Firefly Aerospace Inc.

and increases our backlog to $1.3 billion. As with Blue Ghost Missions 2 and 3, an Electro will support our fourth mission. Our Blue Ghost lander enables NASA to evaluate the moon's south pole resources, such as hydrogen and water, as well as study the radiation and thermal environment. We are honored to be supporting yet another critical NASA mission. We are proud to support the United States building a sustainable long-term presence on the lunar surface and fortify U.S. leadership of the ultimate high ground. In late breaking as of this morning, I am pleased to share that NASA added $10 million to our Blue Ghost Mission 1 contract as an addendum to acquire high-value data. This goes above and beyond the base contract to include large amounts of lunar surface images. This is significant as it shows how each NASA Eclipse mission has opportunities for additional high-margin recurring revenue generation. This addendum contract also demonstrates the market for our Ocula commercial lunar imaging surface, deploying as part of upcoming Blue Ghost missions starting in 2026. As a US Air Force veteran, I'm proud that Firefly is an American-based company with American manufacturing and supported by American suppliers. Firefly is vertically integrated with production-hardened facilities and engineering teams that are based in Austin, Texas. The unique co-location of our manufacturing, testing, and integration allows us to deliver our products on cost, schedule, and at increasing capacity. We have core technology advantages through our carbon composite technology used across all of our product lines, as well as patented, scalable tap-off cycle engines that are shared across our launch vehicles. For those who are new to Firefly, thank you for joining us in this journey. And for the many longtime supporters, thank you for your years of belief and continued backing. And to our Fireflies, thank you for your bold, can-do attitude and your dedication to our mission. Together, we inspire the world, unlock new categories in space, deliver critical national security capabilities for America and its allies.

Thank you, Jason. Operator, we're ready to take questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask the question, please first start 1-1 on your telephone, then wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please first start 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Sheila Cayoglu with Jefferies. The line is open.

Good morning, guys, and good afternoon. Congratulations on a successful launch in more ways than one. Maybe if we could start on the first question. With the FAA approving return to flight for Alpha, how are you thinking about the timing of flight seven and eight, and how does that lead into your targeted launches for 26? What are the range of potential outcomes for next year, you know, thinking about production capacity versus the current backlog?

Thank you, Sheila. We received our FAA return to flight determination at the end of August. We expect to launch Flight 7 in the coming weeks. If you saw our slides in the alpha slide, you could see that Flight 7 is in a mature state right next to Flight 8 in a mature state. And so we keep increasing our production capacity, and we're building ahead as well for 2026. So we're working closely with the range and our customer, Lockheed Martin, to share more details on the mission and payload soon. But above all, safety and quality are the highest importance.

Got it. And maybe if we could talk about Golden Dome. We've heard a lot about it, but some companies are starting to solidify what it could mean. How do you think about the opportunity and what news should we look to hear? What is sort of the framework for and expected timing you're thinking about as it relates to Golden Dome.

Thank you, Sheila. Yeah, being an Air Force veteran, Golden Dome is something near and dear to my heart and the Firefly's. We have three product lines of the company that are well positioned to support the Golden Dome architecture. First off, Alpha, it is a commercially available rocket and we're increasing our production capacity. to deliver more and more alphas per year. It can support launching surrogate targets for the Golden Dome missions. It could also support launching test missions of things like hypersonic missiles as well as space-based interceptors. And it also can serve as a operational rocket as well. As you know, we were the first and only to launch a 24-hour call-up mission on the Victus-NOx mission. That's something that is helpful for the Golden Dome mission. On the spacecraft side, our electric spacecraft with its ample fuel reserves and its high thrust and maneuverability as well as its payload carrying capacity is well suited to support space-based interceptor host missions. And there's optionality there to provide that as a prime or as a subcontractor. And then finally, Eclipse, it's a 16-ton rocket. It is capable of launching constellations, whether they be sensors or space-based interceptors in the future. And that's part of onboarding onto the National Security Space Launch Program.

Great. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Seth Seifman with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks very much, and good afternoon. I wanted to ask, starting off, maybe if you could talk a little bit about expectations for either EBITDA or free cash flow for the year.

Hey, Seth. This is Darren. As of now, we're guiding to annual revenue. You know, we're focused on hitting the operational metrics, which, as we discussed previously, is very much linked to our financial performance. And that's essentially what we're guiding to right now.

Okay, okay. And then just maybe a little bit more qualitatively, as we think about the path to Eclipse launch and kind of have the potential perhaps to do that next year, can you walk us through maybe some of the milestones along the way as we think about going from where we are now to the collaboration you'll have with Northrop next year to get that launch up?

Yeah. Seth, this is Jason. Thank you for that question. We're extremely grateful and excited to be partnered with Northrop Grumman. They're our co-developer on the Eclipse program. As you remember, in second quarter, Northrop Grumman, they invested a first-of-a-kind investment into Firefly at $50 million. We are working on the milestones towards our inaugural launch We've completed our Miranda flight engine testing. As of recently, over 90 hot fire tests that include full mission duty cycle hot fire testing at 206 seconds as well as at 100% thrust. We're going to move into qualifying that engine and then building the flight engines. We also have developed the engine bay, and that's undergoing testing. So once we complete testing there, we would integrate the seven-flight Miranda engines with the engine bay. We've also done fit checks of the integration of our liquid oxygen tank and our RP-1 tank. We've completed the integration of that, and so the next step would be to mate the engine bay with the tanks and the aft section. From there, we would deliver that to Northrop Grumman to integrate with the second stage. complete the payload fairing with the payload, integrate the payload, and jointly conduct the launch campaign at our WALPS pod.

Great. Great. Excellent. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Colin Canfield with Cantor. Your line is open.

Okay. Thank you for the question. If you could maybe update us on the timeline for NSL Lane 1 and maybe kind of talk about how the team is thinking about their proposal ahead of the December window. And specifically, what are customers saying kind of about the timeframe from transition from onboarding to initial contract award? Thank you.

Thank you, Colin, for that question. We wanted to provide a credible offering, and so one of the requirements of onboarding into the U.S. Space Force's National Security Space Launch Program, Lane 1, is to have a credible plan for the first launch. We anticipate that first launch being in the late 2026 timeframe. And so we're pursuing, along with our co-developer, Northrop Grumman, a proposal for late this year to be submitted. Once onboarded, you would need to have a first launch before bidding the first task orders, and the first task orders would be around the – after the first quarter of 2027.

Got it. Okay. And then in terms of the tax-free responsive space line item, the supplemental that was mentioned in the script, the $135 million, Can you maybe discuss kind of the velocity of the money and what contracting officers are saying with respect to kind of, you know, potential near-term unlock in terms of awards? I think one of the things that we've gotten feedback from from other supplemental-oriented players is that they're seeing a pretty fast acceleration of that kind of related spend versus base accounts. But happy to hear kind of, you know, what your experience sounds like.

Yeah, we're very positive on this additional $135 million that was put into the reconciliation budget because of our Victus Knox experience, and we subsequently have been put on contract for Victus Hayes and Victus Sol. We're very much looking forward to working with the Space Safari's Space Force customer on the next missions. We would like to have as many of our alpha rockets that we can fit in storage at our Vandenberg Space Force Base so that we can be ready at any time to launch more tactically responsive space launches in a 24-hour timeline so that we can continue to deter our U.S. rivals. Got it. Thank you for the call. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Christine Leweg with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great. Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Maybe on alpha, you called out that you're going to change the design of the reinforcement of the thermal protection. I was wondering how much of a design change is that? Is that major or minor? And how mature is your progress there? And then second, you talked about changing the angle of attack on the rocket launch. Does that change the... What kind of missions you could fulfill for your customers?

Hi, Christine. It's Jason. There is no change to the design. It's just adding more layers of the thermal protection system to the bottom of the first stage. And it's negligible in terms of mass. The second part of that question is, how does this change the angle of attack We can control that at different critical phases of the flight profile. And so that is something that we can plan for and can control as well.

Great. Super helpful. And if I could do a follow on. You guys called out the addendum contract, $10 million from NASA on Blue Ghost 1. I was wondering, are there more opportunity to sell more data to other governments and commercial customers? And can you size the opportunity of these kinds of potential annuities that you could get from these kinds of additional contracts?

Thank you for that question, Christine. So the answer is yes. We at Firefly, we own that data. And so we are able to sell that commercial data license to multiple customers. This was really helpful for us because It was the first of many data sales that we planned to do. You heard Ocula, and that is something that is very core to the Ocula service that we unveiled a couple months ago. I'll pass it on to Darren to talk more.

Yeah, Christine, I'd say engineering change proposals are common across our firm fixed price contracts. For example, on Blue Ghost Mission One, prior to this data buy process, The team's already been executing on engineering change proposals, increasing that contract from $93.3 million up over $100 million over time. So we fully expect this trend to continue. It really gives us a differentiated revenue stream with higher margin dollars going forward with things like Ocula, as Jason mentioned.

Great. If I could speak a third and last one. With the Blue Ghost IV contract you got this summer, How did that contract turn out versus your expectations? And can you provide some sort of revenue recognition expectations for that since that's not launching until 2029? And also any sort of profitability metrics that we should monitor?

Yeah. So Blue Ghost Mission 4, you know, we had two opportunities to win, one to win another additional Blue Ghost contract going forward. We did plan on winning one of the two. And it's an example of how the team has converted opportunities in the backlog. It's a significant opportunity that the team has executed on. From a revenue recognition perspective, it's recognized over percentage completion basis, very similar to Blue Ghost Mission 1, which you guys saw how it plays out in our financials.

Thank you. Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Suji De Silva with Ross Capital. Your line is open.

Hi, Jason, Darren, Michael. The backlog, you just updated us on the rough mix of launch and spacecraft, and maybe more specifically within the launch, alpha launch backlog. How much of that is national security responsive versus other, if you give some rough estimate there, that would be helpful.

Um, yeah, so, so today, uh, I'd say we have, we haven't really disclosed the split between launch and spacecraft, but if you reference, uh, you know, how we, our revenue split between Q2, it was a majority of spacecraft. So, you know, I, I'd say, um, prior to blue ghost mission for, you know, um, most of our, um, backlog was more on the lawn side, but you know, with Jason's background, as in the spacecraft sector over decades of experience, we would expect that weighting to shift over time and perhaps even outpace the launch site in the future.

Okay, great. And then I think there was an announcement about NASA's Viper rover launch, and I'm just curious, is there a roadmap, Jason, of kind of how much capacity you can carry to the moon with the Blue Ghost paired up with Electra potentially? As we move toward cargo, I know you're taking the UAE rover yourselves, larger cargo, infrastructure cargo, and then over time, manned. If you could help us understand the roadmap you're planning, that'd be helpful.

Yeah, thanks, Suji. This is just the beginning. Although we have the most number of commercial lunar payload services contract out of any commercial company right now with NASA, we have a long-term roadmap where we build big things here at Firefly, If you look at, for example, at our Eclipse rocket, that's a 200-foot rocket by 15 feet diameter. So that's a large structure. If you look at our Blue Ghost II mission, we just sent a full stack of our lunar lander and our D-Path with our electric vehicle, which sits at 22 feet high, to get environmentally tested at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. So we're already building bigger and bigger things. We are able to scale our technology because we're using carbon composite structures and tanks. And all of our lunar lander technology that helped us successfully land stable and upright on Blue Ghost 1 is transferable to those bigger systems. So long term, we would like to put not only lunar landers on the moon, but more rovers, potentially light terrain vehicles, infrastructure like power plants. So that is all inclusive of our lunar lander roadmap. We see more than just annual missions to the moon, but multiple missions annually to the moon by the end of the decade.

Appreciate the detailed color, Jason. Thanks.

Thank you. Will you stand by for our next question? Our next question comes from Milan of Edison U. Your line is open.

Hey, thank you, and congratulations on the first earnings call going public. I wanted to ask about the strategy around potentially some M&A. You obviously raised quite a bit of money. Any kind of types of assets out there that you're kind of vetting or interested in, and maybe if you could dimension kind of the size and scope you'd be willing to do.

Thank you, Edison. We look at M&A using our well-defined process as it relates to M&A targets. First and foremost, any M&A target has to fit our strategy. We have a robust long-term strategy It also has to fit our culture, our Firefly culture, which is one of a can-do spirit, as well as speed and collaboration and technology and innovation. Also, there are synergies that the M&A target could provide to our existing product lines. So those are things that we look for in companies Understood.

Understood. And then follow-up question on Electra. I think you made a reference to RGXX in the opening remarks. I was wondering if you could maybe elaborate around that. Is that supposed to be potentially a template for some future program that Electra would go after? Or how should we think about that kind of reference you made?

Well, if you recall, RGXX is a follow-on to the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, which once was a $6 billion program of record that the traditional prime contractors were developing. It is a requirement that is still needed going forward. But earlier this year, the Pentagon signed out an acquisition decision memo to open up the competition for the next generation mission called RGXX to commercial providers like Firefly and bring in our transformative commercial technologies. It just so happens that earlier this year, we won a DIU contract for our Electra Mission 3, and that mission is to perform space domain awareness using rendezvous proximity operations. And I already mentioned that Elettra has ample fuel reserves, high thrust maneuverability, as well as carrying capacity for different payloads. We're able to apply that same technology to the RGXX program of record.

Great. If I could sneak in one housekeeping, the $10 million extra, is that going to be recognized in 3Q as revenue, or what's the, I guess, the rev rec on that $10 million for Blue Ghosts?

That's correct, Edison, and we did plan for that in our roadmap. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I am showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Michael for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for attending today's call. We look forward to speaking with you all again when we report our third quarter financial results. Let's fly.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.