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SenesTech, Inc.
2/21/2024
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All right. Thank you very much, Anthony, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. As Anthony mentioned, to discuss SNES text, 2023 financial results for the period ended December 31, 2023. With us on the call today are Joel Fruent, the company's chief executive officer, and Tom Chesterman, Synestec's chief financial officer. At the conclusion of today's prepared remarks, we'll open the call for a question and answer session. Before we begin with prepared remarks, we submit for the record the following statement. Statements made by the management team of Synestec 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 and the company's filings with the Securities Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements contained during this conference call speak only of the date on 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 Joel Fruent, Chief Executive Officer, Synestec. Joel, please proceed.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today for our year-end conference call. During 2023, we executed several key initiatives that will be the foundation to drive growth for Synestec into the future. Most notable was the development of Evolve, our all-new softbait fertility control product that was launched at the end of 2023. As a reminder, Evolve has similar efficacy to ContraPest, However, Evolve has three distinct benefits to end users. A one-year shelf life that allows for extensive distribution opportunities, comes in a solid form that is more familiar to technicians and consumers and easier to deploy, and is offered at a competitive price to traditional rodenticides. This has dramatically increased our reach in terms of markets and geographies. It is evident from the initial response that Evolve is what retailers and distributors have been looking for from Synestec. One major proof point is our recent approval as a vendor for a leading network of hardware stores, a network comprising over 4,500 locations. Just the first few weeks after Evolve's introductions, they have become the first of many major retailers that will carry our products to target the do-it-yourselfer and broader consumer market. We expect more to come on board in the months to come. To penetrate the retail market quickly, we are in final negotiations with the manufacturer's rep firm that specializes in retail relationships to represent us with these major national and regional retailers in hardware and home supply, industrial supply, and agricultural supply. Another major advancement has been an agreement with a global leader in irrigation solutions for sustainable open field agriculture. Open field agriculture presents unique challenges to rodent pest control. Poisons cannot be broadcast, trapping is expensive, and of limited efficacy. Evolve soft bait with its minimum risk, its reasonable cost, and its proven efficacy provides a new tool for this widespread market. Our partner has selected one of their preferred customers for the initial deployment, a dairy and almond producer in California. Their stated goal is to ultimately expand their offering of Evolve to their customers across the globe as they learn more about Evolve's potential. Agriculture is a huge underserved market. We have another potential customer in sugarcane production. They have over $10 million in annual losses to rat activity destroying sections of their fields. and choose not to use poisons in their field. They will start working with Evolve, broadcasting it throughout their fields, reducing the population significantly, and thus cutting down those economic losses. Also in the agricultural space, we entered into an agreement with Poppy Enterprises, a distributor and pest management firm focused on the grain management market, serving the upper Midwest. Grain storage operations have unique challenges when it comes to rodent pest control. Again, poisons are highly regulated and are tricky to use without contamination, and traps alone are expensive and time-consuming to maintain. The non-poison Evolve soft bait provides a new tool for this widespread market, and in combination with some traps, we'll establish an effective non-poison IPM program. Another key proof point on how Evolve expands our market opportunity is the rapid number of new international distributors we have brought on board over the past few months for geographies outside the U.S., including Hong Kong, Macau, UAE, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. Importantly, these agreements typically include initial orders and annual minimums for geographic exclusivity. In fact, our first pallet shipments have just arrived in Hong Kong and Singapore. A big question I know a lot of investors have been asking is, what will all of this mean for sales and reducing our burn rate? What it can report is that in 2024, as of mid-February, total revenues for Synestek has grown more than 80% compared to the same period in 2023. This is being driven by orders for EVAL, which represented more than 50% of year-to-date 2024 total revenue and includes international revenue for the first time in the company's history. It is increasingly clear that Evolve is a game-changing product person aspect that will be a key driver of our sales growth in 2024. Transitioning the conversation a bit, we have laid out a few key imperatives to drive growth. One was to offer the customers more choices, which Evolve clearly does. Another was to sell better. In some cases, this means improve the infrastructure we have. In other instances, it means bringing in experts in areas where we need additional skills. The manufacturer's rep agency I mentioned is an example. In another example, we are exploring ways to increase our e-commerce capabilities and reach. To that end, we are in discussions to expand our e-commerce offerings with an industry-leading online distributor of pest control products in an agreement expected soon. We want to be proactive in addressing this channel and believe that partnering with a dedicated online retailer will be an efficient way to boost revenue going forward. Due to the early success of Evolve for rat fertility control, it is becoming clear that there is a need to develop a product for fertility control of mice. We see this as a substantial opportunity that is equal in market size to the rat market. Our product development team has been hard at work and is currently enhancing the form factor and dosing of the unique soft bait contraceptive for mice, and have indicated that a product should be ready to market by mid-2024. We brought Evolve for rats to market in less than a year, and now to follow that up with a unique mouse product required a major shift in strategy, a sense of urgency, and improved utilization of resources. We have been up to the challenge. Again, I look forward to sharing more with you on our upcoming calls. Looking back at 2023, we have made some great progress in several areas, which I believe set the stage for future growth, namely our product development process and the launch of Evolve. We also made significant improvements to many of the processes and procedures to drive efficiency across the organization. To give you more detail on that and on the financials, let me turn the call over to Tom. Tom?
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