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spk01: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Blade Air Mobility Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Release Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and expressions will file at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to send a conference call over to Mr. Ravi Jani, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.
spk06: Thanks and good morning. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Blade Air Mobility conference call and webcast for the quarter end of December 31st, 2022. We appreciate everyone joining us today. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you of the company's forward-looking statement in safe harbor language. Statements made on this conference call that are not historical facts, including statements about future time periods, may be deemed to constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual future results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. We refer you to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC, for a more detailed discussion of the risk factors that could cause these differences. Any forward-looking statements provided during this conference call are made only as of the date of this call. As stated in our SEC filing, Blades disclaims any intent or obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements except as required by law. During today's call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe may be useful in evaluating our financial performance. A reconciliation of the most directly comparable consolidated GAAP financial measures to those non-GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings release, and with respect to our segment non-GAAP measures in our annual report on Form 10-K. Our press release, investor presentation, and our Form 10-K will be available on our website. These non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or as substitute for financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Hosting today's call are Rob Wiesenthal, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Blade, and Will Habern, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Rob Wiesenthal. Rob? Thank you, Robbie.
spk09: Good morning, everyone. I'd like to thank you for your interest in Blade and welcome you to our earnings call for the fourth quarter ended December 31st, 2022. Our financial performance in the fourth quarter was once again well ahead of our expectations. Revenue in the December quarter increased 55% to $38.1 million versus $24.6 million in the comparable 2021 period. For the full year 2022, revenue increased 118% to a record 146.1 million compared to 67.2 million in 2021. Importantly, 2022 was a record year for flight profit, while corporate expenses continued to significantly decline as a percentage of revenues versus the prior year. These are not only the key building blocks that will drive us to profitability and cash generation, but also highlight the leverage provided by our shared services platform. Our laser focus on the pursuit of profitable revenue growth should enable improvement on both of these metrics. Turning to some highlights from the quarter, short distance delivered another quarter of impressive growth, driven by our acquisitions in Europe and Canada, and the continued ramp of Blade Airport, which flies travelers between Manhattan and New York area airports in just five minutes. Q4 was our best quarter yet for Blade Airport, both in terms of passengers and revenue. I'm also pleased with the progress we have made in integrating our European acquisitions and look forward to rolling out the Blade brand across all key European markets ahead of this summer's peak season. Metamobility Oregon Transport delivered another fantastic quarter with growth driven by new customer wins, continued expansion with existing customers, and strong end market trends. Today, we're the largest dedicated air transporter of human organs for transplant in the country. And in February, we rolled out a new television and online video corporate awareness campaign for our metamobility business titled Saving Lives Every Day, highlighting the important role we play supporting transplant centers and organ procurement organizations in improving patient outcomes. All of this hard work led to another quarter of significant growth in flight profit, which increased 38% versus the prior year period, while adjusted corporate expenses as a percentage of revenue declined to 35% in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus 40% in the prior year period. Again, demonstrating our strength across key metrics that will bring us to profitability. In addition to our financial success, we continue to make progress in other strategic initiatives. In January, institutional investor Redbird Capital Partners announced that it's increased its ownership position in Blade to over 5%. Redbird's founder, Jerry Cardinale, and I have been working together for over two decades, and he has been an investor in our company since 2016. Blade's core competencies in last mile air mobility, jet charter, and organ transplant flights overlap well with Redbird's existing aviation portfolio, which we hope to leverage to support our continued growth across both passenger and medical businesses. Additionally, Redbird's global sports and media properties provide a natural complement to Blade's urban air mobility solutions for fans attending large sports and entertainment events. This includes AC Milan Football Club, which fits nicely within our European footprint. Lastly, both Redbird and Blade are leading supporters of aviation's transition towards electric vertical aircraft or EVA technology. To that end, in February, we were proud to be part of an historic moment for the EVA industry as we demonstrated the first pilot in EVA in flight in the greater New York City area in partnership with Beta Technologies. At the demonstration, government officials, media, investors, and a local community were all able to witness the Aaliyah 250 aircraft with blade livery take flight, powered by an all-electric propulsion system. The crowd was also able to experience the dramatic noise reduction offered by the Aaliyah with a live comparison against the conventional helicopter in flight, highlighting the aircraft's sound profile that is one-tenth the decibel level of its conventional counterpart. We thank our partners at Beta for allowing us to showcase this incredible technology to our home market in New York City as part of our effort to bring safe, quiet, and sustainable air transportation to commuter and commercial customers alike. In the meantime, we remain focused on providing best-in-class air mobility solutions for all our flyers around the world using conventional aircraft, always improving the experience, terminal infrastructure, and technology that will fortify our transition to EVA while continuing to scale our passenger business towards profitability and free cash flow. Given our tremendous progress in 2022, it is clear that the significant investments we've made in our people, technology, and products have enabled us to successfully navigate an unprecedented macro environment and further build on our strengths as a company. Across both our passenger and medical businesses, our team has worked tirelessly to deliver our flyers and organ transportation customers the best service in the industry, the greatest level of availability and flexibility, and fair prices. Not an easy feat. However, we are seeing the results of these efforts in our continued competitive posture, increased market share, and continued strong financial performance. With that, I'll turn the call over to Will.
spk08: Thank you, Rob. Before diving into the details from the quarter, I just wanted to highlight a remarkable year of growth across all business lines. In the full year 2022, flight profit grew by 79%, driven by revenue and flight profit growth across both our passenger and medical segments. With that, I'll walk through a few highlights from our business lines during this fourth quarter. In short distance, revenues were up 51% to $9.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus $6.3 million in the comparable 2021 period. Growth was driven by our acquisition of Blade Europe, which closed on September 1st, 2022, our acquisition of Helijet's Passenger Routes in Vancouver, which closed on December 1st, 2021, and growth in our Blade Airport service, which relaunched in June 2021. A few quick highlights from specific short distance products. In our New York airport business, we saw another quarter of sequential passenger growth and revenue per seat growth in Q4 2022. We continue to see strong uptake from the introduction of enhanced cancellation and flexibility options for our flyers. Though Q1 is seasonally slower than Q4, we are encouraged that quarter-to-date Q1 2023 airport revenues and seats are running at approximately double comparable Q1 2022 levels. In the off-season for our New York commuter products, we saw slightly lower demand in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus the same quarter last year as flyers returned to pre-COVID travel patterns. Canada performance continued to improve and was profitable in Q4 2022 after reaching break-even during Q3 2022. We remain upbeat on the opportunity to expand our business in Canada following the country's slower reemergence from the pandemic, and we look forward to rolling out new products and deploying our technology to improve customer acquisition, operational flexibility, and flyer experience. Europe performance in the quarter was impacted by an unseasonably warm winter on the continent, which weighed on seasonal sea demand. This, coupled with poor flying conditions in the Alps, resulted in additional flight cancellations and lower volumes versus the record 2021-2022 ski season. As a reminder, Q4 is seasonally the lowest volume quarter for Europe. We're already seeing improvement thus far in Q1, which is the second lowest volume quarter in Europe from a seasonality perspective. The softer ski season in Europe and a return to pre-COVID level off-season demand for our New York commuter products, more than offset growth in Canada and Blade Airport, resulting in a 5% year-over-year decline in pro forma organic revenue for short distance in the fourth quarter of 2022. This includes results from acquisitions in both periods and adjusts for currency translation. The performance in short distance this quarter and what is seasonally a low revenue quarter should not eclipse the fact that 2022 was a record revenue year for the short distance business with 70% revenue growth for the full year versus the prior year period. Turning now to Metamobility Oregon Transport. Revenue increased 120% to $21.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus $9.8 million in the comparable 2021 period. Revenue increased 7% sequentially in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus the third quarter of 2022. I would note that given our acquisition of Trinity Air Medical was completed in September of last year, all of the growth this quarter was organic, with more than half of the quarter's growth driven by the addition of new customers and the remainder driven by growth with existing clients in addition to strong overall market growth. And yet another, revenue declined by 17% to $7.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus $8.5 million in the prior year period. Although average price per jet charter increased in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus the prior year, the increase was offset by a decline in volume of charter flights, as the prior year fourth quarter benefited from unprecedented strong demand driven by the emergence of the COVID-19 Omicron variant. Based on industry data and what we're seeing in the first quarter of 2023, quarter to date, we expect continued year-over-year declines in jet charter volume, and we do see pricing declining across the board. As a reminder, though jet charter is not core to our strategy, the additional flight volumes generated by this business line provide a significant aircraft sourcing benefit for our medical business and generate incremental flight margin dollars with very limited fixed costs. Given the flexibility of our SLA model, we expect to continue achieving consistent flight margin in jet and other around the 10% range, irrespective of volume and pricing. Turning to flight profit, flight profit increased 38% to $5.4 million in the current quarter versus $3.9 million in the prior year period. White profit excludes non-cash operator revenue guarantee amortization related to our European acquisitions, which was expensed to cost of revenue in the quarter. This unique non-cash item only impacts 2022 due to the timing of our acquisition close for Europe on September 1st and the timing of our negotiated contract with our European operator partners, which began on January 1st, 2023. Flight margin percentage of 14.3% declined in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus 16% in the prior year period as expected. Key drivers of the year-over-year decline include lower utilization in our seasonal by-the-seat jet service between New York and South Florida, and faster-than-expected growth in our metamobility organ transport business, which saw revenues increase 120% year-over-year and now represents 57% of total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus 40% in the prior year period. Recall that metamobility organ transport tends to have lower flight margin versus our historical company average, but benefits from multi-year customer contracts, no utilization risk, limited marketing costs, and demand that is uncorrelated with the overall economic environment. In Blade Airport, though we're encouraged by the continued revenue and employer growth, we continue to operate below breakeven in the fourth quarter of 2022. Absent the Blade Airport ramp up, we estimate that flight margin would have been approximately 150 basis points higher in the fourth quarter. Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2023, We expect both revenue and flight margin to be similar to or slightly above our fourth quarter 2022 levels. From a seasonality perspective, we continue to expect Q1 and Q4 to remain the lowest flight margin quarters of the year, with Q1 slightly better, while our third quarter should have the highest flight margin, driven primarily by mixed shift towards higher margin seasonal businesses in New York and Europe during Q3 and part of Q2. Let's turn now to corporate expenses, which include software development, general and administrative, and selling and marketing expenses. On a reported basis, it's worth noting that this quarter had several unique items, in particular, an earn-out payable to the Trinity management team for significantly exceeding the EBITDA target contemplated at the time of our acquisition. While we view this earn-out as a purchase price adjustment, generally accepted accounting principles require us to expense this payment to G&A. When adjusting for the earn-out and other non-cash or non-recurring items, we're pleased that our adjusted corporate expenses or percentage of revenue declined to 35% of revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus 40% in the prior year period. Like every company operating in this environment, we continue to look for opportunities to optimize our cost structure to drive further operating expense leverage, including making tough decisions where necessary. As we look to the first quarter of 2023, we expect total adjusted corporate expense to be $1 to $2 million higher than the fourth quarter of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2022 was a loss of $8 million compared to a loss of $5.9 million in the prior year period, but improved as a percentage of revenues to negative 21% in the fourth quarter from negative 24% in the prior year period. The increased loss versus the prior year period is primarily attributable to additional corporate expenses related to Blade's recent growth and expected future growth, including marketing and software development. In addition to Blade Europe, where this quarter felt the full burden of SG&A related to our acquisitions, despite limited revenue and flight profit, which does not cover Europe's SG&A in the seasonally weakest fourth quarter. With respect to our balance sheet, we continue to have zero debt and approximately $195 million in cash and short-term securities at the end of fourth quarter of 2022. We remain confident in our tangible and forthcoming path to profitability, and as a result, we expect a significant majority of our remaining cash will be available for tactical acquisitions that can expand the breadth of air mobility offerings and accelerate Blade's trajectory to free cash flow generation. To that end, I wanted to direct your attention to the new segment disclosure in our investor presentation, which will also be included in our 10-K that will be filed with the SEC. You will notice from the presentation that we have broken out segment revenue, flight profit, and adjusted EBITDA metrics for both our passenger and medical businesses, as well as our unallocated corporate expenses for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022, and the prior year. We hope that this added level of disclosure, which we plan to continue and enhance in the future, will help to shine light on growth to strong profitability of our metamobility organ transport business, in addition to the historical profitability and attractive unit economics of our passenger business. To give some additional context, total medical segment adjusted EBITDA was positive 5.1 million in the full year of 2022 versus 1.1 million in the prior year period. The significant year-over-year improvement is a result of the tremendous work the Trinity team did to bring our metamobility organ transport solutions to more customers and patients. And our passenger segment, which includes both our short distance and jet and other business lines, segment adjusted EBITDA was negative 6.4 million in the full year 2022 versus positive 1.3 million in the prior year period. There are three principal drivers of the year-over-year change in passenger segment adjusted EBITDA that are worth calling to your attention. First is the relaunch of Blade Airport, which began in June 2021, and where we continue to operate below brief gates on a flight margin basis, in addition to incurring additional selling and marketing costs. As mentioned previously, the timing of the closing of our European acquisitions resulted in a level of slight profit that was insufficient to cover the fixed cost of the business during the months we owned them during calendar year 2022. We continue to expect the business to be accretive to our financials in the first full year after acquisition, and thus, this will result in a year-over-year tailwind in 2023. Lastly, our Vancouver business was not profitable on a full-year basis in 2022 due to the impact of Omicron, primarily during our first quarter. Note that these segment adjusted EBITDA metrics exclude unallocated corporate expenses as well as non-cash and non-recurring items. For more information on our segment cost allocation methodology, please refer to our 10-K and latest investor presentation, which will be available on the investor relations section of our website at ir.blaze.com. Before I turn it back to Rob, I wanted to briefly address the recent disruptions in the banking sector. First and foremost, Blade does not maintain an account, hold cash, or hold securities at Silicon Valley Bank or Signature Bank. Our primary depository relationship is with JPMorgan Chase and we have not identified any material exposure to Silicon Valley Bank or Signature Bank amongst our critical vendors or large customers. With that, I'll turn it back over to Rob for a few closing remarks.
spk09: Thanks, Will. Before going into Q&A, for those on the call who may be new to the Blade story, I will take a moment to talk about our growth strategy and what sets us apart from others in our industry, including those who expect to enter our industry in the future. First, we are building the ecosystem and aggregating the world's best use cases for air mobility that can be profitable today with existing aircraft technology. This disciplined strategy has served our company and our shareholders well as we have built a diverse manufacturer-agnostic portfolio of air mobility businesses where we are a market leader and possess durable competitive advantages for our proprietary technology, exclusive terminal and passenger infrastructure, favorable cost position, superior brand, and safety track record. Second, we serve resilient customers and end markets across both our passenger and medical businesses. On the passenger side, we offer flyers the opportunity to significantly reduce travel time in highly congested or geographically contested markets. For example, in our largest market of New York City, we turn two-hour drives to the airport into five-minute flights at a price that is not only accessible, but competitive versus Uber ground options. At Medivability, we are the largest dedicated air transporter of human organs for transplant in the country. A market that we believe is as recession-proof as it gets. We provide transplant centers and organ procurement organizations with unparalleled access to the right crude aircraft at the right time, at the right price, saving our customers time, and most importantly, improving patient outcomes. Our flyers and transplants to our customers value the time savings, flexibility, and our unmatched technology platform and customer service, which gives us the confidence that our business is uniquely positioned versus our competitors and will continue to thrive regardless of the broader macro environment. Third, we see significant opportunity for organic growth and a clear path to profitability from our existing business lines using conventional aircraft today. However, our business was designed from day one to allow the rapid introduction of electric vertical aircraft, or what we call EVA, once they are certified. Over time, we expect these aircraft to, one, enhance our addressable market by increasing the number of landing zones available in key markets where we operate. Two, lower the cost of urban air mobility, resulting in increased customer adoption of our services. And three, improve our margins and earnings growth outlook by reducing our average hourly flight cost. Unlike those who may choose to compete with us in an EVA world, we have existing passenger infrastructure that is exclusive to our flyers in key markets. We do not need to wait for the build-out of new landing infrastructure to begin EVA operations. Over the past few months, we've been pleased by the interest from new and prospective investors who view the significant dislocation in volatility and equity markets as a unique opportunity and who share our view that the strength of our business today and the prospects for future growth are not reflected in the current market valuation of Blade. Even with consideration for our debt-free balance sheet and nearly $200 million worth of cash on hand. While we do not control our stock price, we remain supremely focused on what we can control, which is pursuing profitable growth while aggressively managing our discretionary costs under the lens of ROI. You have my commitment that we will continue to work tirelessly in the year ahead to deliver exceptional results for all of our stakeholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Robbie for questions.
spk06: Thanks, Rob. As a reminder, we will take questions from analysts and investors on this call today. Reporters should send inquiries to me directly. Operator, we're now ready for questions.
spk01: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question, coming from the line up, Jason helps inform Appenheimer. Your line is open.
spk03: Hey, thanks. So two questions. So obviously we continue to see steady improvement in gross profit and metamobility. Rob, can you just talk philosophically, you know, do you plan to use basically the profits, incremental profits generated by metamobility to basically fund growth in short distance, namely airport? And how are you thinking about, you know, kind of tradeoff between schedule and I guess service and margin, particularly around short distance in the airports. And then I've got a follow up. Thank you.
spk04: Sure.
spk09: You know, with respect to metamobility, obviously we're quite pleased with the tremendous growth that we have there. And, you know, even when you're concerned of going forward, it still keeps us on track for improving, you know, our EBITDA position and making sure that losses are reduced this coming year. But given our cash balance, the amount of cash that's generated by MedMobility is not critical in terms of our growth plans. That can happen just with the cash in the balance sheet, not only the cash generated by medical, but obviously medical does contribute to the overall bottom line. With respect to airport, Jason, I think that right now, as we get to a busier travel season later in the year, in terms of the trends that we're seeing, i think the growth in the passenger account also with the average seat price is positive uh you know i think we're dealing with right now about a 245 average seat price despite the fact that you can fly for as low as 195 and this is because the introducing introduction of fair classes and other ads add-ons such as you know car connections just that multi-modality is really important to us So I think that, you know, the growth, which will improve utilization, the increase of average sales price, that's going to hopefully accelerate our movement to profitability, you know, on airport. With respect to schedule, you know, we are trying to be a lot more surgical in terms of our flight schedule. But that being said, we need to offer a product that when you want to go to the airport, we're there. So clearly, we wanted immediate profitability on the airport. We could fly from 4 to 7 in the afternoon to all the airports, and it'll be wildly profitable. But that's not product for the long term that may help us in the short term but if we want to be competitive and what we know is the largest short distance urban air mobility opportunity in the world with 28 million people going between Manhattan area airports we want to offer a product that can be completely a product that can be completely fulfilled filling to our customer base now uh flight margin uh profitability uh you know you will see during a quarter this year uh we are quite confident that this year we will see a flight margin profitable quarter it's already there in the numbers and the combination of the growth and the average sales price per seat going up and then just a quick follow-up um you did comment about
spk03: you know, kind of using cash for acquisitions. Maybe just help us understand kind of, you know, in what area you're thinking about next.
spk09: Well, look, there's a tremendous opportunity right now. There's a lot of dislocations, a lot of companies that don't have a fair amount of cash on hand. We're seeing a lot of reverse inquiries on the acquisition side. And what I can tell you is that everything needs to fit in, needs to be taxable, and also needs to leverage our shared service platform. As you've noticed, every quarter or over the course of the year, our corporate expenses and our percentage sales goes down. So we need to leverage this great shared service platform that we have to accelerate the profitability of any company we purchase. We've always committed to buying companies and assets that are profitable day one and accretive day one. We're always looking for opportunity to push more into corporate travel. That is extremely important, that connectivity between especially our airport product and the customer can only be a direct-to-consumer, but also has to be in corporations. And I think we'll be making some great headway there with the 50,000 people who live and work and recreate in Hudson Yards. Travel agents is already a big part of the business in Europe. And also corporates like JetBlue. We have a tremendous program going on with JetBlue where with every mint seat sold, they bundle it with an airport seat, in addition to significant discount for Mosaic members, in addition to True Blue members. Also, we're looking at opportunities to add what we call next flight out capability. As you know, while our medical business with respect to organ transport is growing incredibly, we've done that without the largest part of the business, which is kidneys. And that's because kidneys can actually survive out of the body for a long period of time. Hospitals tend to use neck splat out services. That is an area we're looking very seriously at and should provide incremental, very strong growth outside our core transplant businesses, which are liver, heart, and lung.
spk06: Great. I'll take the next question.
spk09: Thanks, Jason.
spk01: Thank you. And our next question coming from the line of Bill Peterson with JP Morgan. Your line is open.
spk05: Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the question. Can we dive in a little bit more on the flight margins for passenger in particular? You discussed the impact of COVID, the reintroduction of airports. On the other hand, you know, you raised prices. I believe it's like 30% for the Hamptons Airport. You have the three tiers of pricing. You said, you know, 245, so that's well above the base price. I think you also raised prices in Europe and maybe in Canada as well. So I guess looking ahead, how should we think about margins? I know you talked about seasonality, but I guess how should we think about the whole year when you get back to sort of the 20% level? Again, maybe think about that in the current context with the business of Canada and Europe. What's the right way to think about this moving forward in terms of the targets?
spk08: Sure, Bill. Will here. Thanks for the question. You know, I'll hit a couple of the different points. You know, on the seasonality side of things, just to reiterate, you know, we'll always see our best margin in Q3. We still think that is true, even pro forma for the acquisitions we've made, particularly Europe. It has that same summer strength where you're going to see slightly better margins. We have to see that in our U.S. short distance business as well. Q2 will be second best in terms of margins. And then from a flight margin perspective, Q1 and Q4 are going to continue to be lighter. And that's really driven by mixed shift to medical and jet and other, which are going to make up a larger percentage of revenues in Q1 and Q4. However, we don't think that blended overall flight margin is really the right thing to focus on, given the massive growth in medical, because it's going to be driven more by mixed shift than anything else. And as you can see from the segment reporting, Though medical does have a slightly lower average flight margin in that kind of 15% to 20% range, as we've talked about, there are fewer fixed direct costs in that business. And so it's a great contributor to our overall adjusted EBITDA. So, we're not as concerned about the blend toward a slightly lower flight margin, though Europe you'll see be closer to our average mature route flight margin for short distance around that 30% range. So, that should be a boost to overall flight margin in 2023. And then, of course, we continue to have a slight drag on flight margin from our Blade Airport product, which is still ramping up to that breakeven utilization. We talked about that being about 150 basis point drag in this quarter. So you've got a number of moving pieces, but hopefully the new segment disclosure is going to help you figure out what are the drivers and also make it clear that even though the flight margin is a little bit lower for metamobility, we think we make up for it below the line there.
spk05: Yeah, my question is really, where do you want the passenger margins to go? And look, I certainly understand your numbers show that metamobility is going faster. And that's fine. It's already got positive, so that's okay. And the second question actually is related to metamobility. I think, I don't, I don't see you said you added more hospitals organizations, but just to clarify that I think you exited third quarter of last year at 57. Where was fourth quarter? And maybe I was looking for the first quarter, trying to get a feel for how we should you know, think about the further markets for opportunities in this business, not only from more of the business coming your way and where you already have relationships, but as your hospitals and procurement organizations grow through the year.
spk08: Yeah, and so just to make sure I hit your passenger question, Bill, you know, we do still think that's going to be a 20% to 30% margin business for mature routes, and it's just really airport that's pulling that down right now. You know, Europe is already in that range, so we want to make sure you have the right number for your model there. In terms of the passenger count on metamobility, we continue to sign up new customers. We haven't onboarded anyone new to update you on right now, although you're going to continue to see that growth because the onboarding process takes some time. So you continue to expect to see sequential growth in medical during this year. It may not always be the same quarter over quarter because it is going to be lumpy depending on the size of customers. But we have a number of new customers that are in final stages of contract, but nothing to announce on this call. But we do continue to expect sequential growth each quarter.
spk05: Okay. Thanks, Bill.
spk06: Great. Thanks, Bill. Operator, we can take the next question.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question coming from the lineup, Hillary Kakenando with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
spk02: Yes, hi, thanks for your time. You just mentioned, you know, for metamobility, expect, you know, sequential growth every quarter. But could you just remind us if there's any seasonality, like noticeable seasonality for that business and how would you think about growth for the year in terms of, I know there will be sequential growth, but, you know, what type of growth for the year and any seasonality to that business?
spk08: There's really not much. Hilary, thanks for the question. There's really not much seasonality in that business. We see pretty consistent. If there is a quarter that is maybe a touch lower, it might be Q4, really just driven by vacations for doctors and things like that. But I think, you know, we won't always see the same sequential growth that we saw in this quarter, but we expect to see it consistent.
spk02: Okay. So, like, in terms of modeling, you know, Q4 touched lower, and then the remaining three quarters kind of evenly, you know, distributed in terms of growth, do you think?
spk08: Yeah, I think that's a fair way to model it.
spk02: Okay. Okay. Sounds good. And then you mentioned, you know, potentially getting into the kidney transport business, and then your presentation also – mentioned, you know, potentially getting into medical radio isotopes and critical cargo and parts delivery, could you kind of provide more color in terms of, you know, do you need to make another acquisition in order to get into these businesses? Or can you do this organically? And you know, what the timeframe would be?
spk08: Sure. So Rob touched on this. You know, the good news is we have the customers for this already and that we're serving all these transplant centers for heart, liver, lung already. We think they're very pleased with our service and we'd love to be able to serve them on the kidney side as well. We do think that that's a capability that is probably best brought on through acquisition in terms of the next flight out. So it's something that we're looking at given that we have Very significant, 120% growth that I'll remind you was all organic this quarter. We have our hands full at the moment, but we see it as a huge growth opportunity, and we think our customers would appreciate kind of the one-stop shop solution we could offer if we had that next flight out capability. So don't have any specific timing for you on that front, but it is something we're acutely focused on. And same is true with other critical cargo products. We're not really set up with the customer relationships for critical cargo, for example, for manufacturing. We do do some radio isotope work in Canada today, just cargo on flights that are already going. So there's some ton of points there. But that's probably a capability that you leverage the existing platform in terms of the operations center. So you wouldn't need to add a ton of cost, but you probably use acquisition to build those relationships.
spk02: Got it. Great. Thank you so much.
spk08: Thanks, Hillary.
spk01: Thank you. And as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star 1-1. And our next question, coming from the line of Steven Ju with Credit Suisse, your line is open.
spk04: Okay. Thank you. So, hi, Rob. I think we've talked in the past about how fragmented the metamobility sector is today. Going forward, as we're thinking about your potential regional expansion plans, should we be baking in rollouts for both Oregon and consumer transport? Does a particular region have to be attractive for both segments in order for you to be thinking about a regional expansion there? Thanks.
spk09: Sure. Thanks for the question. Two very, very different businesses. You know, right now on Passenger, we're focused on the biggest markets in the world that are as deep as possible. We always talk about New York, which is where Any company that's looking at urban air mobility is saying it's the number one market opportunity in the world. And our goal, and I think we're actually on the road to achieving that goal, is to have the biggest presence, the most amount of critical infrastructure, the strongest brand, and the largest amount of passengers flying every single day to and from all New York areas. airport serving those 28 million people who are only flying between Manhattan and those airports at a price that's competitive with Uber ground transportation. We're doing that today. On medical, because of the scale of our acquisition of Trinity and Metamobility in general, we can service on a multimodality basis, whether it be by ambulance, helicopter, or even jet across the United States. So we are not bound by geographic barriers, and there is no detriment from us operating minimum mobility in a place that does not have passenger service. And with respect to new contracts and new geographies, it does not require incremental costs. In fact, because it is so fragmented, When we look at acquisition opportunities outside, say, this kidney portion of the business, we have found that given the team that we have out with respect to sales and the infrastructure, it is a lot more cost-effective for us to go out and pitch that business, win that business on long-term contracts, and build that into our business as opposed to paying a multiple for a mom-and-pop operator that may have a few contracts here and there. So I think this kind of going at it surgically, tactically, market by market with our existing team is the highest ROI and most effective way for us to continue growing this business. Thank you.
spk01: Thank you. And as a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1. And I am showing we have a follow-up question from Bill Peterson with JP Morgan. Your line is open.
spk05: Yeah, thanks for taking the follow-up question. And again, you guys talk about seasonality, but specific to areas like where we're from home, you obviously benefited from your Hanson's route. I believe you're only flying to one airport currently there. What are the latest booking trends? And I guess, how should we think about that as we go into the summer and into the fall? given that obviously things with the pandemic you know look a lot different now relative they did though in the past few years okay thank you you're coming in and out uh can you just maybe repeat the question one more time it just is very difficult to hear you my apologies we're going to talk about your your like to and from the answer that means that benefited from It's sort of strange that you had a lot of business tied to the pandemic with people going back and forth. I'm curious on how that should look moving forward. We've been only flying to one airport now at higher price points, but just trying to get a feel for how that business should trend now that we're, I guess, largely past the pandemic.
spk09: Sure. Okay. With respect to airports, understand that we are flying both to Newark and Kennedy, not just one airport, and we're flying both on the east side and the west side. But going back to your Hanson's question, you know, during Omicron a year ago, as a courtesy to customers, we offered a very low price with passes at $2.95 to allow people who wanted to live out of the city. I think there was a fear of staying in the city and they wanted to come into the city for a short amount of time. and go back, call it home or their secondary homes, close to 100 miles away. We quickly saw this returning a lot more to a resort slash remote working environment as we did last summer, uh where fridays essentially became thursdays uh and uh you know mondays became sundays and when in fact we layered on a price increase from the previous summer of 795 to 1025 and that went right through the system no problems we didn't see a lot of uh didn't see any uh in fact any kind of decline uh you know in terms of you know that ability of people willing to take that price uh across almost most of our products So what I would say is going forward, it's kind of a little bit of a hybrid, which is good for us because whereas we used to have, you know, potentially, I wouldn't say difficulty, but it was strenuous to say the least to find all enough operators to find this massive fleet that has to go out on a Friday and come back on a Sunday. Given the fact that it's spread out, you have a lot more opportunities for recovery in case there's a mechanical. People are a lot more flexible in terms of going in different times because of weather. There still is that back and forth. It has become a seven-day business. That is a truism. But the peakishness in terms of weekends where you make a lot of your cash has definitely spread from outgoing on Thursdays and Fridays and incoming on Sundays and Mondays, plus the returns, which typically were empty, no longer empty. People are flying in both directions. But I think that the key point is, compared to a year ago, this idea that I want to predominantly live out of the city and come into the city maybe once a week, that's kind of gone. What we're seeing now is more back to this is my second home. I may do some remote work there. It's not going to just be a Friday to Sunday type product. It's going to move around the week depending on my needs at the office and my needs at home.
spk08: And, Bill, just in case you were asking about the destinations we serve on Long Island, it's not just one airport. And, in fact, we made a concerted effort to diversify the different landing locations we have.
spk09: Yeah, so right now, just to make that clear, we have scheduled service to Sag Harbor, East Hampton, Montauk, and South Hampton, you know, throughout the high season. And that's serviced both by amphibious seaplane, which we view as urban air mobility because it lands in Manhattan, in addition to various types of helicopters.
spk05: Okay, yeah, great. Thank you. There's no questions.
spk06: Thanks, Bill.
spk01: One moment, please, for our next question. And our next question coming from the line up, it's Emma Kelly from City, Atlanta, South Bend.
spk07: Great. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Just wanted to go back to the comment around the confidence in the path to profitability in the release, as well as a significant amount of cash for M&A. Maybe just hoping as a bigger picture question, you could just kind of remind us how you view the path to profitability and kind of what gives you the confidence if you're on that path to be able to deploy a significant majority of your cash for M&A.
spk08: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the question. Look, to just give sort of a high-level bridge from the negative $27.5 million of adjusted EBITDA for the full year, you know, on the one hand, right, we talked about how, given the timing in Europe, that was actually a headwind for us this year just because we only owned it during the lowest volume part of the year. So, call that, you know, somewhere in the mid-hundred thousands of a headwind where we've said that it should be adding mid-single-digit adjusted EBITDA. So, Just the full year impact of Europe gets you down to kind of the low 20s on adjusted EBITDA in terms of a negative adjusted EBITDA. And then medical is the biggest driver that we've talked about. And as we've said, we continue to believe that this is a business that can grow 100% organically over time. So if you add another $70 million of revenue from where it was in the calendar year 2022 over some period of time at 15% to 20%, flight margins which is what we've talked about that that brings our adjusted EBITDA down to somewhere in the negative single digits and that's before we make any improvement in airport profitability which is a significant drag before we've made any kind of incremental improvements to our businesses in Europe and Vancouver which we're still in the process of launching the brand and technology and both of those new markets for us And so we think either of those moves can help reduce that negative adjusted EBITDA even further. And so, you know, given the significant growth, particularly in medical, I don't think we're ready to put a stake in the ground on this call as to precisely When we'll cross into positive adjusted EBITDA territory, but we definitely expect 2023 adjusted EBITDA to improve versus 2022. And as we get closer into the meatiest part of our year, we hope to be able to give a little more precision on that.
spk09: And even I'll add to that, even if you saw any type of mitigation in the stratospheric growth that we're experiencing in medical, you would still see an improvement in terms of reducing EBITDA, improving EBITDA for this year. We don't need to keep the growth consistent in order to get to where Will's talking about.
spk07: Terrific. Yeah, that's very, very helpful. Maybe as a quick follow-up, any kind of high-level view on the airport ramp impact on flight margin in Q1 versus the 150 basis points in Q4?
spk08: Q1 is seasonally, as you know, a week or quarter for commercial air travel in general. So, you know, I think... Probably expect a similar drag for Q1, though we are encouraged that if you look quarter to date in Q1 2023, as we talked about on the call, airports running at about double of the same period last year, both in terms of volumes and revenues. So still encouraged with the growth, but just given that seasonally lower quarter, probably not going to see a meaningful sequential step up in profitability.
spk07: Got it. That's all very helpful. Thank you.
spk01: Thank you. And I am showing no further questions in the queue at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude your program, and you may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.
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