Blade Air Mobility, Inc.

fiscal fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Matt Schneider, Vice President of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance. Matt, you may begin.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Blade Air Mobility conference call and webcast for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024. 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 uncertainties, and actual future results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by 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 the conference call are made only as of the date of this call. As stated in our SEC filings, 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 historical comparable consolidated GAAP financial measures to those historical non-GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings press release and investor presentation. Our press release investor presentation informed 10Q and 10K filings 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 a 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 Haber, chief financial officer. I will now turn the call over to Rob.

Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. As promised, we are pleased to deliver our first full year of adjusted EBITDA profitability as significant revenue growth and margin expansion in both medical and passenger drove a 17.8 million year-over-year improvement in our adjusted EBITDA in 2024. This important profitability milestone comes as we continue our rapid growth with revenue, excluding Canada, which we exited in 2024, increasing 22.1% in Q4 2024 versus the prior year period, while Q4 flight profit increased 40% year-over-year and Q4 adjusted EBITDA rose 4.9 million year-over-year. Looking back, it's important to note how much progress we've made with adjusted EBITDA improving over $28 million over the last two years. This is only the first step in our plan to generate multi-year compounding growth in free cash flow and adjusted EBITDA as we onboard new medical customers, benefit from underlying growth in transplant volumes, and realize continued benefits from passenger growth, flight economics optimization, and our expected midterm transition to electric vertical aircraft, or what you might refer to as a VTOL. As we continue to drive to further cost efficiencies in our passenger business, we remain laser focused on maximizing growth in urban air mobility products, such as our New York City Airport Transfer Service, which saw high teams year-over-year revenue expansion in Q4. Services like Blade Airport are key to accelerating and de-risking our planned transition to the next generation aircraft I mentioned. Overall, this combination of revenue growth and cost efficiencies enabled us to improve on our achievement of positive trailing 12-month passenger segment adjusted EBITDA last quarter, more than one year ahead of our target by posting $3.6 million of passenger segment adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2024, an $8.6 million increase versus the prior year. We have successfully positioned both the medical and passenger business to benefit from improved economics of scale driven by our aircraft investments and additional capacity purchase agreements that enable us to use our increasing volumes to drive margin expansion. Our 119.6% year-over-year improvement in medical segment adjusted EBITDA this quarter on 13.7% revenue growth highlights the benefits of this strategy. We're also pleased to report that Q4 was our first quarter with medical segment adjusted EBITDA margins above our 15% near-term target. Though this metric will show lumpiness quarter to quarter, driven by aircraft maintenance schedules and overall trip volumes, and will dip back below target in the first half of 2025, we're happy to be able to demonstrate the attainability of this goal earlier than expected. I'll let Will provide a more detailed outlook later in the call. The improved performance is driven in large part by our aircraft strategy. Our own fleet continues to provide much more than just financial benefits, as illustrated by our expected launch with two new transplant centers in April following competitive processes that required direct aircraft ownership. Early results following our European restructuring have been very encouraging with strong year-over-year revenue growth and solid profitability improvement in the winter ski season in the alps to date in addition to our excellent financial results we made continued progress on strategic initiatives this week we announced a strategic partnership with skyports infrastructure a leading provider of ground infrastructure for advanced air mobility launching a pilot program that will expand blades existing by the seat helicopter transfer service by connecting the downtown manhattan heliport and John F. Kennedy International Airport. This will now be in addition to our pre-existing airport routes to and from the west and east side of Manhattan and JFK and Newark airports. The new service will fly passengers transferring to and from flights at JFK, in addition to Long Island and Queens residents commuting to or from Manhattan for business or leisure on weekdays. The facility, located at the southern tip of Manhattan, close to Wall Street, is an important New York City hub for short distance aviation and follows Skyport's recent appointment as the operator of the downtown Manhattan heliport, supporting the mandate from New York City officials to transition the heliport from accommodating just helicopters to also supporting next generation eVTOL. As such, this program aims to gather data on consumer demands, flyer experience, and logistics specific to the downtown Manhattan heliport and provide insights to help accelerate and de-risk the launch of a VTOL operations at the facility. In March, Blade introduced a new mobile app that offers an enhanced user experience, easy flight booking, flexible payment options, trip management functionality, and many more features. We're getting a great response from our customers, and if you haven't yet updated to the latest app, we encourage you to give it a try today. In medical, our organ placement service offering, TOPS, ended the year with six contracted customers and a strong sales pipeline. TOPS has continued to drive additional benefits for our customers and Blades logistics business, enabling transplant centers to evaluate and ultimately accept more organs for those in need. The program also gives us the opportunity to build trust and demonstrate our high level of service to new customers who may choose to utilize our logistics in addition to TOPS. Working alongside our friends at Organox, we are preparing for an April launch of the first phase of our multifaceted strategic partnership. This initial phase will enable transplant centers and organ procurement organizations to utilize Organox's METRA machine perfusion device on a case-by-case basis. METRA is a perfusion device for the liver, which represents the majority of the heart, liver, and lung transplants that typically require dedicated air logistics. Perfusion technology allows transplant centers to accept more organs for transplant recipients and increase the amount of time organs remain viable outside the body. We are pre-positioning Metro devices at key blade aviation hubs, enabling rapid transport to Organox customer locations. In this first phase, the Metro device will be used for perfusion only at a customer location or in a ground vehicle. However, we are working closely with the Organox team to prepare for potential future in-flight perfusion completing aircraft testing and modifications now so that we'll be ready to hit the ground running, assuming Metro is approved to perfuse in flight at a later date. With respect to our balance sheet, we remain careful stewards of our shareholders' capital, focusing recent investments on aircraft and vehicles that generate great returns for our medical business, while continuing our evaluation of additional tuck-in acquisitions to expand our logistics platform. With $127 million in cash and short-term investments at the end of 2024, we believe we are well positioned to capitalize on such opportunities. With that, I will turn it over to Will.