SenesTech, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Synestec, Inc. Reports First Quarter Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Robert Bloom with Lithum Partners. Please go ahead.

All right. Thank you very much, Chad. And thank you to everyone for joining us on today's call. As the operator indicated, for SNES Tech's first quarter 2024 financial results for the period ended March 31, 2024. With us on the call today are Mr. Joel Fruent, the company's chief executive officer, Mr. 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. As the operator indicated, if you dialed in to the call through the traditional teleconference line and you'd like to ask a question, again, please press star 1 to ask the question. If you are listening through the webcast portal and would like to ask a question, you can submit your question through the ask a question feature in the webcast player. We'll do our best to get to as many questions as possible. Before we begin with prepared remarks, we submit for the record the following statement. 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 risk 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 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 a 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 for SNAS Tech. Joel, please proceed.

Thank you, Robert. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our Q1 conference call. I certainly couldn't be more pleased to be speaking with you today, given all the positive developments going on with the company. So let me jump right into it. During the first quarter, we reported record revenue of $415,000, an increase of 78% compared to the first quarter of last year. This was also a 41% increase sequentially from the fourth quarter of 2023. Key driver has been the introduction of Evolve, our all-new software product launched in January of this year, which has quickly become the company's biggest selling product, contributing more than 50% of first quarter revenue. As a reminder, Evolve is an EPA-designated minimum risk product and brings three key benefits to the marketplace. One, a shelf life of one year plus, so it is an excellent rodent control product for distribution. Two, it is delivered in a sulfate form factor, so it is familiar and easy to use in the field. And three, it is economical and is offered at a competitive price to traditional rodenticides. I'll come back to this more in a moment. One point to make regarding the revenues, this outstanding growth reflected regulatory approval of EVOLVE in only 30 states. There were several states, including high potential states such as Florida, that required an efficacy study before approval. That efficacy study is now complete, which bodes well for acceptance by the remaining states and further accelerated growth in Q2. Speaking of the efficacy study, We finished up our study at the University of Arizona last month and the results were positive as expected and predicted from the literature available on the active ingredient and from our experience with contra pest. The study results confirmed a 61% reduction in litter size through only one breeding cycle. This indicates an 85% reduction in population over six months compared to leaving the population untreated and 90% plus after one year. We will now start some longer-term field trials at customer locations, and we fully expect the efficacy to increase significantly over multiple litters with increased consumption and with real-world conditions. This is actually a little better than our first short-term study with contra pests, which then went on to prove out over 90% efficacy in longer-term field studies. We expect Evolve will prove to be the product of choice for rodent population control. With this published report, we now have the data requested by certain state and international regulators, increasing the conversion potential for the rest of this year. Another key highlight was our introduction of Evolve Mouse this month. This softbait product utilizes the same revolutionary breakthrough fertility solution as Evolve, only to control mouse infestations, effectively doubling our addressable market opportunities. One of our lead distributors and online retailers, DIY Pest Control, has already committed to a sizable pre-order and will immediately add Evolve Mouse to their website offerings. Product shipments began last week, and we expect Evolve Mouse to be a key driver to growth throughout the rest of the year. This effectively doubles our addressable market opportunities. It has been estimated that U.S. rodent pest management product sales, over half of which target mouse infestations, are more than one billion annually and are growing. At the same time, regulators in California and other areas are putting more restrictions on the application of commonly used poisons, leading consumers and pest managers to seek new methods for control and ease of purchase options, providing us with an enhanced opportunity going forward. Evolve has proven to be a very versatile product that is perfect for many distribution channels that focus on our target markets. To keep focus on each of these areas, we have developed our six channel strategy for distribution. Our six channels are e-commerce, international, agribusiness, pest management, industrial, and retail. We have strategies designed for each channel and I will briefly comment on progress in each channel. In the e-commerce space, we have expanded the offerings on our own site significantly. We are also proud to announce the launch of a dedicated Amazon store, which we have launched this week. This was really made possible by the introduction of Evolve and by the expansion of our packaging from the initial 6-pound and 12-pound pail sizes that are so popular with the professional market to now include 1.5-pound and 3-pound pouches that are more convenient for the consumer market, as well as being more earth-friendly with their packaging. The international channel has seen substantial interest and activity. Since Evolve's launch, we have signed six key international exclusive distribution agreements from Hong Kong to Australia to the UAE. Each of the agreements requires an initial order of a full pallet minimum, around $10,000, and the annual sales minimums start at $100,000 for exclusive distribution rights and grow over time. In our agribusiness channel, we announced a new agreement with Wilco Distributing, who placed a multi-pallet stocking order addressing some very lucrative open field agriculture opportunities. This followed agreements with Poppy Enterprises for the grain management area and Agricom for the egg production and protein production facilities management. In the pest management channel, we have signed agreements and have initial stocking orders from Deseris and their 77 locations and DIY pest control to satisfy demand from their significant pest control customer base. Our commitment by our field staff to the pest management market, pest control operators, and government agencies is creating a pull-through effect where local availability in distributors' warehouses is a key factor in driving revenue growth. We have identified a significant opportunity in the industrial channel and are finalizing agreements for an industrial rep agency with 28 outside sales reps to assist us in getting EVAL stocked at substantial industrial distributors such as Grainger and Fastenal. This will be our channel to reach the facilities management and food safety markets as well. We expect this agreement to be completed soon. And as we talked about during our year-end call, we are excited about the opportunities in the retail channel. Since we received approval as a vendor for a national hardware retailer, which consists of over 4,500 locations, We have now completed the process of getting set up in their system with our evolved products. We have also signed on to attend their August market days to display our products for purchase by location managers and owners. To enhance our presence and fully address that network and other similar retailers, we have signed a rep agency with over 30 field reps to represent us with these major national and regional retailers in home supply, hardware, and ag retail locations. This will be a key sales driver for us in 2024. Using distribution channels to leverage and extend our sales reach is a key initiative for the year, and we are off to a great start. You can expect further news in the coming months as we further penetrate the retail and warehouse club networks. Finally, and as I assume most of you saw in the news, the New York City Council introduced a proposal for deployment of EPA-approved rat birth control to address rodent infestations. The NASTEC is the only manufacturer of commercially available EPA-registered rat birth control, which we believe bodes well for our opportunity. While New York City is not at all the only urban market for us, it is a highly visible one and one that we will pursue after trying home remedies to dry ice, drowning buckets and other improvement tools, it is good to see that the city is finally looking at tested and proven techniques. To wrap, I firmly believe the tide has shifted for Synestec. We have the right product solutions to address one of the world's most challenging problems, rodent control, through a completely different way than has ever been done before, by addressing the root cause of the problem, reproduction, and how to proactively control that reproduction. Our product lines, ContraPest and Evolve, address the fundamental issue of rodent overpopulation by proactively controlling the population rather than trying to keep up with the growing numbers of an infestation with poisons or traps alone. Remember, two rats can turn into 15,000 in one year alone. You just can't kill them fast enough. In fact, during this call, there will be tens of thousands of rats born across the globe. Pest management professionals and homeowners are seeking alternatives to poisons, as poisons are highly regulated and are tricky to use. Plus, poisons are less than 40% effective. Clearly, the development involved is a game changer for them and for us as well. To give you more detail on that and on the financials, let me turn the call over to Tom. Tom?