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spk01: Good day and welcome to the AirSail first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note that event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jackie Carlin, Vice President of Marketing and Communications. Please go ahead.
spk00: Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to AirSales first quarter 2024 earnings call. Conducting the call today are Nick Finazzo, Chief Executive Officer, and Martin Garmendia, Chief Financial Officer. Before we discuss this quarter's results, we want to remind you that all statements made on this call that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities law, including statements regarding our current expectations for the business and our financial performance. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements are discussed in the Risk Factors section on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, on March 8, 2024, and its other filings with the SEC. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements on this call. We'll also refer to non-GAAP measures that we view as important in assessing the performance of our business. A reconciliation of those non-GAAP metrics to the nearest GAAP metric can be found in the earnings presentation materials made available on the Investors section of the airsail website at ir.airsail.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Nick Finazzo.
spk04: Thank you, Jackie. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our call today. I'll begin with a recap of the quarter and our strategic objectives before turning the call over to Martin to review the numbers in greater detail. We're off to a good start in 2024, driven by stronger feedstock acquisitions in the back half of 2023, This facilitated whole asset sales and increased USM volume and was supported by continued strength in our tech ops segment as commercial MRO demand remains robust. This translated to first quarter revenue of $90.5 million, which was up $15.7 million from the first quarter of 2023 and also led to stronger profitability as adjusted EBITDA grew 80% year-over-year to $9 million. As we remind investors every quarter, due to the nature of our business and the impact of whole asset sales, our revenue levels tend to be volatile quarter to quarter, and we believe our business is best assessed based on aggregate performance over a longer period of time, with a focus on MRO activity, feedstock levels, and our unique business model that enables us to extract significant value from our inventory. At the segment level and beginning with asset management, first quarter sales were 59.3 million, which increased 22.4% year over year. Stronger revenue in the first quarter of 2024 stemmed from higher flight equipment sales of 38.6 million compared to 27.7 million in the year-ago period. Excluding whole asset sales in a period, segment-level sales were relatively flat as lower leasing revenue offset gains in USM volume. In the quarter, we sold one aircraft and four engines compared to two aircraft and one engine in the year-ago period. Commercial demand remains strong and is particularly elevated for USM. Airline traffic and capacity continue to operate above pre-pandemic levels, which is a strong indicator for our business. That being said, the supply side remains challenging, given OEM production and delivery delays, which substantially limit our ability to acquire feedstock. Regardless, our primary competitive advantage is in our purpose-built end-to-end solution, which enables us to drive asset value from feedstock across various segments of the supply chain. As asset availability improves, we're ready to move decisively on acquisitions. To date, we've acquired 31 million of feedstock and have an additional 52 million under LOI. In our USM parts business, we continue to realize the benefits of better feedstock acquisitions in the second half of 2023, specifically in engine USM, which grew more than 30% year over year. In the cargo market, the environment continues to be under pressure, as we saw during 2023. as the strong demand that carried through the pandemic unwinds and cargo shipping normalizes. We expect these conditions to persist for some time, but did see incrementally positive movements in quoting activity and customer interest in our 757 freighters in the first quarter. As of quarter end, we have one converted 757 available for sale with six more that will complete the conversion process through the remainder of this year. Finally, in our leasing portfolio, full-year sales declined by approximately 45% as we had fewer assets under lease during the period and no aircraft on lease in the first quarter of 2024, compared to one aircraft in the prior year that was subsequently sold. We expect to see an increase in leasing activity as more engines become available and placed on lease this year, resulting from increased feedstock availability. Turning to our tech ops segment, Our MRO facilities were busy during the quarter. Sales improved across all of our facilities, with additional growth from the sale of components by our off-airport MRO shops, which includes landing gear, thrust reversers, and other complex assemblies. As a result, segment sales were 31.3 million, compared to 29.8 million in the year-ago period. We anticipate continued strength throughout the forecast period because of a supportive end market. As we look to increase our MRO business beyond the current run rate, we see growth opportunities on component MRO, heavy MRO, and aero structures. In our Goodyear heavy MRO, we're realigning our operations to create additional facility capacity for heavy maintenance activities, coupled with a significant initiative to increase the availability of trained mechanics. We've been actively recruiting and training new employees for our on-airport heavy MROs, which has been assisted by awards of over $2 million in state and federal training grants this year. We also expect to commence operations at our on-airport heavy MRO facility in Millington, Tennessee in the third quarter and anticipate this facility to be a positive contributor in the latter half of 2024 and beyond. In our component MROs, we're winning new contracts that are generating recurring and predictable revenue, utilizing existing facility capacity to significantly grow these business units. Next, I'd like to provide an update on our engineered solutions business, beginning with AeroWare. In the first quarter, we continued our go-to-market efforts, and all five of the written proposals we made remain outstanding and under consideration since we reported these in March. We continue engagement with these customers, and notably, we've had incrementally positive discussions with several as it relates to the safety enhancements that AirAware provides. Across the airline system, the pandemic led to early retirements of commercial pilots, and experience levels have decreased as new pilots are brought online. AirAware can enhance safety under these circumstances and has been a focus area with potential launch customers beyond the ROI associated with decreased diversions and ground stops. This has led some discussions to expand well beyond the original scope. All of the proposals remain under review, but we consider this enhanced focus on the safety profile of the airwear system to be a meaningfully positive note to our overall market acceptance of this product. Besides the existing proposals we've made, we're engaged with three new operators who have expressed a requirement for their 737s. As word spreads throughout the industry, there is also interest in other aircraft models, including the A320, widebodies, and regional aircraft. Concurrently with our go-to-market strategy, in April we successfully demonstrated our airware ground and flight training program to the FAA, which included classroom and flight training of six airline and four FAA pilots. Once our airware training program is published by the FAA, it will be the first and only FAA-validated training program covering operation of a 737 incorporating an enhanced flight vision system. Although FAA validation of this training program was not a requirement of our STC, it will assist in the adoption process for airlines that install airware in their fleets. Besides airware, we've increased our marketing efforts for AirSafe, our STC product covering fuel tank flammability. Operators that do not have an existing system to prevent fuel tank explosions must provide a means to mitigate a potential electrical short in the wiring of an aircraft's fuel quantity indication system from causing a catastrophe. Installation of AirSafe complies with this requirement. with regulatory compliance deadlines for different aircraft types running through 2026. We expect increasing sales of AirSafe throughout the balance of this year and into 2026, with sustainment sales lasting the life of a given airframe. AirSafe is approved for the Boeing 727, 737, 757, 767, and 777s and the Airbus A320 family of aircraft. In closing, We're off to a good start in 2024 and end market demand remains strong. Our team is working hard to maximize the ROI on feedstock we've acquired, and we continue to evaluate additional opportunities amid a challenging supplier environment. Meanwhile, we're working diligently to advance conversations with potential customers for our engineered solutions products. I want to thank our dedicated employees for their hard work and our investors for their continued support. We look forward to updating you on our progress. Now I'll turn the call over to Martin for a closer look at the numbers.
spk03: Martin? Thanks, Nick. First quarter revenue was $90.5 million, which included $38.6 million of flight equipment sales comprising of one aircraft and four engines. Our revenue in the first quarter of 2023 was $78.3 million and included $27.7 million of flight equipment sales consisting of two aircraft and one engine. Excluding flight equipment, the company continues to demonstrate underlying growth as our base revenue increased to $51.9 million from $50.6 million in the prior year. As we have pointed out in the past, flight equipment sales fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter, and we believe monitoring our progress based on asset purchases and sales over the long term is more appropriate. First quarter gross margin was 31.8% compared to 31.2% in the first quarter of 2023, largely due to the sales mix in the first quarter, which included additional higher margin flight equipment sales. Selling general administrative expenses were $24.1 million in the first quarter of 2024, which included $800,000 of non-cash equity-based compensation expenses. Selling general administrative expenses were 25.2 million in the first quarter of 2023, and included 2.7 million of non-cash equity-based compensation expenses. First quarter 2024 income from operations was 4.7 million, while loss from operations was 800,000 in the first quarter of 2023. Net income was 6.3 million in the first quarter, compared to 5,000 in the first quarter of 2023. Adjusted for non-cash equity-based compensation, mark-to-market adjustment to the private warrant liability, and facility relocation costs, first quarter adjusted net income was $5.5 million, while adjusted net income was $3.3 million in the first quarter of 2023. First quarter diluted earnings per share was $0.12 compared to zero earnings in the first quarter of 2023. Excluding the adjustments mentioned, First quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share was 11 cents compared to 7 cents for the first quarter of 2023. Our adjusted EBITDA was 9 million in the first quarter of 2024 compared to 5 million in the prior year. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was primarily due to the increase in flight equipment sales. Cash used in operating activities was 21.5 million, primarily as a result of cash deployed to increase inventory availability. As we look to the balance of the year, we expect to see continued demand in our tech ops segment driven by a healthy commercial backdrop and several contract wins that will allow us to benefit from our available capacity. We also remain focused on monetizing the inventory we have on hand from a stronger feedstock environment in 2023. While the current supply side for feedstock remains challenged, we have a healthy pipeline of deals recently completed or in process to drive volume through 2024 and into early 2025. We continue to make progress on our go-to-market with AirAware and anticipate AirSafe will be supportive to our results as the year progresses. With that, operator, we are ready to take questions.
spk01: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speaker phone, please pick up the handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. The first question comes from Gautam Khanna from TD Cowan. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hi, good afternoon, guys. Good afternoon, Gautam. Hey, I had a couple questions. First, I was wondering if you could comment on whether you see any used equipment monetizations in the second quarter. and, you know, what your visibility is for that in general for the remainder of the year. And if you could just update us on, like, the 757s in particular as part of the answer.
spk04: We have no pending sales or transactions involving the 757s for the second quarter. And as far as other equipment sales, I mean, we are selling other equipment We are selling engines. I mean, that's typical.
spk03: Yeah, Gotham. We're seeing a very supportive overall market. We are definitely already in negotiations for several engine sales that we've acquired overall in the overall portfolio. So we expect to see continued growth in whole asset opportunities in Q2. And again, we're also working on opportunities in Q3 and Q4. We're also starting to monetize inventory through the USM line. So we saw some modest increases in the USM sales in Q1. and we expect that to continue through Q2 and then start getting even better through the latter part of the year.
spk06: Okay, that's helpful. And just curious on the AeroWare product and the customer consideration of it, is it like, you know, you'd worked with the hoped-for launch customer, you know, while it was being developed. What do you think is sort of the hesitation on the side of customers pulling the trigger and maybe – Do you think it's a function of price? Is it a function of ability to train? What is sort of the sticking point?
spk04: Well, I wouldn't characterize... I don't think we have a sticking point. I just think it's a process. It's very complicated. It involves multiple facets of the airline from pilot training, FAA, finance, operations, planning... engineering, and if you look across the industry today, the things that are going on are very distracting to pretty much everybody we're talking to, certainly all the domestic airlines that we're talking to, which on the one hand is a little frustrating, but on the other, I think that the safety aspect of our system could be a catalyst to to get a number of these domestic airlines that are focused on things that they can do to improve safety to accelerate the process of organizing all their people together at the same time to take advantage of a system that will actually enhance their safety and potentially avoid some of the issues that airlines are having today.
spk06: Have your pricing expectations for the product changed? Just given what you've learned over the last, you know, several months, or do you still think it's going to confer the level of unit price and gross margins you guys have spoke about in the past?
spk04: So, you know, we previously, two and a half years ago, we previously stated that our list price for our system was about 700, a total of about $770,000. That included our portion, which was about $300,000, and Elbit's, which is about $370,000. Our list price today is $1,495,000, I think. And obviously, that's for both Elbit's portion or Elbit Universal's portion and AirSail's portion. Now, obviously, we feel that If we get a launch order and we get a multiple aircraft order, we can discount that price. So we've got room there. As I've mentioned previously, our cost in the system is still in line with our original expectations. So we're optimistic that we can deliver this product at a price that the airlines will find attractive. And we don't think there's a competitive system out there that's, A, they're available today that does what our system does, and when they become available, we believe they're going to be much higher priced than the system we have.
spk06: Okay. That's helpful. I appreciate it. I'll get back in the queue. Thank you.
spk04: Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Gotham.
spk01: The next question comes from Ken Herbert from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk08: Yeah. Hey, good afternoon, Nick and Martin. Afternoon. Hey, Nick. Maybe just wanted to first start on errorware. You've indicated that you're waiting for some of the manuals and the training documentation to be published by the FAA. Do you have any update on timing on that, or can you give us any more expectations around sort of how that maybe could play out over the next few months?
spk04: Yeah, I actually think that's very – It's a very shortened process. So we finished the demonstration, which included, again, ground school training for 10 pilots, and then flight training. We were gonna do, that's five sets of crews. I think we ended up doing four, and then they were satisfied that we passed. So the process is the FAA reviews that whole, our flight training manuals, the whole process, the ground school training, and they recommend basically, it's called validation, they recommend validation of our system. And verbally we've been told our system meets the requirements and they're gonna set it for publication. I don't know if it's been published yet, and I'm not exactly sure where it gets published, but it gets published Then there's a comment period for anybody who wants to make a comment about the publication of the validation of our system, and then it just automatically becomes validated. So I think that will likely occur within the next 30 days.
spk08: Great. And then do you see, beyond that, do you see any other sort of significant roadblocks to a potential initial order, or is there anything else that the airlines could be waiting for?
spk04: I don't think the airlines waited for that. That was something we always told them that we were going to work on. Larger airlines could have done that on their own. We just made it easier for them. Smaller airlines, it's more difficult. That's actually why we did it, spend the money to do it. So impediments to getting this system in across the board, everyone we're talking to is How are we gonna implement it into our simulators and how long is that gonna take? Okay, we've got your FAA validated flight training program subject to publication. Lots of questions across a number of airlines on the safety aspect of the system. And again, I think that that's a little bit being, the catalyst here is what's just going on in the industry and the heightened amount of attention the industry is getting from things candidly that happen every day and have been happening every day for a long time. They're just getting a heightened level of security due to a few events. So everybody's focused on that. We've had potential customers, one of the three that I mentioned earlier, and new customers actually came to us because they heard about the system and they're interested in the safety aspect. So I don't think there's any impediments to moving forward other than the process of getting it installed in the system, getting it installed in their simulators and integrating it into their flight manuals, flight training manuals, and figuring out when and how long it's going to take for the system to get up and running. Price has not been an issue in our discussions at this point.
spk08: Okay, great and very helpful. And I guess that was just my final question. With what looks like almost basically a doubling in your list price, so to speak, at that higher price, how much of that drops down to your gross margins and how much of that reflects just maybe higher costs than you envisioned when you first started to talk about this to bring the system to market?
spk04: Our customers would love to know that information. So I'm sorry, Ken, I can't answer that.
spk08: All right, Nick. Appreciate that. All right, thanks. I'll get back in the queue. You're welcome.
spk01: The next question comes from Bert Subin from Stiefel. Please go ahead.
spk02: Hey, good afternoon. Appreciate the questions. Hey, Bert. Hey, Nick. Maybe just to start out, you know, I guess if we go back three months, you guys sort of stopped providing guidance, right? it seems like you're sort of off to a good start here in 24, and you're acquiring feedstock, maybe a little less than you'd like, but you're acquiring it, and it sounds like you're starting to get a handle on sort of monetizing a good portion of the inventory outside of the 757s. So with that in mind, I guess, would you agree that maybe relative to three months ago, your visibility is improving? And is there anything in terms of forward-thinking commentary you can provide about how to think about the rest of the year?
spk03: I think our... Definitely, it's overall improving. We feel strong on the inventory position that we have. We have $350 million of inventory. We have another $50 million of feedstock. So that definitely is giving us some support on kind of the forward projections. We still have the variability and timing of flight equipment sales and whole assets between whole assets, USM, or leasing. So we're still trying to kind of have a better grasp on that kind of overall. We're also very optimistic in what we're seeing in the tech ops side. of the business. We have a lot of capacity that we're starting to utilize at our component MROs, our aerostructures, landing gear facilities. We're getting new contracts that are starting to give us more of a backlog of work. Once that becomes more established, we'll have a greater visibility into that overall unit. We have initiatives to increase our heavy MROs by adding additional labor and also reconfiguring some of the facilities to have more assets flow through those facilities. We feel really good on the overall dynamics. I think this year we're starting to capture all of that and get that better visibility. So we expect to definitely have improvements. As far as providing guidance, we probably won't return to that until the business kind of grows. We see more establishment in some of these new aspects. And frankly, whole assets becomes a smaller part of the overall business.
spk02: Got it. Okay. On the, I guess, the other piece of that inventory that the freighter side, you know, Transdime posted the earnings call yesterday and called out sort of the weakness in freighters as a result of what they're seeing in belly capacity. How does that make you think about those assets? Is it still just sort of a wait and monetize those as cargo rebounds? Or have you started to think about other alternatives?
spk04: So once we made the investment in the airframes to convert them to freighter and basically take them, do heavy checks and landing gear, et cetera, there really is no better option for those airframes at that point than to wait it out and put them in the freighter market. Now, to mitigate the delay associated with when the freighter market returns, and again, 757 is a niche freighter, we are looking at placing the engines off those airplanes, which is in very, very high demand, putting those engines on lease with different carriers. The risk that we face with that is we put the engines on lease, and then for whatever reason we can't get them back in the time that we need, then it would impair our ability to put the aircraft out. So we're doing a little bit of a balancing act. Because we have seven airplanes that will be available this year, we feel we can take that risk with some of the later deliveries until we see we get, let's say we get three or four delivered, then if we have aircraft engines on lease, we should have sufficient time to pull them back to accommodate any future requirements.
spk03: And if I could add, what we're seeing right now and kind of some of the inquiries that we're receiving, market information that we have providing estimated values on the 757, we have a good book value position on those assets. And definitely, at this point, we can afford to wait for the highest use or the highest monetization strategy, which we deploy those as passenger freighter assets into the cargo market, either through lease or through sale.
spk07: Got it.
spk02: Okay. I've got one final and then just a clarification. But I guess for my last question here, Nick, just as you think over time, you know, you've been in this business a long time and you've seen a lot of different cycles and it seems like right now the aftermarket cycle is really looking favorable and it's sort of a consensus expectation that's extending out. As you think about that in the context of your USM business, that's maybe not, you know, performed as well just broadly across the industry because it's tough to get feedstock and that feedstock gets priced at a higher rate. Where do you think we are in the USM cycle? Do you think that is counter-cyclical and gets better as aftermarket starts to weaken because of retirement. So what do you expect out of that business over the next few years?
spk04: I think the USM availability will continue to be constrained because we're seeing so few aircraft today, things that, you know, like what do we want? A320s, 737s. We're not seeing any 767s reaching the retirement age where they're being parted out. We have acquired some 747s for their engine value, if that's wide-body, and that is primarily those engines will feed 767 freighters and passenger aircraft. But we're not seeing, you know, unless an airline is retiring a fleet of aircraft, like as an example, we're buying four 747s now. We closed on the first one. I don't expect to see any significant... improvement in the availability of aircraft that will eventually become USM parts unless, and I've said this multiple times over the last several quarters, unless the flight equipment is so run down that you need to do everything to it. Landing gear overhaul, AP overhaul, airframe overhaul, engine overhaul, and then what we're finding is we're buying an aircraft with Multiple of those problems are just an airframe or just an engine that needs to be fixed. What we're doing with that is because we're buying in volume all of these things and because of our ability to extract value in multiple ways, we cobble together engines and aircraft using the best pieces from the feedstock that we acquire. So that's our advantage, and that's why we're able to continue to buy in a very, you know, in a very, very competitive market. Candidly, when we, it's by the way, and it's not that we're not bidding. We're bidding. But we're very careful on our bidding. I think we bid on, I think we bid on over $500 million worth of feedstock. in the last quarter. And we closed on 15 million of it, roughly. Under 3% win rate. Typically our win rate is about 10%. So that tells you how competitive the market is. Just because it's competitive doesn't mean that the people who are winning those deals are gonna make sense out of it. If you're buying it because you need the material, you're an engine shop, or you're an airline and you're keeping a piece of flight equipment, Okay, that's different. You're not buying that for resale. You're buying that for your own consumption. But if you're buying it for resale and you don't have the ability to extract value in multiple ways, I think you're severely challenged on acquiring feedstock. So it's a complicated answer to your question, which is how do I foresee the feedstock market and the USM market in the coming years? What I foresee is it will continue to be challenged for people who can't extract the kind of value out of it we can. It'll be diminished from normal because it's an over-competitive market. I don't even think it's a rational market. I think it's irrationally over-competitive. What's going to change? When the new airplanes catch up and the A320 engine problems are solved and more of the new aircraft will get delivered, this isn't new information. I've said this multiple times before. We will see a bow wave of flight equipment, our kind of stuff, come into being, and we'll be positioned to pounce on that and have the infrastructure to, again, figure out how to extract value out of all the pieces. And so I think the best is coming yet for us, that whatever we're seeing today and is growing is going to be dramatically better when the when the new aircraft problems are solved.
spk02: Thanks, Nick. And just the clarification on some of your earlier airware comments, have you started the process for approval with international regulators and for the A320?
spk04: Not yet on the A320, but yes on the international regulators in multiple jurisdictions.
spk09: Thank you.
spk04: You're welcome.
spk01: The next question comes from Michael Ciamoli from Truist. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hey, good evening, guys. Nice quarter. Thanks for taking the question here. Nick, you just said I think you bid on $500 million in the first quarter. How's it looking quarter to date? I mean, are you still as active?
spk04: Well, you know, we're still – yes, we are still active on looking at everything and – And I would tell you that our hit rate is no better.
spk07: Okay. How's the documentation issue? I know that came up last quarter, and even at the MRO America show, a lot of guys were saying you don't even much buy the equipment. You really are paying for the accurate documentation. So what's sort of the update there?
spk04: It's the same. You know, we continue to assess documents. the records condition of pretty much everything we look at and in almost every case the records that we see have deficiencies and you know we have we have developed an AI tool that we've been working on for a year where we can take a records package now and what would normally take us a week to do in about four hours we can take an engine we can run it through our our our system and And in four hours, we can get a full summary of everything we need to know about that engine. And what does that do for us? One, it allows the limited amount of resources that are available to review records to instead of assemble the records and figure out what the condition of the records are and what's missing and take a week to do that, a computer could do it in four hours or AI does it in four hours, spits out the report that would otherwise take one of our people a week to do, And that person can now focus on solving the problems that exist immediately rather than spending a week just to understand what the problems are. So that's a significant investment we made to facilitate the rapid review of records and to help solve some of these records issues. They exist. They're always going to exist. And the key is, how quickly can you get through them, and can you get your people focused on fixing them?
spk03: Got it. And, Mike, as we noted in the meeting, if anything, that's a competitive advantage that we have, that we have the expertise, we have the records team that can actually go through this material and make sense of it. Other competitors might just move away from it, but we can work with counterparties to clean up those records and come through it. And if we can't, we adjust the pricing fairly. So if we do not have the records, we do not pay for that material. And subsequently, we continue to work on it to see if we can fill in the gaps and sell that material. So, if anything, that is a competitive advantage. And in this market where feedstock is more limited, having that ability is absolutely something that we are proud of and we're making investments to continue to support.
spk07: Got it. That's helpful. And then... I don't know if this is Nick or Martin, and I don't know how much intel you want to give us here, but out of the inventory, the $350 million is significantly higher than it's been, and you've got $50 million of feedstock added to that. Can you give us any color in terms of how much is readily available for sale right now versus something like the 757s? Can you even slice it in terms of Do you have X amount of value or percentage in whole assets versus more sort of USM piece parts or components? And then I guess would just, I mean, an update on how many air aware kits you have and kind of how much of that's reflected in the inventory.
spk03: So overall from a, let me, let me try to go through all the overall points. Uh, air safe kits, we have 150 kits overall. Um, Can't provide you an overall exact inventory value for that for competitive reasons, but there are 150 kits in that overall number. 757s, we've noted we have nine assets that are better, well, sorry, we have seven assets, one that's ready and another six that are in process. Those inventory costs are there. That's a mixture of the airframe value and the engine value. I can't give you those specific amounts either for competitive reasons, As we've given out the numbers, so giving you a dollar value would merely note what our net book value is there. But I think we made the comment earlier, we feel confident in the position that we have in the book value based on what we're seeing in the market that we can monetize those assets going forward. As far as a breakdown of overall inventory, as a reminder, our whole assets are pretty much assets that are being evaluated to either be monetized through USM, whole asset opportunities, or leasing. But I can't tell you about three-quarters of that inventory value is engine material that's readily available. We have a variety of engines, CSM56, CS680s, PWs, RB211s. The engine material is not readily available. V2500. No, overall engines, flight equipment material overall. A lot of that is still with us. Yeah, yeah, of material. That is being processed. And as Nick was noting, some of that is being processed through the USM channel. In engines, we're definitely seeing a slowdown in our ability to monetize that, which is a good sign. That means that there's a lot of demand for that material, which is why it's taking longer for us to get that through the system overall. But we also have bought, with the amount of feedstock that we bought last year, inventory to replenish our inventory portfolio. So we already have opportunities of various engine types to add those into the leasing portfolio. We're starting to deploy those out. We've added a couple already in the current quarter. We have more that are available and we're starting to see demand. We have about 10 additional engines that are in repair that will come into the leasing portfolio. So what I expect to see in the remainder of the year is you're going to see growth in our engine leasing portfolio as we start monetizing some of those assets. From a USM perspective, we're also going to be monetizing at a faster rate. We started seeing a pickup during March. We expect the second quarter to be comparable to Q1 and then just start seeing a stronger growth in the second half of the year.
spk07: Got it. That's helpful. Last one for me. I know you don't want to disclose the margins on AeroWare with the updated pricing, but I know you've been building these kits for quite some time. I mean, assuming we get an order, is it realistic to think that the drop-through is significantly better on these first 150 kits? I mean, it seems like they're ready to go. You just have to have the labor for the install. Should we get maybe a disproportionate margin benefit when these first ones go out the door?
spk04: I think we'll get a better margin profile for the ones that are made after the first month because I don't think we did it. I'm very happy with our cost, by the way, but I think that it can be done more efficiently than we did it in-house. Got it. I'm not concerned about the gross margin that we can make off of the sale of the kits. Again, we're not going to reveal drop-through. At some point, you start seeing Airware sales, we'll talk about, you know, how many airware sales did we make? And I guess, yeah, I guess we'll talk about, we'll disclose, you know, gross dollars. And margins you're probably not going to see. I think you'll see the margin in our tech upside. Maybe you'll see the dollar margin. But, you know, that's really tough to start disclosing that type of level. Yeah. You know, as we're negotiating with the industry.
spk07: Understandable. All right. Perfect. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
spk01: Okay. And we have a follow-up question from Ken Herbert. Please go ahead.
spk08: Yeah. Hey, Martin. I maybe just wanted to follow up on a comment you made earlier in the call. You know, we're sort of five to six weeks here into the second quarter. I can appreciate you don't want to give any sort of full year guidance, but it sounds like you were just commenting the second quarter EBITDA I wasn't clear if that was for the company or a particular segment, but second quarter EBITDA looks very similar to first quarter EBITDA. Did I get that correctly with maybe a more pronounced step up in the second half over the first half?
spk03: No, that comment was specifically to USM sales overall. We're seeing USM activity improving. Probably Q2 will be similar to Q1 activities, and then as more material flows through, specifically engine material, we'll see an acceleration of that
spk08: through the remainder of the year okay uh but are you any any sort of high-level views on on ebitda on the second quarter and sort of maybe expectations relative to first quarter or just anything you can help with as we think about sort of the setup here near term yeah i think we won't provide any specific financial uh guidance overall what we can say is we are seeing good opportunities in all sides of the business
spk03: We're starting to see air safe sales that Nick mentioned in his remarks, so we're starting to see that contribution flow through the P&L. We're seeing the pickup in our component MROs that we've talked about with some of the new contract sales, so we're expecting improvements there. And then from the asset management side, we've already have done some deals related to engines, so we expect whole asset sales in the second quarter. and USM, as I noted, being overall. And you will start seeing some increase in leasing, but that also will be a stronger acceleration starting in Q3.
spk09: Perfect. Thanks, Martin.
spk01: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Nick Finazzo, CEO. Please go ahead.
spk04: You know, I want to thank Gotham, Ken, Bert, and Michael for the good questions because it really does help our investors better understand our business. So thank you, guys. For everyone else, we appreciate you listening to our call today and for your interest in AirCell. And I hope everyone has a good evening. Good night.
spk01: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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