SenesTech at Lytham Summit: Disrupting the Rodenticide Market

On Tuesday, 19 August 2025, SenesTech (NASDAQ:SNES) presented its strategic vision at the Lytham Partners Consumer & Technology Summit. The company highlighted its innovative approach to rodent population control, emphasizing the potential for growth in a competitive market. While significant progress has been made, challenges remain in scaling operations and achieving financial targets.

Key Takeaways

• SenesTech is focused on disrupting the rodenticide industry with its Evolve product.
• Rodent overpopulation causes $27 billion in damage annually in the US.
• The company’s revenue grew 56% year-over-year, with expanding gross margins.
• SenesTech targets a $1 billion US market and a $4.5 billion global market.
• Cash breakeven is anticipated at $6.5-$7 million in annual revenue by 2026.

Financial Results

• Revenue increased by 56% year-over-year.
• Gross margins improved to 65.4% in Q2, up from 54.2% the previous year.
• E-commerce revenue surged 78% year-over-year.
• Evolve product sales rose 94%, accounting for 83% of total sales.
• Cash position is $6.1 million, with a pro forma of $12 million after an August raise.

Operational Updates

• Evolve, a soft bait product, is SenesTech’s top seller, expanding its market reach.
• Municipal deployments are growing, notably in Chicago and New York City.
• International expansion is underway with 15 distributors and significant shipments.
• Brick and mortar sales increased nearly 500% in Q2, with new partnerships like Ace Hardware.

Future Outlook

• SenesTech is targeting breakeven at $6.5-$7 million in annual revenue by 2026.
• The company aims to capture a significant share of the $1 billion US and $4.5 billion global market.
• Plans include further expansion into e-commerce and international markets.
• The company’s runway extends well into 2027, supported by a strong cash position.

Q&A Highlights

• CEO Joel Fruent emphasized the ecological and economic benefits of reproduction control over traditional rodenticides.
• CFO Tom Chesterman highlighted the company’s strategy to improve gross margins and reach cash breakeven.
• Discussions included the regulatory advantages and the first-mover status of SenesTech’s products.

In conclusion, SenesTech’s presentation at the Lytham Summit showcased its potential to transform the rodenticide industry. For a deeper understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Lytham Partners Consumer & Technology Summit:

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: All right. Hello, and welcome to the SenesTech fireside chat. My name is Robert Blum, managing partner at Lithium Partners. And today, I’ll be moderating a q and a discussion with Joel Fruent, CEO at SenesTech, and Tom Chesterman, the company’s Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, SenesTech trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol SNES.

Joel, Tom, welcome. Hi, Robert. Thank you. Great. Let’s jump right into it here.

For those not familiar, provide a brief overview of SenesTech.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: So at SenesTech, we’re a biotech and life sciences company that manufactures products that are used in the pest control industry, and we are disrupting the multi billion dollar rodenticide industry, so products that are used to control rodents. And we have a scalable science driven solution that suppresses rodent reproduction and does it in a sustainable manner.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Why is having too many rats a problem?

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Well, great question. So, let’s talk about something that you might not be familiar with, is rats are not just a problem, they’re a global crisis. Rodents cause massive economic, ecological, and health damages globally. Over $27,000,000,000 annually in infrastructure damage just in The US alone. 35 known diseases, including leptospirosis, hantavirus, salmonella, and the plague are derived from rats.

And on top of that, they destroy nearly 20% of the world’s food supply. So that’s a huge problem globally.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: What are you’re focused on a on reproduction. What are the current solutions that are used in the marketplace?

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Well, unfortunately, most of the solutions are usually addressed using poisons that really are ineffective and more importantly harmful. The bigger issue is these poisons have a variety of issues. So, some of those are non targets and secondary poisoning, it harms humans, it harms pets, harms wildlife, harms livestock. Rodenticide resistance is growing especially to anticoagulant baits, so rats are becoming resistant to these poisons. And then rodenticides are increasingly being banned in, places such as schools, prisons, organic farms, and in multiple jurisdictions.

So, there’s a lot of issues there with the poisons that are being used.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: So, let’s talk about why a rodent birth control solution would work.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Yeah, this is really our why, it’s like why even bother with this? So, if you remember one thing or one thing only, it’s that two breeding rats can produce 15,000 offspring in just one year with sufficient food, water, and shelter, and this is a huge issue. They produce at a reproduce at an extremely rapid pace. So, the lifetime expectancy for a female rat is roughly one year. During that one year, they’ll have six to eight litters with six to 10 pups per litter.

And in fact, the largest pest control company in the world, Rent A Kill, has an interactive study that showed a pair of rats could produce nearly 500,000 descendants in three years. So huge issue. Remember one thing, that’s it, as they reproduce so fast that you can’t kill them fast enough. They’re intelligent, they’re adaptive, they learn how to avoid adverse outcomes. And so the reality of it is you can’t poison them, drown them, trap them, or gas them fast enough to keep up with this birth rate.

And so we’re really the only company and product that are out there that focuses on the birth rate as opposed to the death rate. And reproduction is the start of it all, and we’re doing it in a very safe manner. There’s no impact through our products on non target species or secondary poisoning harms to humans, pets, wildlife. You’ve heard about owls that have had secondary poisoning by eating a rat that had adjusted baits. None of that happens with our products.

They’re humane. They don’t cause a painful death with rodenticides do or traps. Our products allow them to leave their natural life, but stops the chain of reproduction. And they’re user friendly. We now have a soft bait format that can be easily deployed by a user, either in bait stations or not.

And most importantly, our products are scientifically proven to work. Our solutions have shown that we reduce rat populations by 90% when integrated into an IPM program, both in the lab and most importantly in the field.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: So you’ve evolved your product offerings here lately, a little pun there, discuss sort of the creation of your evolved product line and how it’s changed really the trajectory of this company here over the last year and a half or so.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Absolutely, we’ve created really two unique products. The first initial product that was registered in 2016 is ContraPest. ContraPest is a liquid based solution registered by the EPA, and it’s used primarily for professional applications. But we needed something more, we needed a solid bait, some type of solid bait that could be used out in the marketplace. And so about a year ago, a year and a half ago, actually, introduced Evolve.

It significantly changed the company’s trajectory. It’s our top selling product, really changed the game for us, including expanding the company’s market and also our geographic reach, is really important. Being a soft bait in the solid form, it’s easy to deploy, so it’s suitable for do it yourselfers and professional use. It has an EPA minimum risk designation, so what that means is it defines it as having no secondary poisoning of predators and scavengers, and really no environmental contamination or bioaccumulation. And another point is it’s economical with the initial price point being competitive with other baits, and certainly more cost effective over the longer term as you control your population.

And one of the big things is the product now has eighteen months shelf life. So, it’s an excellent product for distribution, for retail, and for international shipments. Yeah, maybe talk about the moat, if you will, that you’ve sort

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: of built around this now rodent birth control idea.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Yes, so certainly a lot of great things with our moat. So before I touch on that, let me just highlight a few key areas that highlight our defensible market position. So we really have a moat on rodent birth control. It’s built on science, it’s built on regulatory trust, IP production, and certainly category leadership. So first we have a regulatory head start, we have a FIFRA 25B minimum risk exemption, and we have 48 state and territory approvals in The United States.

So, competitors would face twelve to eighteen months of delay and complexity trying to navigate that. Secondly, our proprietary know how is unique. We filed a patent, we have a trade secret formula, we have our stability science and how the product is made and how it can be used, and of course the bait palatability, which is a huge thing. It’s how will they like it out in the field? Will they eat it?

And we know that to be an excellent way of getting it out to the field with Evolve. And our label is not enough to really duplicate the product. While they may know the ingredients, they don’t know the exact formulation. So, combine that with, we also have exclusive data and trials on the product. We have efficacy studies.

We have field trials that are going on in New York City, in Florida, in University of California, at Irvine. We also have many testimonials from users of the product. So we really own the efficacy story and how well it works, and we also own the social proof on it. And, you know, finally, we’re the first mover in key distribution channels. So we’re on the Amazon store.

We have retailers that are doing their own trials. We have, over 15 international exclusive distributor agreements now. So we lead in key channels, very competitive pricing, and getting in on the early shelf space that also helps in the moment.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: You you talked a little earlier about some of the bans that have taken place within certain jurisdictions. Talk about maybe some of the other broader macro tailwinds for the company here.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Yeah, so we think that we’ve gone from some headwinds to really some strong tailwinds that really will fuel our momentum. Rat populations are increasing, that’s a known fact. Rodenticide resistance is spreading, so they’re becoming resistant to the poisons. And there’s growing demand for a humane, safe, and sustainable alternative, and that’s really accelerating. And as that’s happening, there’s the public and regulatory pushbacks against poisons that is advancing just as rapidly.

Let’s

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: talk about the go to market strategy here a little bit more. Expand on the markets, the opportunities, the verticals, if you could.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Yeah, so we operate in a very large industry. You know, the company targeting a market in The U. S, the rodenticide market, which spends a billion dollars roughly annually on rodenticides. Globally, expands, the market for rodenticide expands to 4,500,000,000 So, very massive verticals. And our products are, the great thing in what we’re going to market with Revolve, they’re applicable across six massive verticals.

First, have the consumer. It’s like, okay, how’s the consumer going to buy? Cities and governments who all have rodent problems and need a solution that addresses the growing rat populations. Of course, pest management and agribusiness. Agribusiness is huge for us because agribusiness has very specific economic damage that you can verify.

Facilities management, food production facilities, those types of places, and of course, across the industrial spectrum, because I mentioned the damage that rodents do, industrials manufacturing locations really need to have a rodent control program because they don’t want the damage done to their equipment and to their electrical devices. So, beyond those six market verticals, we have a multi channel distribution strategy to address those markets. And so 60% plus of our revenue right now comes from e commerce. That’s derived from Amazon and walmart.com, tractorsupply.com, and our own website, where consumers can purchase the product. And then another thing that we do is that we work with industry leading distribution companies to address agribusiness.

We use other distributors to address pest management, and also other ones to address industrial markets. We have a direct sales team that are focused on the largest users, and we actually work directly with some of the largest users in cities. And then another exciting thing is we’re expanding into brick and mortar and big box retail. And one of the early adopters have been we’re in the Ace Hardware system, and we have some Ace Hardware stores that are stocking our product. And then as we mentioned about Evolve having a great shelf life, we can now move into international customers.

And we have those 15 international distributors with more on the way. And the way we work with them is they’re responsible for regulatory approval in their countries. And they have to maintain minimum stocking amounts and yearly sales amounts for exclusivity in their countries. And I can talk about that a little bit more in a moment.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Yeah, let’s dive into maybe a couple of those points there. You mentioned 60% of your revenue is coming from e commerce. I believe Amazon is probably the leader there. Maybe expand a little bit more on sort of the growth that you’re experiencing within e commerce.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Yeah, so very exciting. We have large opportunities and e commerce is, I mentioned, is 60% or so of our revenues through e commerce. That’s a 78% increase from the year ago period. Amazon, we started out in June. We actually really didn’t get on there in any meaningful way until a year ago in August 2024.

That’s been growing about 10 to 15% month over month. The key Evolve’s the key driver here. It’s because consumers like it. It’s easy to deploy, and it’s very suitable for the do it yourselfers as well. So we’ve expanded e commerce presence from selling exclusively on our SenesTech e commerce site.

So we’re offering Evolve on Amazon and of course now around Walmart and Tractor Supply and also diypestcontrol.com. One thing that we’ve done that we’re really proud of too is we’ve enhanced our website functionality on our own websites, and we’re really using this as target marketing strategies, using target marketing strategies to drive our e commerce business there as well.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: All right, that’s helpful. The other sort of big opportunity that certainly investors and many talk about are the cities and governments. You’ve announced a number of deployments in some major cities. Maybe expand a little bit more on cities and governments, that vertical in general.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Yeah, great vertical for us that we did not get much traction on in the 2024. But this is a vertical where we work with local municipalities and cities and government agencies to bring innovative and sustainable solutions for their pest management. And municipal deployments of EVOLVE are increasing significantly, especially over the last three months. So, as an example, in the Wicker Park, Bucktown Special Service Area right outside or in the city of Chicago, in the Northwest Side of the city. So, this was a program by their chamber of commerce.

They wanted to find a way, when we said they hate two things, they hate rats and they hate poisons. So, we talked to them about an Evolve program where they bought into it and their crews installed bait boxes with Evolve Rat in alleys behind their major thoroughfares. And so, those deployments received extensive media coverage because they were doing things differently. And they’re having great success with it. We’ve had a number of reorders.

Their citizens in the neighborhoods now are buying it and using it around their homes as well. So, we’re really proud of that. New York City was a little bit different. Our deployment began in April after the city council in New York approved in September 2024, a rat contraceptive pilot program. And they deployed our product, we’re getting great consumption there, 100% consumption of our product, which is really what they’re measuring, because they know that if the rats consume it, that they will restrict the reproduction of the rodents, which is really what they’re after.

And we’ve done great things in the city of Baltimore. They tested it, then they put it out for an RFQ, which they have a pest control company that is now doing the deployments for them, and Los Angeles County is doing some of the same things, some on their own, and then with some pest control companies. In San Francisco, our pest control partner Pestech, they have a large deployment going on there. Our team supported the deployment. It’s a substantial opportunity, naturally, as their options for other rodenticides are limited there.

And we’ve got a number of great deployments going around the Boston area. So we really expect those municipal deployments to drive our future growth. We really wanna focus on high impact areas, and what we do in conjunction with the city officials is evaluating the effectiveness and reducing the populations and minimizing the public health and environmental risks that are present with other options. And what does a large full scale municipal deployment look like? It could be a city that wants to do a 10 block area.

It could be a city that wants to do a thousand blocks. But really, when they get past the pilot program, with the expansion of it, could be a million dollars in revenue annually.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: You’ve talked about sort of transformational growth opportunities, certainly the government sector, cities and governments being one of them. Another one is the international opportunities. Maybe expand a little bit more on international expansion and the opportunity that presents itself there.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Evolve has really opened up international markets for us. We just couldn’t get there with the ContraVest product. And so, we’ve developed a strategy, and it’s like, okay, let’s develop exclusive distribution relationships in high growth international markets. What we’re looking for are partners that demonstrate a commitment to our products by being willing to bring it into the country, and they have access to regulatory approval processes. And we’ve done that, and we have approval and commercial product shipments in areas such as Hong Kong, The Netherlands, The Maldives.

We have some great pilot programs that are going on, and one of those is deployment expected for later this year in Australia and New Zealand. And, you know, when we ship out container size orders to the international customers, it tends to be a $100,000 per container. So a few large orders can really move the needle for us.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: One more sort of, I think, big transformational opportunity has always been sort of the brick and mortar retail side of things. Maybe expand a little bit more on some of the recent agreements there.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Yeah, one of the big key developments there is, so during the second quarter, we signed an agreement with Bradley Bradley Caldwell is premier wholesale distributor serving over 8,000 farm, ranch, hardware, pet supply dealers across mostly the Northeastern United States. And what that partnership does for us is it significantly expands our national distribution footprint and gets our product to evolve directly into the hands of those rural retailers and independent dealers who serve America’s agriculture communities. The great thing about Bradley Culver was they’re stocking the product. Their initial order was eight pallets they have in their warehouse. They can ship our product out with other products to these retail outlets, and that’s very exciting.

So brick and mortar, as a whole, is up nearly 500% sequentially during the second quarter. Now, it started from a small base, but we had sales of approximately $65,000 So we ’ve seen that point where the sales are starting to expand. The other exciting thing is we’ve been in discussions with the two largest home improvement chains in The US about carrying Evolve. Hope to have more to talk about that in the coming month. But we always want to caution that the process to carry our products on retail store shelves tends to be lengthy.

So we’re working through a lot of those in timeline. But as you can imagine, even in order for even a small region of one of the large home improvement retailers, that could translate into transformational growth for SenesTech.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: All right, very good. Let’s let you take a breath there. Tom, let’s jump into some financials. You reported second quarter numbers here recently. For those that may not have seen the report, you maybe talk a little bit more in some detail there, maybe starting on the revenue line.

Tom Chesterman, CFO, SenesTech: All right. Yes, revenue is, of course, the top line importance to us right now From a trailing twelve month perspective, we’re doing about 2,000,000 per year in revenue, and that’s growing rapidly. More specifically, we’re looking at the Evolve revenue line has increased 94%. It’s now about 83% of our second quarter sales. ContraPest decreased approximately 45% and was 17% of our sales, but it’s not going away.

It’s actually grew slightly a quarter over quarter. There are still a number of loyal ContraPest customers and there are a number states that a couple of states where Evolve has not yet improved. Kind of looking at the breakdown on the different verticals, we’ve talked about e commerce that came in about 60%, a little bit less. It’s, you know, up 78% compared to last Q2 of last year. Municipal sales saw a sevenfold increase from a year ago quarter deployments in Chicago and New York.

We think we can continue to grow this market vertical significantly. We had a small order of amount of international sales during Q2. These tend to be very lumpy sales. We’re waiting for follow on orders from a few markets and we have, you know, some deployments coming out later this year, this quarter. We had more than 50,000 in international shipments in Q4.

That’s the kind of a high watermark so far. Other contributors during Q2 were in kind of spread between agribusiness, commercial, pest management professionals, zoos and sanctuaries, and a small amount, but a growing amount in brick and mortar retail.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Maybe if I could jump in on gross margins, here, a key objective is to expand margins here. Where do those end up here in the second quarter?

Tom Chesterman, CFO, SenesTech: Yeah, gross margins are really driven by the evolved product, which is a more profitable product to produce. Gross margins were 65.4 percent compared to 54.2% of Q2. We anticipate that that can continue to improve as we move forward and the expansion into the new facility will help that. It will also help us meet growing demand. So we’re expecting to see improvement there.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: On the OpEx line, you’ve recently implemented some optimization plans. Maybe speak a little bit more to that.

Tom Chesterman, CFO, SenesTech: Yeah, we’ve been very careful about not just decreasing our operating expenses, but really fine tuning them, making sure that they are very well targeted to our growth objectives. We implemented an optimization plan in Q2, and our goal was to really bring down the burn rate to a million dollars, the overall burn rate to a million dollars per quarter. And this we’ve done it via by pausing some of the new product development things, bringing some things in house, looking outside when that’s better, and really optimizing their direct sales efforts. So, you know, kind of pulling it all together, we believe our breakeven point, cash breakeven point is somewhere around 6.5 to $7,000,000 in annual revenues or about a little more than 1,500,000.0 per quarter. And we’re looking that that’s very definitely is achievable and sometime in ’26, maybe even sooner.

Some of the big, big transformative events that Joel mentioned come through.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Maybe quickly on the balance sheet, talk about the balance sheet, cash position, etc.

Tom Chesterman, CFO, SenesTech: Yeah, our balance sheet is in the best position it’s been in many years, if not ever. We ended the quarter with $6,100,000 in cash following a successful $4,400,000 one. We also have an ATM facility. We raised $3,000,000 during the second quarter. And then just in the beginning days of this August, we brought in another $6,200,000 in gross proceeds.

So we’re now sitting at a pro form a cash position of about $12,000,000 which gives us runway well towards the ’27 and beyond.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: All right, very good. We’ve got about a minute left here, Joel, maybe just to wrap things up, a few key takeaways from for investors.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Yes, a few key takeaways. I think the first one would be that we have a global market with regulatory tailwinds down. So, as I mentioned, billion dollar U. S. Rodenticide market, 4,500,000,000.0 globally.

There’s rising bans on rodenticides and pressure for humane non toxic alternatives. And we’re past the initial phases in regulatory approval and into deployment in a lot of those markets now. So that’s a key takeaway. Really, we’re the first mover in rodent birth control. We’re the only company that are offering a fertility control soft bait, Evolve, as EPA minimum risk designation, and it really targets the root cause of overpopulation, which is reproduction.

We have a very diverse and scalable go to market. We have distribution through Amazon, through Walmart, Tractor Supply, major pest control, and agriculture distributors. We have some active pilots going on in major US cities, Chicago and New York City for sure. And we have regulatory approvals in Hong Kong, The Netherlands, and Australia, New Zealand are gonna be coming on board, The Maldives. So, we’re excited about those opportunities.

And I think that when you look at it, we have a really lean and focused growth strategy. Our cash burn has been reduced by about $2,000,000 annually, and we have, really some prioritized investments. Right? And we look at those in ecommerce, international, and government sales, and they’re all now showing traction. So we should get a return on those investments, very soon.

And then we have strong revenue growth and expanding margin as, revenue is up, 56% year over year. Gross margin improved to 65% in, 2025. And so we have a clear path to, to break even, to get to that 6 and a half to $7,000,000 revenue mark. And when exactly does that gonna happen? It’s, all depends on the size of the orders we’re getting.

If we get some of those large orders sooner, it will be sooner in ’twenty six rather than later.

Tom Chesterman, CFO, SenesTech: All right, very good.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Well, we’ve run out of time. Joel, Tom, thank you so much for participation here. I want to thank everyone for watching and spending time with us throughout the day here at the Summit. If you’d like to schedule a meeting with management here, please send me an email. That’s bloomblithympartners dot com.

Thank you so much to everyone for their participation. Joel, Tom, once again, thank you as always.

Tom Chesterman, CFO, SenesTech: Thank you.

Joel Fruent, CEO, SenesTech: Thanks, Robert.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: All right, that’s a wrap on the Lithium Partners Consumer and Technology Summit. Big thank you to all of our viewers, participating companies, and our guest analysts for joining us today. If you missed anything, don’t worry. Our entire event will be available on demand right after this, and all webcast will also be available on our YouTube channel. Feel free to follow us on LinkedIn so you’re the first to know about all future events.

And if you’d like to learn more about Lithium Partners, visit our web site at www.lithumpartners.com. Thank you, and have a great rest of your day.

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