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It's impossible not to make mistakes. What we can do though is to learn something from it, and try not to make the same mistake twice :) Good luck to you from here.
Drose did seem to say he didn't write the article himself.
Just look at 19 and 20 together.
[Honig] 19. On or before June 20, 2016, Defendant Drose drafted an article under his pseudonym “Bleecker Street Research” entitled “Pershing Gold and ChromaDex Exposed: These Barry Honig Names Could Fall 70-80% (Or More).” (hereinafter the “Article”). Drose submitted the Article to Seeking Alpha for publication on that website. On June 20, 2016, Seeking Alpha posted the Article on its site.
[Drose] 19. The allegations of paragraph 19 are admitted except that the allegation that Defendant Drose wrote the “article” (the Blog) is denied.
[Honig] 20. On information and belief, Does 1-10 encouraged Defendant Drose to draft and publish the Article, and they assisted him with the drafting and publishing process.
[Drose] 20. The allegations of paragraph 20 are denied. Defendant Drose did not draft the blog.
That confirmed what some of us have suspected.
That sounds fantastic. Let's do that. Will add you to my follow list right away. At this stage of economic cycle, I'm really interested in great short candidates! I really like your trading acumen (on KONE).
It fell ~29% during the session and seemed to fall another ~8% after close. Wish we get more opportunities like KONE and SPU.
CVS is obviously a toss. Let's hope that others are doing much better and we are beginning to get some milestone payments from P&G.
Let's save BPI for later. That should be huge and is one that only success is the acceptable outcome. We would rather BPI plans and executes perfectly, than it comes to market hastily and oops... That would be disastrous.
Going into the future, we should look forward to the company's non-supplement, high volume ingredients business gaining traction. The co. is in talk with a few Fortune 500 cos. on these. Realistically, that might be a 2017 story. But Jaksch should keep on talking about it.
Operating expense should be OK.
Operating expense as a % of revenue:
So, we are fine now that the trend continues.120% 2012
48% 2015
41% Q1 2016
New Customers Announced Since 3Q15:
Dates included are PR dates.
Sync Health Solutions Älsa™ PURENERGY® July 28, 2015
CVS NIAGEN® NR Age Defense Sept. 9, 2015
Procter & Gamble JTA Nov. 05, 2015
Jarrow Formulas Nov. 23, 2015
Specialty Nutrition Group F1RST® In GNC Jan. 21, 2016
BPI "ANTI AGING PILL", “LIFE1™”, “CELL1™” and "ENEDREX™" Costco, Walmart, Walgreens, Target, Miejer, Kroger, Publix, Vitacost, QVC, Home Shopping Network, Shopko, Ahold, eVine Live, Ulta, and Wegmans. Jan. 27, 2016
NECTAR7 NIAGEN® & COLLAGEN April 19, 2016
New Customers Announced in 2Q15:
Healthy Directions NRG AdvantageTM June 2, 2015
So we can still expect YoY growth contribution from new customers. QoQ, on the other hand, might be more Same Customers Growth.
Indeed. Kudos!
If I had to wager, I would have shorted it also. But I've chosen to stay away from this one. I have shorted SPU instead. Fraud suspicion, house of cards, delayed SEC filings, valuation well above book, declining sales/operating profit, etc.
Given no update from BPI roll out yet, and similar silence from other new fronts, this is a quarter that could serve as a good indicator of "same customer sales" growth. We are going to find out how well existing customers are doing. Revenue growth (in particular ingredients) similar to Q1 would be very bullish. In that case, great profit and cash flow is almost guaranteed.
Fundamentally not cheap.
Clean balance sheet. Book value about $3.65. But poor performance means it deserves a significant discount to book value. Fair value $3.00 at best.
From chart alone, it appears ripe for short. That might just work, for a stock out of China. But I don't like the P/B~0.69, just in case this was a value repricing and a bidder somewhere is shopping up to take it private. I would certainly NOT go long, hence I just avoid.
Nordic Clinical MitoBoost
See here.
100 mg Niagen
30 mg Resveratrol
60 mcg pterostilbene
(Low NR dose, but better than CVS, and has SIRT1 activators.)
Good point. Meanwhile technical is improving.
We have tested and broken out of the recent consolidation low of $3.70s. We could be challenging the $4.30s trading range high soon. Once that's out, we are solidly above 200 and 50 EMAs and back to a new uptrend. Hope for a great Q2 release with positive EPS and cash flow. Then we can be heading toward the $5 level.
That's cute. I have bookmarked it. (Hope they are accurate.) Thanks.
Boosting NAD+ for the prevention and treatment of liver cancer
Source: Mol Cell Oncol. 2015 Oct-Dec; 2(4): e1001199
Reading before weekend :)
Re: New Institutional Ownership
They have not filed 13F yet. Should be coming in August. So you are fast. What's your source?Vanguard Group Inc 904,252 2016-06-30 2.47 N/A 3,744
BlackRock Fund Advisors 771,183 2016-07-18 1.98 0.01 2,992
Holder Shares Report Date % of Shares Outstanding % of Total Assets Managed Market Value($1000)
The 1.12 million shares investment back in early June,
valued at $5.25 million, must have been from Honig/Frost/Brauser. (Anyone disagrees?)
The BSR piece hit at the right time, shortly after that direct offering. There is reason to believe that this gang would have stepped in to pick up CDXC shares following the attack, had it not been for the huge $5+ million commitment they had already sunk into CDXC just 2 or so weeks before that.
Following the piece, Honig kept on buying Pershing Gold shares through July 1; while Frost kept buying Opko Health shares right through July 13. Brauser did two small purchase transactions on IDI (after June 20) right through 6/28.
Frost is CEO/Chairman of OPK. Honig is director of Pershing. Brauser is executive chairman of IDI.
None of the transactions mentioned was part of a 10b5-1 plan. All three company has quarter ending 6/30. These insiders simply do not follow well-accepted trading practices. Nothing illegal, but might be somewhat eyebrow-raising.
No, CDXC does not need a director like this, not even Dr. Frost. It's apparent that he is not much of an asset to any small cap companies.
Dr. Frost should have set up a 10b5-1 plan for such transactions, particularly given his frequent purchases in his own company.
It is slightly comforting that CDXC management have done far better on insider-transaction practices. But overall they do not have a lot of transactions anyway.
Good info. Some traders/observers appear to have already assumed Honig's involvement, maybe due to his deep pocket. Interestingly, BSR apologized only to Pershing, ChromaDex, and Honig. Not Brauser. It also puzzles me why Honig's did not sue PumpStopper for similar articles before.
His (and Frost's) not going after Lakewood may be a little easier to understand, given (potentially) Lakewood's powerful attorneys.
Could this somehow be related to the degree of distortion involved? I keep on thinking this way because I know for fact that some legal threat never materialized in relation to SA negative articles. Representatives for companies/major investors (just like Honig in this case) made threat but never actually sued. Common among those few cases: they didn't distort. One author simply updated his article by adding a couple sentences of caution. And that was it.
Jaksch really was weak/slow in handling this crisis. It's good that Mr. Honig came to rescue in the end.
From this point on, they probably should vet each board candidate carefully. Bring in someone who would be an asset than liability. Should not be another Dunkerley, Honig, or Brauser. And then preferably he/she would have expertise to help with the company's ingredient business. Age wise, maybe someone in the 40-70 range? Or maybe it does not matter. A retired executive might have more time to advise on the company's business.
My 2 cents too. Not up to us anyway.
Other observation on the BSR attack
(1) Article was withdrawn minutes after publication on SA (and then re-appeared). Whatever you make of this.
(2) Heavy selling volume on the stock the two days prior to attack.
(2) indicates group activity with advance knowledge of attack. Sometimes SA author is just shill/proxy. The author didn't really write the article himself/herself (even though he/she certified to SA otherwise). Other SA author or even hedge fund wants a piece (usu. negative) to be published without real identity revealed. Sometimes simply to boost impact (because someone doesn't want to be the guy/gal who keeps on churning out something negative that raises question of bias.)
Just author one or two short articles and gradually you might just receive this kind of request from others. If it's likely a hit piece, you get the chance to profit from others' work while potentially making a name for yourself. When you cooperate on this kind of matters, you could build a network with future profit potential for yourself.
(Not everyone cooperate on this kind of things. Some chooses to be independent and original. Some validates the content of third party work before consent.)
Inexperience traders should particularly be aware of this practice.
Hi mtg, I agree with you here. But I'm not sure how realistic that is.
If they can strength the BOD right away the stock presumably would get an immediate boost. But after this episode, it might have gotten a little more challenging to attract reputable people to the board in the near term. People might hesitate given Smithburg's resignation.
Maybe board strengthening can only happen over time when Niagen really turns out to be a huge success.
So, we might be in the tough spot of having to produce result first. And when that happens, nobody would really care much about the BOD though it should also get strengthened accordingly.
But we probably can still hope that more positive product news flow would drown out the horror that has come with the BSR attack. We are humans and time heals. So some reputable people might gradually come to sense and become willing to serve on the board.
On the more positive side, Honig and Brauser is now out of the board. People might realize sooner or later that they are history and the long shadow cast by them should soon fade away.
Regarding Jakish's 40,000 share ownership of Empire Sports that you brought up before, that should be a non-issue to me. Given Honig's way of doing business, he might just have the habit to offer investment opportunities to business people he knows. While he was weighing an investment in CDXC back then, he might just have tried to pull its management into some of his ventures. And 40,000 shares was a small position.
Had that really been the case, maybe it would have been prudent for Jakish to decline his invitation back then, just to stay clear of any related-party connotation. But you know executives are not prudent all the time.
And I'm just speculating here. And that's long, long ago.
My point is that, no, management have not acted in the best way in the past. But things have gone in the positive direction already. To be fair to this company, we should all look forward to its future.
Stock Option Grants to Senior Officials and Directors
It's interesting they have not filed that yet. Last year it was in July and year prior in June.
Maybe they have realized that it's not such a great idea to grant option awards to themselves before quarterly release and under these artificially depressed prices. Hopefully people at the top have learned a lesson from the recent BSR attack that maintaining a high moral standard is a must for a tiny public company.
And that brings us to a related issue. A widely accepted practice regarding non-10B5 insider share transactions is this. The trading window is closed from about 2 weeks before quarter end to 2 days following earnings release and conference call.
Not sure if they have a similar rule in place already. If they don't, however, they should put this into their corporate governance documents now. They should make sure that all key officials and directors follow this rule.
And now to the anemic insider purchases following the BSR attack. Mr. Rhonemus the COO acquired 7,800 shares on the day of the attack, June 20th. And that was 12 days before the Q2 end of July 2nd. Close to two weeks before Q end.
Compared to the common practice mentioned above, this date can be interpreted at the very end of the trading window. After that it's not quite appropriate for insiders to acquire shares.
Will any insiders step in to purchase shares after Q2 result is out? We have yet to see. I guess it also depends on the share price at that point. And very likely they are going to receive option awards after the Q2 result. Can that impact their decision also?
But overall, this company does not have a strong tradition of insider buying. That's for sure. Nobody can deny that.
Yeh, great logic! Everybody has to agree:
(1) Honig is a convicted Madoff fraudster.
(2) Anybody who has ever worked with Madoff should be implicated in his fraud case.
Smithburg's resignation deserves some thought. Nervousness due to this is understandable. I was myself a bit nervous about this before. No longer.
Just think about what you might do if you are a 77 year old, reputable retired executable. You have so far been showered with glory. Other than having been a long-time executive who has led Quaker to success, you have also served on (the board of) prestigious companies like Abbott Lab and Corning.
And you are just two weeks into your board membership at a tiny company named ChromaDex.
A short attack hit and suddenly you found out that the former co-chairmen of the tiny co. you are serving on had a far-less-than-stellar record. And you can easily read about that kind of "record" in previous SA short articles.
A very logic step and easy decision would be to quit while your association with this tiny company has barely just started. After all, you don't really care about the "puny" amount of compensation as a director. What you really want is more honor.
It could have been a different story if you have been on the board for two or three years. But at two weeks of "membership," it's really a simple decision.
It does not really take a lawyer to understand that language. If you base everything on facts, you rally don't have to fear any legal threat. Most of the short articles on SA face legal threat. Citron even challenged his target companies to sue him in court.
You don't really need to withdraw or apologize if you have based everything on facts. Go back to read my previous messages. If you are a smart lawyer, you should have understood my points.
And here is the most important part. The BSR piece contained a lot of distortion and untrue statements. If you have read 10-K, if you have studied the financials you don't make that kind of mistake.
Anything that can't be found in SEC filings, you can consult KarinCA's article. She went through the pain to study this company's corporate records (that are not available from SEC filings).
The only thing that remains murky about this company is its association through share ownership by Honig etc.
Besides that, there's a board member that ran into trouble and resigned. And some board members who have also served on some tiny companies. The perceived or actual failure of tiny companies is something short sellers can use to scare retail investors. But you know, tiny companies are prone to failure by nature.
Misleading patterns can be a very powerful weapon in creating panic. But that does not mean they are truth.
If you are really a lawyer, you ought to understand these.
Just ask yourself:
(1) Why did BSR state "After further research we believe that the statements were not supported"?
(2) How many times have you seen a short article on Seeking Alpha retracted?
(3) If it was only due to litigation threat, why were not other articles against Honig/Brauser on SeekingAlpha withdrawn as well?
If you have done your own research, you should have concluded that much of the accusation was just plain wrong. You have fallen into the trap of a distortion campaign on this one.
On this one, BSR = BS Radicals.
Last year they announce earnings release date on 08/06/15 and actual ER was on 8/13. So guess they might announce the Q2 ER date Aug. 5-10; and actual ER date should be Aug. 12-17 range.
That's a reasonable expectation, it seems:
Can't agree with you more:
"Six of the CVS capsules will only get you to 450mg. They need to sell a higher dose."
Do CDXC management just sit back and relax? Do they monitor their (CVS) progress and try to work with them on reviving sales going forward? Are they just going to count CVS out?
Jakish should be challenged on this kind of questions next month (Q2 CC).
Cute video. Other vendors must have been pitching similarly. We will find out if consumers buy the pitches when CDXC reports earnings next month. Do sincerely hope these vendors are not following CVS' step.
Caloric Restriction, Fasting and Nicotinamide Riboside
Crisis plan needs to extend to financial risk too, ChromaDex learns
They actually acted too slow. Karin acted faster than they did.
Positive result from this trial could well be a catalyst for the stock. I'm particularly impressed by their designed enrollment of 120 seniors 60-80 years old. This is a group highly likely to benefit from NR/pterostilbene/Basis.
This age group design stands out against:
NR Phase 0 Trial (12 adults age 18-30, AUH/Univ. Copenhagen)
NR Phase 1 Trial (12 adults age 30-55, KGK/ChromaDex)
Of course both were only PK studies. But that, combined with the less favorable age groups, made it inherently less likely to produce exciting result.
You must be talking about this trial. June was their final data collection date. It takes time to analyze. I'm also looking forward to it. Hope it wouldn't take as long as it did for CDXC's Phase I (six months or so till first PR and another six months or so to publish).
Thank you, Karin. Given the semi-anecdotal evidence from the limited data and the fact that Basis gives you 250 mg, it does appear 300 mg is right around the mark. I suspect that your 325 mg + 50mg pterostilbene might have given you close to best benefits. That probably is why you have already had a positive experience.
That said, 500 mg might be well justified for some people. NAD+ concentration is obviously highly variable among the population. The Phase I data was also charted as a range, though the max concentration in the trial happened to be around 25 uM.
On Q1 conference call (the only CDXC call I have listened to and read) an analyst asked about cost to consumer given perceived 500 mg minimum dosing. Here's Mr. Jakisch's answer:
"I think you mentioned that you need to take 500 milligrams a day to be effective. That -- our initial clinical -- human clinical study showed that NAD was increased on a much lower dose, and that was just on one daily dosing. So once we have the full results of our eight-week study, we're going to get a much better idea of the dosing on what needs to be done on a daily basis."
So obviously everyone is just making an educated guess on dosing at this point. For myself, I'm going to start with 250 mg and step up to 500 mg if I don't feel an impact. I just found this company a bit more than a month ago. I still have yet to try the product out.
Have a nice weekend to you and all.
My guess is also the NAD+ level. 300 mg and 1000 mg both reached Cmax of ~20 microM (uM). Though 1000 mg had better AUC than 300 mg, the latter also reached ~20 uM at 24 hour (while 1000 mg maintained ~20 uM from ~8 hr through 24 hr.) Likely they concluded that 300 mg would be enough based on this observation. => Single dose
n=1 trial 1g daily for 7 days on a 65 kg, 52 year old male showed 21 uM NAD+ at 4.1 hr and peaking at 25 ug at 8.1 hr and presumably maintained high NAD+ through end of 7th day (ending 19 ug).
Should be: "... ... and peaked at 25 uM at 8.1 hr and presumably maintained high NAD+ through end of 7th day (ending 19 uM.)"
Cmax = Max concentration
uM = micro moles per liter
It appears that increasing dosage beyond 300 mg does not boost NAD+ concentration much beyond 20 uM. Though the n=1 (single person) trial did peak at 25 uM that significant level beyond 20 uM did not seem to last.
300 ug reached 20 uM at 24 hr. If one takes one dose every 24 hr, any presumed decline in NAD+ from that level (from previous dose) could quickly be made up by the new 300 ug dose. It seems reasonable to expect that 300 ug would maintain high NAD+ at ~20 uM following 24 hr after first dose.
Thus 300 ug appears to be the most economic dose to use from NAD+ perspective.
This is interpretation from the company's limited data from Phase I. I do not believe this can be definite conclusion. Result from future trials should be factored in once available. But for now, 300 ug really appears to make a lot of sense.
"Seems like people say at least 250 mg/day is required in humans, but I'm not sure where this number came from. I'm not even sure what measures are the relevant ones (although plasma NR and NAD+ sure seem like a good start)."
My guess is also the NAD+ level. 300 mg and 1000 mg both reached Cmax of ~20 microM (uM). Though 1000 mg had better AUC than 300 mg, the latter also reached ~20 uM at 24 hour (while 1000 mg maintained ~20 uM from ~8 hr through 24 hr.) Likely they concluded that 300 mg would be enough based on this observation. => Single dose
(And you know they didn't test on 250 mg; but 250 mg is close enough to 300 mg)
n=1 trial 1g daily for 7 days on a 65 kg, 52 year old male showed 21 uM NAD+ at 4.1 hr and peaking at 25 ug at 8.1 hr and presumably maintained high NAD+ through end of 7th day (ending 19 ug).
Anyone interested should be able to request the 1-page poster on FASEB/NAD+ Metabolism and Signaling conference. Very small meeting with ~100 attendees and no published symposium/proceedings. No reporters on the meeting?
So positive result was certainly achieved; but I would love to see peer-reviewed publication of the result.
They didn't claim dosage final and have said phase II trial (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02712593?term=Nicotinamide+Riboside&rank=5) would also help establish dosage.
On the other hand, for those who purchased without doing research first they might not feel the benefit at the small 75mg dosage.
Karin, I do want to thank you personally for your nice article Monday. I just found CDXC after their Q1 release. And I bought in mostly in the $5s. Even after adding to position at $3+ and today after BSR withdraw, I'm still under water. But I do believe I will recoup my losses in the not-too-distant future. To me, CDXC is a unique biotech that's beginning to generate profit and cash. So I do have faith in its future.
But I feel a bit nervous for two reasons.
Firstly, did Mr. William Smithburg know something we don't (about their backdoor dealings)? Otherwise, why would he have had to resign just because of a malicious BSR article? Or, is it really because of his age and out of an abundance of caution?
Secondly, CDXC published the result of its first human clinical trial in August of 2015, and primary completion date was even further back, in Feb. 2015. But their "peer-reviewed science" is still nowhere to be seen today (one year or more later). Moreover, they didn't post the trial result on their clinicaltrials.gov page (though this practice is nothing out of the extraordinary). Makes me nervous about if their claim (boosting NAD+, meeting primary endpoint) is really 100% trustworthy. Somewhat to my comfort is what I have read in the literature (which points to almost certainty of this outcome).
"CVS Age Defense Niagen" actually appears to be a flop to me. (1) Only available in a few local CVS stores. (2) No customer reviews at all, even so many months after roll out. (3) Dosage is too small.
They are not having a successful trial phase. Otherwise, they would have gone full speed (made available in all stores and online) already.
Do suspect that the tiny dosage of 75mg is the culprit.
Hopefully the BPI roll out (Walmart, Costco, Walgreens, Kroger, Target, Meijer, HSN, QVC, ...) will be most robust.