Hello, everybody. I'm Rob Brass, my managing director at Barclays, and I'm here today with Dylan Taylor from Voyager. Thanks for being here, Dylan.

Yeah, great to be with you, Rob.

So I want to spend some time going through some questions and thoughts and kind of getting your perspective on where things are in Voyager and maybe in space and defense more broadly. So if we think about it, we're 253 days from your IPO. And I guess, you know, it goes back to the founding principles. You know, why did you found Voyager and kind of what is your broader mission? I think often we lose that as outsiders looking in, so we'd love to hear that.

Well, I appreciate the question. So, yeah, the thesis when we founded Voyager, we saw an opportunity really within the A&D space. You know, at the top of the market, you had the primes, you know, very lovable and capable, but maybe not particularly innovative, maybe not leaning into the future as much as they needed to. or should be doing. And then you had, of course, the upstarts, you know, highly innovative companies, very entrepreneurial, a lot of sort of ethos around innovation and technology, but maybe not particularly capable, maybe not having the capital structures that they needed to be successful. And maybe the management teams weren't particularly skilled at running companies at scale and or taking companies public. So we saw a real opportunity to create an operating platform similar to, let's say, a Danaher or a Hyco or some of the companies that we admired. So that was the opportunity that we saw. We were driven really by our passion. I have a keen passion for space. I had the privilege of seeing the Earth from space on a suborbital flight. So I've always been really excited about the opportunity for space to not only provide infrastructure to benefit life here on earth, but really to imagine what's possible. Co-founder Matt Cuda served our country honorably as an F-15E fighter pilot, so he really approached it more from an operator standpoint on the national security and defense side. So we're both really driven by this passion around technology in space tech, defense tech. So that's what we set out to do. We We made a bet around the privatization of space stations, made a key acquisition called NanoRacks that was doing a lot of the servicing of the International Space Station, completed a human-rated hardware project, which was a commercial airlock, and then we're very fortunate to win one of the contracts on CLD Phase 1 about 20 months after we were founded. So, yeah, that's really been a little bit of our journey, and we're going to continue to lean into this innovation and technology curve. That's really what our ethos is. The thesis when we set out to build Voyager was that the customers would gravitate towards a platform like this and the best people in the industry would want to work for a company like this. And so far we see great evidence that not only the customers but the best people in the industry like what we're up to.

Yeah. And so when you think about the last, you know, since being public, although the public is just a step in a longer mission, but what have been the major milestones that you're most proud

of in the last nine months? You know, I think getting public the old-fashioned way, Rob, you know, there were a lot of SPACs that occurred in our industry. And of course, you know, we were getting a lot of inbound calls to go SPAC. But I told the team, I said, look, you know, we're on a long journey here, it's really important that we do things the right way, that we don't skip any steps, and that when we go public, it's because we're a high-quality S1 company that can stand up to the scrutiny. So I'm proud of the fact that we did that, because it was one part for us, but it was also one part for industry leadership as well, and really to show that there is a right way to do things. So we were really fortunate that we got out. It was very successful. I think We were 20-plus times oversubscribed on the book, so I think that was great. And then soon thereafter, we did a convertible offering and raised some additional capital. So we have a lot of dry powder. The balance sheet is very, very strong, and we see lots and lots of opportunities to grow the company. So we're excited about that. And then I think we've reported two quarters as a public company. We'll do our year-end earnings report issued March 9th and then a call on March 10th. So we're excited to talk about that as well.

So let's look at the defense side of the business a little bit. When we talk about next-generation interceptor, Golden Dome, where do you see the opportunities there for Voyager?

Yeah, so we have some key technology that – actually two pieces of key technology relevant to Golden Dome. One is the ability to modulate solid-state propulsion, and this allows missiles to be more accurate. And if you think about hitting a bullet with a bullet, which is really what missile interception is, it's really important you can fine-tune and course-correct the missile. So we have key technology for that. We also have key technology to orient missiles in space. Of course, GPS looks down, not up. So when you're in space, you need other technologies to know where you are. and our optical navigation and control systems are really best in class and allow us to orient the missile in space in ways that are very differentiated.

And when you first were talking about just industry structure and where the primes are and the kind of the neoprimes and where you saw opportunity, and we can argue that the motivation of a lot of the primes is designed by the structure of the government contracting elements, But you play as both a prime and a subprime, right? Is that part of the strategy, or how do you think about that? We do. How do you think about your position in the market?

Yeah, so it's a great question, Rob. One of the things we set out to do is to have maximum flexibility in the platform. So not only dual-use technology between space and defense tech, but also the ability to operate as either a prime or a contractor to a prime at our option, right? because there are instances where being the prime, like, for example, the space station, being the owner-operator, there's a huge amount of upside to doing that. But there are other times where you have highly differentiated technology like TDACs, this throttable technology, where we're perfectly happy to be in the supply chain because we can get the margin profile and we can get the financial returns that we're looking for. And we don't necessarily have to take a lot of risk in a particular contract like that. So the ability to arbitrage between prime and contractor, I think, is another key part of our model.

So when you talk about TDACs and you talk about your unique kind of throttling and throttling technology, so you could play multiple entries into a program of record, right? That's another concept. That's right. Spread the offense a little bit.

Exactly.

Let's transition to space a little bit. You know, this year people have been talking about Mars. They've been talking about Artemis II, you know, back to the moon. ISS, we haven't heard much about it, right? So, you know, should we be focused on the ISS? Is that still a thing from your perspective? When does it really become mission critical? And how do we think about how you're positioned and, you know, what is CLD and how does that all work?

I think people are not focused on ISS, but they should be. Because when you think about the promise of space to benefit life here on Earth, one of the things that I think is undervalued is microgravity research. And the reason you don't hear more about it is because the space on the ISS to do microgravity research is limited. It's complicated to get missions done. It takes a lot of time. But if you look at all the different technologies that could benefit from microgravity research, this is biopharma drug development. This is perfect crystal growth. This could be semiconductor manufacturing. This could be just original scientific research that benefits from this microgravity environment. it. There's huge applications and upside to doing this. And this is a situation where when the commercial space stations come online, it's not addressing demand, it's creating demand, right? So our project is called StarLab. It's optimized around laboratory space, right? That's the name. And so think of this as really a huge platform to not only provide innovation, but commercial potential. So I think people are kind of missing that part of it. The other thing is the ISS is coming down. It's old. SpaceX has been awarded a de-orbit contract. They're talking about decommissioning in 2030, 2031. So if that's true, it's really important that commercial space stations are online before then. And our project should be in orbit in late 2029.

And what's the government, what's the NASA process around awards for that? Because NASA is obviously a big part of the solution.

What NASA has said is they intend to select at least two successors to the ISS because they want pricing competition. There is a phase one contract that we're currently under. There were three winners to that. There will be a CLD phase two. We anticipate that RFP in the next four to six weeks approximately and a selection sometime this summer, probably late summer. And from there, the CLD phase two award winners should be the stations that ultimately get built and used.

And if we were to take the counterpoint that, well, I don't know if commercial space stations are going to be something that people care about, what's the national security angle? Is anybody else up in LEO with a space station? How should we be thinking about that?

Well, the Chinese are up there. So there's a new Chinese space station. It's brand new. I think every astronaut that has served on the Chinese space station is active duty military. It gives you an idea of the posture that that station has. So, yeah, I think there are a lot of national security implications, not only for LEO, but for Lunar. And, of course, these Lagrangian points, L1 and L2, I think there's a lot of national security implications. And one of the themes that we're seeing with the current administration is sort of a tighter formation between national security and civil space. You're seeing that with the DOW and NASA coordinating much more tightly on some of these projects.

And when we think about, you know, a lot's happened in the last year geopolitically and certainly with the administration, how has your experience changed with the speed of contracting, the type of contracting, even the award identification in defense and space?

We're seeing evidence that that's all being accelerated. We're also seeing evidence that the government is being more creative with the way they're contracting, whether it's more incentive-based or more competition-based. I think that bodes well for a company like ours, which can be more flexible and adaptable with our response to procurement strategies that the government might come up with. I think it's more difficult for a larger, more entrenched company to flex their approach.

So I think it plays to our strengths for sure. And thematically, one of the areas that you focus that's different than some of the other companies in space, you're deep in R&D as a percentage of kind of your revenue to drive future growth. When you look at R&D and you think about the thrust of that and the opportunities that you're looking at in the defense market, where are the areas where you think Voyager is really special?

Yeah, so thanks for pointing that out. We're very high on our innovation spend, and the way we think about that is we're always trying to lean into this technology disruption. One of the things, and we'll probably maybe talk a little bit about SpaceX IPO here in a moment, but you're seeing a lot of convergence of technologies. And so the way we think about technology are what are the different technology and innovation vectors that are happening in the world that we can leverage for space and technology and defense tech. So that's one of the things we think about it. our chief technology officer, Paul Tilgman, spent several years in the DARPA labs, which is great proving ground. He then went to Microsoft, and then he went to Andrel. So he's a fantastic resource, and we're really thinking about this convergence of technologies. So there's a couple of different areas, propulsion being one of them. In addition to TDACs, which we talked about, we also have hull effect thrusters. That's a really important technology for maneuvering satellites lights on orbit, and then integrating that power and propulsion system in a tighter fashion, which we're known for. So that's one area. I mentioned optical navigation and control as well. We're also playing very heavily into optical comms. And if you believe orbital data centers are a thing or will be a thing, one of the key technology challenges is how do you move that data around, not only from space to Earth, but space to space. And really, technologically, the only way to really do that effectively is optical, which is key technology that we have

as well. So those are some areas. So Orbital Data Center, you said if you believe it's a thing or

not a thing, do you believe it's a thing? I believe it is a thing, and I think it will ultimately be a key theme for space. I think the debate, in my mind, is more around what's the form factor going to be, big or small? Mesh network versus standalone nodes, that's one key question. The second question is when, how quickly will this build out? So I think, to me, those are the points to debate. But whether orbital data centers will be a key theme for space in the future, I think, in my mind, That's been settled, but that will be a key part of our future.

And do you think it's an issue of security or power or cooling? What's the advantage of space for the uninitiated?

Well, power, I think it's a couple things. So power is free in space, free in quotes. There's no permitting required, right? I mean, there is and there isn't. But it's theoretically easier to get something in space than it is here on the ground, right? At least that's the argument. I think the disadvantage of space is, of course, you need launch capability. SpaceX has that in-house, so that's a key advantage for them. But you need to bring other launch capability online. And then you mentioned cooling. It's counterintuitive that cooling in space is actually challenging because the only way you can dissipate heat is via radiation because there's no medium, there's no air to cool the system. So I think that's a design challenge, but it mainly impacts how big the form factor is because the larger the data center node, the larger the radiation system has to be.

And by dissipation, you mean just fins, basically, right? or something of that ilk.

Yeah, it's basically, yeah, think of it as the ability, additional surface area to dissipate heat. Yeah, that's the way to think about it.

So you mentioned SpaceX a few times. Obviously, there's a lot of talk about that in the market. How do you feel like a potential debut of SpaceX in the market? What does that do for Voyager, and how do you feel about that?

If it's okay, I'll talk about it generally for the industry as opposed to Voyager. But I think for the industry, a couple of things. One is we're going to have a lot more interest on the industry itself. So a lot of people will pay closer attention. What is space? Who are the players? What are the key technologies? What are the key growth factors? So I think in an environment like that, the best companies that stand up best to scrutiny and call it double-clicking on the story will do best. And not all companies show well once you really do the work, right? So I think the best companies will shine in that situation. So you'll have a lot more interest. I think the other thing is we're going to have a capital event, depending on if you believe Polymarket or others, that is going to be at least a trillion dollars of value creation, potentially even more than that. And I think a lot of that capital will want to be reallocated. I don't think it'll be reallocated into treasury bills or something conservative. I think it'll be something, you know, out on the growth curve of that growth and risk curve. And so I think it's likely that a lot of that capital gets reallocated within space and defense tech. And again, to the best companies, I think.

So like space is, you know, Hewlett Packard moment, if you go all the way back, right? The creation of Silicon Valley.

um just on that point just quickly because i i heard a story recently that resonated with me which was the netscape ipo which i think was 1995 and when that went public i did a little bit of digging on this i think they had 15 million of revenue and it ended up closing day one on the ipo around three billion dollar valuation and at the time people were like okay this is the most ridiculous IPO that was ever done. Well, of course, that led to this big boom. And it was mainly, the story was still the same. But what was different was people were now paying attention to it. Space has always been there. It's a huge meta theme, right? SpaceX has been building and companies like ours have been building. That story is not changing. But what's changing are people are actually now focused on it. So I see it as a Netscape moment as well.

Yeah. And so we talked to ISS. What about Lunar? What is the opportunity in Lunar from your perspective? And how do you see people positioning around that? How do you see Voyager maybe positioning around that?

Yeah. So the administration has a big push into lunar, as we know. We announced a lunar strategy here recently as well, a partnership with a company called Max Space. Max Space's expandable and inflatable technology is very relevant for lunar habitat. So that's one area we see of collaboration. We have two other pieces of technology that are relevant to lunar, which include dust repellent, a coating technology that repels moon dust. That's one of the key design challenges on the moon. Think of this as almost like sharp little shards of glass. That's what the moon dust is. So it gets into a lot of machinery, spacesuits, all that sort of stuff. So our coding technology is relevant. We also have technology that allows you to extract oxygen and water from moon regolith, which is also very relevant if you're going to live off the land, so to speak. So we're definitely focused on lunar. The way we think about the ecosystem for space is we call it the three L's, so LEO, low-Earth orbit, lunar, and then the other is Lagrangian, which is a little bit more exotic. There are five Lagrangian points. Think of these as orbits that don't decay. So if you have a space station in low-Earth orbit and you don't reboost it, eventually it's going to come down. With the Lagrangian points, there are these stable orbits between the moon, earth, and sun, where it's getting equally kind of tugged. If you're like, I don't know if you've rafted before, Rob, but it's like a little eddy where you're spinning and you're not moving. And those orbits would be stable for about a million years. So if you put infrastructure there, it's a great way to not only test deep space technology, but back to national security, surveillance, things like that. The James Webb Telescope, which I think we're all familiar with, that's in L2, about a million miles from the Earth. So, yeah, we think to be dominant in space, it's important to have a LEO strategy, a lunar strategy, and a Lagrangian strategy.

And since AI is also topical, how is that impacting your business? Where do you see more opportunity, or how is it coming into play?

Yeah, I think agentic AI is very meaningful to companies like ours in the design cycle, not only using less resource to design, build, and test, but also to make the cycle time quicker. So we're very focused on that part of it. The other part of it is doing more data processing at the point, at the edge where data is collected. So Palantir is a key partner of ours. We have an edge computing initiative where we're essentially completing the technology stack between where the data is collected, processing that data so that you're transmitting the answer to the customer as opposed to a data stream, which is really important, especially in situations where it's a contested environment where data streams can be jammed and things like that. So that's a key part of our strategy as well.

So you talk about Palantir, you talk about partnerships. there's a lot of gang tackling and defense, for sure. When you think about, you know, some of your key partnerships and kind of the way that you're expanding even your physical plant, anything you want to share on that that would be interesting to hear?

We're focused on, so one of the key challenges we have, like a lot of companies, is hiring enough talent. So we're focused on opening these innovation centers around the country, key places like Southern California, where we have an operation, then Huntsville, Alabama, Colorado, Texas. So that's a key part of it. We'll have more to say on our earnings call about specific strategies there, but, yeah, that's a key focus for us.

And back to the defense side, when you look, when you step back and kind of look at the geopolitical environment, A, you're trying to point your R&D into the arenas where it would be most valuable, But what are the hot zones that you see globally that maybe we're not all looking at, you know, over the next three to five years?

Yeah, well, I think we're all familiar with this, but the huge push into defense spending in Europe, specifically Germany, I think it's circa 40 billion euros is what they're talking about, which is a huge number for them. I think Italy is also leaning into defense spending as well. Again, I think that bodes well for companies like ours because the main prime in Europe, of course, is Airbus. Airbus is a partner of ours on the space station. So I think we have a good relationship with them, and I think they see us as an innovation partner. So I think that's good for us. But, yeah, I think Europe is a key theme. We'll be paying close attention to what happens in Japan. There was a big election there. Japan is really not militarized, as we know, since World War II. too, but I think that could potentially be another growth factor. Our key partner for Japan is Mitsubishi, and they're a partner on the space station as well.

And one of the things we hear often is that it's very difficult for U.S. defense companies to be effective in Europe because there's a little bit of tension. So your ability to be a subcontractor in some of these opportunities allows you to white-label some technology into the European opportunity. Is that a fair way to think about it?

I think so. Yeah, and I think a lot of it, of course, is subject to ITAR and regulatory complications.

But yeah, in general, that's true. And so a classic question we always like to ask is what keeps you up at night? And I guess what keeps you up at night about Voyager and then what keeps you up at night about the world? Well, I'll start with the second one.

I think we're heading to a place where we're going to have very, very, very high economic growth and probably high unemployment, because I do think agentic AI is a real thing. I've seen it with my own eyes in terms of what it's capable of doing. I've also seen how quickly it's evolving. My thinking on agentic AI has changed in the last four weeks, just to give you an idea of what's on the leading edge that I think is possible. So I think in a world where there's 10% GDP growth, let's say, and 20% unemployment, what does that world look like? Not only from a societal standpoint, but from a policy standpoint. So I think that's a question. I don't have the answer to it. I think from a Voyager standpoint, it's really scaling. So human resource is a big issue. We really want not only to attract and retain the best people in the industry, but we're competing with the likes of SpaceX and Andrel and other very high-profile companies. So far, we're doing that very effectively, very well. But again, as we continue to scale our company, I think human resource is going to be a key limiting factor. And so I spent a lot of time trying to convince people that we're the right place for them to spend their future.

I appreciate that and I guess sometimes outside looking in at Voyager you say you've got your hands in a lot of different areas how do you think about how to allocate more time or less time to space or defense and within that even missiles and optical systems how do you decide how to spend your time and effort as an organization given so many opportunity sets

it's a great question So this is where the dual-use technology, I think, really comes in handy. So propulsion as a category is something we're really, really focused on, but that's really not defense or space. It's both, right? So think of propulsion as a, you know, mobility is always going to be relevant no matter what the application is, no matter who's the administration, who the adversary is, mobility is critical. So that's a key technology that we know. Moving, and I'll call it data sciences, not only moving data around, but processing data. That's not only dual use, but that's a meta theme that's going to be relevant for the next 10, 20, 30 years. So we try to, back to the convergence topic, we try to focus on technologies and growth factors that are not only durable, but that are ticking a lot of different boxes. So that's the way we think about it. And I think the other thing is leaning into that innovation curve. By definition, you're going to see opportunities that maybe other companies aren't seeing.

And when we were talking about CLD before, and you mentioned that there was a downfall of a couple companies, what does that landscape look like? Who else is trying to get into the ISS replacement commercial space stations? And is there more than one winner? Is it winner-take-all? How do we think about that?

I think it's going to be winner-take some, but not all, because I do think, you know, again, I go back to launch. So quick story on launch, when Falcon was a platform and reusable rockets were a thing, there were a lot of people saying, well, I don't understand SpaceX's business model because in January and February, they're going to launch all the payloads to orbit. In the other 10 months of the year, they're going to be sitting around twiddling their thumbs. And my argument and others was like, no, that's not the way it works. By virtue of having this capability, we're going to launch a lot more satellites and infrastructure to orbit. And so this is a situation where demand is, supply is not addressing demand, it's creating demand. And, of course, that's exactly what has happened. I think the space station business is very similar to that. We're going to have, I think, multiple space stations, not only serving different governments, like the U.S. and its allies, but maybe sovereign nations will have special purpose for biopharma drug development, space manufacturing, tourism, and the like. So I think there's a huge opportunity in that industry for a lot of different people to play. Key competitors on our program are Axiom and Blue Origin. Those are the key competitors. They're both phase one winners as CLD, and I would anticipate they're going to be competing for phase two as well.

Got it. And I think it's worth noting that for you, space is very personal. I think this has always been a passion, as you've talked about it. When you look way ahead and you think about humanity and you talk about AI, you talk about the potential for unemployment and what do we do as a species, quite frankly, what do you think happens in space over the next 50 years?

Oh, boy. Well, I think we'll have people living and working on the moon. I think we'll be on Mars by then, probably. But I think, you know, to me, space is the best of us. And I think we have the ability to project a more hopeful version of the future. I think things are a bit dystopian right now with a lot of people wondering what's going to happen in the future. I don't see it that way. I think a lot of the conflict is around arguing over limited resources here on Earth. And theoretically, if we open up the aperture and we create space, you know, think of space as the eighth continent, Rob. If Antarctica is the seventh, we'll think about space as the eighth. I think it could be a way for us to see that we're in a more abundant universe than we think we are.

Well, Dylan, thank you so much for your time. You've been very generous. Really appreciate it, and I love your thoughts. If everybody could just give a round of applause for Dylan.