would like to turn the call back over for closing remarks.

Frank Jaksch

Analyst · Harburn Enterprises. Your line is open

Thanks, everybody. Thanks for the support. We definitely appreciate the long-term shareholders that we have had. We have a lot of long-term, fairly large shareholders that have been very supportive of the story and we appreciate that a lot and I just wanted to say that in closing here.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect. Good day.