Conference Transcript - FLY 2026-05-04

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the Firefly Aerospace First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal remarks. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please note, this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Michael Sheets, Firefly Director of Invest Relations. Michael, you may begin.

Michael Sheetz, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Operator. Hello there, and may the fourth be with you. I'm Michael Sheets, and welcome to Firefly's first quarter financial results call. I'm pleased to be joined on the call by CEO Jason Kim and CFO Darren Ma as we report for the period ending March 31, 2026. Today's call will include forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements the company will make about its future financial and operating performance, growth strategy, and market outlook. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results and trends to differ materially are set forth in our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. Firefly assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their respective dates. Also, in this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in the first quarter of 2026 earnings release. Unless otherwise stated, financial information referenced in this call will be non-GAAP. Our earnings press release, SEC filings, and a replay of today's call can be found on our Investor Relations website at investors.fireflyspace.com. Now, I'll turn the call over to Jason. Thank you, Michael,

Jason Kim, CEO

and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings call. Firefly opened the year with strong execution and increasing momentum driven by major government programs that align directly with our core capabilities. We delivered record quarterly revenue of $81 million. The acceleration of the Artemis program, combined with NASA's Moon Base Initiative, calls for monthly robotic lunar landings and reinforces the demand signals we've been building toward. Our early investments to scale Blue Ghost production and our milestone as the first commercial company to land on the moon successfully position us to be a critical commercial partner as NASA expands lunar operations with three additional missions ahead we're already executing toward the goal we also advanced our ocular lunar imaging service through a new partnership with Nvidia enabling on-orbit processing for faster more actionable data insists lunar space on the national security front firefly subsidiary sci-tech secured an agreement with the U.S. Space Force to support the space-based interceptor program under Golden Dome. We are concurrently delivering and proving the value of our AI-enabled data processing through the U.S. Space Force's operational Forge Missile Defense System. Within launch, the capacity-constrained market is driving increased demand for Alpha following its successful return to flight. We also completed the Victus DM Responsive Launch demonstration and made steady progress on our reusable Eclipse rocket in the first quarter. The pace of change in the space economy is accelerating, and Firefly is scaling up our existing revenue-generating capabilities to meet the demand across every line of business. For those new to Firefly, we are a space and defense company delivering innovative hardware and software to perform the hardest missions in space for national security exploration and commercial technology our hardware is represented by four revenue generating products our blue ghost lunar landers electric satellite orbiters small lift alpha rockets and medium lift eclipse rockets firefly's software portfolio falls under sci-tech's ai-enabled defense systems which are proven in national security operations the industry tailwinds behind artificial intelligence and data centers are fueling operational realities for our company as we deliver crucial no-fail systems in support of the US and our allies. We are meeting the US government's call for commercial investment, speed, and scale in defense and exploration. Our advanced technology products and funding of infrastructure include upgrades and expansion of Firefly's co-located spacecraft and rocket factories, clean rooms, and test ends, as well as our data centers and classified facilities. Now turning to our business updates, in the first quarter, we completed new milestones across each of our product lines and services. The lunar opportunity is here. Recent milestones, including the NASA moon base event, Artemis II's successful lunar orbit, and our Blue Ghost moon landing and surface operations, ignited the industry and the world. The moon is now a permanent destination. NASA's moon-based plan represents a dramatic acceleration of the Artemis program with a detailed pathway to a regular cadence of missions to the surface and persistent support from satellites in lunar orbit. Our prior growth strategy was to extend from one moon landing a year to multiple a year, and now we have an amplified demand signal from NASA. The agency's objective is to provide monthly robotic landings on the moon's surface starting next year, as well as larger lander missions to support the required lunar infrastructure for a permanent presence. The first two phases of the NASA moon-based architecture taking place over the next seven years represents a $20 billion program with multiple shots on goal opportunities for Firefly. When you combine Blue Ghost, the only commercial lander to operate successfully, with our Electra spacecraft, we provide the ideal system to deliver and support many of the payloads and capabilities needed, such as navigation, orbital communications, surface observation, power infrastructure, exploration drones, rovers, cargo, and support systems for humans on the moon. The moon is a vastly untapped resource, and Firefly is the tip of the spear in the routine deliveries and services that NASA needs to support a permanent presence on the moon. Last week, we heard NASA Administrator Isaacman's request in a congressional hearing to template Blue Ghost and launch with frequency. As stated earlier, we are already building towards this. In the first quarter, we made significant progress on our new cleanroom, which is four times the size of our existing cleanroom. this enables a production line of lunar landers for frequent missions we are leveraging our vertical integration to scale up while also investing in our blue ghost supply chain we're working closely with each major supplier to ensure they are ramping up with us through long-term agreements and strategic inventory in place to ensure quality schedule and quantities of delivery meanwhile assembly of our blue ghost lander and electro orbiter is well underway for Blue Ghost Mission 2, and we're on track to complete assembly and payload

Michael Sheetz, Head of Investor Relations

integration this summer. We named Blue Ghost Mission 2 Riders Through the Dark as our team

Jason Kim, CEO

charges toward another historic milestone, conducting the first American landing on the moon's far side, carrying both NASA and commercial payloads. We are making progress on our additional lander contracts with the Blue Ghost Mission 3 preliminary design review complete, which verifies the vehicle's design to deliver payloads to the moon's Grootheisen domes. The team is now preparing to complete the critical design review for Mission 3, while also getting ready to complete the preliminary design review for Blue Ghost Mission 4 to the moon's south pole. Moving to ELECTRA, we're pleased to add NVIDIA as another Firefly partner, with our first collaboration included as part of our Ocula Lunar Imaging Service. NVIDIA's Jetson module was embedded in the high-resolution Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Telescopes and delivered to Firefly's Spacecraft Facility for integration on our Elettra orbital vehicle. This Elettra will first serve as a transfer vehicle and communications relay for Blue Ghost, and then begin our Ocula service to support advanced lunar surface mapping, mineral detection, and reconnaissance for five years in lunar orbit. Our Ocula data will be rapidly processed onboard Elettra and autonomously transmitted back to earth utilizing the nvidia jets module combined with firefly's sci-tech enabled ai software this allows firefly to mitigate downlink constraints from the moon by processing data on orbit before it is transmitted to earth as real-time actionable insights for government and commercial customers firefly's ai software will further enable advanced space domain awareness our ai algorithms and data fusion technologies are already proven in critical national security missions in Earth orbit. Our software will enable ELECTRA to leverage multiple data feeds on board to more accurately track objects and provide timely situational awareness of space operations occurring in the cislunar domain. These capabilities are transferable to ELECTRA's upcoming space domain awareness mission for the Defense Innovation Unit Cinequon project. This mission also incorporates high-resolution Lawrence Livermore National laboratory telescopes just like the ones enabling our oculus service after completing the critical design review for the mission the team has begun building and testing electra flight hardware additionally in the first quarter firefly completed critical electric test milestones for blue ghost mission 2 including separation testing to demonstrate electra's mechanisms that will deploy the european space agency's lunar pathfinder satellite following a separation