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SenesTech, Inc. (SNES)

Q3 2022 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 14, 2022

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the SenesTech Incorporated Reports Third Quarter of 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Robert Blum with Lytham Partners. Please go ahead.

Robert Blum

Analyst

All right. Thank you very much, Betsy, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss SenesTech's Third Quarter 2022 Financial Results for the period ended September 30, 2022. With us on the call today are Ken Siegel, Chief Executive Officer; Joel Fruendt, the company's incoming Chief Executive Officer; and Tom Chesterman, the company's Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of today's prepared remarks, we will open the call for a question-and-answer session. Before we begin with prepared remarks, we submit for the record the following statements. Statements made by the management team of SenesTech during the course of this conference call, may contain forward-looking statements, within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as may, future, plan or planned, will or should, expected, anticipates, draft, eventually or projected. Listeners are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors and other risks identified in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements contained during this conference call speak, only as of the date, in which they were made, and are based on management's assumptions and estimates as of such date. The company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as the result of the receipt of new information, the occurrence of future events or otherwise. With that said, let me turn the call over to Ken Siegel. Ken, please proceed.

Ken Siegel

Analyst

Thanks, Robert. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today. I'm pleased we got a chance to talk with you today, as we report another quarter of strong revenue growth, but also my retirement from the company at the end of the year, and the appointment of Joel Fruendt, as our new Chief Executive Officer. Over the past three and half years, it's been my objective as CEO to lay the groundwork for the successful commercialization of ContraPest and I think we've achieved that goal. When I took over, we were a science-led organization, with no commercial experience. Prior to my taking over, as the company embarked on its initial commercialization efforts, it found itself constantly pivoting from a distributor-led model to a PMP-led model, to a replacement for rodenticides model, to a green model, to an animal-friendly model, with many iterations in between. In certain instances, it had chosen to fight the industry that we would depend on for our long-term success. And that last point is one when I will come back to in a moment, because it leads us to Joel's appointment. We also didn't have the data to show how ContraPest worked in real-world situations, or to demonstrate both its long-term efficacy and cost effectiveness. We have since completed the necessary long-term studies and field work required by high-value customers, particularly within agricultural and urban setting. As I mentioned a moment ago, we didn't truly have a commercialization strategy, and we certainly didn't have an e-commerce platform. Since then, we have launched a highly effective e-commerce platform that allows us to sell directly to customers. This has the dual effect at providing better service to customers, and also providing some price discipline in the market. Further through our collaboration – or through the…

Joel Fruendt

Analyst

Ken, thank you very much. I am extremely excited and honored to lead SenesTech going forward. As Ken mentioned, ContraPest is an effective sustainable and earth-friendly tool that has the ability to revolutionize the way pest management is conducted. There simply is no other product in the world like ContraPest, and that is where I think the true opportunity lies. My background is anchored with 15 years of executive leadership, in the vector and pest management industries where I was the Vice President and General Manager of Clarke Environmental, a leading vector and pest management products and services company. From Clarke, I bring extensive expertise in the development and manufacturing of EPA registered chemical control products, commercialization and sale of those products and leading large sales and service organizations. My primary skill set though has always been on growth initiatives, how to grow the top line, how to grow the bottom line and how to grow the organization. I've had successes in a variety of industries and will now focus on how best to profitably grow SenesTech. In conclusion, I have always had a passion and commitment to sustainable effective solutions to vector and pest control challenges. And ContraPest fits right in with that passion by providing an exciting sustainable solution for management of animal pests in a standalone or IPM program. I'm very excited about this. With that let me turn it over to Tom Chesterman.

Tom Chesterman

Analyst

Thank you, Joel. Let me add my welcome and excitement to have you join the team here at SenesTech. As a reminder to our investors, the press release is available on our website in the Investor Relations section. Further, we expect to file our 10-Q later today. So, I will just touch on some of the high points right now. Revenue during Q3 was approximately $250,000 compared to approximately $183,000 in Q3 of 2021, an increase of 36%. Please note though that the year ago period had approximately $24,000 in grant revenue. So, excluding grant revenue, product sales increased 57% compared to last year. The real driver of growth was our e-commerce platform where sales increased 173% compared to the year ago period and represent more than 50% of all sales during the quarter. The e-commerce growth is being driven by the marketing initiatives including the award-winning Operation Rat Race campaign, which is driving consistent increases in traffic as well as increased website functionality. We also saw continued traction within our zoos and sanctuaries market vertical with sales up 32% year-over-year and the launch of Elevate helped drive a 27% year-over-year increase in our agribusiness vertical as well as new and existing customers add the system to their pest management programs. As mentioned in the press release, sales were impacted during the quarter by the outbreak of avian influenza or bird flu, which has impacted the poultry operators across the US and thus delayed expected deployments with certain customers during the quarter. While the bird flu has impacted poultry farms, we did have success in other agribusiness areas where we recently deployed ContraPest such as in our first pork protein production facility. Gross profit during the quarter was approximately $122,000 or 52% of total revenue compared to approximately $77,000 or…

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Amit Dayal

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Ken, [Technical Difficulty]

Operator

Operator

Pardon me Amit, your line is open. I believe you might have some connection issues.

Amit Dayal

Analyst

[Technical Difficulty]

Robert Blum

Analyst

Go ahead, Amit.

Amit Dayal

Analyst

Hey, sorry. Can you guys hear me?

Robert Blum

Analyst

Now we can [indiscernible]

Amit Dayal

Analyst

Good luck to Ken on the next phase of his career and congrats to Joel on the new appointment. I just wanted to start with just this bird flu related -- on the quarter. Any color on how big this could have been. We were modeling for sequential growth obviously, because of this probably didn't come [Technical Difficulty] sales this quarter.

Tom Chesterman

Analyst

Yes I'm sorry. You broke up again there. Could you repeat the question?

Operator

Operator

And it appears we’ve lost connection with Amit today.

Robert Blum

Analyst

If I could jump in here, Tom, it's Robert. I think he was discussing the bird flu and just any sort of discussion surrounding that perhaps if that could be expanded upon.

Tom Chesterman

Analyst

Yes. The bird flu, as I'm sure many have read in the paper, was hitting the avian industry across the nation starting on the East and moving towards the West. We did have a slowdown in that our existing customers could continue to order from us, but we're not allowed onto the property of any of the bird farms if you will. And so we really were not able to do any sort of marketing sales activity out to new customers, until they were able to open up the farm gates and let people in. That has now begun to abate. And we've actually seen strong pickup in that area as we begin to -- as particularly as Elevate gets introduced to that industry. Ken anything more you want to add to that?

Ken Siegel

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Tom. So one of the bigger issues is, we learned in talking to the pest management professionals that service that industry is essentially with the flu, as Tom points out, the farms essentially locked down and sole focus was really on dealing with the outbreak. They had critical issues of whether to cull their flocks, there was a significant effort there. So, really any effort other than directly related to dealing with influenza essentially stopped. And so what we're expecting now is as the flu abates, the things that they had really neglected during the crisis will now come back and accelerate. So pest control, which was largely off the list for the past several months should become a critical consideration for them going forward.

Robert Blum

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you for addressing that. Operator?

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Joel Fruendt

Analyst

Yes, this is Joel. And I think, in closing, thank you for your attention. As I mentioned, we are entering a new phase of SenesTech's growth, and I am excited to be part of it, and to be sharing it with you all today. Good day.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.