All right, hello, everyone, and thank you for continuing to join us throughout the day here during the Lytham Partners 2024 Investor Select Conference. My name is Robert Blum, Managing Partner of Lytham Partners. During this fireside chat webcast, we welcome SenesTech, ticker symbol SNES on the NASDAQ, and joining us today from the company is its Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Joel Fruendt. Before I begin, I do want to remind everyone that management is available for one-on-one meetings throughout the conference here today. I know we still have a few hours left. If you've not already signed up and would like to schedule one, you can send me an email. That's blum, B-L-U-M, @lythampartners.com, or you can visit our website, lythampartners.com/select2024. From there, you can click on the Investor Registration tab and make your one-on-one selections.
If we can't get it coordinated, here today, we'll certainly look to get something, scheduled as soon as possible. So, Joel, welcome.
Thank you, Robert.
Perfect. Let's sort of get things started here. For those not familiar with the company, please provide sort of a high-level overview.
So SenesTech's mission is to improve public health by managing animal pest populations through fertility control. So we're addressing one of the world's oldest and probably most challenging pest problems, that's rodent control, by attacking the problem at its root cause, which is reproduction. In essence, it's rodent birth control and is very proactive versus the common reactive solutions today.
Why do you believe fertility control is sort of such a critical component to overall pest management?
For decades, the pest management industry has built their integrated pest management programs around poisons. They've been addressing only one side of the equation, that's the death rate, and the poisons certainly are not environmentally friendly. Our solutions really focus on the birth rate. Rodents have an extremely high reproductive rate. In fact, two rats can be responsible for 15,000 descendants in one year. By adding fertility control, we have shown population reductions of 90% or more when added into existing programs, and our solutions are very eco-friendly. Whatever IPM strategy is being employed, it simply works better with fertility control.
Any other sort of additional reasons for including fertility control in IPM?
Well, the current options of rodenticides or poisons can pose a very real danger to people, pets, wildlife, the environment. Sometimes the wrong things get poisoned. The growing realization is that there's too much collateral damage in this war on rodents, and in areas such as California, their adoption of the Ecosystems Protection Act, which bans many poisons commonly used in rodent control, is a perfect example. Our fertility control options, combined with the use of traps, can effectively eliminate the poisons from a program. So it's a lot easier to trap 100 rats than it is 1,000 rats, for example, and that's how fertility control can be an important tool for infestations.
Now, you initially started this sort of endeavor into rodent fertility control with a product called ContraPest, but you've recently launched a new soft bait product. Is ContraPest going away?
Not at all. Our initial product, which is ContraPest, it's unique, it's patented, it's a contraceptive technology that reduces or eliminates fertility in both male and female rats. So ContraPest is delivered in a liquid form and is very palatable to rats. They keep coming back for more. It works. It's proven itself in the field. We have introduced different delivery systems to meet specific customer needs. We have loyal customers who love the product and find it is an effective solution for them. So ContraPest is not going anywhere and will be available as it always has. What we did find was that 95% of all products used in rodent control are some sort of solid bait. Asking them to switch to liquid was challenging to meet all customer needs, so that is why we developed Evolve.
Let's sort of go in that a little bit more into Evolve. What more can you tell us about it?
Yes, very excited about this. Evolve is our all-new soft bait product, so it's a solid product, but it's classified as a soft bait. It has similar efficacy to ContraPest and really has these three distinct benefits to customers. First is a robust shelf life, so it's a great distribution product. It lasts on the shelves for over a year. It's a solid formulation, so that's more familiar to the industry and the marketplace, and it's easier to deploy. And the third, it's offered at a competitive price to traditional rodenticides. It's also designated as a minimum risk product by the EPA, which means it poses little to no risk to human health or the environment. Evolve has all food additive ingredients, so we are not introducing any type of poisons into the environment. That's a critical consideration for any rodent control decisions.
How is Evolve deployed?
... Well, first of all, it can be used anywhere rats are found. Its soft bait form is conducive to easy and quick deployment. Our label dictates deployment inside of tamper-resistant bait stations in areas where there's potential exposure to children or pets or wildlife. Or it can be placed or broadcast in areas where there is no exposure. So simply place 2 to 12 pieces per location, update it based on activity levels. The key is keeping a constant supply of Evolve available to the pest. They will consume it.
Yeah, and maybe beyond what I would maybe define as some of these more traditional deployment methods, can Evolve be used in some of the other non-traditional ways?
Yeah, absolutely. And, the agribusiness market is a good example. Huge market potential, because losses due to rodents are substantial in that marketplace. Evolve can be broadcast in areas such as agricultural fields, grain storage areas, and food production facilities. So we have one customer, an irrigation company, that deploys it into an almond grove to protect their irrigation equipment from damage. We have another customer, a sugar producer, that will mass deploy it across their fields to reduce their $10 million annual loss in rodent damage. So that will be a real game changer for us.
Help investors understand how you sell this product. Do you have a sort of a direct sales force?
Yes, we have a field sales organization that's divided up into geographical territories in the U.S. The strong regional focus we have is all designed to tighten the sales cycle and ultimately drive revenue. But with Evolve, now we've been able to partner with pest industry distribution leaders, such as Veseris and Target Specialty Products, to help move our product to the pest management professionals or get really closer to the customers. We've also signed agreements with a number of distributors for specific end markets, such as an agreement with Poppe Enterprises. They're a distributor and pest management firm focused on the grain management market. Evolve and its excellent shelf life has now allowed us to open these large distribution channels.
So we see our sales, our field sales team spending more time working with the distributor reps to expand our reach into large markets, where those distributor reps have extensive contacts, and influence. So this is a very exciting development.
It feels like most of what you mentioned there is sort of on the B2B side. How about on the direct-to-consumer market?
Yes, so our e-commerce platform has served us well. We've made improvements in it. We've reconfigured our marketing spend and have added additional products and options to our site, as well as convenience items. Currently, about a third of our revenue comes through e-commerce. The exciting news is we are partnering with a large do-it-yourself or pest control products company, who is now stocking pallets of our product and featuring Evolve prominently on their sites. So it's another way of putting it through the e-commerce channel. So we also will have our products on Amazon in the very near future, and this is an area that we feel significant expansion will occur there.
Any other sales channels that maybe we haven't chatted about yet?
Yes, and yeah, Evolve in its shelf life, the ease of use and packaging options, has now allowed us entrance, entrance into the retail market space. The retail market for rodent control in the U.S. is over $300 million. So this is a new obtainable market for us, and it wasn't really possible with ContraPest, because of the shelf life issues. And the retailers are definitely taking notice. We recently launched Evolve at Ace Hardware franchise locations in California, making it the first time we've had our product on store shelves. We initially started with two locations, but additional franchises came on quickly.
So we are now in the process of being approved and getting a vendor number for sale throughout all 4,512 Ace stores throughout the United States, by going through their corporate procurement process.
Mm.
So we really plan to continue to pursue retail with market experts in our discussions with retail manufacturers representatives to handle our line. We will target similar home and hardware retailers such as True Value, agriculture retailers such as Tractor Supply, and industrial distributors such as Grainger. We have had initial discussions with Costco, so we're talking about some really big opportunities here that weren't available to us before.
That would be significant. I believe everything we've talked about here has largely been domestic. Anything, maybe walk through some of the progress you're making internationally here as well?
Yeah, tremendous progress there, and a little bit faster than what we had even thought. So Evolve, here is the key driver, as there has been really tremendous interest in this product since it was introduced at the Pest World, World Pest Forum, their show in October. So because of that and our introductions, we have now exclusive distribution agreements, which include initial pallet stocking orders and annual minimum purchase clauses in Hong Kong and Macau, Singapore, the Maldives, and the UAE. We're in late-stage discussions in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Netherlands, Turkey, Taiwan, and we expect to have our approval in Canada by mid-year, which is a large market for us. So this is a tremendous opportunity and is likely to become a significant driver of revenue in 2024.
You know, you talked a little bit about numbers just a moment ago, but talk about, you know, maybe remind everyone here on what the size of the addressable market is here for your solutions.
Absolutely. First, you know, it's, it's important to understand that having too many rats is a huge problem for society, one we're spending millions on because they cost billions. Public health standpoint, rats represent enormous global public health risks and are significant vectors for disease. From a food supply standpoint, rats destroy 20% of the world's stored food supply through either consumption or contamination, and they're very destructive. They cause over $27 billion of infrastructure damage per year in the U.S. alone. So when you see that now we can participate in what is a $1 billion U.S. market for rodenticide products, and globally, $4.5 billion, we're very excited about our prospects.
All right, excellent. You know, maybe let's transition a little bit. What insight can you provide as to the outlook for 2024 here?
Yeah, very excited there as well. In 2023, in the Q3 , we were up 44% year-over-year in revenues to set an all-time record for that quarter. Our three-year CAGR has been over 80%, so very solid foundation there. In addition to sales growth, we've also been able to drive down our operating expenses. We brought our operating expenses down from $10 million annual spend to $7.5 million in 2023, and we have some further improvements that are planned for 2024. But I think the key takeaway here is that none of this includes any contributions from Evolve, as it was only introduced in a soft launch in November. So we believe Evolve will be a key driver in significantly steepening the growth trend as we look to 2024.
So just let me give a little teaser, January 2024 is double that of January 2023 for revenues, and we really only started shipping Evolve in any substantial amounts in January, so the growth curve is definitely steepening.
Excellent. Talk about the balance sheet and, and your overall financial position here.
Our pro forma cash balance at the end of the Q3 , inclusive of the capital raise we did on November 29th in 2023, is $6.6 million. Balance sheet's pretty straightforward. We have no long-term debt, just 4.3 million shares outstanding. We also have 8.2 million warrants outstanding that can be seen as potential future funding. And since the end of the year, we have seen some significant warrant exercises, but the details will have to wait for our financial report in the 10-K.
Excellent. Couple of minutes here remaining. Anything else you want to say before we, we end the discussion?
So our goal in 2024 is about, all about product ramping, delivery on executing those products, and the sales execution. We will continue to look and bring new and innovative products to the market with the goal of really moving beyond the rat label. So to that end, a, a mouse product is to be released in early Q2. And when you look at it, we launched Evolve from concept to market in six months. So we have the expertise and the team to do many other product development initiatives, and we're really focusing on that. And I guess finally, the one thing I always like to remind everyone is that products that can be paradigm-changing don't come along very often, but when they do, they have an opportunity to change the way things have been done for generations.
We really believe we have this type of opportunity by leading the way in fertility control for animal pest populations to really change the way things are done out in the marketplace.
All right. Fantastic, Joel. Well, we'll, we'll go ahead and leave it there. Thank you so much for your time today. Certainly enjoyed the conversation, found it informative. I hope our audience will as well. I'll give just two quick reminders to everyone. Again, if you've not already scheduled your one-on-one meeting with management and would like to do so, send me an email, blum@lythampartners.com, or again, visit the website. Additionally, again, we have additional webcast and presentations coming up here today. Again, the website there, lythampartners.com/select2024. You can click on that presentation tab in the top left-hand corner to access those. So, Joel, again, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Hope you enjoy the conference.
Thanks, Robert. Appreciate it.