RDW Redwire Corporation
$13.58
Redwire Corporation Q2 F2026 Earnings Call Transcript
Thursday, August 6, 2026
AI Conference Call Analysis
Sign in or subscribe to read.Chris
Chief Financial Officer, Redwire
with record total liquidity of $607.8 million, comprised of $557.8 million of cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash, and $50 million in undrawn revolver capacity, a significant sequential and year-over-year improvement, primarily driven by the net ATM proceeds of $487.9 million raised during the quarter. To put a finer point on the balance sheet improvement, I'd like to touch on a few highlights on a year-over-year basis. Our cash has increased by over six times to $557.8 million. We have reduced our total debt by 75% to $48.9 million and significantly reduced our net interest expense to less than $1 million in the quarter versus $23.8 million in Q2 2025. And we've seen a 100% reduction in our Series A preferred shares. which have now fully converted into common shares and a 92% reduction in our warrants outstanding to 202,000 which are set to expire in September of this year. We ended the quarter with a strengthened balance sheet and simplified capital structure that is ready to support the company's future growth. Please turn to slide 19. During the second quarter, we saw continued strength in contracts awarded with bookings of $165.8 million, a significant increase on a year-over-year basis resulting in a book-to-bill ratio for the quarter of 1.42 and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.52 on a last 12 months basis. Turning to backlog, we once again saw growth in this metric as backlog increased by 8.8% on a sequential basis and 64.5% on a year-over-year basis to a record $542.1 million. As of June 30, 2026, space backlog was $322 million and defense tech backlog was $220.2 million. As a result, the majority of defense tech revenue is recognized at a point in time, whereas in our space segment, the majority of revenue is recognized over time, driving a different backlog profile. As we enter the second half of 2026, we are very proud of our fifth consecutive quarter of growth and backlog and believe demand for our mission critical space and defense tech products and solutions around the globe remain strong, bolstering our confidence and continued growth during the second half of the year. Please turn to slide 20 for a brief discussion of the outlook for the remainder of 2026. Having achieved year-to-date revenue of $214 million, in line with our expectations, plus another strong quarter of contracts awarded, confidence provided by our record backlog of $542.1 million, and a supportive macro environment, we are reaffirming our full-year 2026 revenue forecast in the range of $450 to $500 million, which represents a 41.6% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. With more than $350 million in bookings during the last two quarters, we continue to expect our revenue to build in the second half of the year. With that, please turn to slide 21 and I'll now turn the call back over to Pete. Thank you, Chris.
Peter Cannito
President & CEO, Redwire
To summarize, Redwire's second quarter was defined by delivering growth and successful execution. With record backlog and a strengthened balance sheet, Redwire is scaling to meet the strong demand we see for our mission-critical offerings. With that, I'd like to thank the entire Redwire team for their achievements during the second quarter of 2026. We will now open the floor for questions.
Operator
Conference Operator
Thank you, and we'll now begin the question and answer session. For today's session, please limit yourselves to one question only. To ask a question, press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. And your first question comes from Brian Kinslinger with Alliance Global Partners. Please state your question.
Brian Kinslinger
Analyst, Alliance Global Partners
and congrats all around on a great quarter. I guess my question will be around the gross margin. During the first half of the year, I believe this is one of your biggest accomplishments, what you achieve versus the trailing two years. Can you talk about the sustainability of the gross margin and how you think about the near term and the medium term opportunity to expand gross margin? And then separately on a numbers question, Where's the share count today with all the restructuring that happened on the balance sheet?
Chris
Chief Financial Officer, Redwire
Hey, Brian. Thank you. So gross margin, clearly very proud of where the team was able to deliver this quarter, quite frankly, the first half this year. Earlier this year, we talked about guiding around the low to mid-20s is where we thought we would be in the first half of the year, appreciating some of the EAC adjustments we had last year that we are still working through. Obviously, the bookings profile has been very helpful as we replenish that backlog. But as we go forward, I think that initial guidance that we said, Brian, in the kind of low to mid-20s is the place to think about in the near term, But as we continue to replenish our space backlog and we're seeing solid growth in our defense tech, there's the opportunity that we continue to grow the gross margin over time. But again, we had a very mild EAC adjustment this quarter. Very proud of what the team was able to do. A lot of initiative that we put in place. But we're doing a lot of really forward-leaning technology here that... could have EAC adjustments in the future. Again, we put measures in place to mitigate and monitor those. But very proud of where we ended up here at 27%. But I'll stay with the guide and kind of that low to mid-20s as we move forward.
Brian Kinslinger
Analyst, Alliance Global Partners
And then on your share count question.
Chris
Chief Financial Officer, Redwire
Oh, sorry, Brian, interrupted. One more time.
Brian Kinslinger
Analyst, Alliance Global Partners
Yeah, no, just the 10 students come out. Normally the first page shows the share count where it's at. So I'm just curious where it's at today.
Chris
Chief Financial Officer, Redwire
Yeah, so we're 249.9 million common shares. Great.
Brian Kinslinger
Analyst, Alliance Global Partners
Congrats again. Thanks, Brian.
Operator
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from Suji Da Silva with Roth Capital Partners. Please state your question.
Suji Da Silva
Analyst, Roth Capital Partners
Hi, Pete. Hi, Chris. I'll echo my congrats on the strong progress here. Guys, as we approach the second half of 26 and we're anniversarying the full company from the prior second half, Any thoughts on the year-over-year growth opportunity relative across space versus defense? Just try to get some understanding of how we should think about growth for the two segments.
Peter Cannito
President & CEO, Redwire
Yeah, hey, Suji, how are you? Yeah, I mean, we see great opportunities in both segments, right? So we continue to see double-digit growth. for both segments going forward. Defense tech is growing faster than space, but there's a lot of space opportunities that are still working their way through the system that we think we're really well positioned on. So we're bullish on both and are excited about the fact that we continue to get really strong signals from the market with these follow-on awards, whether they be IDIQs or straight-up aircraft orders. So bullish on both. Defense tech seems to be growing a little bit faster at this point, but that's not to say that space doesn't have the opportunity to catch up. Okay. Thanks, Pete.
Suji Da Silva
Analyst, Roth Capital Partners
I'll jump back in the queue.
Operator
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from Alexandra Mandery with Truist. Please state your question.
Alexandra Mandery
Analyst, Truist
Hey, good morning. Great results and thanks for taking my question. We've seen backlog and orders continue to hit record levels. How would you describe the award tempo during the quarter and what are your expectations for the back half of 2026?
Chris
Chief Financial Officer, Redwire
So, you know, one of the measures that we focus on a lot is the LTM book to bill. And so we've seen over the history that our order flow can be lumpy. And, you know, obviously we would endeavor to have as smooth an order flow as possible. But market forces, again, we've got reach across the globe and different vertical stacks between our national security, our commercial, and our civil customers. The timing of awards are always tough to predict. We're coming off of really a couple great quarters in a row for both segments. Off the space, pulled back just a touch this quarter, but appreciate that they were over two times, booked a bill in both Q1 and Q4. As we look in the back half of the year, as we kind of said in our prepared remarks, we do consider it to be a very supportive macro environment. But at a book-to-bill ratio of an LTM basis at 1.5, that is a growth signal book-to-bill. And we're a couple points in front of where we thought we'd be this time. But again, the market's been very supportive thus far this year.
Alexandra Mandery
Analyst, Truist
Great. Thank you.
Operator
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from Adam Samuelson with Jefferies. Please, your question. Yes, thank you.
Adam Samuelson
Analyst, Jefferies
Good morning, everyone. So I guess the question is just on the outlook. You kept the revenue range at $50 million for the year. Half the year is complete. The second half, that implies a pretty wide range of growth, like 11% to 35% year on year. Actually, also pretty similar half on half. Could you just help us frame kind of what's occurring to get you to the high end versus the low end of the year at this point? Thanks.
Peter Cannito
President & CEO, Redwire
Yeah, I mean, fundamentally, which we tried to articulate in our comments is we're scaling, right? So the way the year has been set up is to show that growth over time. We have a number of indicators to include our growing backlog that we believe support and demonstrate the fact that we're on a scaling curve right now. So I think that's what makes us feel comfortable about the second half. Chris, anything you want to add there?
Chris
Chief Financial Officer, Redwire
Well, I'd just say as we exited the first quarter, we had about 75% visibility into the guidance at the midpoint. That's come up with the bookings profile that we had in Q2. So we're up in the 90% range right now from a visibility standpoint, which is a good place to be halfway through the year.
Adam Samuelson
Analyst, Jefferies
All right, that's helpful. Thank you.
Operator
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from Colin Canfield with Cantor. Please state your question.
Colin Canfield
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald
Hey, thank you for the question. Maybe if the team could talk about their appetite for M&A, essentially kind of what are the key areas that you want to add over time, and how does the team think about edge autonomy scaling milestones relative to the team's capacity to do deals? Thank you.
Peter Cannito
President & CEO, Redwire
Yeah, thanks for that question. So we've been doing M&A for a long time, so it's really fundamental to our DNA. You can see based on the way we've managed the balance sheet that we are postured to do M&A. So the critical point now is finding the right deal at the right accretive value. And that's what we're focused on. As I've said on other calls, Redwire considers M&A to be a competitive advantage, our experience there, and especially the fact that I think we've demonstrated numerous times our ability to walk and chew gum when it comes to integration and staying active in acquisition. I like where we are a lot with the edge autonomy integration as you can see from the first half of the year they have significant momentum so we haven't slowed down and we've already hit on a number of critical milestones not the least of which being brand integration and that now have moved to the nitty-gritty of aligning our internal processes So we're in a good position. It's been over a year. Edge Autonomy is performing, and we're capitalized to go out there and do a creative M&A. So it's a big part of our investment framework, as I articulated at the beginning of the call.
Operator
Conference Operator
That's great. Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Leshock with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please state your question.
Michael Leshock
Analyst, KeyBank Capital Markets
Hey, good morning. I wanted to ask on the inventory build up 23% sequentially. Obviously, that was a drag on cash, but what was the biggest driver of that step up? Is it a function of programs shifting into production? And is there any way to kind of bifurcate that between space and defense tech as to what was the biggest contributor? And then, you know, if you could talk to the working capital impacts there and what that means for cash going forward. Thank you.
Chris
Chief Financial Officer, Redwire
Yeah, so this is us being responsive to the market signals that we're seeing, specifically in our UAS space. We have brought inventory off. We are looking to cut down turnaround times. The team's got a very lean manufacturing process, but we want to make sure we have the right materials on hand to be very responsive with our customer base and so this was a very measured investment into our inventory and I would expect that actually inventory levels will probably come up a little bit more as we move into Q3 and that just becomes a timing of working capital but opens up the aperture with our customers to be able to deliver more quickly and put these world-class UAS systems in the hands of the warfighters around the globe. The thing about working capital, just overall, our working capital has moved around a little bit just over the years, but I'm particularly focused right now that we have improved our cash use through operations on a net balance sheet basis. So we're going to keep focusing on that as we go forward, making investments in inventory. This is a strategic investment so that we can continue to deliver more quickly for our customers.
Operator
Conference Operator
Thank you. And your next question comes from Austin Moeller with Canaccord Genuity. Please state your question.
Austin Moeller
Analyst, Canaccord Genuity
Hi, good morning. Can we talk about how many NATO countries are in your discussion pipeline for Penguin and Stalker versus how many are currently in the sales channel for you today? And are there any U.S. allies that need to be approved by the State Department first before you can sell to them?
Peter Cannito
President & CEO, Redwire
Sure. So we do not disclose the number of allies that we've sold to explicitly. Obviously, what NATO allies are interested in that Redwire is extremely well positioned for is twofold. One is a battlefield proven platform that is widely fielded. They tend not to go after science experiments or early stage prototypes. They tend to buy those spacecraft that already have momentum in the field. The other thing that I think is unique about Redwire is we have Thank you very much. building their organic industrial base. So having the Penguin being organically both conceived of, designed, and now manufactured at scale in Latvia is a huge opportunity for us. And we saw a big purchase from a NATO ally of that platform in the quarter and these things tend to gain momentum over time as Different ministries of defense look at what others are doing in their peer group. I also want to emphasize that, again, we have global interest. Whether it be the stalker platform or the lobbying-based Mark III Penguin platform, we're selling to Taiwan. So our capabilities are available to everyone. worldwide beyond just the U.S. and Europe. And we have proven demonstrated sales going on there. In terms of the State Department ITAR restrictions, of course, we adhere to all the regulations out there. Many of our technologies are ITAR controlled. Redwire has been a global operator for many years. So unlike maybe a startup or companies that are just starting to dip their toe into global operations. We have a really sophisticated capability around export control. So we monitor that closely and have the ability to continue to make sales while adhering to all those regulatory policies.
Austin Moeller
Analyst, Canaccord Genuity
Awesome. I'll pass it back there. Thanks.
Operator
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from Griffin Boss with B. Riley Securities. Please see your question.
Griffin Boss
Analyst, B. Riley Securities
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So I guess I just want to focus on where or what programs are most of your R&D dollars going towards? How are you thinking about that while you're also balancing kind of looking at M&A and then sort of related on the investment side regarding the new Huntsville expansion? Are we going to see any associated step up in CapEx? in the back half of the year and into 27 to support that? Or how much is those $8.5 million in state and local incentives cover? Thank you.
Peter Cannito
President & CEO, Redwire
Yeah, well, so great question. If you go back to our framework, focusing on the balance sheet, doing M&A, you're highlighting our internal investments, which is great because it's key. I would say that the vast majority of our investments are focused on our platforms, our high-value platforms, whether that be in space. or Maturing, our UAS platforms. But we're also investing a lot in payloads, and of course, nobody's asked about Starfall yet. I know inventory and working capital is super exciting to talk about too, but Starfall and our microgravity capability is a real game-changing opportunity, so we're investing there as one would expect also. Whenever somebody asks me this question, I always point to the five key value drivers. I haven't hit orbital data centers or the lunar surface, but these are key growth areas as well. So we evaluate each proposal that bubbles up from our segments. based on the size of the market, the ability to capture great gross margins because of some sort of competitive advantage, whether it be intellectual property or proven performance, and that's how we make those decisions. So we're spreading it around, but we've got five key value drivers that with lots of opportunities and each one is evaluated based on the merits using the criteria I just articulated.
Operator
Conference Operator
Thanks, Pete. And your next question comes from Andrew Steinhardt with Bank of America. Please state your question.
Andrew Steinhardt
Analyst, Bank of America
Hi, Peter and Chris. This is Andrew on for on. Thanks for taking our questions. So it looks like you guys are starting to see some momentum on the defense tech side of the business. 40% sequential growth in Q2, backlog almost double what it was at the end of 2025. We're also seeing higher R&D already ahead of 2025 through the first half of the year. So with all that, I'm wondering, could you guys talk about any of the defense tech products currently in the pipeline, particularly within UAS?
Peter Cannito
President & CEO, Redwire
Yeah, so the two primary UAS products in the pipeline are the Block 40 for Stalker and the Mark 3 for Penguin. So those are key defense tech capabilities, next generation platforms. We've talked about in the past how our industry leading ability to power a UAS across longer ranges and longer duration using our solid oxide fuel cell that we now believe our Group 2 UAS has the ability, particularly out of the Block 40 stalker, to start taking on more Group 3 missions at a better price point, right? So we're investing heavily in that. We're investing in maritime capability for the Block 40 as well to expand its reach into naval forces as well as US Army ground forces. Of course, the Mark III continues to expand on its performance capabilities as it proliferates across Europe and other countries as well. I do want to draw attention to our growth in payloads as well, which is not insignificant. A 15% year-over-year growth in the Octopus EOIR gimbaled payload is really exciting for us. It shows that we're differentiated. And as I noted in my comments, it's not just about payloads for Stalker and Penguin. This is a capability that's being procured by third-party platforms as well. So bringing out the E-140 and E-180 MWIR capability certainly advances our payloads. and the fact that that has gotten early traction is super exciting for us as well. Now those of you who have been following Redwire for a while also know that we have a lot of capability in RF and that things like providing the LINK-16 antenna for the York transport layer satellites that have gone up and demonstrated their capabilities on orbit. Well, the beauty of expanding with the acquisition of edge autonomy from singularly focused on space to defense tech is now we have the ability to take our RF capabilities into defense tech as well. and so we're looking at a number of opportunities for RF payloads that would be differentiated on UAS platforms as well. We already got the EOIR phenomenology from a sensing perspective. We have the capability for RF and I got a lot of questions about the synergies when we did the edge autonomy acquisition and RF is one of those areas where we're seeing a lot of potential.
Andrew Steinhardt
Analyst, Bank of America
Awesome. I really appreciate that color. I'll pass it back there.
Operator
Conference Operator
Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, that was our last question. I'll now hand the floor over to Peter Cannito for closing remarks.
Peter Cannito
President & CEO, Redwire
All right. Well, thank you all for the questions and your engagement this morning. With that, we appreciate everyone taking the time to listen today and go Red Wire. Thank you. This concludes today's conference. All parties may disconnect. Have a good day.