Hello everyone, thank you for joining us and welcome to the Beta Technologies second quarter 2026 financial results conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I will now hand the call over to Devon Rothman, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Beta Technologies' second quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me today are Kyle Clark, our founder and chief executive officer, and Herman Cueto, our chief financial officer. Following their prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A, where Kristin Costello, head of government and regulatory affairs, will also be joining us. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing our second quarter 2026 financial and operating results as well as an investor presentation, which are both available on the investor relations section of our website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our filings with the SEC for discussion of these risks. We will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings materials. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kyle.

Thanks, Devon, and good morning, everyone. On our last call, we covered the growth of our commercial backlog, EIPP selections, and most importantly, continued certification progress. Today, we get to show you how our consistent focus has enabled us to execute on our plan. We'll go deeper on our key announcements from Farm Bureau, the MV250, our hybrid flight demonstrations, and expanding partnerships with GE Aerospace, our charging partnership with Archer and Macquarie, and the order from Logan Air. We'll also cover the launch of the EIPP operations, our flights in Japan and Hawaii, Secretary Duffy and the FAA Deputy Administrator Rushlow coming to Vermont, and our regular KPI update. These developments are connected. They come from the same plan. Certify and produce aircraft designed around simplicity. Develop the core propulsion technologies, aircraft systems, and components in-house, and carry those technologies across commercial and defense applications. The work we complete on one program strengthens every other program, and the progress this quarter shows that strategy is working. The majority of our team is focused on certification. We have successfully worked through key policy interpretation issues of the FAA to enable solid progress in the certification of our H500A motor. On CX300, we reached a significant milestone that gives us a complete and agreed upon foundation for the next phase of the certification program. Each of these milestones flow into certification of the A250 vertical takeoff and landing aircraft and continue to mature Beta's relationship with the FAA. In parallel, our manufacturing teams are developing the systems and procedures critical to achieving production certification immediately following the type certification of our motor and our aircraft. At the same time, focus teams are expanding our charging component and defense businesses. all of which build on and contribute back to the same technological base. Switching gears to Farnborough, starting with a new order. Earlier this year, we flew across Scotland with Loganair and the Royal Mail, connecting Glasgow, Dundeen, Aberdeen, Inverness, Wick and Kirkwall, covering postal routes to some of the most remote communities in the UK. Loganair watched our aircraft close through those missions and placed an order at Farnborough. This aircraft is positioned perfectly to provide low-cost, zero-emission access to the islands and highlands of Scotland and across the UK. Cargo today, passengers in the future. Luke and the team at Loganair are world-class operators and we're proud to see their tartan on our aircraft. Next, we unveiled the MV250. The MV250 is the military variant of the civilian VTOL aircraft, combining hybrid propulsion and autonomous capabilities for contested logistics. Beyond its breakthrough capabilities, the important point is how we are building it. It is developed in the same core technologies already flying in our CTOL and VTOL aircraft, including batteries, motors, and flight control computers. This lets us move faster and at a lower cost compared to a clean sheet defense program. Our hybrid turbo generator, developed in partnership with GE Aerospace, gives MV250 the range and onboard power required for the mission while proving its safety and reliability for future use in civilian applications. Our defense work is a powerful catalyst for cutting edge technologies with applicability across our family of aircraft. This focus and portability has been a core part of our strategy since the early days here at Beta. The MV250 carries a 2,000-pound payload over a 250-nautical-mile tactical range. It cruises at speeds above 170 knots, which is faster than any existing military rotorcraft, and has a projected repositioning range of over 1,300-nautical miles. It can self-deploy and operate from ships, austere locations, and forward positions that fixed-wing aircraft just can't reach. When it lands at a forward operating base, The turbo generator keeps running to supply operational energy directly to the troops to recharge batteries, communications, and electronic warfare systems. It is a logistics platform and a power source in the same airframe. The MV-250 is built on an open modular architecture that can integrate with a range of autonomous mission systems. That flexibility is important to military customers because it allows the aircraft to adapt as missions, operational requirements, and autonomy technologies evolve. For military operations, we've integrated the Sikorsky Matrix, a proven capability suite built for multi-mission applications. Alongside our commercial and defense developments, we hit a significant milestone with GE Aerospace, flying the Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration Aircraft, or EPFD for short. Our partnership with GE Aerospace continues to expand. At Farnborough, we flew and jointly announced the successful test flights of the hybrid aircraft. Beta served as the integration partner on the EPFD, working alongside GE to successfully demonstrate the feasibility of hybrid propulsion on regional scale passenger aircraft. Beta pilots flew the hybrid aircraft from our test facility in Plattsburgh, New York to Farnborough, England, and set a new altitude record for hybrid aircraft over 30,000 feet. Flying at that altitude demonstrates the ability to operate where commercial flights do today. Hybrid electric propulsion has been part of our roadmap from the beginning. Our partnership with GE Aerospace accelerated that development on two fronts. First, it advanced our joint work on the hybrid turbo generator. And second, it opened up the door to integrate hybrid technology directly into regional passenger scale aircraft. These economics open up regional and commuter routes that previously were not financially practical. EPFD proves that this path is viable and it provides a wealth of data that flows into our continued partnership with GE. This milestone required regulatory approval from the FAA, regulators in Canada, Greenland, Iceland, and UK's Civil Aviation Authority. Beta and GE's shared commitment to safety and working closely with the regulators made that possible. Next, I want to give you an update on a few other defense developments before we move on. In April, we received our first Special Airworthiness Certificate for an Optionally Piloted Aircraft, or OPA, for November 709 Juliet Lima, an ALEA CTOL aircraft. This aircraft has already completed its first autonomous flights, flying with both Beta's Internal Autonomy Stack and Sikorsky's Matrix Stack. Autonomy is foundational to the MV250 program, and using our CX-300 aircraft as a testbed for this technology is a testament to the flexibility of our architecture and our platform. Also, during the second quarter, at the invitation of the U.S. Army, we deployed our ALEA aircraft to a live-fire exercise Aurora 2026 in Sweden, supporting NATO's Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative. We flew alongside conventional and military assets supporting logistics operations in a complex environment. We completed the deployment flying 30 sorties and using only about $300 of electricity. Beyond an excellent demonstration of our aircraft, the operational data we brought back is directly informing our development of the MB250. On our work with General Dynamics, We've moved into phase two on our internal classified programs and entered phase one of a new and separate program providing critical hardware solutions. And those are just the two that I can mention. Undersea applications have become a meaningful and growing area for beta, and our work continues to expand the aperture of where this platform can operate. Beyond classified work, our component sales business continues to grow. Shortly after the end of the quarter, we announced a sale of flight control computers and software licensing to Horizon for their X-7 aircraft. This technology has historically come from a short list of legacy aerospace suppliers. We developed ours in-house to the same standard designed for power lift aircraft. Horizon chose our flight control computers because they met the high bar that aircraft certification demands. This is the third major aircraft program flying on our flight control computers. We have talked on prior calls about what motor sales to EVE and hardware sales to General Dynamics meant to our component sales business. Flight control computers extend that further. We are now selling motors, batteries and flight control computers. Other OEMs are looking to Beta to provide the same high reliability flight critical systems for their aircraft, and the portfolio they are choosing from continues to grow. Every time we add a component to that list, our customer base expands and our technology gets proven across more platforms. At their core, these are enabling technologies built from the first principles of our own aircraft and valuable to the industry precisely because of that. We built the technology that now others have adopted. Before we get into KPIs, I want to cover our work with the Department of Transportation and FAA on the launch of EIPP operations. On June 1st, Secretary Duffy came to beta. He flew three sorties in our C-Toll, in our V-Toll, and alongside our hybrid aircraft. He is the first U.S. Secretary of Transportation in history to fly an electric aircraft. The administration came to Vermont, got in our aircraft, and went flying with us. This is the product of years of building trust and working alongside the people and agencies building this regulatory environment. On July 12th, United Therapeutics became the first to launch operations under the EIPP, flying two of our aircraft in Maryland and Virginia to transport in Oregon. We were the first company in the program to reach that milestone. Beta launched in 2017 with United Therapeutics as our first customer. What started as an R&D contract grew into an aircraft order, a charging order, and a relationship that helped shape our family of aircraft. Martin Rothblatt, United Therapeutics founder and CEO, was the first person outside of Beta to fly Aaliyah as a crew member. Nine years later, our first customer is our first EIPP operator. Across 26 states, operators like Metro Aviation, Bristow, and Republic Airways will fly our aircraft ahead of type certification. Together, we are building operating plans and demonstrating real-world use cases that will inform FAA rulemaking. This represents more than a one-year pull forward on commercialization for the Beta aircraft, and it's happening now. Our readiness was earned through 190,000 nautical miles flown to date, a safety record built across every one of those miles, years of work with the FAA, and a charging network that is already in the ground across the country. Our customers and operators have been flying this aircraft worldwide in real conditions on real missions long before EIPP opportunity was created. When the contract was signed, The aircraft, infrastructure, operating experience, and regulatory partnerships were already in place and allowed us to launch immediately. Farnborough presented another opportunity to further our relationships with global regulators. Beyond meetings with leadership from the FAA, EASA, UKCAA, GACA, and ANAC, we gave each of these agencies the opportunity to watch the technologies they're working to certify fly in the air show every day. In addition to these aerial demonstrations, FAA pilots and delegates are flying our aircraft regularly. These flights are reinforcing our belief that design philosophy rooted in simplicity can support motors and aircraft that are well positioned for certification. We showed up in Farnborough with three aircraft, flew two of them every day during the air show, and had military customers, airline operators, and global regulators watching all week. On to KPIs. Our backlog now stands at 1,001 aircraft and 3.9 billion. We have set 4 billion as our year-end target. We are essentially there now at the halfway point of the year. The Logan Air Order is a great example of how that backlog grows. An operator wants an aircraft that will let them fly more reliably and at a lower cost. We show up and go flying, demonstrating the realities of electric aviation to their pilots, maintainers, and dispatchers, flying actual routes in real-world conditions at night in all sorts of weather. They get it, and then they place the order. We have now flown over 190,000 nautical miles across our fleet. The cargo routes in Scotland with Logan Air and the Royal Mail that led us to that order, Oregon transport missions in Virginia with United Therapeutics, cargo demonstrations in Japan with Yamato, One of the country's largest delivery networks, in fact. And an eight-week demonstration program with Hawaiian Airlines, Mokulele, and Surfair, evaluating performance across inter-island routes and demonstrating our aircraft's ability to fly the missions that Hawaiians rely on. Every nautical mile adds to the safety record, the operational data, and the confidence our customers and the FAA have in this aircraft. Every new country we fly in is yet another independent regulatory body that has reviewed this aircraft and cleared it to operate. Our year-end goal remains 250,000 total nautical miles, and we are on pace. We now have 138 charging sites. On our last call, we announced a 34-charger contract with the Florida Department of Transportation. We began delivering those chargers in the second quarter, which contributed to our revenue performance. Our charging business is generating revenue today against contracted orders, with the opportunity to build an even larger network ahead of us. A few weeks ago, we announced America's Consortium for Electric Skyways, or ACES, A-C-E-S, with Adam at Archer and Macquarie Capital. Macquarie brings infrastructure and finance expertise, Beta supplies the hardware built on the standard that the industry has adopted, and Archer accelerates the deployment by identifying strategic locations. Together, we are building up to 250 charging sites across California, Texas, Florida, and New York. These sites join a network that Beta already owns and operates and that other OEMs use for their missions. The consortium accelerates the growth of our current network and with the necessary capital and continues to build the infrastructure that our industry needs. Our max demonstrated rate has not changed from what we reported last quarter. That is intentional. We have been consistent about our approach. The highest value work we can do on the production floor right now is building the foundation that allows us to ramp efficiently. Securing long weave materials, expanding vertical integration, staging production lines, qualifying suppliers on quality and conformity, and bringing the labor we have hired up to the standard that the industry requires. We are executing on each of these tasks in parallel. When the production ramp comes, it'll be into a system that's ready for it. Moving on to certification. Continued rotation is no longer a limiting factor for the H500A program, and the path forward does not require any changes to the engine. We have worked with the FAA to resolve the policy interpretation issue. The team has now developed the data sets needed, and we have made meaningful progress with the FAA on the compliance approach. We are continuing to close the remaining elements methodically and we will measure the completion when the FAA accepts our work. We also completed additional tests for credit, teardowns and inspections of the engines that were used in durability and in lightening tests with the FAA actively participating. The teardowns were uneventful and showed the robustness of our engines under these extreme test conditions. These are among the most demanding test activities in the program, and the results reinforce our confidence in the design and the data supporting certification. On software, last quarter, we were targeting completion of the requirements-based testing across all 2,100 engine software requirements. We have substantially completed that test effort, and the formal runs of these tests for the FAA are all underway. When we started this program, we were building not only an engine, but also a regulatory framework in close partnership with the FAA. The rules for certifying electric motors did not exist. We have been at the table as those rules were written, which means every issue we resolve becomes a standard the next company has to meet. We have done and are continuing to do the work. Shifting to our CTOL aircraft. We have closed the requirements definition phase of the CX-300 program. The last open issue paper was signed off by the FAA, and we received 100% acceptance of our detailed design standards collector. My understanding is that this is the very first in the AAM industry. This is an important product of our stepwise approach to certification. We resolve requirements early, complete the engine and aircraft work in sequence, and carry the accepted methods forward wherever the architecture is common. That reduces ambiguity and lets our teams focus on producing evidence required for compliance. With requirements definition complete, we can finalize the compliance plans for each requirement. Certification test activities from multiple systems are already running in parallel, along with our preparations to enter TIA flight testing. As always, we report certification progress when it has been accepted by the FAA. Because the CX-300 and the A250 share substantial commonality, much of the CX-300 DDS work carries directly into the A250 program. The CX-300 establishes a foundation that the A250 is built on. Common aircraft architecture, flight controls, production tooling and processes, test methods, and regulatory groundwork. Thank you for joining us today. The H-500A will power the CX-300. The A250 will use the H-500B, an amended type certificate variant that builds on the H-500A. The standards, test procedures, compliance methods, and production foundation established for the H-500A program carry into the H-500B, allowing the next engine to advance from a proven certification basis. The same compounding effect happens in flight. Every hour we log generates data on the aircraft, its system, and its operations in real-world conditions. We bring that data, validation, and regulatory expertise into every certification program across the platform. The more we fly and the further each program advances, the stronger the foundation becomes for the aircraft that follow. On July 12th, we launched EIPP operations. On July 20th, we unveiled the MV-250. The Logan Air Order brought our aircraft backlog one step away from the year-end target of $4 billion. The charging network we have built is becoming the infrastructure other OEMs are building their operations around. Each milestone reflects our core development philosophy. Every program and beta converges back to the main line of technology to support the development, certification, and commercialization of our aircraft, motors, and components. The certification requirements, compliance methods, and production processes established on the CX-300 carry forward into the A250. The work completed across the A250 platform gave the MV250 a flight-proven foundation to move rapidly in addressing our nation's defense needs. That is the stepwise approach that has guided us from day one. Every program advances the common platform, and the common platform allows every aircraft, engine, and component that follows to move faster. This is our product development strategy. Before turning to Herman, we recently announced plans to expand our financing with the Import-Export Bank of the United States. Chairman John Yovanovitch and the bank's team has shown exceptional leadership on strengthening U.S. aerospace manufacturing. Herman, over to you.

Thank you, Kyle, and good morning, everyone. Kyle walked through what Beta delivered this quarter. From a financial perspective, those milestones demonstrate how consistent and focused investments made over several years in technology, infrastructure, regulatory readiness, and vertical integration are beginning to generate revenue and expand our opportunity set. The EIPP launch is a clear example. States are committing capital and the FAA and Department of Transportation are active participants in implementation. The EIPP is delivering tangible benefits months ahead of our expectations. The same policy environment is also strengthening demand for MV250. The administration's focus on American manufactured autonomous platforms and higher rate production to prioritize the warfighter helped create the opportunity behind the aircraft we unveiled at Farm Borough. The commercial and defense tailwinds we are seeing are connected and Beta is positioned to benefit from all of them. Those operating decisions are now showing up in our financial results. Revenue in the second quarter was $14.7 million, above our guidance range of $8 million to $11 million, and year-over-year growth of 146%. The outperformance was driven primarily by revenue recognized on the EPFD program and charger deliveries to the Florida Department of Transportation. With GE Aerospace, the revenue reflects the steady expansion of a partnership that began with a joint technology development agreement for one program and now includes multiple active programs. The contribution this quarter reflects both organizations' ability to innovate, execute, and scale that work together. The Florida Department of Transportation deliveries, along with the recent expansion of our partnership with Archer, demonstrate Beta's product maturity and the infrastructure monetization model in practice. Florida committed capital to deploy Beta charging infrastructure in anticipation of EIPP operations, and we delivered against that commitment. Operating expenses were $166 million in the quarter, including $122 million of R&D and $44 million of G&A. R&D reflects continued investment in certification, MV250, EIPP operations, and production readiness. Our continued disciplined deployment of capital led to a second quarter adjusted EBITDA of negative 110 million at the midpoint of our guided range of negative 100 million to negative 120 million. We ended the quarter with approximately 1.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Our capital deployment strategy is focused on building the manufacturing capability, product portfolio, and operating infrastructure required to scale. Last week, we announced plans to expand our XM Bank relationship with up to $1 billion in net financing. The XM program is a key enabler of that strategy. When used to finance capital assets, it will materially extend our financial runway and give us the flexibility to move faster on CX300, A250, MV250 manufacturing at a time when market signals are strengthening. The focus strategy of deploying capital across R&D and manufacturing continues to produce revenue today. As Kyle described, the sale of flight control computers to Horizon Aircraft is one example of Beta's organically developed technology creating commercial value. Alongside our certification progress, defense work, and growing component sales business, it reinforces Beta's position as an aerospace and defense company. These are returns on decisions made years ago, and they inform how we think about the decisions we are making today. Turning to our outlook, performance through the first half of the year and increased visibility into the balance of the year gives us confidence to raise our full year revenue guidance to $42 million to $50 million. The improved outlook reflects execution across our commercial, government, and technology initiatives. The launch of EIPP operations, the unveiling of the MV250, and other milestones achieved since our last call reinforce our confidence in the long-term opportunity and our conviction that this is the right time to accelerate. Accordingly, we now expect full-year adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of negative 400 million to negative 445 million. We continue to expect full-year capital expenditures of approximately $150 million to $200 million. We are moving faster on vertical integration and aircraft and component production capabilities. The anticipated XM financing supports these investments with non-dilutive capital. The acceleration of production engineering and technical investments is driving spend in the near term. We expect that investment to remain at pace throughout the year as we build towards the capabilities that we are working with XM to fund on the capital expenditure side. We remain disciplined about capital allocation and realistic about the execution work ahead. The market is signaling that Beta's products and capabilities are increasingly relevant, and we intend to maintain the speed required to convert that signal into durable revenue growth. Before we turn the call over to the operator for Q&A, we wanted to provide a little color on the third quarter for modeling purposes. Revenue for Q3 is expected to be in a range of $8 million to $12 million and adjusted EBITDA to be in a range of negative $115 million to negative $125 million, reflecting the investments we just spoke about. At this time, I will turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question is from the line of Christine Lewig with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. And it was great to see all the aircraft that are at Farnborough. So, Kyle, you know, it sounds like there's been significant progress in the H500 motor. It's encouraging to hear that you've got a path sorted with the FAA, as well as the requirement definition phase for the CX300. So, given that the work is progressing in parallel, once the acceptance or the certification of these two come about, could they end up being closer together than previously expected? Or are there elements of the CX300 development and certification process are dependent on a motor being certified first with some sort of lag in timeline. How do we think about the timing of these two potential events?

Hey, Christine, great question. So the structure of our product development sequence with H500A coming before the CX300, there was an intentional year split between them. That is not necessary. In fact, you can concurrently certify those things. So The H-500A working through those policy interpretation issues has not affected the CX-300 program. In fact, I mean, we can get right through TIA and through flight testing. And if need be, the H-500A could be concurrently certified. But that's not the case since we were able to work through the continued rotation and we found a path with the FAA. So we're actually in really good shape. And I'll tell you, it's interesting. The FA hasn't done a lot of certifications of engines, yet they've done a lot of certifications of aircraft. Moreover, the engine companies like the GEs and the Prats, they're ODAs. So the burden on the FAA is much less there. So we're really working through not only a new technology introduction to the FAA, but a less exercised corner of the FAA when we look at the engine. And that's one of the reasons we focused on that first, focusing on the hardest nut on the wheel to take it off first. Thank you for joining us. and it allows us to move very quickly through the CX300 and as you probably saw we have a large number of those test plans already approved. So the answer to your question very bluntly is no it does not negatively affect the CX300 and we're feeling really good about both programs now that we got through those real hard interpretation issues.

Your next question is from the line of Andres Shepherd with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, everyone. Good morning. Congratulations on the quarter and thanks so much for taking our questions. It was also great to see everyone at the Farnborough Airshow last month and congrats on the launch of the EIPP and on the recent flight with Secretary Duffy. Kyle, I want to come back to the military aircraft, the MV250. So it's exciting to see your first military aircraft that in this case combines hybrid and autonomous capabilities. I guess my question here, you know, what type of application and use cases will you target here? And given the more progressive certification process for defense, you know, how quickly do we perhaps think we can begin to deploy this and to achieve scale? And lastly, maybe you can remind us of how you're thinking about the selling price for these. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for the question. So for us, what's really important to Beta is maintaining consistency and focus across all of our platforms with the core technologies. So the MV250 military aircraft shares a ton of parts and pieces and technologies with the civil aircraft. Ultimately, it's a dual-use aircraft. That includes the wings, the booms, the tail, the flight control computers. And this has always been planned within our business as part of the product development strategy. As engineers, we really focus on that. How we do this is as important as what we do. So we're going about this in a way that allows us to leverage those same developments into the MV250s. That application of the MB250, it's a multi-mission platform. The first focus is something we call contested logistics or aerial logistics connector. It's a huge fuselage. It's like the size of a sprinter van inside. You can carry four pallets of stuff, 2,000 pounds of payload. and you can carry it a very long distance further than like a helicopter can. You can certainly ferry the aircraft further. So that's kind of the main line. Of course, it will be used for exfiltration, CASAVAC, METAVAC and launched effects. You may have seen in Farnborough in the aircraft we brought over there, there are standard launch effects tubes that can do things like drop sauna buoys or smaller drones. So with a 13-hour loiter time, it gives us the ability to use that Thank you for joining us. They need to go fast. And helicopters have a retreating blade problem in their speed. We can go faster than that. We can go further than that. And we can go further than that without a pilot. So we can go into riskier areas, moving goods, bringing water, medicine, bullets to our troops while keeping them out of harm's way. The other thing that wasn't talked about a lot, and we just proved it out at the Aurora US Army exercises in Sweden, is it's fewer crew. So you only really need one maintainer and one pilot in our Miand aircraft, and you delete the pilot in the autonomous aircraft. So this becomes a really low logistics tail for the military to deploy these aircraft, and that's about one-tenth of a legacy rotorcraft. It's like goodness all around, and we are firm believers in giving our American troops the very best technologies, and that's what the MV-250 brings to the party. Hopefully, that answers your question, sir.

Excellent. Yes, it does. Thank you very much. Maybe just a quick follow-up, if I may. Just wanted to get your take, again, on the joint charger announcement with Archer. What do you see as most Significant here. And how do you expect this charging segment to materially grow, perhaps particularly given that the EIPP has now started? Thank you.

Yeah, great. Great question as well. You know, it's a common misconception when you base chargers on what you know from electric vehicle chargers. to a large extent, airports are public use facilities. That means that we all have to coalesce around a common standard. You don't get to put something on publicly paid for land and then say, and many more. customers and even land developers really starts to shine. There will be high value endpoints off the airports. You know, Archer focused on on a major metropolitan areas have unique strategic insight of exactly where to put those chargers. So we marry that with the main lines and and we we We marry that with the main lines and we have these strategic endpoints connected to this network of airports. So we rely on people like Adam Goldstein at Archer to like figure out strategically what's important in L.A., for example. And that's not a place where beta hangs out a lot. Yet we have really good insight where the cargo routes of UPS are and the medical routes of United Therapeutics are. And you put those together, you end up with a more powerful network. And that's the kind of the thesis behind the consortium.

Andreas, let me just add a couple of things on ACES. First, I would start with it's a very exciting opportunity. As you understand, it creates the opportunity to build out the infrastructure required for electric aviation beyond what's already in the ground today. The consortium operators are at this point are Archer and Beta, but we expect that to grow as Beta has the only certified CCS charger suitable for electric aviation. There are many aviation companies currently using the standard, so we expect the consortium will grow. And right now, what's key is the consortium coming together and identifying the strategic locations for chargers and on what timeline. That's some of the work that we're doing right now. As I said when I started, it's an exciting opportunity and we'll continue to update the investor community as we build out the tactics to execute what's in front of us.

Excellent. Thank you both. Congrats again on the quarter. We'll pass it on.

Your next question is from the line of Ronald Epstein with Bank of America. Your line is not open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning, Kyle and Herman and the team. I hope you guys are doing well. So Kyle, I think you laid out pretty well on the call that Beta is more than just sort of an eVTOL company, but it's a whole suite of technologies that build on each other for CETOL, VTOL, and electric propulsion, hybrid propulsion, hybrid and a whole basket of technologies that can be used across a bunch of different fronts. So one of my questions for you is as sort of myself, a little bit of an airplane geek watching things flying around the country. It's noticeable that up in Plattsburgh, New York, there's the Hart airplane. And I think it's public knowledge that you guys have been involved with that. I was wondering if you could kind of walk through what you're doing there and how that interplays with of what Beta's doing.

Hey, Ron. Thanks for the question. You are right. We are supplying our technologies to a number of programs. Unfortunately, I can't comment on the extent of our supply to heart. I mean, it's a huge thing for the whole industry to see the next step up in scale of electric aviation. And what they're doing is just awesome. It is we are we are, as you know, huge fans of everybody in this industry, specifically that program. But it's it's really good and apologies for not being able to dive into that one. But I can say that that the strategy of selling these components makes beta a better company. publicly working with Eve on these things. Embraer is a great company. We've learned a ton working through design reviews and delivering product to them to allow them to fly. Working with GE on our certification programs and hybrid programs. Every one of these programs makes us better. makes us smarter. And that's what allows us to kind of gain trust with the FAA and accelerate our production, our certification, our design, and get a lot more feedback than what would have happened if we were just serving ourselves. And it keeps the best engineers, an extremely important asset to our company, interested and involved in new and diverse programs every day. But they're all tied back to a common set of technologies that that are germane to Beta's airplanes. So, yeah, that is our strategy, and it's going very well.

And, you know, if I may, just as a quick follow-on to that, and I just got one more after this on a different subject, but, you know, I don't know, kind of looking at pictures of their airplane, which I have, you know, their propellers look a lot like what you guys use, and a lot of times, you know, propellers are matched up to motors. I don't know, I mean, am I drawing a wrong conclusion there? I don't know if you can say anything on that.

Yeah, I guess I have to say no comment on that one, but yeah.

Hey, Ron, it's Herman. I want to just pull on a thread that you brought up about multiple ways to win. I think that is really what we're after, and I'm happy that you said it. Right now, our current aircraft backlog now sits over 1,000 aircraft. The mix between CTOL and VTOL is about 50-50. And this quarter, the Logan Air Order is really an awesome order for us because it's a mission that we could go and complete today. and beyond aircraft, the enabling technologies that we always talk about, the component backlog is also getting a lot of traction. So we talk about Eve, we talk about Horizon, and then batteries is now starting to become a thing. And As we've said in the past, we're very particular about what we put into the backlog. We evaluate the customer, we evaluate the use case, the commitment level that the customer has, the operational readiness, and then really look at the infrastructure needs. And this gives us great visibility into the probability of a successful launch. So, you know, building the business with multiple ways to win is something that we are very focused on building.

and then you know as a follow-on to that to both of you how are things like resourcing just the various tools and different things that you need for the ramp like you know I don't think it's a secret that your autoclaves are in short supply and different toolings in short supply and so on and so forth just from an industrial ramp up perspective how's that going?

It's going extremely well, Ron. One of the things that I think is quite differentiating for Beta is that we are building the aircraft that we're flying today in our production facility. We very early on in partnership with XM built a facility so we could build on the tooling that we build our production aircraft on. So there isn't a secondary kind of step after certification to then ramp into deployment and production. So it's actually going very, very well. And again, like being consistent and methodical in our plan allows us to get when we have autoclaves, right? We saw that coming. We set up the right kind of autoclaves that we need to do our composites work. We got them in place. We got the trim tools. We got the machinery, the ultrasonic testers, which are also hard to come by, along with the people that are qualified to interpret those inspections. all in place early days because working in a regulatory environment doesn't give you the flexibility to up and switch your strategy very quickly.

Your next question is from the line of Sheila Kailayu with Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, Kyle Herman. Thank you so much. And I apologize if I missed this in detail, but I just wanted to, your slides are always so helpful. I just wanted to hone in on slide 15 and 16 and the H500A, I know Christine discussed it a bit. What's kind of left as we think about phase four on the engine cert and how we think about that going forward over the next six to 12 months?

Hey, Sheila. So in the Phase 4 implementation phase, it is the execution of our testing. We've completed a large number of the tests, and I will just remind you that we don't chalk up the progress until the FAA accepts the results of the work. We have a ton of testing going on. I think the ones that were most relevant for this quarter were completing the lightning test and the associated teardowns with it, as well as the durability testing and the associated teardowns that are overseen by the FAA. Thank you for joining us. We have somewhere near 40 different dyno assets here doing different things to the motor continuously. We've got 80 plus thousand hours of runtime. If you compare that to a typical turbine engine, it'll just have a thousand or two hours on it before it's certified. The level of work that we've done here is pretty remarkable. And and what's left is basically repeating these tests in front of the FAA, getting sign off on the methods of collecting this stuff and the ultimate sign up through the type certification board of getting the type certificate. We are in pure execution mode, having kind of retired that big, ominous issue around policy interpretation recently.

No, that's great. And great to see all the momentum at the air show as well. Even if it meant I got kicked out of a meeting because you had customers. So really good progress. And then just on the CX 300, as we think, you know, same question, you know, how do we think about phase four, the completion of that? Is it just hours of testing, working with the FAA, if you could get into the nuances?

Yeah, first off, I apologize if you got kicked out, but we do need to prioritize customers, and I think that's good for you and for us. On the CX-300, the implementation, it is a well-known process to certify an airplane, and we have been very consistent of not asking for special conditions or introducing new technologies that weren't previously appointed or clarified. So in the airplane itself, We had previously kind of chalked up the three new technologies being the propulsion, the batteries, and the fly-by-wire system. The fly-by-wire system is largely enveloped and completely enveloped actually. from Part 25 standards. So the risk is very, very low there that there's any issues associated with the interpretation of that. The batteries, we got through our series of papers and accepted issue papers on it. So there's clarity there. And our entire, one of the early test plans that we had approved with them, it's something called 823 Charlie, which was a standard for flight testing, Part 23 airplanes handling qualities, Thank you so much for joining us. We accepted, we intervited, and we've flown with FAA test pilots, and we do it regularly to make sure the qualified, kind of the qualifiable tests such as human factors are opined on well before we get to the end. And these test pilots come and they have a singular objective. They are focused on safety and they do an incredibly rigorous job of giving us feedback early in the design cycles. And those have all been implemented. So I think that if I look out forward, there's execution risk left on the H500A. We get through TIA on the CX300 and then we redo the same types of things we've already done with the FAA on these tests, again, in front of them. It does take time, but the execution is very, very doable in front of us. And then we get into the A250, which is probably your follow-on question, where we introduce the new dimension of flight, vertical takeoff and landing. We've been flying those aircraft regularly. It does introduce new risks, but we feel very comfortable that we've contained those with a very simple design.

Awesome. Super helpful. Thank you.

Your next question is from the line of Chris Pierce with Needham. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Congrats on the progress to date. I guess if we think about, you know, you had your initial EIPP demonstration. And if we look at kind of what you've done globally or in Hawaii, in the UK, in Norway, should we expect to see an EIPP sort of iteration along those lines where it's more of a and many more.

Thank you for joining us. We had a pilot from our customer, had already gone through training. We had the chargers in the ground, and we executed that mission within a number of hours. That was to ensure that it was clear to the FAA, the DOT, our customers, and everybody watching the states and tribal territories that AAM is here, it's ready to go. All we needed was the execution of that contract, and we went and moved the heart. That was step one. Now what we're working towards is expanding that out to the other jurisdictions that we're going to be flying and then getting into Phase 2 under 135 operations. Remember that Promer 1 was done under Part 91 operations. And those will start to get, and I think I mentioned this before in one of our earnings calls, they aren't demonstrations. Those are true operations that start to go at cadence, multiple flights a day. Hey Chris, it's Herman.

The July UT flight was a big milestone because it was the transition from readiness to operations, which is really important. Our focus today continues to be on building a repeatable operating cadence. Aircraft dispatch, charging, ground handling, maintaining, customer workflow, and data capture. All of those things are really important throughout the CIPP process. Each operation that we do gives us an opportunity to mature the operating playbook with customers and public sector partners. and then apply that playbook across all of the EIP markets as they mature. Over the next couple of weeks and month or so, we expect Louisiana and Texas to come online with customers like Metro, Bristow and Future Flight Global. So you'll start to see more of the EIPP flying over, I would say the next four to six weeks.

Okay, perfect. And then just going back to Sheila's question on slide 16, can you sort of walk us through what phase four looks like when you do begin TIA testing? Is it just a certain number of flight hours that need to be sort of done to get FAA comfort? Or is there like a playbook in terms of what needs to happen there? Or is it still sort of an unknown because of, you know, the novelness of the aircraft? and just kind of, and then is the gating factor sort of like you talked about getting the FAA pilots on site and that's sort of out of your control? Like, how should we think about the green bar moving forward on phase four and slide 16?

So really, I would say there are like four major buckets there. We have a conforming article structural test where we twist, bend, and break an airframe to show that the structural margins meet the design intent. We, of course, have done that. Just by way of example, we've built five different wings that have gone into stress testing to make sure that when we get the FAA in front of it, and many more. and many more. and a brake action and other such things on compromised runways and in compromised weather. So those are the kind of the major big bone things. Now, within the test plans of that overall aircraft, there are a number of like less obvious ones. We just did a complete dry run on our electromagnetic susceptibility and emissions, for example. So that's a ground test where we run a series of different sweeps Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. with the knowledge that we're going to be walking directly into the A250 VTOL program. So hopefully that's helpful. And we could go very deep, but I'm getting the nod from my team not to go too deep on this.

I appreciate that from you and the team. Congratulations.

Your next question is from the line of Andre Madrid with BTIG. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Yep, thanks, good morning team. Appreciate you taking my question. I understand you pulled forward the introduction of the MV250 by about like six months back in the fourth quarter, but given the updates from Farnborough, I was curious if you could maybe just highlight how conversations with potential customers are progressing on that platform. And additionally, I guess, since it's kind of aligned, I'll also throw in another one there. In light of recent announcements from peers, and your commentary around further vertical integration. I guess just how should we be thinking about potential M&A to support your defense applications? Is that something that's kind of on the roadmap for you guys?

Yeah, great, great question. We did pull the MV250 forward from the initial plan. We did that because we saw a very strong demand signal. That demand signal, by the way, was more than validated in Farnborough. We showed up there expecting to generate a little bit of further interest domestically. That went to the very highest levels of the U.S. military. There is an incredibly keen interest in moving forward. I think the performance specifications speak for themselves. Exercising our other aircraft around Europe and around the world has generated foreign military interest as well. I would say it's been extremely good. As you know, DEVCOM of the Army has paid for hybridization and autonomy work. We're rolling that up to the point where we can get a rapid prototyping contract to focus on the aircraft and the operations we intend to bring this to over the next year. It's all really aligned with the acquisition reform of the military where They're looking for low-cost, rapidly deployable systems that are built on commercial platforms. And that's what we have delivered. And everything's kind of singing together. The performance of the aircraft, the mission set that's needed, especially in the Pacific, and the acquisition process. and the executive orders that kind of set the table for this, prioritizing the warfighter and the defense acquisition executive orders have only augmented this. And look, we've played nice with everybody, especially with GE and Sikorsky as partners. We're getting great access to folks in Washington and even with others like Near Earth Autonomy and smaller companies and on the component side with General Dynamics. It is, you know, I'm just a humdrum engineer, but I'll tell you, like the momentum I felt in Farm Bro and the interest by the military was very, very real and kind of unprecedented based on, you know, the feedback that we got from people like Jim McConville, who is the chief staff of the Army, who's now on our board. He walked away really excited to answer your very first question. I guess I missed the second part of your question. We did an acquisition last quarter of an AI company, and it is focused on executing on these things. It's not as sexy as the kind of detect and avoid autonomy AI portion, but it's way more important in my opinion, which is the validation and verification of safety critical code within our flight controllers. And nobody in this industry can claim success yet. So we have to look at the very hardest problems in our case. It's getting through certification. So we focused our acquisition strategy around acquisitions in this case that address the hardest problems first. And that is validation verification through the DO-178C process of software. It's not as sexy, but it's really, really meaningful.

Got it. Not that that's super helpful. I appreciate the color there, Kyle. And then Herman, maybe one for you, I guess. Could you, I don't, I don't know. I might've missed this, but did you maybe outline the exact timing of the expanded EXIM bank financing?

No, we didn't announce the exact timing of it, but we're currently in talks with them. As you know, we have a long partnership with the XM Bank, which began in 2023, and they funded our South 40 facility. So we've been through a lot with the XM Bank over the years, including going through their diligence. We have plans. to meet with them in the upcoming weeks where we're going to talk about how we're looking to drive more volume for the factory, do more vertical integration. And we're looking forward to that meeting. Think about XM as a strategic financing partner, really an execution enabler. Thank you for joining us. You have the IPO proceeds, which will fund things like R&D and certification. And now we have XM, where we could use them to fund a lot of the CapEx. So it's really a big enabler for us right now. Awesome.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Your next question is from the line of Noah Poppenack with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is Tomas Russo on for Noah Poppenack. Maybe just one on the aftermarket profit opportunity. Can you discuss how higher energy density batteries may impact the cadence of customer placement and how we think about battery margin trajectory as battery technology improves?

I think, you know, a higher energy density, higher power density, lower cost. are all things that every battery manufacturer is working on. We're at a point where all of those things are going towards the better constantly. But I think the essence of your question is, if you get a high enough energy density battery, does it reduce the frequency of battery changeout? The answer is no. You increase the performance of the aircraft, You increase the performance of the aircraft and you may actually put less cells into the battery, which gives you more payload. So those trades become an optimization point. And just kind of for visibility for you, the UPS, for example, our largest order is with UPS. Their feeder fleet flies between 100 and 150 nautical miles typically. That range is well within the ranges that we're flying right now. They don't actually want more range. They want more payload and they want more volume. Those things are the trades that they want to make. And that's with the IFR reserves already accounted for. That's the trade that they want to make. And if it costs them less to fly, instead of kind of saying what limited amount of stuff can we put on the airplane, they say, how much can we put on the airplane? And as we start to approach parity with over-the-ground shipping, then the aircraft volume goes way up. And this is all part of kind of the UPS vision of how aviation fits into their future network. So I think it's a goodness all around to get to higher energy density. You increase in just the math of it. If you double the range, you have four times the accessible city pairs. It's the square of the radius of the circle that gives you the area of the circle. and that is really good for UPS. It's really good for us. It's great for Amazon. It's great for United Therapeutics to get access to more city pairs, which just means more flights for Beta.

Thank you. That is helpful. And then over the past couple of quarters, we've recently talked about the operating cost of a conventional aircraft versus the Beta CTOL. Could you just talk maybe a little bit about the pathway for EVTOLs to provide a lower total cost of ownership for customers? and how the input to that will evolve over the coming years.

Thanks. Yeah. I mean, look, it is you're absolutely right. I mean, the cost of energy becomes relatively insignificant. It's like 40 times less. The pilot still costs you the pretty much the same amount in the in the airplane's The insurance and the upfront cost is similar, but the maintenance is significantly less. So you end up relative to an airplane, maybe a 40, 45 percent reduction in cost when you move from a traditional turbine aircraft with the same performance to an electric aircraft. But the cost delta is even better when you compare it to a helicopter. Thank you for joining us. In our case, for 30 to 50 seconds, you turn the top rotors on, then you shut it down and you fly smoothly like an airplane. And you do the same thing at the other end of flight. That is a small fraction of the time when you're exposing those rotating components to that type of fatigue. Moreover, because they're fixed pitch rotors, there are way less parts. So you end up with a system that has way less maintenance. You get the benefit of the energy. And in many cases, you get higher performance. So you have a reduction of cost, higher performance, and that's why your total addressable market goes up so drastically. So, you know, in summary, the airplane shines, but the VTOL, it just glows. It really is a much better financial proposition. And this is why we're all over the world flying these things, because we have to prove it. In that Aurora mission, I think I mentioned it in the prepared remarks. up in Sweden. We flew 30 plus missions and we had about $300 of energy that we used. Ten bucks a mission. Compare that to the Black Hawk that we were flying next to.

Thank you for those details and taking my questions. I will pass it back there.

Your next question is from the line of John Godden with Citigroup. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, this is Max on for John. Thanks for taking my question. I just kind of wanted to double click on the hybrid electric engine with GE and if you could provide an update there as well as just kind of, you know, what the future looks like for that partnership with GE.

Sure. So with multiple programs going on with GE, we showcased for the first time the hybrid turbo generator built around the CT7 at Farnborough. That is a partnership in the power electronics and the electromagnetics to create a 1.4 megawatt turbine that is used in the MV250. It is a segmented high speed, so it's directly coupled to the CT7. Mechatronic Design, where the airflow, the mechanics, and the structure all share the same common systems and very lightweight and high-performance systems. So you've got multiple experts in power electronics and controls with GE and Beta working together to produce this hybrid turbo generator. But really, if you look broadly at the future of aerospace, it includes electric. Now, in order to include electric, you have to prove high altitude applicability. You have to turn at very high speeds. So the electromagnetics have to be tolerant to high speeds, both mechanically and electromagnetically. and many more. So that's kind of the nature of the partnership. And I will tell you, working in a lot of partnerships in my past life with Raytheon and big companies like Tesla, the level of integration of the teams between GE and Beta and even with Sikorsky is extremely positive. And the rate of production of those technical developments, the flight demonstrations, the ground runs, everything. is exceptional. And I have never seen two companies come together and make more progress than Beta and GE have since our relationship kicked off, I don't know, what, nine months ago or something?

Sounds good. That was great color. And then just kind of switching gears a bit, you mentioned the sale of control computers to Horizon. This is pretty interesting. Can you just elaborate on the opportunity for the component sales, kind of the bigger picture there, and are there other components that you think may have a viable market beyond light control computers and the motor?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, there's certain programs we can talk about. Horizon was one that we can talk about and others that we can't talk about. But I can tell you that we have sold motors, propellers, inverters, high voltage systems, Flight Control Computers, the actual flight controls like the Inceptors, the Throttles, and other such things. Of course, we've sold the batteries, we've sold our lightweight data acquisition systems, and we've sold services associated with those things. And off the airplane, we've provided the services to do flight testing, to do flight test engineering, and of course, we've sold chargers. The strategy behind this is that these are extremely sticky sales. When somebody designs their control laws around a hardware platform or vice versa, then those things are kind of linked. and you don't get to change the constructive mathematical model of the airplane, i.e. the motor torque ramp rates or some parameter without changing what's inside the flight control computer and vice versa in many cases. So they become sticky and they hang together. And so our strategy is, look, find a way to make a lot of margin on those components. Get them designed in early, plant those seeds, water them, let them germinate, and then they grow into these programs. Now, they're not all going to hit, but this is why we have so many programs. You know, Horizon, awesome company, really, really smart leadership. And we said, you know what, that's one that we want to bet on. You know, publicly working with General Dynamics, with EVE, with GE, and others. So this is the strategy, and I'll let Herman kind of talk through the margins on those.

Yeah, in the aftermarket, as you could imagine, there's a variety of things. So we've got batteries, we've got motors, we've got flight control computers. And what I would say is we typically look at the component business to carry somewhere between a 40% and 60% margin. But when you get into flight control computers, the margin is actually a lot higher.

Great, thank you.

Thank you for your questions. I will now turn the call over to Kyle Clark for closing remarks.

Awesome, thank you. I think we covered most of my closing remarks during the meeting, Just wanted to kind of highlight this XM deal. It allows us to use the right color of money for the right thing. XM focused on capital, capital purchases, facilities, equipment, tooling, and the equity capital focused on research, development, and growth. And as Herman said, it really does extend our runway. Certification is moving at pace, and it's doing it because we have focused, consistent research. Progress. We've been working with a bunch of different companies, GE, Sikorsky, General Dynamics, working with startup companies like Eve and Horizon and a bunch of others. And we're doing this with cash discipline, consistent. I mean, we landed right in the middle of guidance and we kind of blew out of the water our revenue targets. And this is a product of just doing what we say we were going to do. And we're We're doing this well-defined, vertically integrated, sticking to the products that build on themselves and going to multiple places. And this is the strategy Beta has been talking about since the IPO less than a year ago. And we just continue to deliver on the EIPP, the defense components, showing up at the air shows with flying aircraft. And we're doing it with, I would say, some of the best partners in the world, both in the customer side, at the FAA, the DOT, and in technological partnerships. So, you know, I'm proud of what the team has done here at Beta. And we are heads down and looking to go forward to actually winding up to be a really, really awesome set of quarters coming up. And we're leaning in hard, sticking to our strategy and getting the job done. So I appreciate everybody getting on the call this morning, especially those guys on the West Coast up early for us. And we'll talk to you in about 90 days.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect