Rocket Lab Corporation

Good evening and thank you for standing by. My name is Kelvin and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Rocket Lab's fourth quarter 2024 financial results update and conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Muriel Baker, Senior Communications Manager. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello and welcome to today's conference call to discuss Rocket Lab's full year and fourth quarter 2024 financial results. Now, before we begin the call, I'd like to remind you that our remarks may contain forward-looking statements that relate to the future performance of the company And these statements are intended to qualify for the safe harbor protection from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and factors that could influence our results are highlighted in today's press release and others are contained in our filings with the Security and Exchange Commission. Such statements are based upon information available to the company as of the day hereof and are subject to change for future developments. Except as required by law, the company does not undertake any obligation to update these statements. Now, our remarks and press release today also contain non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of Regulation G enacted by the SEC. Included in such release and our supplemental materials are reconciliations of these historical non-GAAP financial measures to the comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. This call is also being webcast with a supporting presentation and a replay and copy of the presentation will be available on our website. Our speakers today are Rocket Lab founder and Chief Executive Officer Sir Peter Beck, as well as Chief Financial Officer Adam Spice. They'll be discussing key business developments and highlights, including updates on our launch and space systems programs. We will discuss financial highlights and outlook before we finish by taking questions. So with that, let me turn the call over to Sir Peter.

Thanks Marielle and thanks for everybody joining us today. Look, 2024 was our biggest revenue year ever and I'm proud to share that we delivered very strong results for Q4 2024 and indeed for the full year. We achieved our highest annual revenue figure to date of $436 million. That's more than a 78% increase on previous year's revenue, demonstrating that our strategy of delivering end to end space services is paying off and delivering significant growth. From Q3 to Q4 last year, we saw growth of more than 26% and year on year Q4 growth was 121%. Something you'll hear me say often at Rocket Lab is we do what we say we're going to do. And in this case, that's delivering significant growth, 382% increase in Q4 revenue to be precise, since our entry into the NASDAQ in 2021. On the launch side, these figures are driven by an increase of electron launch cadence and the introduction of hypersonic suborbital test launch capabilities. Space systems contribution has been continued strong execution across both spacecraft and constellation build and operation, as well as our merchant satellite component businesses. Now let's dig into these areas in a little bit more detail in the following slides. Our accomplishments in 2024 really speak for those record numbers. On the launch front, we delivered a record number of 16 launches spanning Electron and Haste, all with 100% mission success. Once again, we've maintained our position as the leading small launch provider globally and the second most frequently launched US rocket annually. We signed more than $450 million in new contracts in 2024 across launch and space systems, further strengthening our backlog, which currently sits at just over $1 billion. We also achieved a world first by successfully launching two missions within 24 hours from pads on either side of the planet. On the space systems front, there are too many achievements to distill into one slide, so here are just a couple of my favourites. We made significant progress on the design and build of the 40 plus spacecraft in our backlog, but I'm particularly proud of the team completing the manufacture and test of the twin spacecraft for NASA's Escapade mission to Mars. They did this on an impressively short time frame and an incredibly cost competitive for an interplanetary mission. While they're yet to launch, we're excited to see these birds on their way to the Red Planet soon. A reentry for VARTA with another major milestone, successfully enabling the first in-space manufacturing mission outside the International Space Station. Since the first reentry early last year, we've delivered two more pioneer spacecraft for VARTA, with the second returning to Earth in South Australia. Another third pioneer spacecraft for VADA is just now days away from launch. That's just a tiny snapshot of our achievements in 2024, but before we dig deeper into the updates across electron, neutron and space systems, I want to provide an overview of our strategic focus for this year. We're building a truly end-to-end space company. That means owning the full value chain of having the keys to unlock enormous potential from the rapidly growing space economy. The first two steps are well underway with launch in space systems, meaning that we have our own ride to space and we can build and operate the satellites on orbit. The final remaining step is space applications or delivering data or services from space using our own constellation. In 2024, we made significant progress across all three, and we're building on that again in 2025. On the launch front, this year is the year of Neutron. We look forward to unlocking the medium launch bottleneck by bringing Neutron to the pad to help launch more than estimated 10,000 Constellation spacecraft that need deployment in the coming decade. We're continuing to wrap up our small launch cadence with more than 20 missions in 2025 on the manifest across Electron and HACE. Of course, as usual, these missions only launch when our customers are ready. It's worth pointing out that as far as I'm aware, Rocket Lab is the only launch provider with missions scheduled this year across small launch, medium launch, hypersonic suborbital test launch. This demonstrates the breadth of our launch experience and capabilities and also positions us to take advantage of the TAM exposure across several different growing launch markets. On the space systems front, we have more than 40 spacecraft in various stages of production right now, By the end of this summer, we expect to have, well, by the end of summer this year, we expect to have more than quadrupled the number of Rocket Lab spacecraft on orbit, ready to launch, or have completed their missions. I'm also excited to reveal a new addition to our spacecraft lineup, one that slots nicely into our vision for space applications, and I'll talk more about this satellite later in the call. But first, so now for some updates on Electron. 2024 was a fantastic year for Electron. Last year we increased our launch cadence 60% year on year and 2025 is shaping up to be even bigger. We've launched twice this year already, both times for satellite constellation operators and each with only 10 days of each other within 10 days of each other. Last year's trend was building out satellite constellations with Electron. In Q1 2025 this has continued with launches for constellation operators Black Sky and Kines. both of whom have booked multiple missions on Electron to deploy or replenish their constellations. CNES in particular is worth calling out since we launched them for the first time in June last year as part of a five launch deal. We're now four launches in and on track to complete their fifth launch shortly, meaning that we will have deployed their full constellation of 25 satellites in less than a year. Now to put that into perspective, many constellation operators can wait for a year for their first launch with other providers. Last year we also signed a multi-launch deal with the Japanese Earth Imaging Company IQPS for four electrons, and then just this month they signed another agreement to double that and lock in eight electron launches for their constellation deployment over 2025 and 2026. In 2024 we built on our success in the small launch market with electrons suborbital variant HAST. Last year's Pentagon budget request for hypersonic research was up 46%, to 6.9 billion on the two years prior, and we're ideally positioned to support this expanding market. We're the only commercial provider that's executed two launches in 21 days for the Department of Defence Mark TB program, which we completed in Q4, and we have another five HACE missions locked in for the DoD and its contractors. In January, we also announced that we've been selected by Kratos to support the next phase of the Mark TB program, called Mark TB 2.0. It's a $1.45 billion five-year contract to expand hypersonic technology testing, and with HACE we're uniquely suited to meet that challenge. I think it's also important to place all of that within the wider context of today's geopolitics and America's defence technology. Hypersonics have become increasingly urgent under the new administration. In the words of the President, within the executive order he issued in January to build the Iron Dome for America, The threat of hypersonic and other advanced aerial attacks is the most serious threat facing the United States today. Furthering peace through strength is critical to America's defense. Our capabilities with haste, our affordability and our speed, all of which are the new administration's top priorities, makes it a great product fit to address these challenges. Right, moving on from small launch into neutron updates. Well, the title really hearsay's it all. This is the year of Neutron, our monopoly breaker to unlock the bottleneck of medium launch. As I said before, there's more than 10,000 satellites that need launch in the next five years from commercial constellations alone. And then there's the growing demand from national security and defense missions, as well as interplanetary exploration for the science community, and it goes on. The need is clear, so I won't labour on it other than to say that the industry is crying out for more launch options in this class and Neutron is coming to market in record time to deliver it. Neutron is also critical to us launching and operating our own future satellite constellation. So over the next few slides I'll take you through the latest development milestones and achievements as we work to get Neutron on the pad in the second half of this year. OK, so at LC3 all major hardware and infrastructure items have arrived and been installed and our civil works on the site are practically finished. Yes, and we even have water. Most recent updates include the flare stack, 165 tonne steel circular launch mount structure that Neutron will launch from. Giant pair of LNG tanks, the ones you can see on the bottom left of the slides. Those are the heaviest objects to have ever crossed the Wallops Island Bridge, and their installation marks the completion of all the long lead propellant storage for the launch site. What's left now is to complete the electrical and mechanical connections for a fully integrated system, but otherwise we look forward to its grand opening in a few short months. Now on to the one of the most exciting and novel features of Neutron, its Hungry Hippo fairing. The massive reusable nose cone halves are now live and moving, fully integrated with their avionics and actuators and all of the mechanical systems. We're testing like we're flying, opening and closing the Hungry Hippo at full speed to understand exactly how they behave and it's great to say I was there in person for the first lot of testing and I can tell you that it's a wonderful sound to hear the Hungry Hippo in action and I fully encourage you to go and check out the video we'll put out today of all of that testing in action. It's pretty cool. We have a few more run throughs as we add some hardware, then they'll soon be making their way over to our assembly and integration facilities ready to be fitted to Neutron's first stage for launch. Let me draw your attention to the picture on the top left. That's our stage one tank stacked and ready to ship out. Check out the person at the bottom of the frame for scale and you can see the size of that tank. All of the launch vehicle is currently in production with significant parts of it currently in test before being shipped out to the launch site for integration. We've been moving past flight one with structures including fairing halves already in production for our second neutron rocket. For flight one though, all of neutrons largest pieces will soon be moving across the country and making their way to the East Coast. They'll be integrated with all the avionics and software And it'll go with the fit checks and AIT before going straight into full system qualification. So keep an eye out for pictures of tanks on barges to know where we're getting close to that next milestone. Now on to Archimedes. The engines qualification campaign continues at a cracking pace. We're hot firing every few days and the testing is going well. We've got engines consistently moving across the country between the production line in Long Beach and the engine test site in Mississippi. You also may have seen we shared a recent update that performance iterations on the production line have resulted more than a couple of hundred kgs shed from the engine, which is always good. And also check out the size of that second stage nozzle expansion cone in the bottom left of the slide that were recently produced and on its way for testing. It's a cool thing. OK, so from engine testing, we're really doubling down on our test cadence to match with the increased production rate out of Long Beach. We've been running a really intensifying test campaign on multiple engines as we lead up to flight one. So in that case, the build of a second Archimedes engine test cell is nearly complete, and this enables us to concurrently test engines as our investments in production ramp up. So having two cells is always good. Now, we've provided plenty of updates on where Neutron will lift off, but not much where it will land. Well, here she is, meet return on investment. We named that specifically for Adam Spice. Neutron's 400-foot ocean landing platform, that's what we see on the screen there. The image at the bottom of the left also providing a great sense of scale, how big this vessel actually is. Alongside shore based landing sites and the ocean platform gives us the flexibility to maximize the vehicle's performance by allowing us to dedicate less propellant to landing and more to lifting our customers payloads to diverse and complex orbits. With the vessel secured, work has now begun on modifying it. We're adding autonomous ground support equipment that secures neutron to the deck when it lands, heat shielding, propulsive systems and things to keep it on target for neutrons return. The landing platform is also a clear indication that we're scaling up and moving past first minimum viable product with Neutron now. With one launch set for 2025, we're aiming to triple that in 2026 and then the landing barge is obviously critical to that ramp up. Now recovery isn't planned on the barge for the first test flight. We'll be doing a soft splashdown, but we can expect return on investment to live up to its name in 2026 when it enters service for all the future Neutron flights. Now the road to launch. I'm often asked what should we look at to indicate Neutron's progress to the pad because there's just so much going on. So we tried to create a little bit of a visual overview here of the big ticket items that we're running concurrently right now and what's left to go to get to the pad. We've always been really clear that we run aggressive schedules and that gets us to the pad quickly. And of course, I want to get to the pad faster than anybody else. The important thing to point out here is all these tasks are not serial. We don't wait to finish one before starting the next. Everything has been worked concurrently and some of them are long lead pieces that come together literally days before the launch. For example, a launch license. And now of course this isn't our first rodeo and we're no strangers to bringing a new rocket to the pad. We run aggressive schedules and at the end of the day, as I always say, it's a rocket program, but right now we're planning for first launch in the second half of this year. I'm very happy with the progress of the development program. Neutron is going to be a really important vehicle for the industry and we're excited to be the ones delivering that. So moving on from launch now and to provide some updates on our space systems businesses. I'm happy to share mission success for our latest spacecraft Varda. In the early hours of this morning, and I mean early, our pioneer spacecraft flawlessly executed an Earth reentry maneuver and deployed Varda's capsule to land in South Australia. The mission was launched in January and had been operating on orbit for over a month, delivering critical mission functions for VARTA's capsule. We have our third pioneer class satellite with its VARTA capsule ready and waiting for launch in the coming days, which is the second satellite ready for launch of this program within a month. For our Space Systems team, they're busy right now helping land a NASA Lunar Lander mission on the Moon. After its 45-day journey through space, our very own space-grade solar cells have provided over 1,400 operational hours of power for this mission, while the space software team have been providing 24-7 support for the orbit control and engine burns that have gotten this far. They'll be continuing that support for the mission right through its most critical phases too, including landing on the moon itself. On the national defense side, our team is really hitting their stride with two critical programs. We're now deep into the detailed design phase of our $500 million prime contract with the Space Development Agency. Early last month we cleared a critical step of the program, the first design review that ensures our satellites and how they operate all meet the rigorous mission requirements set down by the Department of Defense. All 18 satellites use practically every one of their integrated subsystems and components, including solar panels, composite structures, star trackers, reaction wheels, radios, flight, ground software, avionics, launch dispensers and so on and so forth. It's a high level control over our own products within our own prime programs that gives us the ability to deliver world class National Defence solutions with certainty on cost and schedule and of course quality. We also have our 24-hour notice responsive space mission coming up this year for the US Space Force. This one is a $32 million Victor's Haze mission with a rocket lab satellite launching on a rocket lab electron on short notice to demonstrate that we can respond to threats on very short timelines. In the defense industry, that's called tactically responsive space. It's a hugely complex yet sought after capability that the Pentagon is eager to have on hand with trusted commercial partners. With their proven capabilities across space systems and launch, it's a position we're uniquely suited for. Now, most of those missions employ spacecraft from our line-up of standard vertically integrated satellites that we announced last year. But today I'm excited to share a big announcement. Please meet Flassellite, a low-cost, mass-producible satellite tailored for large constellations. Now we've developed Flatellite after many years of working closely with constellation operators and getting to deeply understand their needs of today and of course into the future. Flatellite is a scalable, resilient, high power satellite that can enable capabilities such as secure low latency, high speed connectivity and remote sensing for national security, defense and commercial markets. With Flatellite we can do something few spacecraft manufacturers can. We can build it fast, cost effectively, and in high volumes thanks to our experience in spacecraft production, combined with deep vertical integration of our in-house components. This puts us in greater control of cost and schedule than others relying on constrained supply chains. What's more, once we've built them, we can launch them ourselves too. That's thanks to its low profile stackable design, we can maximize the number of Flattolites launched per mission, ensuring seamless integration with Neutron. The bottom far right render with Flattolites stacked inside Neutron's fairings gives you a bit of an idea of the census scale here. Now the satellite is more than just a new product development to serve our customers ever involving needs though. It's a bold strategic move towards completing the final step of Rocket Lab's ultimate vision of truly becoming an end-to-end space company and operating its own constellation and delivering services from space. By having our own ride to space with neutron and electron and being able to build our own spacecraft in high volumes, we're at a distinct advantage when it comes to establishing constellations with speed and cost efficiency. It's about all we can share on Flatlite today, but I'm excited to be able to share more with you soon on this, so watch this space. So with that, I'll hand it over to Adam now to provide further commentary and to discuss our financial highlights and outlook.