All right. Hello, everyone, and thank you for continuing to join us throughout the day here at the Lytham Partners Spring 2025 Investor Conference. Again, my name is Robert Blum, Managing Partner here at Lytham. Today I'll be moderating a fireside chat discussion with the management team of SenesTech. I've got the CEO, Joel Fruendt, and the Chief Financial Officer, Tom Chesterman, with me. Gentlemen, welcome.
Thanks, Robert.
Thank you.
Glad to be here.
Great. Just as a reminder, SenesTech trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol SNES. Let's go ahead and jump right into it. Joel, maybe starting things off, for those that may not have seen one of our previous presentations or fireside chats, provide a brief overview of SenesTech.
Absolutely. So SenesTech, we're a biotech and life sciences company that specifically operates a business in the rodent control products area, specifically controlling reproduction. Having said that, here are two things to keep in mind as we go through this. The first is that two breeding rats can become 15,000 in one year with sufficient food, water, and harborage. The other thing is that Rentokil, the largest pest control company in the world, did a study that showed that a pair of rats could actually become 500,000 in three years. With that being said, we tackle the rodent control problem by addressing the birth rate. Most rodent control products and companies focus on the death rate. That is why you see there is such an issue these days in the municipalities and in agriculture. You really, you cannot poison them. You cannot trap them.
You can't gas them fast enough in order to keep up with that substantial birth rate. Our approach is rodent birth control. It's a real novel, as you can imagine, novel method compared to those other solutions. They rely on poisons. We rely on controlling the birth rate. Poisons are an issue because of a couple of things. One is the high reproductive rate, as I mentioned. Rats can develop resistance to those poisons. They also have aversion to those poisons out in the field. It keeps them from going where the poisons are. Of course, there's increased social and political restrictions on poison use. What we are finding, and we have over the last 12 months for sure, is that communities are really seeking sustainable and effective pest control solutions.
Our fertility control, birth control products line up with that demand for those sustainable pest management products. If you look at it, controlling the rodent population is really a proactive approach compared to traditional methods.
Yeah. You mentioned the Rentokil study. You said two breeding rats over three years. Is it 500,000 or 500 million descendants?
It's 500,000.
500,000. Okay. I just want to confirm.
Which is substantial.
Yep. Very good. You know, tell us a little bit about your flagship product, Evolve.
Yeah. So SenesTech has been around for, well, since 2016, went public and launched our ContraPest product. Real excited in 2024, we were able to launch Evolve, which is significantly changing the company's trajectory. It's a soft bait. It's a solid in a solid format compared to a liquid format. It has proven efficacy. It's very common that solid baits and soft baits are used out in the field. There's very much a familiarity with that type of product, which makes it then easier to deploy than the liquid products. It's really competitively priced to traditional rodenticides. The other great thing about it is the EPA has designated this as a minimum risk product under their Section 25(b) regulation. It has quickly become our top-selling product. It's expanded our market and geographic reach.
In fact, in Q1 of this year, Evolve sales grew by 40% year-over-year. The active ingredient is cottonseed oil. It is known for effectively reducing fertility in rats. The low level of cottonseed oil is tailored specifically to a rat's body mass. Large mammals would need to consume 50-100 pounds of the product just to have a slight chance that it might reduce their fertility. We are real excited about that. It can be used really wherever rats are present. The product form is in the shape of small sausages. We did that on purpose to differentiate it from the rodenticide products that are out there. Our recommendations are you put 2-12 pieces inside of a bait station.
You want to use bait stations in areas where you use tamper-resistant bait stations where there might be pets or wildlife or non-targets there because you want to make sure that it gets to the targeted audience. I think the key there is that it's a minimum risk product. It's not a poison. It has all natural ingredients in it.
And then, you know, is Evolve available for, well, I guess confirm, Evolve is available for both rats and mice, correct?
It is. We launched Evolve, the rat product, in January of 2024. We then followed it up with Evolve Mouse in June of 2024. What that has done, it has allowed us to significantly increase the addressable market there because there is a large marketplace for mice.
All right. Fantastic. Let's talk a little bit here about distribution. What channels is Evolve sold through today?
We have come up with a strategy that covers a lot of different areas. We call it our six-channel strategy. Certainly, e-commerce is a big channel for us. That is how we started selling the company's flagship product, ContraPest, on our e-commerce site. We also have agriculture distributors for the large agriculture market. The same thing for pest management, pest management distributors that will distribute the product to the pest operators that are out there. We now are able to get into retail. You would be able to find our product in places such as Ace Hardware stores. It also has allowed us to expand globally. We have international exclusive distributors that are out there. We also do our direct sales to large customers like zoos, sanctuaries, and of course, municipalities. E-commerce is our largest channel currently.
It's the fastest growing channel. Over the past 12 months, e-commerce has expanded from our own website, our own e-commerce site, to now where we are on Amazon. We've been on there since last August. We're now approaching the $60,000-$70,000 per month run rate. We've taken that formula, and now we've expanded it recently to walmart.com as well as tractorsupply.com. In fact, in the first quarter, e-commerce sales increased by over 107%. You say, "Okay, what does that do to it?" It's like, these new platforms enhance functionality on our own website. We're able to do more for the e-commerce customer that's out there to make it easier for them to purchase the product. Of course, we have our targeted marketing strategies for e-commerce, which are proven to be effective as well.
Really, what is the Evolve's features that support e-commerce growth are the fact that, as I mentioned, it's a solid product. Of course, the price point is very important. We've got all our efficacy studies in line. The efficacy is it works really well. People keep coming back for it. The other thing is we have a long shelf life. We have a shelf life now on a product that is over 18 months as compared to the liquid product, which was about six months. E-commerce is moving along greatly. We're starting to expand there. Another area that we're really focused on in the last six months has really taken off is on the municipal side. On the municipal side, deployments of Evolve are increasing significantly.
We're doing a big project in the Chicago area with the Wicker Park and Bucktown Chamber of Commerce, where we now have repeat orders of pallets of product that are being deployed out in the neighborhoods to really control their rat populations there. They install, the crews install the product in the bait boxes out in the alleyways and wherever there's food sources available. They're having great consumption of the product, which means in turn that they're going to have great results. These deployments have received extensive media coverage there. Every major news outlet in the Chicagoland area has been covering it. The repeat orders will tell us that the product's working. We're excited about the rest of Chicago because this certain area, it's one of, it's a district called a special service area. There are 54 others in those areas in New York City.
We started initial deployment there just last week. They're deploying the product in the West Harlem area. It's a pilot program that could possibly expand to the rest of the city as we go along and see the results. Additionally, we've received orders from Baltimore and from Los Angeles County. We've got some repeat customers now, municipal customers that are in the Boston area. We've done a nice project in San Francisco that we expect to be expanded on substantially in the near future. I think municipal opportunities really indicate that we're gaining traction and we're gaining support behind our product and looking at it from how to control the birth rate rather than just what are you doing with the death rate. As we see the municipal success happen, it will only impact all of our other channels positively.
All right. That's very helpful, very informative there. Maybe talk a little bit about some of the international opportunities that you have, how are sales trending there. Maybe talk a little bit about the approvals needed by country and how that may differ from some of your U.S. based sales.
Yeah. We have a number of opportunities internationally at the moment where distributors that we've signed up to handle our product on an exclusive basis due to just the quantity of inquiries we're getting about doing it. It all came about because of Evolve. We've signed exclusive distribution agreements in 12 countries. Recently, we just signed an exclusive distribution agreement in Indonesia and expect one in the Philippines to be right behind it. We've done shipments to places such as Hong Kong, the Netherlands, the UAE, the Maldives. With those, we're expecting reorders to really start ramping up. There are a couple of key markets that we're right at the tail end of getting our product registered in. That would be Australia and New Zealand. Both have significant programs designed at trying to eradicate rodents.
We expect that in October, we'll get the full approval. We expect to be shipping substantial amounts, container loads of product there, certainly later this summer. Those are some of the things that really have us focusing on, okay, what other international sites, international markets do we actually want to get to? Because those require navigating the regulatory processes. They're different in each country. Some are easier than others. Some allow waivers. Some do not. As I mentioned, this is substantial because once we get the approval, then it's large orders to our distributors. We think that the second half of the year is going to be really strong with our international presence.
You know, Joel, something I think you touched on briefly, but I want to make sure we come back to this because I think it's an important topic that sometimes can get lost here, which is why is controlling rats important?
First of all, you hear about it all the time, right? They pose a societal problem. Orkin, the largest pest control company in the world, they come out with their 10 rattiest cities list in the United States. It is an age-old issue. It is one that has been traditionally managed for the last 50 years with lethal solutions, things like poisons and inhumane traps. There is still this big problem. As rat infestations continue to worsen, they have great societal impacts. The first one is public health. They are vectors for various diseases that humans can contact and also die from. Our food supply, they destroy about 20% of the world's food supply either through consumption or contamination. Infrastructure, the damage that they cause, it is estimated in the U.S. alone is $27 billion annually. Those are real substantial things, whether they are economic, whether they are public health.
Those are the things that we need to be concerned about and how can we get rid of this problem. The other thing I wanted to mention with, you know, over the last 50 years and poisons, what's your risk factor there? The risk factor there, people, pets, wildlife can be poisoned. We've seen instances in each of those. Our alternative and what we focus on, the birth rate, controlling that so you can control your populations, it's approached in a humane way through fertility control. It's really an environmentally friendly way compared to the alternatives.
You know, you touched on some of the damage, you know, $27 billion in infrastructure damage. You know, we talked about the food supply. But when it comes back to sort of the addressable market opportunity for your solutions, maybe give folks a sense of what that opportunity is.
Yeah, it's a large marketplace, both domestically in the U.S. and globally. It's estimated that the U.S. rodenticide market is about $1 billion a year, somewhere around there. Globally, it's $4.5 billion. When you look at how is that divided up, I mentioned the municipal market. The municipal market, roughly spending $400 million a year on their rodent problems. That's everything from small towns to large cities to counties to government agencies. Then you have the whole pest control industry, a $200 million marketplace just for products that are used for pest control operators that are out there outside of the municipal market. Agriculture, $250 million.
If there's one marketplace that when we look at, let's say we have some tremendous opportunities there, it's in agriculture because you can see some real economic damage, whether it's in things like destroying sugarcane, in egg production, really reducing the amount of eggs that are produced, as well as when you look at the row crops and things like that, in addition to poultry houses. There's a substantial opportunity there. Of course, we're not even talking about consumers, right? That's $150 million that's sold through big box stores online and in retailers.
All right. That's helpful. Good context here. Tom, let's turn things over to you for a bit here on some of the financials. You saw, Joel mentioned this a moment ago, you saw sales of Evolve grow 40% during the first quarter. That's the March ending quarter. But the margin profile on Evolve is substantially higher than your earlier product gross profit dollars. In fact r ose, I think it was about 130% during Q1. Maybe for those not familiar, talk about the margin profile of Evolve and how it's driving those sort of profit dollar increases.
Absolutely, Robert. Thanks. I mean, we've deliberately placed equal efforts on growth and profitability. Let's go into the two pieces of them. For 2024 as a whole, we had record revenue of $1.9 million, which was up 56% from the previous year. In Q1, as we continue to transition from ContraPest to our higher margin Evolve product, total revenue growth was up 17%, but Evolve grew over 40% year-over-year. Now, due to the high margin nature of the Evolve product line, comparatively, gross margins were 64% compared to 32% in Q1 of last year. Even looking at it sequentially, gross margins have improved compared to 60.9% in Q4 of last year. You can see we're continually improving our gross margins. As you said, from a gross profit dollar perspective, gross profit up to 132% in Q1.
We're really looking to drive the business towards profitability. We always believe that our Evolve product line would represent a higher margin opportunity for SenesTech, and it's proving this out. Further, ever-improving manufacturing operations gives us continued pricing and margin flexibility. We're also increasing production capacity to meet future demand. We just secured a newer, larger facility in the Phoenix area that will allow us to meet the next five years of increasing demand without dramatically increasing our facility costs. We've just moved into that facility within the past month.
All right. Very good. You also, I think it was the year-end call, announced a series of initiatives to cut operating costs, maybe expand a little bit more there.
Sure. Yeah, in March, we implemented a new series of optimization initiatives to further reduce the operating expenses. These included the pausing of new product development to focus exclusively on the commercialization and growth of Evolve Rat and Evolve Mouse, bringing more marketing, regulatory, and intellectual property functions in-house to reduce reliance on external consultants, and optimizing our direct sales efforts, shifting to a focus on high-value customer acquisition in key customer segments and commission-only models. The benefit of these should be evident in the quarters to come in the operating expense line. All told, these savings, coupled with the higher gross margins and the operating efficiencies, are expected to move our cash flow break-even to a little over $1.5 million per quarter. We continue to move closer to that inflection point that many companies and investors, of course, are looking for.
There's still a lot of execution work to be done, but the pathway is clear for us.
All right. That's helpful to everyone there. Joel, let's come back to maybe the growth side of the equation. Tom touched a little bit about it. You touched on a number of growth areas, e-commerce, municipal, international orders, perhaps towards the end of the year here. In order to get the business to the inflection point that Tom just mentioned there of maybe a little north of $1.5 million per quarter, again, you're right around $500,000 per quarter today. What are the sort of various pathways to get there?
Certainly, the success we've had in e-commerce, we continue to see that. You could see that since the end of the year, just our presence on Amazon has grown from $20,000-$30,000 per month up to now where we're seeing $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 per month. We expect that to keep going. As we get some time under our belt with Walmart and with tractorsupply.com and some others that we're looking to enter, that's going to be a big driver. I mentioned the municipalities, they're starting to recognize the need for rat control and not just using poisons. Our deployments in the municipal market over the last 60 days more than doubled our deployments the previous year. You can start to see some transition there to looking for alternatives that will work.
Those deployments, they cover relatively small areas, a few blocks in a city, maybe three blocks, 10 blocks, 20 blocks. Expansion and the continued use of the product can generate millions in revenue for SenesTech. You combine a few municipal, large municipal orders or international orders, which are substantial. Those are in the $100,000 plus when we get these orders. Combined with the e-commerce and then our distribution into the large pest control and ag markets, you can really boost our prospects there. I think when you look at it, agriculture along with zoos and animal sanctuaries are great areas because there's a need. There's some real economic value there, along with the need to make sure that there are certain things that do not go near poisons.
When you look at things like the residential business, we're doing some real nice projects right now with large apartment complexes where they're using our product because of the fact that they don't want poisons around their tenants. Commercial buildings, food storage, warehouses, those are really emerging opportunities where they're starting to realize that this alternative out there is something they've been looking for for a long time.
All right. We've got a couple of minutes left here. Joel, just final takeaways for investors here today.
As I mentioned, and I hope everybody remembers it from the beginning of the chat here, two can become 15,000 in one year. You cannot gas them, poison them, drown them effectively to keep up with that. Public health concerns are real concerns that are out there because they continue to increase as we go along. There is growing awareness of collateral damage in rodent control. Take, for example, California's Ecosystem Protection Act. It bans a lot of the second-generation anticoagulant poisons. If they are banned, what is going to take the place? The rodents are not going away. All those things trend in our favor. We are executing on our strategy. We spent 2024 building a new product line, getting it out there. Our product is a regulated product. We had to get approvals in each one of the states that we can sell in.
That took some time. Now we're ready to execute on our strategy. You can see that the execution is starting to happen. Some of the proof points are our record revenues, our increased gross profits, not a little bit. We went from the mid-40s to the mid-60s with our product lines. We're making a real effort to decrease our operating expenses and really reduce our cash burn till we get to break even. They say that paradigm changing products do not come along often. They're very rare, but can transform long-standing practices. We really believe we have a transformative opportunity here by leading in a way that does not keep doing the same thing over and over again, but does it differently. That is by controlling the populations, ending infestations that are out there, and keeping the populations low.
We've got a good start, and we're really excited about what the future has to offer.
All right. Fantastic. We'll go ahead and leave it there. We're sort of at time. Joel, Tom, thank you so much for your participation in today's conference here. Thank you to everybody watching here as well. If you have any questions or perhaps would like to schedule a meeting with management, you can send me an email. That's Blum, blum@lythampartners.com. If you'd like to learn more about Lytham as well, you can visit our website or make sure you connect with us on LinkedIn so that you can learn more about future events such as the one today in the Fireside Chat with SenesTech here. Again, Joel, Tom, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thanks, Robert.
All right, guys. Everyone, enjoy the conference here and have a great rest of your day.