Blade Air Mobility, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Blade Air Mobility, Inc. Fiscal First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your speakers.

Thanks and good morning. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Blade Air Mobility conference call and webcast for the quarter ended March 31st, 2023. We appreciate everyone joining us today. Before we get started, I would like to remind you of the company's forward-looking statement in safe harbor language. Statements made in 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 uncertainty, 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 call are made only as of the date of this call. As stated in our SEC filings, Blade 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 these non-GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings press release and investor presentation. Our press release, investor presentation, and our Form 10-Q are available on the investor relations section of our website at ir.blade.com. 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. Good morning, everyone. We released strong first quarter results this morning, resulting in our seventh consecutive quarter with financial results ahead of our expectations. Revenue in the March 2023 quarter increased 70% to $45.3 million versus $26.6 million in the comparable 2022 period, while flight profit increased by 145% to $7.2 million versus $2.9 million in the comparable 2022 period. Adjusted EBITDA of negative $7.7 million was roughly flat versus the prior year, and as a percentage of revenue, adjusted EBITDA margin improved by nearly 1,200 basis points to negative 17%, in the March 2023 quarter. This is particularly notable given that Q1 is seasonably one of our lightest quarters. This was driven by a significant increase in flight profit that outpaced growth in our adjusted corporate expense. Importantly, our first quarter results set a strong foundation for the balance of the year, and we remain on track with our commitment to deliver a significant improvement in full-year adjusted EBITDA in 2023 versus 2022. Turning to some highlights from the quarter, short distance delivered another quarter of solid growth, up 148% on a reported basis, driven by our acquisitions in Europe, robust growth in Canada, and the continued ramp up of our Blade Airport product, which flies travelers between Manhattan and New York area airports. In Blade Airport, we were pleased to see revenue increase nearly 100% versus the comparable prior year period, driven by a nearly 70% increase in seats flown, combined with double-digit increases in average revenue per seat. In the U.S., Airport is Blade's most accessible entry-level product, with seat prices starting at $195, consistent with Uber Black pricing, and therefore our big bet for customer acquisition for Blade. We continue to optimize our marketing spend on Blade Airport to focus on getting even more granular and targeted with our audience, and by spending more efficiently on interconnected digital channels. This strategy has increased new user visits to the airport booking page on our app and website by 310% since the start of the year, relative to the same period in 2022, showing a strong increase in awareness and engagement. Furthermore, since the start of the year, we've seen a 46% increase in first-time blade airport flyers versus the same period last year. contributing to a 72% year-over-year growth in revenue from new customers. Remarkably, this has been accomplished with roughly 20% less media spend. Meanwhile, Airport Pass Plus, which offers flyers unlimited flights between Manhattan and New York airports for $95 with an upfront cost of $795 for the year, is another major driver for airports. year-to-date the number of airport passes sold is up 118 versus the same period last year demonstrating that more and more flyers value the time savings and customer experience that blade offers this is extremely important given that pass holders typically fly blade airport an average of 10 times a year giving us strong confidence in the lifetime value of our airport customer base with respect to Current trends in Blade Airport, we are encouraged by the strong revenue and booking trends we have witnessed thus far in the second quarter, including April 2023, which finished as our second best month ever for the product, giving us confidence that the investments we are making in marketing, schedule, and service offerings continue to pay off. Moving on to Europe, our performance in Europe this quarter was impacted by several factors, including an unusually warm winter ski season, fewer flyable days due to weather, and longer-than-expected delays in scheduled aircraft maintenance. These factors reduced our available capacity during the quarter. However, this will ensure that we have adequate aircraft availability for Europe's peak season, which starts next week with the upcoming Cannes Film Festival in addition to Cannes Lion, the Monaco Grand Prix, the Monaco Yacht Show, and numerous conferences throughout the summer with attendees from all over the world. Given that this is Blade's first high season in Europe since our acquisition, we have launched our European marketing campaign for the line, our by-the-seat service between Nice and Monaco, historically the highest volume helicopter service in all of Europe. We have launched impactful marketing campaigns, resulting in noticeable improvements in efficiency and conversions. We will continue to capitalize on our momentum to drive brand awareness for Blade and incentivize referrals with ambassadors, promoters, concierges, and travel agencies throughout Europe. I'm also pleased to announce that we'll be running a by-the-seat helicopter service between Nice and Cannes this summer, and we look forward to welcoming flyers to our new terminals in Monaco, Nice, and Cannes, all which will be opening soon. This will bring us to 14 passenger terminals across the US, Europe, Canada, and India. This is game-changing for us as we build the brand experience that we are renowned for in the US across Europe, while helping to unlock our lucrative local and global brand partnerships. It is also very encouraging that over 60% of Blade Europe bookings are now happening on the Blade app or website, demonstrating healthy awareness and acceptance of our brand and consumer-friendly technology at this early stage. In metamobility organ transport, we delivered another record quarter with 111% organic growth driven by new hospital wins, continued expansion with existing hospitals, and strong end-market growth. We've discussed in the past how advances in organ preservation and perfusion technology are increasing the size of our addressable market, both in terms of the number of organs being transplanted, in addition to the distance organs can travel in order to get from the organ donor to the transplant recipient. For Blade, this dynamic results in both higher traffic and higher revenue permission, as longer distances typically require larger, more capable aircraft. For transplant recipients, it means the potential to receive a matching organ that might otherwise have been discarded. It's a perfect fit for a broad, flexible, acid-light air mobility platform, and we are incredibly well positioned to continue supporting our hospitals as they adopt this new technology. We also launched a highly targeted television video campaign to build awareness with hospitals, legislators, and investors about this very important part of our business that is both profitable and saving lives every day. On the M&A front, we continue to actively evaluate strategic bolt-on opportunities that will accelerate our path to profitability in a low-risk manner and where we can leverage our brand, terminal infrastructure, technology platform, operator network, and core competencies in customer experience and operational excellence. We are fortified by our strong balance sheet, which in the current market environment remains a strategic weapon. Therefore, we will remain disciplined with respect to capital allocation with a focus on creating long-term shareholder value. Separately, in March, we announced the appointment of Andrew Lauch and John Borthwood to our board of directors. Andrew has been a board observer since January and is a partner at Redbird Capital Partners, where he leads the firm's consumer vertical. including its over 5% stake in Blade, as well as Redbirds, Furman's investment in Jetlinks, the Beta Technologies EVA company, AeroCenters, and Redbirds QSR. John Borthwick is the CEO and founder of Betaworks, a technology investment and incubation company based in New York. John was actually a member of Blade's board when the company was private and first started and brings over 30 years of expertise and consumer facing and business to business technologies. And I'm confident that he will be vital as our flyers and customers demand more real time information about their flights and to collect relevant data insights, optimizing our flight economics. On the topic of electric vertical aircraft or EVA certification, we remain encouraged by the strong support shown by the FAA and acting FAA administrator, Billy Nolan for the industry. As Mr. Nolan prepares to step down from his role this summer, we remain optimistic that his successor will continue to support the acceleration of the certification process for these innovative aircraft. We believe that EVA has the potential to provide numerous benefits, such as reduced noise, zero emissions, and lower operating and maintenance costs. This transformative technology has the potential to exponentially grow our business globally as we add more landing zones that will enable greater convenience and lower prices for our flyers across all of our operating regions. Regardless of the ultimate timing of EVA, we remain focused on providing best-in-class air mobility services for our flyers around the world using conventional aircraft, always improving the experience, expanding our terminal infrastructure footprint, and consumer-friendly technologies, that will serve to fortify our transition to EPA while continuing to scale and optimize our passenger business towards profitability and free cash flow. With that, I'll turn the call over to Will.