Archer Aviation (ACHR) Q4 2025 Earnings Transcript

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DATE

March 2, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Chief Executive Officer — Adam Goldstein
• Chief Financial Officer — Priya Gupta
• President, Aircraft OEM — Benjamin Lyon
• Chief Operating Officer — Thomas Muniz

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TAKEAWAYS

• Liquidity -- Ended the quarter with approximately $2 billion in liquidity, the highest level in company history, according to Priya Gupta.
• FAA milestone -- Achieved 100% acceptance by the FAA of Midnight's Means of Compliance, enabling advancement to final certification plans and anticipated TIA activities this year.
• Global backlog -- Reported an order book valued in the billions, now including Saudi Arabia's PIF and the Serbian government as new partners.
• Adjusted EBITDA guidance -- Estimated adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of $160 million-$180 million for the first quarter, reflecting a deliberate step-up in investment.
• UAE progress -- Became the first eVTOL manufacturer to establish a restricted type certificate program with the GCAA, positioning Midnight aircraft for piloted and passenger-carrying operations in the UAE this year.
• Piloted flight test program -- Launched the piloted VTOL flight test campaign for Midnight, with ongoing fleet expansion and flight envelope growth planned throughout 2026.
• Commercial launch timeline -- On track to deploy Midnight in U.S. cities via the EIPP and in the UAE’s commercial launch program before year-end.
• Defense strategy -- Partnership with Anduril focused on developing an autonomous, hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft for dual civil and defense applications, with optimism for winning a major defense contract this year.
• Software platform -- Collaborated with Palantir, NVIDIA, and SpaceX to integrate advanced software and connectivity; first software product in this category set for unveiling later this year.
• Manufacturing investment -- Significant CapEx already deployed in the Georgia (Covington) plant, tooling, and non-recurring engineering (NRE) to enable aircraft production ramp as certification concludes.
• Leadership integration -- Benjamin Lyon noted as fully integrated as President of Aircraft OEM, credited with accelerating engineering and manufacturing execution velocity.
• Quarterly spending discipline -- Fourth-quarter spending closely matched prior guidance, with spending increases aligned to targeted program progress and market entry milestones.
• Olympics commercialization target -- Management referenced alignment with the Summer 2028 Olympics as an “unslippable date,” driving regulatory focus and coordination across supply chain and infrastructure.

SUMMARY

Archer Aviation(NYSE:ACHR) concluded the quarter with a record $2 billion in liquidity, reinforcing its ability to pursue multiple operational and strategic initiatives. The company reached a key regulatory achievement by securing the FAA’s full acceptance of the Midnight aircraft’s Means of Compliance, enabling the next phase of certification. Archer Aviation is set to launch U.S. air taxi operations as part of the EIPP and begin commercial activity in the UAE, supported by a newly established restricted type certificate from the GCAA. Investments in manufacturing and supply chain readiness underpin an aggressive production ramp leading up to the anticipated 2028 Olympic milestone.

• Archer Aviation expanded its customer backlog to include major international and governmental partners, which management cites as evidence of commercial momentum.
• The company forecasted a sizable near-term increase in adjusted EBITDA loss, citing targeted spending in manufacturing scale-up, hybrid aircraft, and software platforms as foundational investments for diversified future revenue streams.
• Management disclosed "The step-up in investment is deliberate" and tied directly to advancements in aircraft certification, defense platform development, and commercial readiness.
• Piloted flight testing and continuous improvement in software and operational automation were emphasized as enabling faster program execution while maintaining safety standards.
• Unveiling of a new software product, as well as active collaborations with technology leaders for autonomy and connectivity, may contribute incremental optionality and addressable market expansion.
• Establishment of new engineering hubs, such as in Bristol, UK, serves to accelerate defense segment technology development and program talent acquisition.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• CTOL: Conventional Takeoff and Landing — an aircraft’s ability to ascend and land using runways, distinct from vertical operations.
• VTOL: Vertical Takeoff and Landing — the capability for aircraft to ascend and land vertically without the need for a runway.
• eVTOL: Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing — electrically powered aircraft designed for urban air mobility with vertical lift and landing capabilities.
• TIA: Type Inspection Authorization — an FAA process step where the agency examines aircraft for compliance during the certification phase.
• GCAA: General Civil Aviation Authority — the civil aviation regulator for the United Arab Emirates.
• EIPP: eVTOL Integration Pilot Program — a U.S. White House initiative supporting demonstration and integration of eVTOL aircraft into urban environments.
• NRE: Non-Recurring Engineering — upfront engineering design and development costs that do not repeat with ongoing manufacturing.
• PIF: Public Investment Fund — the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, a major investor or partner in aerospace deals.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Adam Goldstein: Thanks, Kate. At Archer Aviation Inc., we are building a next-generation aerospace company with civil and defense applications. We have formed an ecosystem with some of the best partners in the world from Anduril to SpaceX to NVIDIA. We have great momentum, and I am excited to walk you through it today. I published a more detailed shareholder letter that I encourage everyone to read. I am going to keep my remarks relatively brief and dedicate most of this call to Q&A from analysts and retail investors. Last year, our pilots took Midnight through its CTOL campaign: flights over 50 miles, over 30 minutes of flight time, at altitude above 10,000 feet, and speeds exceeding 150 miles per hour.

We have now begun Midnight's piloted VTOL flight test campaign. We will continue to expand our piloted Midnight fleet and the flight envelope throughout 2026, enabling us to begin TIA activities with the FAA as soon as this year. As we expand our flight test program, we are simultaneously preparing to be ready for air taxi operations. We are on track to begin deploying Midnight this year both in American cities as part of the White House's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, or EIPP, and in the UAE, as part of our commercial launch program. Before we go into our plans for the UAE this year, I want to acknowledge the current geopolitical situation in the Middle East.

Our team and partners in the region are in our thoughts, and their safety will always be our top priority. We will continue to monitor the situation closely. Despite that current uncertainty, we remain focused on rapidly progressing our commercialization strategy in the UAE. I am pleased to share that Archer Aviation Inc. is the first eVTOL manufacturer to establish a restricted type certificate program with the GCAA, which sets us up to deliver additional Midnight aircraft to the country this year for piloted and passenger-carrying operations, while simultaneously building out our network of certified vertiports across Abu Dhabi. While our team is hard at work commercializing in the United States and the UAE, our global backlog continues to grow.

Our order book is in the billions, with seven of the world's largest airlines choosing to partner with us. Some new partners include Saudi Arabia's PIF and the Serbian government. The commercial momentum is real, and it is built on a certification strategy that we have been executing against for seven years. This quarter, the FAA confirmed its final acceptance of 100% of Midnight's Means of Compliance. I believe this makes us the first eVTOL company to achieve this level of progress with the FAA. Completing Midnight's Means of Compliance unlocks the ability to finish the next phase: finalizing its remaining certification plans.

We expect those to get there in the coming quarters, clearing the path for TIA work to begin on the program as soon as this year. Our partnership with Anduril is central to our defense strategy. We are designing an autonomous, hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft built for dual use: a loyal wingman for defense, and cargo or medevac for commercial customers. I remain optimistic about winning a major defense contract this year. We are always looking for opportunities to apply the proprietary technologies we have developed for our commercial aircraft to other adjacent applications. In November, we announced our first third-party powertrain deal with Anduril and EDGE Group to power their Omen autonomous air vehicle.

They spent five years searching for a propulsion solution for Omen; I am proud they chose ours. Beyond commercial aircraft and defense, we see a third opportunity: software. We partnered with Palantir for next-generation air traffic control, movement control, and route planning. We are working with NVIDIA to integrate their IGX Thor platform into Midnight for safety-critical autonomy applications, and we are working with SpaceX's Starlink to bring high-speed, low-latency connectivity to our aircraft. We plan to unveil our first software product in this category later this year. Executing across all of these fronts requires exceptional leadership. I want to highlight Benjamin Lyon, who has integrated fully into his role at Archer Aviation Inc. as President of Aircraft OEM.

Benjamin is a longtime pilot who spent decades at Apple shaping some of the most complex hardware programs they ever built, then served as CTO at Aptiv, one of the world's leading industrial technology companies. He is exactly the kind of operator you want driving a program towards commercialization, and its impact on our engineering, manufacturing, and certification velocity is tangible. Thomas Muniz continues to support the Midnight program, but has now taken a leadership role in developing our hybrid aircraft. Together, Benjamin and Thomas represent exactly the caliber of leadership the opportunity requires. We ended Q4 with approximately $2 billion in liquidity.

While this is a strong position, I try to be ruthless about cutting anything that does not earn its place. My job is to drive execution: fly aircraft, deploy them in cities, complete certification, scale manufacturing, and deliver to the customers who are waiting. Thank you to our team, our partners, the government agencies, and our shareholders that all play a part in our success. Deep tech is extremely challenging; you give us the ability to pursue it. With that, I do not take your support for granted, and we will work every day to continue to earn it. I will hand it over to Priya.

Priya Gupta: Thanks, Adam. On today's call, I am not going to walk through all the detailed financial results, as those are set out in our earnings release. Instead, I will briefly discuss the key highlights: our liquidity position, capital allocation priorities, and overall financial discipline. First, with respect to liquidity, as Adam highlighted, we closed the quarter with a very strong balance sheet and total liquidity of approximately $2 billion, which is the highest watermark in Archer Aviation Inc.'s history. Our financial strength allows us to think and act beyond a single program. With respect to our priorities for deploying capital, it is very straightforward. In the near term, commercializing Midnight remains our number one priority.

This includes progressing certification activities, scaling manufacturing, and advancing market launch effort. Beyond the Midnight platform, as we position Archer Aviation Inc. as a category leader, our next investment priority is in adjacent opportunities, such as the hybrid aircraft program, and our software platform. These efforts meaningfully expand our long-term optionality and total addressable market. Our focused capital allocation carries through to day-to-day execution, with Q4 spending tightly aligned to the guidance we outlined in the last earnings call. We are moving steadily towards industrialization and market entry. That naturally requires increased but disciplined spend. For Q1, we estimate our adjusted EBITDA loss to be in the range of $160 million to $180 million.

The step-up in investment is deliberate and is a direct reflection of the meaningful progress we are planning for the year. We will continue to provide transparency on spend trajectory and liquidity as we continue to execute against our key priorities. I will now turn it back over to Adam.

Adam Goldstein: Thanks, Priya. I want to first start by addressing some of the retail questions. The first question is, how is the pathway for Archer Aviation Inc. to be the main air taxi service for the Summer 2028 Olympics? Well, the Summer 2028 Olympics is the most important commercialization milestone for Archer Aviation Inc. because it represents an unslippable date for us, and it is driving the regulators, and it is really driving us towards making decisions and ultimately making progress. But it is not just certification that has to be ready for the launch. It really is all about the infrastructure, the supply chain, the technical progress, all converging at the same time.

Just last quarter, you saw us invest in the Hawthorne Airport; our team is on the ground every day there working through initial flight operations and pilot training. This is a very important event for the administration, and we are coordinating at the highest levels to make sure that this goes off smoothly. We will now open for questions.

Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If for any reason at all you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by 2. Again, to ask a question, please press star 1. The first question comes from Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank.

Edison Yu: Hi. Thank you for taking our questions. I want to start off on EIPP. Can you give us a sense of what the next milestones are and the sequencing of events that need to happen before you start to fly the aircraft?

Adam Goldstein: Sure. Thanks, Edison. Just to take a quick step back on the EIPP program, we view this really as a big moment for the industry. I like to call it our Waymo moment. It is like the first time you saw a Waymo, it felt like science fiction to you, but now the goal is to have half a million people in the biggest cities in the country start to see these aircraft as part of your everyday commute, just like they started to see Waymos every day. That is what I think the EIPP has the power to do for air taxis.

So seeing new aircraft flying over major cities will be exciting at first, but we do need to get people comfortable with them and ultimately accept them as an everyday outcome. That is how we are going to drive consumer acceptance across the industry and, in turn, regulatory approval. All that is on track, and Archer Aviation Inc. is on track to participate in that event. For the EIPP, we have had a lot of inbound interest from the municipalities. Ultimately, we have submitted the applications, and there are roughly a dozen or so municipalities that we partner with, including Southern California, Texas, and Florida. Now we are looking forward to the DOT announcing the finalists later this month.

Once the finalists are announced, we will begin working directly with the selected localities to establish the initial operational plans. Then we will focus on public flights as soon as the second half of the year. It is really back to the DOT's hands at this point; we are waiting for them on next steps.

Edison Yu: Understood. In terms of the piloted vertical for transition, I think in the letter you mentioned the next few months the test campaign will rev. What is the broader plan for the number of aircraft, for the levels of flying that you would do for the rest of the year?

Thomas Muniz: Yeah. Hey, Edison. This is Thomas. Maybe to take a step back, as you mentioned earlier, we are now in the piloted VTOL and transition part of our flight test, and that is all in support of and on track for the EIPP work that Adam mentioned earlier on the call. Just to remind everybody, this comes on the back of all the VTOL flying we have done on Midnight, with a pilot on board over the last several years, and the extensive CTOL campaign that we did last year. We believe we are in a strong position with the testing that we have done.

We also are really glad we invested time in that detailed CTOL campaign, as having the ability to do both conventional takeoffs and landings and vertical takeoffs and landings we think is a huge advantage for the product and a big differentiator, obviously for the business case and safety case, things we have talked about. Our goal with this aircraft and the others that are coming online is to efficiently get through the transition testing in support of the EIPP, but then we will get right into TIA activity, all of this with the goal of being certified for the Olympics.

Edison Yu: Understood. If I just sneak one in on the, I think you mentioned the first one to get the 100% on the MOC. Can you maybe walk us through the last couple of percentage points? It seems like the industry in general has struggled a little bit to get to those last pieces. What do you think held that up, and why were you able to get through that?

Adam Goldstein: Yeah, so it is a good question. I would say it is definitely fair to say the last few percent were the hardest to close. But I think the fact that we, from the very beginning, have taken really best practice approaches or conventional approaches to topics like lightning strike, gust loads, occupant protection, those sorts of things, that are all enabled by us having a larger, heavier aircraft, meant we were able to get through those topics with the FAA. We did that instead of pushing back; we were able to just accept what enables us to get through it—again, the best practice approach. I think that is it.

Edison Yu: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Savi Syth with Raymond James. You may proceed.

Savi Syth: Hey, good afternoon. I am sure it really depends on all the activity that you plan on doing this year, but just curious at a high level where that EBITDA can step up as you go through the year and any commentary on CapEx expectations for 2026?

Priya Gupta: Yes, Savi. Thanks for the question. It is Priya. You know that we do not give annual or multiyear guidance, but I will walk you through the flavors of where spending is going. At the core, we are investing in three focused areas. The first is, as you can expect, supply chain readiness and manufacturing capacity. That is to ensure that we can aggressively ramp Midnight production and deploy it. Second, as we have talked about, is development of our dual-use hybrid aircraft, as we believe the opportunity is now to win contracts from the United States and its allies as they pursue this new vertical lift form factor.

Third, of course, is our development of our AI autonomy software platform. While all these three result in spending being elevated in 2025, there are a lot of near-term opportunities to win awards on the defense side that could offset some of the spending, or early revenues on the software side and the air taxi side, as part of our Launch Edition program. The goal long term is to have a diversified set of opportunities that can allow us to get to meaningful long-term sustainable revenue. As to how we progress through the quarters, we will keep providing our quarterly guidance, but hopefully that gives you a framework to think about where we are deploying capital.

Savi Syth: That is helpful, Priya. Thank you. Then just on the GCAA side, could you talk a little bit more about what the key features are of a restricted flight approach? What is and is not included in that versus a full certification?

Adam Goldstein: Sure. Hey, Savi. This is Adam. Our progress in the UAE is obviously continuing. Given the current geopolitical situation, we are just mindful of it and how fast to push and how to support our partners best over there. Obviously, safety for people is going to be important, and safety for partners over there is going to be really important. With that as a backdrop, we aligned with the GCAA on a pathway to commercialization. We chose the restricted type certificate because it was more of a recognized alternative than some of the other choices such as a type qualification, and it gives you broader operational flexibility and a scalable foundation to bring Midnight to market in the Middle East.

We really have to wait and see how all that plays out here, and I think there is more detail to come on that.

Savi Syth: Appreciate that. I will turn it back.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Andres Sheppard-Slinger with Cantor Fitzgerald. You may proceed.

Andres Sheppard-Slinger: Hey, everyone. Congratulations on the quarter and all the great progress. Adam, I wanted to maybe circle back to EIPP for a minute. With the projects now in the application stage, I am curious how you are thinking about those projects. What would you call a success, and particularly the California project, is that maybe where most of the attention is focused? How are you thinking about winning those projects, and what would you characterize as a successful EIPP entry? Thank you.

Adam Goldstein: Thanks, Andres. I think the EIPP win will largely be an industry win where we have lots of aircraft flying around in multiple cities and getting the general public comfortable with what we are doing. I think that is really the number one takeaway that can come from this. There are a lot of very interesting cities and states that have applied, and I am hopeful California and Texas and Florida ultimately get picked, but of course we have to wait and see what happens. Any one city or location is not going to determine a success or failure of this. We have lots of options here that can get picked.

Of course, we are hopeful that the Huntington Beach location does get picked given our plan to ramp operations ahead of the Olympics. There are lots of great opportunities across many other cities that we think will also be great opportunities as well. I would say showcasing the aircraft, showing what they can do, having multiple operators doing this, getting the general public comfortable with this, and ultimately getting everybody comfortable with this industry just as they have gotten comfortable with Waymos in their cities.

Andres Sheppard-Slinger: Got it. Thanks, Adam. That is super helpful. I appreciate all that detail. Maybe just as a quick follow-up, I see that you recently conducted a piloted VTOL flight on the new aircraft. Apologies if I missed this earlier, but can you walk us through your flight plans for this year and how you expect to ramp up those flight hours throughout this year ahead of EIPP and the UAE?

Thomas Muniz: Yeah. Hey, Andres. It is Thomas. We are super excited that we are now in the piloted VTOL phase. What you should expect to see over the coming weeks and months is additional flying and working out towards full piloted transition. Obviously, after that, we get into TIA and onward certification, but also in support of the Olympics. Maybe this is a good chance for Benjamin to comment here. There were a lot of lessons that we have learned in flight test, and I think it would be good for Benjamin to comment on some of those.

Benjamin Lyon: Thanks, Adam. One of the learnings we got from the CTOL campaign was that it was actually the software update cycle that paced our progress. That is because for our first piloted campaign, we wanted to stick with a well-understood path, so we used traditional aerospace methods. We learned along the way that about half the time taken was due to manual steps that could be easily automated using best software from Silicon Valley. As part of preparing for the VTOL campaign, we made updates to our software infrastructure. One such example is we now automatically deploy software updates to the Midnight aircraft.

As you can imagine, the team is very proud of having reduced multi-month-long cycles into often just a few days while maintaining the highest standards of safety.

Andres Sheppard-Slinger: Hey, guys. Super helpful. I appreciate all that, and congrats again on the recent success. I will pass it on.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright. You may proceed.

Amit Dayal: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Adam, can you provide any color on how many aircraft you will have available for the certification and testing and then for the EIPP program?

Adam Goldstein: Sure. I will give you a flavor of that, Amit. Thanks for the question. We are in the late stages of building that initial fleet of Midnight aircraft that we have talked about, and we are going to deploy those in 2026 and 2027 for our flight testing, our TIA activities, and then also as part of our EIPP and the international launch program. The focus of those aircraft is to get us through the piloted VTOL transition testing and then ultimately to demonstrate air taxi operations under the EIPP and launch programs. Then, of course, we need to use that to get to a TIA and then ultimately type certification.

In parallel, we are also stepping up our manufacturing and supply chain capacity to put us in a position to aggressively ramp aircraft builds as we get into 2027 and 2028, as we ready for the commercial operations in Los Angeles for the Olympics and beyond.

Amit Dayal: Understood. That is where I was going next, Adam. From a manufacturing perspective, what else needs to be put in place for you to be ready to meet the timelines you just talked about, and any color on how much CapEx is going towards that effort?

Adam Goldstein: Yeah, it is a good question. As we go through the certification process, we are really focused on making sure we have the right aircraft that is designed for a great consumer experience, very safe, and that can carry the appropriate amount of payload but can also be mass manufactured. I talked a little bit about that in the shareholder letter. It is very challenging balancing the performance and certification side of it as well as manufacturing ramp. The good news is we have already stood up Georgia, the Covington plant. We have invested heavily in CapEx, heavily in a lot of the NRE and tooling.

While our spend has been elevated here, we think we are in a pretty good position to ramp once we get through the certification program.

Amit Dayal: Okay. Understood. That is all I have for now. Thank you.

Adam Goldstein: Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Next question comes from Austin Moeller with Canaccord. You may proceed.

Austin Moeller: Hi. Good afternoon, Adam and Priya. My first question: Is the 100% Means of Compliance completion on the FAA side essentially close to or through critical review, and should we not expect any more aircraft changes? I know you had changed the landing gear last year.

Thomas Muniz: Yeah. Hey, Austin. This is Thomas. The reality is I cannot say we will not make any further design changes until we get through all the certification testing. The reality is there are pros and cons there. It is actually an opportunity for us to make improvements where we have time and bandwidth in the program. That being said, we are really comfortable with the architecture of the aircraft, and we do not see any technology issues today. One thing I can also say is the approach to design for certification from the very beginning, like I mentioned—it has meant we have a larger and heavier aircraft than some of our competitors—has really positioned us well.

Adam kind of touched on this earlier. The challenge is making sure that the design has the right performance, the right certification path, and the manufacturing path to actually launch the product, and we are really comfortable with where those are coming together.

Austin Moeller: If we think about the Iran operation and the first use by the Pentagon of one-way attack drones, should we think about a Midnight rotorcraft drone as potentially competing on future phases of the drone dominance program, or do you think it would be more in line with a Collaborative Combat Aircraft-type program specifically set aside for rotorcraft where they are looking for something attritable?

Adam Goldstein: Yeah. I think the conflicts have really reinforced what has always been true, Austin, which is that air dominance is a decisive factor and a key to military superiority. What we are seeing now and what you are asking about is the beginning of a generational shift in how nations are thinking about aerial warfare. That shift will play out over a multi-decade period of time. One thing is clear: simply hybridizing an air taxi to get some additional range or payload may get you some short-term wins, but it is divergent from what the administration and what America's allies want—what they are demanding.

That is why we partnered with Anduril to build an autonomous hybrid VTOL aircraft with dual-use capabilities for both civil and defense applications. On the military side, we think the demand is going to be for a loyal wingman, and that is for armed reconnaissance attack helicopters. Due to the sensitive nature of it, I cannot share much more detail at this point, but our hope is that we can show the aircraft this year, which will translate into some key wins. To help accelerate our progress there, we opened a new hub in Bristol, UK, where we have already hired 20-plus seasoned engineers.

Austin Moeller: That is very helpful color. Thanks, Adam.

Adam Goldstein: Thanks. Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from David Zazula with Barclays. You may proceed.

David Zazula: Hey. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. Adam, in your first question response, you said that the Olympic 2028 date was driving the regulators. I wonder if you could unpack that statement a little bit. What do you mean? Do you mean resource allocation, and what was behind that statement?

Adam Goldstein: Sure. Back in 2022, the FAA was the one that put out the goal of being able to fly eVTOL aircraft en masse in one city at the LA 2028 Olympic Games. They called it Innovate 2028. It was really an FAA program concept to begin with. Since then, you have seen this administration be heavily leaned into the Olympics, wanting to show all the great things America has done: the reindustrialization of America, America's leadership in aviation. It has become a big selling point for the Olympics in general.

It has been, one, an exciting thing for everybody to rally behind and for people to be proud that America is leading in aviation; also an important point for the administration to make sure that we get this done. What it did was create an unslippable date—so it is a date that everybody knows things have to be done by. In this industry, it is tricky. We have had companies around for a long time, and they keep putting out dates—and us too—and the challenge is how you get anybody to stick to these dates. The way to do that is to align everybody to an unslippable date, and I think the Olympics has done that.

It has forced everybody to get moving to make sure that all these challenging things that we have to get done are getting done. Hopefully that gives you perspective, but I think a lot of it has to do with the culture and the excitement that is around the Games.

David Zazula: Helpful. You talked a little bit about deployment earlier. Maybe specifically for what you have in production right now, can you give us the breakdown of what you expect to be UAE-based versus US-based on the testing plan for this year?

Adam Goldstein: Sure. I think it is a little bit difficult for us to predict too much in the UAE right now, given the ongoing conflict. Our goal is to keep getting through some of the testing and the certification progress over there, as well as the certification process testing and the EIPP over in the United States. We have to wait and see how that plays out to determine the volumes that we are going to put in each of the different locations. I would say let us wait and see how that turns out.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Chris Pierce with Needham. You may proceed.

Chris Pierce: Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Just one quick one on EIPP and then one on design. If we think about the application that you put out there, is CTOL involved, or should we only expect to see VTOL flights? Is there a possibility we could see VTOL flights up and down even though we do not have full transition at that time, and that is enough to help move the industry forward? I just want to make sure I am on the right page of what we might be looking for later in this year.

Adam Goldstein: Hey, Chris. We do expect to be through the full flight envelope at that point. I would expect to certainly see VTOL full-transition flights, but because the aircraft was designed to do both VTOL and CTOL, we have the capability to do both. I think that is what is unique about the aircraft, and there is an opportunity to do both.

Chris Pierce: Okay. The letter talks about the benefits of a four-bladed design, and I know you had a two-bladed design prior. Is it just that you did not know what you did not know? You talked about software before—does a four-bladed design give you increased confidence in transition, or is that the wrong way to think about it and those are not correlated?

Adam Goldstein: I think it goes back to the broader philosophy of trying to balance performance, certification, and manufacturability. That is where the work of the industry is going right now. It is very doable to build an aircraft that can fly really far or fly really high or fly really fast. Once you try to certify that, a lot of the case falls apart because the FAA is extremely rigorous in terms of the standards that they make you have. What we do is look at different trades. All three are possible and can be done. You can use a two-blade propeller, a three-bladed propeller, or a four-bladed propeller. You can probably even use a five-blade propeller.

They all come with different trades. What we mentioned in the letter was a two-bladed propeller had more of a weight penalty on the trade versus a four-bladed propeller, which had more of a drag penalty. One gives you more range; one gives you more payload. We optimized around payload, which is why we chose the four-bladed propeller. We used that as an example to show there are thousands of trades that go on like that throughout these programs. Some could be design trades where there are industrial designs for better looks—where it can look better, but it might hit your performance. Some might be payload. Some might be range. Some might be speed.

Those are just to give you a flavor for how we think about design here. Any of them are possible. We went with the four-bladed option because we thought it optimized for what we needed to make sure we can build a proper business case around.

Chris Pierce: Okay. Thanks. Good luck.

Operator: There are currently no more questions at this time, so I will pass it back over to the team for closing remarks.

Adam Goldstein: Thank you very much for attending the call. We certainly have a lot of work ahead of us, but I could not be more excited about where we are headed. Every day, our team shows up with the same urgency that we had on day one, and that is not changing. I do not take your support for granted. We will keep earning it every day. Thank you very much.

Operator: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.

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