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SenesTech, Inc. (SNES)

Q1 2025 Earnings Call· Sun, May 11, 2025

$1.47

-0.68%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the SenesTech First Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [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. Thanks so much and thank you all for joining us today to discuss SenesTech’s first quarter 2025 financial results for the period ended March 31, 2025. With us on the call today are Joel Fruendt, the company’s Chief Executive Officer and Tom Chesterman, the company’s Chief Financial Officer. As the operator indicated, at the conclusion of today’s prepared remarks, we will open the call for a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. 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 in Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act 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 the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements contained during this conference call speak only as the date which they are 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 a result of the receipt of new information, the occurrence of future events or otherwise. All right, with that said, let me turn the call over to Joel Fruendt, Chief Executive Officer. Joel, please proceed.

Joel Fruendt

Analyst

Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today for our first quarter 2025 conference call. As you all can see from the press release, we continue to make remarkable strides transitioning and expanding customers towards our high margin Evolve product line, including both our rat and mouse products. During the quarter, Evolve revenue grew 40% compared to the year ago period, driven by success in our ecommerce platforms, improved adoption by pest management professionals and deployments in major U.S. cities. Perhaps more important though is that gross margins increased to nearly 65% during Q1 compared to just 33% last year, resulting in gross profit dollars increasing by an impressive 132%. Evolve continues to change the game for SenesTech and Evolve is changing the game in major U.S. cities. As we see deployments ramping significantly across the United States, after the quarter closed, we announced deployment of Evolve Rat in the Wicker Park, Bucktown special service area of Chicago. The new deployments in Wicker Park has crews installing bait boxes with Evolve Rats in alleys behind several major thoroughfares in the Chicago neighborhoods. As many of you have seen, the deployment has garnered extensive media coverage and we actually have a dedicated informational website for the residents and business owners to see where deployments have occurred. Visit our website at www.evolverodentbirthcontrol.com/wickerpark to see our interactive map. Also in April, we began deployment in New York City following the approval in September of last year by the City Council to launch a rat contraceptive pilot program. Our team was in New York two weeks ago supporting the initial deployment and it is going very well. Beyond New York and Chicago, we have also received orders from the City of Baltimore, Los Angeles County, mainly in the…

Tom Chesterman

Analyst

Thank you, Joel. Let me take a moment to expand on the numbers in the press release and a few of the points Joel mentioned in his earlier remarks. On the revenue line, total revenue for the first quarter was $485,000 which was an increase of 17% from Q1 of last year. Breaking that down further, Evolve revenue increased 40% and accounted for 79% of our first quarter sales. ContraPest, which we have deemphasized in recent quarters as we focus on our higher margin Evolve product decreased approximately 40% and accounted for 21% of our Q1 sales. By the way, we do not expect ContraPest to go away. There are still a number of loyal ContraPest customers and there are still a couple of states where Evolve is not yet approved. Looking at it from our vertical breakdown, ecommerce is clearly our largest contributor coming in at 61% of our overall Q1 sales. Overall, ecommerce was up 107% compared to Q1 of last year. Amazon is going well and is the predominant ecommerce channel right now. Municipal sales, while still a relatively small percentage of total sales, saw sevenfold increase from the year ago quarter. As Joel touched on, with new deployments in Chicago and New York and others in Q2, we think we can continue to grow this market vertical. We did not recognize any international sales during Q1 as we await follow on orders from a few markets which ordered at the end of last year. As a reference point, we had more than $50,000 in international shipments in Q4. As Joel mentioned, we have a few potential significant orders pending regulatory approval, which we expect will be key drivers for us later this year. Other contributors during Q1 were in the areas of agribusiness, commercial, pest management…

Joel Fruendt

Analyst

Thanks, Tom. So just a couple of closing comments. We have now completed nine consecutive full quarters of year-over-year revenue growth since I took over as CEO in 2022. The launch of Evolve has changed the game for us not only from a revenue perspective, but also from a gross profit perspective as you can see. The gross profit during the first quarter was the highest in the company’s history, which when coupled with operating optimization initiatives we touched on puts us on a pathway to achieve our goal of profitability. Beyond the numbers, so as I take a step back, I see more clearly today than at any point since I took over the opportunity we have to revolutionize the way the pest control industry has dealt with rodents. Municipalities are increasingly understanding the need as you can see from deployments in some of the largest cities in the country. And to be clear, these are very small areas being deployed at the moment with potential expansion of these across the entire cities, this could lead to millions of dollars in opportunity for SenesTech going forward. And importantly, less rodents that are damaging infrastructure in transmitting disease to humans. The opportunity doesn’t stop in municipal applications. Agriculture is a huge opportunity, both domestic and international. Zoos and other animal sanctuaries where you cannot easily deploy poisons are a huge opportunity for us. Residential applications, especially in large apartment complexes is a huge opportunity for us. Commercial buildings and warehouses are also a huge opportunity for us and we are just beginning to penetrate these areas. I believe we will gain significant traction in each of these areas shortly. To get to the long-term, we need to execute in the near-term and that is our focus, be effective yet efficient. I’m pleased with the recent financial results and activities accomplished to expand adoption moving forward. As always, I thank you all for your interest in SenesTech. And with that, I am happy to open the call to questions. Operator?

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Q - :

Operator

Operator

Showing no questions, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Joel Fruendt for any closing remarks.

Joel Fruendt

Analyst

Thank you and thank you all for being here. We appreciate your support. We are in an exciting time as our company is now moving into marketplaces that are substantially large that are showing a great acceptance for our Evolve product line and we look forward to success in the near-term and the long-term. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.