CEO’s video interview from today.
TLDR:
-tariffs don’t affect (largely made in USA)
-Chicago is progressing convincingly
-NYC is just getting started
-Amazon sales growing 25% per month, excellent reviews
-San Francisco new customer. Press release coming soon about this.
Interview starts at approx 2h16min mark:
https://x.com/storytrading/status/1912125084535525643?s=46&t=QCTaL-e7rO0F9gMbIUKk9Q
Let’s do Amazon review updates again. The number of reviews had increased from 54 to 63 in a month, and a few more comments had been added. The percentages have remained relatively the same.
One criticism:
“Not sure it’s working well at all. I started December 2024 with the large size. After Four orders later March of 2025 I still see young baby rats walking around along with huge rats. I also use live traps and snap trap. I also use it for my bait in live traps.”
One with a comment and three pictures:
“Easy to use, rats love it (obviously- see photos!), works (haven’t seen young rats and besides this old guy - no problems with rats in and around chicken coop anymore). AND…i don’t have to worry about my dog or our neighborhood owls. win-win-win.”
And one quite informative:
“Despite my initial skepticism about products that advertise as contraceptives for rodents, I was pleasantly surprised and quite impressed with the effectivity of this product. This product does what it says and says what it does. And not only is it effective, but it is much easier to use than rat poison and most importantly, it gets rid of the problem without a mess and the nightmarish prospect of having to wake up every morning dreading to find dead rats in traps which is quite disturbing to see. The makers of this product have made getting rid of rats tolerable, clean and most importantly, more effective than rat poison. Once the rats eat this product, they become infertile and soon you will see their population getting smaller and smaller and reduce down to nothing. And for anyone claiming that this product doesn’t work, they definitely did not use it right. They either did not leave the Evolve contraceptive out for the entire 4 weeks to make the rats infertile, or they didn’t place the Evolve contraceptive in the right location on their property where there’s known “rat traffic”, or they didn’t place the Evolve contraceptive in their housing units CORRECTLY (if you don’t put them in their housing units correctly, other animals like opossums and racoons will get to them and pull them out and eat them), or they left the Evolve contraceptives out during daytime which damages the product’s contraceptive properties by exposing it to heat of the sun, or they didn’t put something enticing in their housing units to draw the rats to the contraceptive. I personally used “tootsie rolls” to draw the rats to the Evolve contraceptive and that did the trick for me. When used correctly, this product works like a charm and is a long-term solution to the problem of having rats in the neighborhood. Because when you control their fertility, the population does not reproduce, and you will see their population in your neighborhood become extinct. That’s why cities with rat problem such as New York are exclusively using this contraceptive to take care of their rat issues.”
It’s interesting!
Consumer sales on Amazon might, of course, save it, but looking at old press releases, they’ve been selling this snake oil for so many years that one would think it would have taken off if it was going to. The online store has been up since 2019, and it was already being tested in Los Angeles back then.
Having once lived in a house with a mouse problem, I sincerely hope for its success and effectiveness, and I’m in with a small lottery ticket, but, but.
As I understand it, the biggest problem with commercialization was Contrapest’s liquid form, which made distribution difficult, and the shelf life was apparently about 1 month, although this is not explicitly stated anywhere.
Evolve was developed under the leadership of the new/current CEO, and it actually gave this the opportunity for commercial success. As I understand it, the shelf life could be at least a year.
So, for this product, I would say that Evolve’s potential has yet to be seen.
Not really a direct reply to @timontti, but if that 25% MONTHLY growth in Amazon is true and continues, it’s quickly calculated to be over 1000% a year! (Sorry if I calculated wrong)
Information about the Chicago experiment. From memory, that seems to be the so-called rat problem capital in the US…
edit. different cities have different approaches to publicity. Chicago was very open (map above), but New York plans to keep a low profile during the experimental phase. In New York, there are 3x10 block test areas. (I’m not entirely sure if the other 2 are references and only one has the ‘stuff’ inside)
Really great news came out in that interview, thanks for digging and also for the screenshot of that map, for example!
Now, if I had the time, I would retroactively dig up information from previous reports/interviews to find out what the share of online sales was in the total revenue. From that, one could get a good estimate of the current scale of online sales, and could extrapolate how many such 25% growth months would be needed for online sales to exceed $4M.
You calculated correctly, sales would increase about 15-fold.
“This Chicago project is a perfect example of a commerce/citizen joint effort. They approached us with the problem, and our technical team worked with them on developing a plan. The early reports on consumption are positive, and we are already working on their second shipment as they expand the deployment area,” said Joel Fruendt, President and CEO of SenesTech.
After trying the same things for 50 years, they are finally looking to control the birth rate
Lukusuositus. On tässä stoorissa paljon asioita joista on helppo pitää
A couple of takeaways from Lytham partners’ call on April Fools’ Day
There was also other quite useful information…
They announced in the last quarterly report that development work is on hold and they are now focusing on commercializing products. They say they can get Operating expenses down to 5 million dollars a year. If the Gross margin is 50%, then an annual sales of 10 million dollars is needed to break even, meaning current sales need to more than quintuple.
Thanks to “e-commerce”, sales are growing at a good pace, but that alone is not enough. Large orders from cities and companies, as well as new country openings, are needed, because revenue should preferably multiply in 2025 and again in 2026. ContraPest sales apparently decline as customers buy Evolve.
Money will still be needed, but now, regarding the stock price, the difficult market, and the Trump recession, we are in a situation where sales simply must come in or the money will run out:
This is perfect for a small investor in that sense, as one can potentially earn an excellent reward through their own information gathering (as @timontti has done wonderfully). Merely due to its low market capitalization, this doesn’t really interest any larger stock market player at this point, and when starting from such small figures, for example, a 20x for the stock is not impossible.
On the DIY pest control side, user feedback has also started to come in. All of these are from last year, so the volumes through that are certainly quite limited
Pretty much consistently, consumers praise the ease of use, etc.
That’s how it should be, no setting up traps, etc.
Interesting company, fits well for a dopamine investor like me among other penny stocks. That 1.4 webcast is worth listening to, a slightly more credible format than this trader’s show. It was mentioned, for example, that Amazon sales have grown from $5000->$40000/month since August 2024.
So the New York project is starting, if the product works, then in 3-6 months, the effectiveness should be clearly visible, am I right? In my opinion, it opens up a real opportunity for a large additional order already this year.
Correction to the quart transcript above. NYC has 120,000 blocks, not 20,000 as the translator stated.
However, it’s not advisable to assume access to every block. But the theoretical maximum revenue potential is 120,000x1,000$ = 120 million.
Let’s just say off the cuff that if 25% of the city had too many rats and there was a 50% discount for bulk orders, then the real potential could be around 15 million.
As I understand it, the shelf life concerned the need to replace opened bait in a ready package (even if liquid inside the package), not that it would have expired in a month while on the shelf. At least I didn’t find such information myself, but I’m happy to be corrected if that was the case.
And I could imagine that at least in commercial use, cities, farms, etc., baits are replaced at least monthly anyway, so I don’t know how much the physical form of the poison inside the bait station affects sales to large customers.
For consumer sales, it might certainly have a greater impact because the solid form is easier to place where desired.
I just wonder what has ultimately happened to these significant pilot projects, news of which has been seen for years, when the results don’t show on the bottom line.
2019
2020
2021
2022
What is the trick, besides the solid form of the poison, that makes “this time its different.” Of course, there’s enough market in the world even for a somewhat inefficient solution, but will an Indian slum buy this product or simply copy it if/when the active ingredient is easy to produce.
At least that effective population management requires a comprehensive program (Integrated Pest Management program) which they are now promoting in these announcements. In my opinion, these current urban projects are included in these IPM programs.
For example, New York’s previous experiment was not this comprehensive:
This solid form clearly has some great significance:
Here’s a discussion about CP vs. Evolve:
Lower Shelf life as the main reason, see below. Shelf life = shelf life, i.e., “storage life unopened”. This would also be logical as to why commercial expansion was not possible (the logistics chain does not allow for any storage, freight time delays, etc.).
So your interpretation is different from how I understood it.
The price is up almost 20% today without news, has the sell-off begun?
Apparently, a paid advertisement in PMP Magazine yesterday. San Francisco is already mentioned here in writing, even though there’s no news about it on the company’s website yet.
The company has opened a new sales representative position for the ‘western block’. By reading this, one can see a bit of what is expected and perhaps sense distant nuances of the culture. Or maybe not. 
I’ll grab the so-called opening blurb from the announcement here.
I don’t remember now if there were about 20 employees working there, so adding one position would perhaps be ~5% more to the workforce.
Here’s another excerpt
A piece about Chicago’s situation, rat species, the movement of rat poisons in the food chain, etc., including what was reported about SenesTech’s experiment
https://a-z-animals.com/articles/this-is-the-most-rat-infested-city-in-the-u-s/