BioHarvest Sciences - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 5

Greetings and welcome to the BioHarvest Sciences second quarter 2025 corporate update conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Before we begin the formal presentation, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made on today's call and webcast, including those regarding future financial results and industry prospects, are forward-looking and may be subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described on the call. Please refer to the company's regulatory filings for a list of associated risks, and we would also refer you to the company's website for more supporting industry information.

In addition, throughout today's call, the company may refer to adjusted EBITDA, a non-IFRS financial measure, which it believes provides helpful information to investors about the performance of the business on an ongoing basis. A reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to its most directly comparable IFRS financial measure is included in today's earnings release, which is available on the BioHarvest website under the Investor tabs. On our call today is Chief Executive Officer Ilan Sobel and Chief Financial Officer Bar Dichter. I would now like to hand the call over to CEO Ilan Sobel. Ilan, the floor is yours.

Speaker 3

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to welcome you to today's second quarter 2025 corporate update conference call. Q2 marked a pivotal quarter for BioHarvest Sciences Inc., not just in terms of execution, but in setting the stage for a major inflection in the second half of 2025. With continued gross margin expansion, growing vineyard.com subscription revenue, and accelerating CDMO traction, we remain on track to achieve adjusted EBITDA breakeven targeted for Q4 of this year. Now, before going further into the second quarter, I'd like to quickly introduce our company and background. BioHarvest Sciences Inc. is the inventor of Botanical Synthesis, a patented non-GMO platform that produces highly potent plant-based compounds without needing to grow the plant. Our cell banks replicate key phytonutrients at magnified potency and industrial scale to enable the creation of consistent, soluble, and bioavailable products.

This allows us to serve high-value markets across pharma, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, and nutrition, both through our branded products and as a CDMO partner. Now, moving to the second quarter, we continued in the second quarter scaling both our products and CDMO divisions. Revenue rose 41% year over year to $8.5 million, in line with our $8.5 million guidance. Growth was fueled by balanced performance across vineyard.com and Amazon, plus revenue contribution from our CDMO services division, helping to drive our progress towards adjusted EBITDA breakeven in the fourth quarter of 2025. Looking at our direct-to-consumer health and wellness products division, total active vineyard.com customers in the U.S. have reached approximately 65,000 as of end of July 2025, with subscription customers representing the majority of these daily users.

Our Amazon business, which now accounts for approximately 20% of total sales, continues to deliver strong results across conversion rates, repeat purchases, and return on ad spend. Vineyard.com is currently the number one resveratrol-only product sold on amazon.com in the U.S. We continue to build real consumer equity and momentum across each of these core platforms. In Q2, gross margins expanded by 800 basis points to 60%, up from 52% in the same year-ago quarter. This improvement reflects both scale and technology leverage, driven by the deployment of 22% larger bioreactors, enhanced manufacturing yields, and continued digitization of our biological production workflows. We continue to improve efficiencies within our supply chain.

For example, in Q2, we began shipping all six- and twelve-month purchases in a single larger one-time shipment rather than a 90-day supply each quarter, which has reduced transportation costs and packaging materials and added 50 basis points to our gross profit margin efforts. VINIA has maintained its premium pricing in the resveratrol market. Our high customer retention and a 4.7-star average rating on vineyard.com continue to validate the product's efficacy and brand trust, and we are about to reach a major milestone of 10,000 customer reviews on vineyard.com, with over 9,900 verified reviews as we speak today. This is a very significant achievement for our hardworking VINIA team. Our direct-to-consumer health and wellness e-commerce machine is proving highly scalable, allowing us to successfully launch new VINIA inside products via our e-commerce channels without having to add significant marketing dollars and enabling us to create strong operating leverage.

In Q2, new products, defined as all non-capsule products, contributed to 20% of the company's incremental revenue growth versus prior year and now constitute a healthy 10% of the total revenue mix. This healthy contribution is balanced by the fact that our core capsule business is still the primary growth driver of the direct-to-consumer health and wellness business, contributing 80% of the year-over-year revenue growth in the second quarter. In Q2, we continue to expand our VINIA inside delivery systems, and in June, we successfully launched VINIA Daily 2X Formula Chews, a double dose 800 milligram first-of-its-kind chew designed to increase nitric oxide production and arterial dilation and to enhance blood flow and oxygen delivery for athletes and individuals with high active lifestyles. These chews are Informed Sport Certified, meeting global anti-doping standards and expanding access for us into the critical professional sports and institutional wellness programs.

Our VINIA Daily 2X Formula Chews are targeting a younger demographic than our core capsule business and enable us to capture revenue from a much younger consumer audience who are looking for the extra edge on the sports field and workplace. The consumer feedback so far has been very encouraging, and we are quickly building strong Amazon reviews with a very encouraging start with many five-star reviews. In addition, we added this quarter two new Superfood tea SKUs, our English Breakfast and Matcha Green Tea in K-Cup compatible pods, to follow the successful Q1 debut of our Superfood teas in sachets. Looking forward, we are also expanding our VINIA Superfood coffee line with VINIA Superfood espresso coffee expected to launch soon in an espresso compatible format, targeting the more than 5 million U.S. households that use an espresso original system.

In the second quarter, we also saw major milestones achieved by the CDMO division. Firstly, we announced that a CDMO research contract had successfully completed stage one, becoming the first CDMO project to advance to stage two. We are excited to continue working with this valued pharmaceutical partner on a high-impact approved therapeutic drug product, and stage two will involve successfully transitioning growth of the target compound to our liquid bioreactors. It is important to note that to date, we have a 100% technical success rate when compounds successfully complete stage one, and that each stage in our CDMO development process represents positive revenue and high gross profit margin, improving our bottom line as we complete the critical research and development stages with CDMO partners, bringing valuable life-changing plant compounds to market.

The CDMO business development team is actively building the new contract funnel, and in Q2, we also signed our first contract targeting a fragrance molecule. Our AI capabilities were integral in securing this new agreement and are providing invaluable insights as we engage with prospective industrial partners. Our target compound on this project is a provocative use case for our Botanical Synthesis technology, as the compound is a highly valuable compound derived from an endangered plant species that sells for thousands of dollars per kilo. We now have ongoing CDMO projects for pharmaceutical, nutrition, and fragrance industry partners, and I'm pleased to report that our deal funnel is very healthy. We are being very selective in the deals we finalize, but our expectation is that we will announce multiple new CDMO contracts here in the second half of 2025.

As our products and our CDMO services business units expand, we are constantly innovating so that we can actively layer on incremental high margin revenue drivers. I would like to spend a few moments here to discuss three examples of major new programs that are designed to rapidly accelerate our revenues in the second half of 2025, each of which is incremental to existing core growth catalysts such as incremental CDMO contracts and our upcoming olive cell product. I call these our big bets for the downhill of 2025.

The first big bet I want to talk to you about is in our products business, in our direct-to-consumer health and wellness products business, where I am very pleased to announce the launch of our Health Pros Professional Affiliate Program, which is our new proprietary program to activate major health practitioners, athletes, coaches, trainers, and health influencers who have significant followings and who share our passion for healthy and sustainable living. We have always fostered relationships with like-minded influencers and practitioners, but this formalized Health Pros Professional Affiliate Program will dramatically increase VINIA exposure within our targeted partner physical and social networks and is expected to drive significant subscriber growth at lower acquisition costs. The Health Pros Professional Network will all be approved and supported by the BioHarvest Sciences Inc.

team and our own proprietary backend technology systems, and our goal is to have 300 top thought leaders enrolled by the end of 2025. We are launching with a dynamic and eclectic mix of partners. One great example is Dr. Anna Toker, a top colorectal surgeon with a growing social media audience of 160,000 Instagram followers, who is focused on gut health and who advocates the critical importance of blood flow, given the need for healthy blood flow in the intestinal tract to digest food, absorb nutrients, and ensure optimal delivery of these nutrients to the body's tissue cells and organs. Another great new partner is Marcellus Wiley, an NFL Hall of Famer and sports media personality, who is partnering with us to bring the power of VINIA to his community and sporting ecosystem. Just these two Health Pros alone represent over 1 million engaged social media followers.

Today, we kick off our test phase with 10 Health Pros using the platform, and in September, we will scale to 100 by the end of the month, with a target of 300 Health Pros on our platform by the end of the year. Our second big bet also relates to our direct-to-consumer health and wellness business and sits squarely in my own personal wheelhouse, based on my 18 years of experience with the Coca-Cola system, where I managed major hydration brands in the U.S., such as Vitamin Water, Smartwater, and Powerade sports drinks. I'm excited to announce that we are in the final phases of commercializing our differentiated entry to disrupt the $13 billion electrolyte drinks market in the U.S. In October, we will launch our VINIA BloodFlow Hydration Solution into the market as a daily powdered electrolyte mix which comes in six great-tasting flavors.

We will be the first electrolyte hydration beverage powered by blood flow and driven by our unique VINIA matrix of pyruvate, resveratrol, and other polyphenols, demonstrating that this blood flow-driven hydration solution is a breakthrough that only VINIA and BioHarvest Sciences Inc. can deliver. Currently, the marketplace is swamped by players with marketing claims largely related to electrolytes. We plan to be a disruptor in the market, focusing on the importance of having better blood flow to deliver the necessary oxygen, fluids, electrolytes, and nutrients to organs, muscles, tissues, and cells, right where hydration matters most. In addition to the blood flow benefits we all know about, our solution will feature premium electrolytes sourced from nature. Our formulation features salt from the Irish Sea as our source of sodium, potassium from coconut water, and magnesium from the ocean bed, and at 25 calories, it tastes amazing.

We have been very fortunate to partner with one of the best formulators in the industry, Louis Hines, the owner of Bevnology and previously Head of R&D for the Coca-Cola Company for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Louis has partnered with myself and the team on the development of this product for the last 12 months and has invested more than a thousand hours of R&D time to get this product tasting just perfect. Our VINIA BloodFlow Hydration Solution will be sold via our e-commerce channels and is a great strategic fit for our Health Pros Professional Affiliate Program. Our third big bet is the addition of a new revenue driver in our CDMO services division. We call this our AI-enabled discovery phase. This new service offering has been developed for cosmetic, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and nutrition companies who need help identifying the most promising botanical compounds for their products.

It leverages our proprietary AI trained on rare plant biology and biosynthesis and couples it with our team's proven ability to achieve full-scale production from indication to market. With these assets, we are uniquely positioned to provide companies and researchers an assessment for the most effective plant candidates based on scientific evidence, unique value propositions, and prior success in tissue culture. We will provide models of feasibility and future product analysis, including evaluation of active ingredients and formulation, patentability, sourcing, and safety. These customers will receive a final shortlist of suitable plant candidates with multi-pathway efficacy and full scalability within the BioHarvest system.

This service includes the utilization of our computational biologists and access to our catalog library of plants information, whereby our PhD plant cell biologists analyze the AI-driven data to provide a human experience-based point of view behind the recommendation for plants to take into a stage one contract. The discovery phase will be completed in seven to ten days at a cost to the CDMO customer of approximately $35,000 to $50,000. The goal of the discovery phase is to finalize one or two recommended plants to move into stage one, and we anticipate that this new service addition will accelerate the rates of new high-value CDMO customer projects entering into stage one contracts.

Each of these big bets, along with our subscription-driven operating leverage, expanding gross margins, and maturing CDMO contracts, are designed to put us in a strong position to reach the adjusted EBITDA breakeven target in Q4 of this year. With that, I'll now turn it over to Bar, our CFO, to walk through the financials. Thank you, Bar.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Ilan. Good morning, everyone. I will provide you with a succinct review of our financial results. A full breakdown is available in our SEC filings and in the press release that crossed the wire before market open today. Please note that all figures are in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise. Revenue for the second quarter of 2025 increased 41% to $8.5 million, in line with our revenue guidance, as compared to $6 million in the second quarter of 2024. The increase was as a result of continued success of the company's VINIA family of products. Gross profit increased 65% to $5.1 million, or 60% of total revenue in the second quarter of 2025, as compared to $3.1 million, or 52% of total revenue in the same year-ago quarter. The increase in gross margin was primarily attributed to the benefits of increased manufacturing scale and improved manufacturing yields.

Total operating expenses for the second quarter totaled $6.9 million, as compared to $4.8 million in the same year-ago quarter. The increase in operating expenses was primarily due to increased marketing spend and the development of our Health Pros Professional Affiliate Program to support future revenue growth and higher expenses from the CDMO service division. General and administration expenses increased 61% in the second quarter, as compared to the same year-ago quarter, due to one-time costs associated with our NASDAQ corporate compliance upgrade. Net losses for the second quarter of 2025 totaled $4 million, or $0.24 per basic and diluted share, as compared to a net loss of $0.7 million, or $0.04 per basic and diluted share in the same year-ago quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA loss, a non-IFRS measure, totaled $1.3 million in the second quarter of 2025, as compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.2 million in the same year-ago quarter. On a percentage of revenue basis, adjusted EBITDA loss totaled 14.7% in the second quarter of 2025, as compared to 20.7% in the same year-ago quarter. Cash and cash equivalents, as of June 30, 2025, totaled $3.7 million, as compared to $2.4 million as of December 31, 2024. Importantly, with the current margin growth and expense discipline, we continue to project that we will reach adjusted EBITDA breakeven in the fourth quarter. We believe this is achievable within the second half of 2025, based on VINIA run rate growth, expanding Amazon contribution, and maturing of our first CDMO programs. This inflection is a key financial milestone for validating the scalability of our business model.

I would now like to pass the call back to Ilan to offer some closing remarks, after which we will begin our Q&A session.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Bar, and thank you all for joining us today and for your continued support of BioHarvest Sciences. As we wrap up today's call, I want to take a moment to recognize the strength of the platform we've built, the discipline of our team, and the momentum we're carrying into the second half of the year, which I view as a monumental financial turning point in the history of our organization. I consider it a privilege to lead this company, and I remain confident in our ability to deliver both operationally and financially against the incredible opportunity in front of us. We're seeing our strategy come to life. The direct-to-consumer business is scaling efficiently with growing margin leverage, and our CDMO pipeline is starting to unlock long-term value through marquee partnerships.

This synergy between product and platform is translating into real commercial traction, and most importantly, a path to adjusted EBITDA breakeven target in Q4 of this year. That inflection will mark a turning point for BioHarvest: a shift from foundation building to scalable execution, and from early validation to accelerating value creation. Botanical Synthesis is no longer just a breakthrough technology. It's a commercial platform with expanding utility across multiple high-value verticals. As we scale from here, our focus remains unchanged: execute with discipline, deliver measurable health benefits from life-changing plant compounds for millions of consumers, and drive long-term sustainable value for our shareholders. With that, I'll hand the call back to the operator to begin our Q&A session. Thank you, operator.

Speaker 5

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speaker phone, please pick up your headset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our rows. First question is from Matt Hewitt, Craig Hallum Capital Group.

Speaker 0

Good morning and congratulations on all your progress. Maybe to start off, if we could dig a little bit into the consumer side, I'm curious if the 2X chew launch has kind of progressed as you would have anticipated, how you think that ramp could look over the back half of the year. Regarding the hydration launch, is there anything different given that this will be a liquid versus your prior consumer products? How do you anticipate that launch proceeding into the back half of the year?

Speaker 3

Good morning, Matt. Thank you for your questions. The 2X formula, our feedback has been phenomenal. I would encourage everybody to go to Amazon and have a look at our consumer reviews. I think the last time I looked, we had 25 reviews. Read the reviews. It'll help you understand the level of engagement that consumers have, the overall taste feedback, the overall functionality. This is really encouraging because it's a premium product. It's $79. It's still a strong value proposition because you're getting basically 800 milligrams of VINIA in each specific chew. When you benchmark it versus singles, it's still a better value proposition. From an absolute price point, we premiumize it because we understand that the user is different. The user is looking for very unique functionality, increased vascularity, and all the benefits that you get from increasing nitric oxide from an overall blood flow and oxygenation perspective.

We're very enthused. It does take time to get the product out there and to get the reviews going. Just from an efficiency perspective, and you understand that we're all about marketing efficiency and how we operate, you can't really start spending significant resources on a platform like Amazon, as an example, until you have a critical mass of reviews. Now we're tracking at that 25 reviews, which is a significant number of reviews. The last time I looked, we had a five-star rating from 25 reviews, which again just emphasizes the consumer's vote on quality, on functionality, and on taste.

We're very encouraged, and we see that the 2X chews will continue to build momentum and be an important contributor for the business in the third quarter, and then again in the fourth quarter as we start to ramp up additional marketing spend behind that, and specifically because the new Health Pros Professional Affiliate Program channel is going to be a key channel that the chew product is going to be totally appropriate for the consumer that the Health Pro, the discerning consumer that the Health Pro channel is focusing on. That's probably a good segue to the hydration product that we're bringing to the marketplace. This is unique. As I said in the notes in my comments earlier, it's personal.

Having spent 18 years in the beverage business, on both the ready-to-drink mat and on the powdered side of the business, I did have the privilege of launching in Vietnam powdered beverages back in a previous life. I have a lot of experience with this space. Obviously, we're focused on the stick packs, which is the powdered beverage space, which today just in the U.S., it's roughly about a $4 billion market. You have players like Liquid IV, who lead this market that's right now more than a billion dollars of revenue on an annual basis. There is significant interaction between the powdered stick business and the ready-to-drink business. Right now, our focus is on the powdered stick business. As I said, we've developed a formula which we believe is a game changer from an overall taste perspective. It's clean.

The formula is super clean, which is so important for these consumers. Very, very discerning. As you can see, you've got the power of VINIA from a blood flow perspective, which is powering hydration. It's pretty much common sense. When you actually talk to the consumer, you understand the consumer behavior and the consumer just cognitive thinking approach. Consumers understand that in order to have the best hydration, you've got to have really good blood flow to transfer all the fluids and the electrolytes to your muscles, your tissues, and your cells. The consumer, it really, it resonates very strongly. You can see, and this is just work in progress packaging. We've evolved the packaging even more breakthrough in the last 72 hours. It's very clearly, it's blood flow hydration. It's hydration powered by blood flow.

We have naturally derived electrolytes, which again is a very unique differentiator in the category, with sodium from Irish sea salts, the potassium from coconut water powder, and the magnesium from the bed of the ocean, and a really unique clean sugar sweetness system where we're using organic cane sugar and Reb M with a very unique ratio that Louis Hines from Bevnology has developed. You have a product that has very little aftertaste. The power of the 2X chews and the hydration product, all being doubled down and executing through our regular channels plus through the Health Pros Professional Affiliate Program, this timing has been absolutely critical to start to build the additional scaling and additional incremental growth points within our business.

In a way, it was through the Health Pros with a sales force that literally the Health Pros act as a sales force for our business, an educated technical sales force for our business to be able to communicate to the more discerning health-based audience the power of our 2X formula chews and the hydration product. Thank you, and I hope I've covered your question.

Speaker 0

Yes, that was fantastic. Maybe shifting gears a little bit on the CDMO side, obviously, congratulations on your color there. You noted the success with the initial pharmaceutical company and the fragrance. I'm just curious how that pipeline is progressing, maybe an update on the Tate & Lyle opportunity.

Speaker 3

Yeah, sure. We've been very busy, to put it simply. The pipeline is significant. We have a high single-digit number of leads that we are working on, and these are all, I would say, significant catalysts that we're looking to bring into the CDMO business. Not all of them will get through the gate, but there are consistently new use cases that we are being shared, significant life-changing compound billion-dollar opportunities. A good example is the announcement that we made in May regarding the fragrance. That was a use case that we wouldn't have, coming into this 12 months ago, thought that that would be a use case. We continue to see new incremental use cases, which just basically opens up the opportunities for us. The team is very, very focused on pulling that pipeline through.

It's a really good mix of pharma, of nutraceutical, and of food companies that are part of the pipeline. We are confident that in the downhill of the year, so between now and the end of the year, we will announce at least one and maybe two new deals into the CDMO, which I think would give us significant momentum going into 2026. Importantly, as well, as it relates to the new product that we've launched, the discovery product. This is, for us, has been a game changer because many of our customers are coming to us. They have very clear indications that they're focusing on. Unlike Tate & Lyle, who were very, very focused and had done enormous research that it was plant A and plant B, many of our customers are more focused and starting with the indication.

They'll come to us and say, "Look, we have a specific indication we're targeting." Let's say, I'll just use a broad example out there, asthma. Obviously, these are companies that have played in the chemical synthesis space for the last 20, 30 years. All of a sudden, they're starting to understand that there's massive blind spots out there that they have to make sure they get their arms around that may be a critical answer in driving a game-changing compound for their businesses. That's when they knock on the BioHarvest Sciences door because obviously, we're the critical bridge between the plant kingdom and scaling these life-changing compounds with unique consistency, economic viability, and obviously patents.

We have developed this unique discovery process, which is indication-focused, utilizing the different tools, the computational biology tools that we've developed, and obviously utilizing a significant amount of AI because we've actually been able now to catalog so many libraries of plants, of compounds, of the mechanism of action, of understanding what's worked in tissue culture, what hasn't worked in tissue culture.

We're able to very quickly, and it's normally like a 14-day process that we're able to work through, be able to then sit down with the customer and say, "Okay, based on that indication, here are the one or two or three plants that we believe have the compounds that can be the next generation of life-changing compounds for you." We believe that based on the mechanism of action, based on the work that's been done in the last 30 years from a tissue culture perspective, we can deliver on this compound. That then gives them the confidence to go into that critical stage one. With this new tool, we're able to also increase further the amount of leads that are coming into the pipeline. I think that's going to really stand us in a very strong position as we go into 2026.

Lastly, in the case of our Tate & Lyle partnership, the partnership continues to strengthen. The relationship between the two working teams is excellent. There's a great collaboration. We have sourced one of the critical plants. We are working actively on the tissue culture work. I promise that when we have news to share, we will be sharing that news. The partnership continues to grow from strength to strength. That gives us opportunities because Tate & Lyle are a significant company. They cover many categories. I think Tate & Lyle have experienced the professionalism and capabilities of our organization over the last six months. I believe that can also open up some potential new opportunities for us outside of the existing swim lane that we've been working on. At the right time, I can share a little bit more in this area if appropriate. Thank you.

Speaker 0

That's helpful. Maybe one last one for me, and I'll hop back into Q. Will you guys be seeing any impact from the implementation of tariffs? If so, how do you expect to respond? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yeah, so obviously, everybody's familiar that the final tariff impact from an Israel perspective is now sitting at 15% as far as transfer material from Israel to the U.S. We obviously are transferring material from, you know, one company owned by BioHarvest Sciences Inc. to another company. We have factored that in into our value chain. Obviously, I would prefer it to be zero. The impact of that, we've been able to manage that through driving efficiencies in other areas. We had budgeted actually for a higher number, thinking it was going to go up to 17%. That's basically what we had factored into our downhill. Now that it's sitting at 15% for the moment, I do think that that's not stationary, that may change. We do get a little bit of upside, and obviously, we're focused on everything here.

We have, you know, been able to factor that into our P&L and into our projections as we look to guide the business to that adjusted EBITDA profitability that we're focusing on getting to in the fourth quarter. It's not a major impact. The quantum is not major. It's manageable. We've managed it through just, you know, religious focus on cost reduction in other areas to balance that impact.

Speaker 0

That's helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Next question is from Amit Dayal, H.C. Wainwright & Co.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm calling out another strong quarter. With respect to the sales channels, Ilan, can you give us sort of a high-level overview of what are the different sales channels you will have by the end of the year, and how are you managing these?

Speaker 3

Ahmed, nice to hear from you. From a sales channel perspective, obviously, our core vineyard.com direct-to-consumer business is basically the lion's share of our business. This today is roughly around about 80% of the business. Obviously, Amazon, we've been able to manage this at a healthy 20% of the business. Today, these are the core channels. In addition, we have a growing direct-to-doctor professional business where we have a small team that focuses on key integrative medicine specialist centers around the U.S. and key doctors that actually do sell supplements directly to their patients. We've also opened up our international purchases in the last two months, and we're seeing a really nice steady stream of international purchases come through every single day. That obviously helps us from a marketing efficiency perspective because they're seeing this through leakage of a lot of our TV.

We do a lot of work with TBN, Trinity Broadcast Corporation, which is the fourth largest TV channel in the U.S. A lot of that content is projected into the Southern Hemisphere, Australia, New Zealand, also into Singapore, Malaysia, and even into Europe. We're starting to see now that those consumers, and that's one of the reasons why we turned on international purchasing. Every single day, we're getting more and more requests, and I believe that will continue to grow. The Health Pros channel, Ahmed, is a major, major bet for us and something that I believe will be a critical source of our competitive advantage because to be able to manage and build that professional channel requires IT capabilities, critical technology that we as a company, it's part of our DNA, the way we run our business with technology and systems running the whole backend of the business.

We've spent literally the last four months building the backend of how do you onboard 300 Health Pros, how do you make sure that you have all their required information that's critical, bank information, tax information, being able to pay them at the appropriate time, and all the backend systems. We've now developed that. We've also developed all the content to be able to educate these people, the catalogs, the specific programming to make sure that these health tech experts understand the technical nature of our product, almost like it's our own sales force going out and communicating to the world the uniqueness of our, in this case, of our VINIA products. Obviously, the Health Pros will continue as we launch new products into the marketplace.

Our expectation with these Health Pros that are coming on board is that they are people that are highly respected in their ecosystems, in their communities. Many of them have significant social media presence, as we articulated with the two examples that we shared a little bit earlier. We see this as being a critical strategic channel for the company, a channel that we can control, a channel that we're able to scale. Initially, we'll go from 10 to 100 to 300 by the end of the year. Ultimately, we will continue to build this out and scale it. My expectation is that this will contribute shortly to 20% of the business and will then start to kind of give us a nice balanced channel mix.

Importantly, the marketing efficiency in this channel is much greater than all the other channels because it allows us to be able to generate a much lower cost of acquisition. This should help us really drive increased marketing efficiency and leverage as we continue to scale the business. The only other channels that I think we would start to consider as we're scaling our business is other e-commerce channels which play in parts of the world or play in certain areas that we don't specifically play in. I'll be able to share more about that probably in the next call.

Speaker 2

Understood. Are these Health Pros, you know, like fitness and health sort of influencers, or are these some other type of folks with other credentials?

Speaker 3

No, this is like another level. A lot of the people we're going to be bringing on board on the Health Pros, they are doctors, nutritionists, physiotherapists, and chiropractors. These are people that are top coaches and trainers. These are people that, you know, basically live and breathe health every single day. When you explain to them about dilation of arteries and nitric oxide and ET1, they get it. They understand exactly the uniqueness of our product. When you talk to them about solubility and bioavailability, they get it. When we talk to them about, you know, hydration powered by blood flow, they get it. These are educated people that live and breathe in the health and nutrition world. We're very, very selectively bringing on board these people. We have very, very tight, you know, agreements with them as well.

It's a layer of very highly skilled, trained health professionals that understand the science and understand the consumer and can be a very important and highly effective bridge between our company and consumers out there, and a consumer that, you know, basically we can then target in a much more efficient way.

Speaker 2

Understood. Thank you for that, Ilan. With respect to margins, we see another sort of improvement this quarter. Is there more room here? You know, you spoke about some maybe slight headwinds from tariffs, etc. With that in mind, are we sort of capped at around 60% at least for the near term?

Speaker 3

I think you know my answer to that. You know that we are a company that, as a result of some great work that Bar Dichter has done with her team and the systems that we put in, like we're like ABC costing on steroids in our company. We know every single step and what the cost is of that step. We're maniacal in looking at every single opportunity to turn the knobs. I would tell you that we still have target opportunities to turn the knobs. You saw us share that example a little bit earlier, just purely by changing how we ship and shipping in a double pack for many of the households that purchase two subscriptions for each household. This added literally another 50 basis points for us.

There are a number of other opportunities like that that we will be able to execute between now and the end of the year. Obviously, we do get the benefits of scale as we continue to scale up the revenue of the business. I would say to you, there's more in it. We're very, very focused on literally turning every single screw. It may be the pace will not be as fast as the pace of what we've done. I mean, you think about it, we went from 6% now to 60% in three years. I think importantly, Amit, this is really, really important. I want everybody out there to understand this. The price of Vineyard Core Package, which is our 90 days, three months subscription package, when we launched in May 2021, was $99.

If you all go online today and you want to buy that same package, it's $99. We've maintained price. Show me another company out there that has, in this hyperinflationary four years, been able to maintain price on their core SKU. This is super unique. It's driven by, number one, the company's vision and value system, which is all about democratizing life-changing compounds. We felt that this price point is a magical price point and critical. Then just real servant leadership across the end-to-end value chain to find other ways outside of pricing to be able to drive margin in the business. There are plenty of opportunities left for us. Obviously, pricing for us is not a lever that we want to be pulling because as we democratize and scale the business, we do utilize mixed management.

Obviously, our coffee products and tea products are higher margin than our capsule business. I think, you know, with the success we're going to see in our hydration business, we have very high expectations. This will help us improve margin as well from a mixed perspective. Again, on the cost side and the efficiency side, there's still more work for us. It won't be at the same pace, but there's still work to be done there.

Speaker 2

Understood. Thank you for that comprehensive answer, Ilan. I'll take my other questions offline. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Next question is from Anthony Vendetti, Maxim Group.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Ilan, I was wondering if you could just dig a little deeper into your botanical process there. Any other this quarter, particularly innovations in the process in terms of improving the throughput and if any other new molecule isolation that you've been able to ascertain this quarter? Then just an update on your facility expansion. Thanks so much.

Speaker 3

From a Botanical Synthesis process perspective, Anthony, we've done, we continue every quarter, there's a lot of work that we're doing on the process. Let's call it the process optimization. I think I first want to break this up into the first area, which is around digitization of our facility as it relates to all the biological metrics that are critical for us to make sure that the cells are growing effectively on the growth curve in a way that optimizes the high-seed resveratrol and polyphenols that they produce, as well as optimizing potency, as well as optimizing yield. My COO, Ilana, and her team are growing in their knowledge because this whole piece has been digitized. With more data, we're able to optimize. We're getting better and better at doing what we need to do to drive optimization of yield and potency. That's really, really critical.

That's all just driven by the digitization. We built a blueprint, a brain for our facility, which allows us also to be much more efficient in handling every single month, anywhere from 100 to 140 bioreactors. There's no other company in the world that handles the quantum scale of bioreactors that we handle. This is number one. Number two is, I actually sat down with the team before I went overseas. Last week, Wednesday, I had a great three-hour meeting with our process engineering team. There are certain parts of our process where we have an opportunity to automate these processes more effectively. There is a significant amount of work, specifically in the area which we call harvesting, which is when we basically take the cells when they've finished their growth cycle, and we separate it from the liquid. We call this harvesting.

We are now working on a number of different technologies to much more efficiently work through the harvesting side. Similarly, on the drying side, there's a number of technologies that we're working on right now because as we scale our manufacturing capacity, we will be putting in place our own drying capacity. That's, again, just to the earlier point around the margins. Once we start to bring at least a large proportion of our drying in-house, this will allow us to improve gross profit margins. Everything that we're doing from process optimization as it relates to harvesting, as it relates to downstream drying and upstream digitization, all of this is ultimately allowing us to get better at what we do, and will translate over time in much better gross profits for the direct-to-consumer business. Importantly, all of this translates into the CDMO business itself.

In addition, we're also working on the next generation of bioreactors. Now we're at 1,200-liter bioreactors. We're not going to stay stationary. We keep on moving. We went from 350 to 600 to 800 to 1,000 to 1,200 liters. As we plan now to move to our next facility, which we will commence the more specific manufacturing towards the back end of this year, the expectation is to be in 2,000 liters and above. There's a lot of work that we're doing in that space. This is just part of how a company like ourselves that's building a movement of change to bring life-changing compounds to the world operates. It's like the natural cycle of just continuous improvement around the process engineering of our end-to-end business so we can get better and better as it relates to Botanical Synthesis.

On the CDMO side, and I speak here on behalf of Zaki, it's amazing the way Zaki, and obviously given his background as a mathematician and an engineer, Zaki has built, I would say, a best-in-class computational biology team with some real experts from the industry. This is really starting to be seen as a force of our competitive advantage across the business. Our business, we don't talk about it a lot externally.

You don't see us thumping our chests around how we use AI, but we're using AI across our entire business and specifically within the CDMO business, whether it relates to the work that we do from a discovery perspective or it relates to the work we're doing on the actual tissue culture work in leveraging the power of AI computational biology to get more and more efficient all the way through to, we live in an ecosystem in Israel, probably the best ecosystem as it relates to tapping into best-in-class cutting-edge technology to make us more efficient, like computer vision. We started a major project in the area of computer vision so that there's less handling of the materials, and we can actually use computer vision, an AI combination of computer vision and AI, to be able to assess whether the tissue culture is growing the right way or not.

This is really part of the culture and the innovative mindset that we have at BioHarvest Sciences Inc.

Speaker 0

Okay, great. Maybe one last follow-up. In terms of the quarter we're in now, I know fourth quarter 2025 is the target for EBITDA breakeven. For this quarter, are there any other major milestones by September 30 that we should be looking for between now and then?

Speaker 3

Look, I think you'll start to see the impact of the Health Pros in the month of September. For us now, as I said, we're bringing in our first 10 this week. Everything's ready. The whole backend's ready. The frontend's ready. It's a huge effort of the whole marketing organization as well as the IT side of the organization. We plan to very quickly bring on board, you know, 50, 100. We should start to see some of those benefits come through in September. We're working through very methodically and carefully around how we do that. The impact, the true impact of that will be in the fourth quarter. Similarly, the hydration product, we will launch, we're trying to get production completed in September. The product is Informed Sports Certified, and again, it's one of the few products in the market that actually is third-party verified, anti-doping.

We've been very, very technical on how we bring in this product to the market. Everything is best-in-class. With Informed Sports Certification, it takes about another 10 days from the time you've done manufacturing to send samples to London to make sure because every single batch is certified to make sure it passes anti-doping laws. This is so critical to get into NCAA teams, NFL, MLS. I really believe we have the game changer, the game changer of hydration as it relates to the science, as it relates to the taste, and ultimately efficacy when it comes to these athletes. That's why it was so important for us to invest in Informed Sports Certification. The true impacts, again, will be in October. We are doing a lot of work on the CDMO, and there's a lot of action going on. I don't want to be overly predictive on this.

We will obviously share more updates when appropriate over the next six weeks. You can see the business is gearing up for putting in place the infrastructure to really have a significant acceleration in the fourth quarter. I think it was important for us to give our shareholders the visibility of what that looks like, building on top of already very, very good core momentum in the business.

Speaker 0

Okay, great. Thanks so much for all that color. Appreciate it.

Speaker 5

Next question is from Hunter Diamond, Diamond Equity Research LLC.

Speaker 4

Hi everyone. Good morning and congratulations on the strong results. My question relates to the CDMO. When do you see that sort of ramping up high level and contributing more meaningful to revenue? Maybe you could touch on the phase one, phase two assets, the breakdown of contracts, or how you see, where do you see the low-hanging fruit? Is it more coming in earlier stage or some later stage compounds that you're able to work with?

Speaker 3

Hi, good morning, Hunter. Thank you for, thank you for the question. Just to kind of remind everybody, you know, we've made huge progress. We moved our Nasdaq-listed pharmaceutical company that has an approved drug, I repeat, an approved drug. We moved them already from phase one to phase two in the second quarter in May. That was really a major, major validation of the power of our technology. Given the fact that this is quite a unique biological material that, you know, we plan to produce for this very, very strategic partner. As you know, we are now working very closely with Tate & Lyle.

Obviously, the fragrance opportunity, which, you know, we haven't really spoken about in a public forum like this, is a monster of an opportunity of a category, or I'd call it more like a segment, which is $16 billion, and it's just waiting for innovation, just given the sustainability challenge that exists there. Literally, the particular plant that we're dealing with here is a plant that in 20 years' time may not exist. It's a rare plant, and it's a massive opportunity from a financial leverage perspective for us. What's already in the queue is significant. Each of those opportunities are, you know, literally specifically on the Tate & Lyle side and on the fragrance side. These are multi-billion dollar opportunities. On the pharmaceutical side, it's a good million, multi-million dollar opportunity. What's sitting in the pen looks really, really good right now.

As I mentioned a little bit earlier, the team has built an amazing pipeline. What's really very encouraging for me is that that pipeline has not been built by a crazy amount of marketing. The demand creation is coming from the customers. It's customers that are finding us and are totally intrigued, overwhelmed by technology, and then start to understand what it could actually do for their respective businesses. That's why, throughout significant interaction with customers, we decided to bring into play the discovery module because we felt that this, for, you know, $35,000 to $50,000, a few weeks of work by our computational biologists together with our, you know, R&D team, we could very quickly get customers on the path into a stage one project. Going back to your, that just gives a bit of color and texture on what's going on, which is super exciting.

What's important, going back to your question, is when are we going to start to see meaningful contributions? The meaningful contributions, I believe, will start coming to play in early next year because we'll start to see more of the existing projects coming into, so phase one moving to phase two, phase two moving into phase three. As a result of a lot of the work we've done in building the pipeline, you'll start to see a lot more projects coming into phase one. The contribution of the CDMO will continue to increase. By the way, the CDMO contribution right now, it's meaningful. It's not insignificant. It's meaningful because as we realize in revenue on a quarter-by-quarter basis, it's becoming more and more meaningful each quarter.

Obviously, that will continue, and we'll start to probably break it out more clearly for our shareholders and the analysts as we go into next year.

Speaker 0

Great. Thank you for taking the question.

Speaker 5

This concludes our question and answer session. I'd now like to hand the call back over to Mr. Ilan Sobel for his closing remarks.

Speaker 3

Thank you, everybody, for making time. I know for some of you on the West Coast, it was pretty early this morning. I appreciate that. I hope after the last one hour, you really see the progress that the company has made, our ability to maniacally execute day in, day out, and deliver on what we said we would deliver. I also hope you walk away from this conference call encouraged by the additional capabilities that we're building as it relates to new channels, as it relates to new breakthrough disruptive products going into multi-billion dollar categories.

Speaker 5

The way through to what we're doing on the CDMO side with our new discovery service, which ultimately has the ability to really act as a significant catchment of customers that we can bring in and progress through our CDMO. It's those capabilities that we're building that, combined with the momentum of the business, together are ultimately going to ensure that we deliver on the financial metrics that are so important. We're all, my management team, Bar, and kudos to Bar, who's just so focused on ensuring that we execute on our financial metrics.

As I said earlier, we have such great visibility, data visibility on where we need to be focusing our resources to ultimately deliver those critical financial milestones that I believe all of our shareholder partners are obviously eager for us to cross the line and then really start to scale this business and our capabilities and build a life-changing company that's delivering compounds that's positively affecting the health and wellness of initially millions and tens of millions and ultimately hundreds of millions of consumers around the world. Thank you for your time. I'm super excited as we move into an exciting downhill of the company as we continue to build on the existing momentum. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.