Conference Transcript - SNES 2026-05-28

Speaker 2

All right. Hello, everyone, and thank you for continuing to join us throughout the day here at the Lithium Partner Spring 2026 Investor Conference. Again, my name is Robert Bloom, Managing Partner here at Lithium. Up next here, we welcome Synestec and the company's Chief Executive Officer, Michael Adele. As a reminder, Synestec trades under the ticker symbol SNES on the NASDAQ. And during this session here, we're going to conduct this as a fireside chat. So, Michael, thank you so much for your participation. Yeah, thank you, Robert. Good to be here. Fantastic. For those less familiar, you recently became CEO. What attracted you to Sinesc Tech, and why did you decide this was the right company for you to lead?

Speaker 3

Well, having been in consumer products companies in the past that are both in B2B and direct-to-consumer, one of the things I first noticed about this company was the mission that they were on to really change this category in pest management. And once I found out that it was a patented product with no direct competitor in the market, it became very, very intriguing to me because I'm used to having a lot of competition in the markets that I've been in. So this one had a little bit of a different twist to it with a product that we know works it's a very very large market and nobody's been addressing this particular challenge you know talk a little bit more about your

Speaker 2

background and again why it sort of suits exactly where synestec is at this stage right now well i

Speaker 3

have uh over 25 years in consumer products and that's building designing launching brands both on Amazon and Shopify and brick and mortar on the B2B side of it. And this brand, this company just really, really was interesting to me in terms of what we thought the scope and scale could be.

Speaker 2

At a high level, talk about what that growth strategy is for you and moving Synastec forward here.

Speaker 3

Well, historically, the strategy had been leading with B2B because that's a very big market for us, but the challenges that we were running into is that the brand awareness and the brand recognition wasn't exactly where it needed to be to really drive some of these other categories and verticals. So one of the first things I did is flip that to leading with direct-to-consumer, getting the brand awareness, really moving along in the right direction, and then following it in with B2B and very, very targeted verticals.

Speaker 2

One of the, I think the biggest changes that you talked about in the most recent conference call has been bringing Amazon, the management of the Amazon distribution there in-house for D2C. Talk about why that's important. Talk about some of the benefits to the company here.

Speaker 3

Well, the first benefit is what I wanted to bring to the company is control of our data, our analytics, and our customer. We want to control the brand message and control how this information is being conveyed into the market because it just wasn't handled the way that we thought would maximize these different channels. So by bringing Amazon in first, we were able to really control the message, update all of the communication with our customers so that they could set the proper expectation of proper usage of the product and where it best serves, where it fits. And that messaging and that strategy is moving across all of the channels that we're

Speaker 2

talking to now. So maybe expand a little bit there on the DTC, right? There's the Amazon side of the equation. Then there's the company's own website, sort of the Shopify, you know, help people just

Speaker 3

understand the connection between those two. Well, you want to be where the consumer is going to be, right? You want to reduce consumer and customer friction on buying. You want to be wherever they're going to shop. The other thing that was critical for us is I've really shifted the business and the online parts to have a big focus on recurring revenue, the subscription parts the business and what that does is that demonstrates the stickiness of the brand because subscriptions only grow if the product is working so it's fair to say that subscriptions

Speaker 2

are going to be a major focus of the company going forward here yeah and we're already seeing

Speaker 3

incredible results just in the six to eight weeks that we've brought just the amazon part of the business in-house. You'll be seeing a lot of change also on our own website, our direct-to-consumer website, as that gets relaunched and rebranded over the next quarter

Speaker 2

or so. And sort of transitioning from D2C to the B2B side, as you said, you're sort of flipping that. How do you think about B2B growth, especially within municipalities, the PMPs, the pest management professionals and just sort of the broader commercial customer base?

Speaker 3

Well, I think one of the things that we've done is we've revamped that whole approach to the B2B because what we have to do is for pest management, we have to be part of an overall solution. We can't be or try to become the only solution. You want to be part of the community and part of the offering so that the consumer can pick and choose how they wish to, which products they wish to deploy to solve their particular problem um in in other channels or other verticals like municipalities like government like zoo agriculture uh each one of those channels has its own message but you have to come up with a program of whether it's a return on on investment to an ag or a food processor to how can a pest management company make this a revenue center, a service offering to their consumers so that they're actually able to drive a large program to their particular customers. And those programs in this approach being very vertical focused in the messaging, we don't want to approach it as one size fits all. And we're redoing all of that messaging as we speak. You know, on that topic of sort of

Speaker 2

remessaging, there's been updates or there will be updates to the website, going back to the DTC side. You have updated some of the packaging. You know, talk about sort of if there's a list of activities that are sort of going on behind the scenes here that are going to hopefully make a

Speaker 3

sizable investment here in the future? Well, I think one of the very first thing is proper messaging and setting of expectations. And now that we're doing more work, the new packaging, which people can see online, if you go to Amazon or on our website, you'll see the old and the new packaging as we transition. Message is much, much clearer, setting the proper expectation of what consumers on how to deploy, but also what to expect and in what timeframe. I think the other things, as you look at the different verticals, that packaging and the messaging is going to support those efforts. You know, brick and mortar retail, they want to bring in product, put it on shelf that people are looking for. So you want, as this brand awareness and the proper messaging gets out there into the market, it's going to make it easier and easier for people to move this product, whether it's on shelf or a distributor or a pest management company or online partners. It's just going to make it easier across the board. And so all of that work in the back end is being done and you're going to see more and more of it. You're going to see more and more of it in social media, in PR, in packaging. you're going to be seeing just across the board in a pretty short order. Excellent.

Speaker 2

One of the things that you've made statements about in the past is that not all revenue is equal, right? You've made tremendous strides in terms of increasing gross margins. I think last quarter gross margins were a record. Just talk a little bit about how you think about growing the business and sort of reaching that inflection point of profitability.

Speaker 3

Well, the first goal, you have to focus on revenue, and that only comes about through execution, right? Revenue solves problems because you're not going to solve it overnight. What you need to do is you want to build your revenues in a profitable manner so that the world can see that you're moving and slowly reducing your burn over time. and in a consistent in a sustainable manner and that's why recurring revenue is very very valuable to consumer products companies because as that builds that becomes a larger piece as a percentage of your business so that when you go into your next month it's not a mystery to you on how you're going to be performing at a minimum there's some numbers you're going to know going in based on the

Speaker 2

data um i know we have still a few minutes left here so i want to maybe just touch on one topic that's sort of very timely which is the hantavirus right and yeah you know what can you sort of share with the with the audience here as it relates to the company well i think any of these news

Speaker 3

articles and news and releases that are coming out related to rodent and and infestations and rodent problems the the bottom line is is that as you reduce the population of these pests all of the other challenges that you're facing are also going to be reduced so we don't really specifically talk to a particular infestation or a particular virus or a particular challenge that's going on, we like to just simply say, if you want to have a solution that is going to solve the long-term problem, that you don't want this problem coming back, that you want to solve over a longer period of time, then our product is a real good solution

Speaker 2

for that. All right, excellent. In the final couple of minutes here, what is it that investors should expect, you know, sort of the company focused on, you know, the commercial execution, accountability, measurable progress? What should they expect from a Michael Adele-led company?

Speaker 3

You can expect accountability, but with a capital A, and the information you're going to hear is going to be based on data and analytics and information we're getting back so that we can properly convey the message to the street. Storytelling is great, but you really want a solid foundation, a sustainable business. You want repeatable sales on B2B. You want recurring and subscription business on the d2d on the d2c side of it it's just really looking forward to just being consistent and demonstrating performance you know we want we want the consumer to understand as we talk about different programs we're in it's not about a pilot you know uh pilots we don't even need to talk about pilots because we know the product works it's more about deployment now Let's get the product into these particular verticals and markets and deploy and execute. And that's the message that I want the street to understand that's going to be different on a go-forward basis.

Speaker 2

Well, we are up against the end of the time here. So, Michael, thank you so much for your participation here in the conference. Thank you to everybody, of course, for watching. As always, if you'd like to schedule a meeting with management, shoot me an email. That's Blum, B-L-U-M, at lithampartners.com. Of course, to learn more about Litham, make sure you visit our website or stay connected with us on LinkedIn. So we hope you all enjoy the conference here. Michael, again, thanks so much for your time.

Speaker 3

Yeah, Robert, thank you.

Speaker 1

Thanks for hosting.