Q1 2026 Earnings Call — May 12, 2026
Analyst Christine Liwag (Morgan Stanley): Hey, good morning, Kyle, Herman, and Devin. Kyle, thank you for your transparency on the H500A engine certification timeline. On the endurance and containment testing that you called out in your prepared remarks, can you provide more color on what the issue is, what's technical versus administrative, and how you think this could be resolved?
Executive Kyle (CEO): Yeah, for sure. Good morning. So on containment specifically, you know, the legacy rule comes from the blade disc route on turbines separating and releasing a blade. But the physics of an electric motor rotor are completely different where you have the periphery of the rotor being the magnets. And there are, in our case, titanium bands and tension. So the amount of energy of a 20,000 plus RPM rotor turbine blade that is connected at the root versus some magnets that are turning at 1 10th of speed and omega square matters here. It then becomes an energy containment question that we had to answer with the FAA, which what does containment of quote a rotor burst mean? And that's one of the examples where it was really hard to work through these things, but we ended up in in-person meetings with the FAA. We got to common agreement and understanding, and that risk is largely retired. We now have to go execute against that, but it took longer than expected to get there.
We aren't yet there on something called continued rotation, where the FAA requires that after an engine is shut down, the engine continues to rotate without any hazard effects on the aircraft. And one of those effects, for example, is fire. And we're having a really hard time creating a fire to show that we can contain the fire. So once the engines shut down, it continues to windmill at the prop. We've compromised the coils mechanically with nails, with chemicals, trying to create a situation to create this fire. And it's extremely hard to create consistent heat in this test. So this comes down to a policy interpretation issue of how the FAA is applying kind of a rule written for legacy turbine certification programs to an electric motor where you don't have, you know, in a PT6, you have 2.3 gallons of oil sitting in there. That's all flammable. You just don't have that in an electric motor. And so, you know, we are confident we have a safe and reliable design. And this is a matter of getting to agreement with the FAA on this. And I appreciate you recognizing the transparency because this is one of those things where we don't have a fundamental technical issue.
We haven't had test failures. But what we have is we have to come up with something that allows the specialists at the FAA to apply the rule the way that they're interpreting it against our motor such that we can mutually find compliance with the system. So that just takes time back and forth, a ton of data. We're running a lot, a lot of different tests to help validate the argument. But the fundamental truth is that an electric motor doesn't have fuel. It doesn't have oil. It's much harder to catch on fire. And we have to catch it on fire, then show that containment of no uncontrolled fire, no hazardous effects to the airplane. So that's, I guess, a little more detail on that.
Ingestion was a different one where, you know, our motor is at the back of the airplane. It has 3% of the air coming through it as compared to a turbine. Just the frontal area exposure of the engine to icing conditions is different. But we elected to pretend as if the engine is right on the front of the airplane. We sent it over to Europe, did all the ingestion and testing to validate the icing analysis that we've done internally. And that's another one that we've largely retired because we completed those tests successfully after we felt like we were at an impasse, but a lot of good negotiations. And that's one where our friends at GE who are an ODA stepped in and they gave us a ton of support in working through the technical nuances of icing and ingestion on an electric motor. And I'll take that opportunity to remind everybody that we are building an all-weather IFR airplane. That lightning test, really important for that. Icing ingestion, really important for that. So we know how to get through these issues. We have some left, mostly the continued rotation, which is the no hazard effects after a fire.
Thank you, Kyle. I guess it's very encouraging to hear that it's hard to start a fire with an electric motor. Seems like a good problem to have. And as a follow-up, you know, you touched on this with your GE partnership. Can you expand more about what that partnership is now and how are you working together and any more details you could provide? Thank you.
Executive Kyle (CEO): Yeah. It's going to be harder for me to find how we're not working together because it feels to me like this partnership, we've done more in the six months that we've been formally working together than I would say any engagement that I could ever imagine. It started with a single program, a joint technology development agreement on the publicly available turtle boat generator. We moved on to a larger program, and then we have a third program that we've engaged. But the undertone of the whole engagement has been very, very high levels of mutual support between beta to GE, and for us, very importantly, GE to beta. And they're bringing their full ODA to bear to review all of our compliance planning, our test plans, and all the things that we negotiate with the FAA. And we've learned a ton today. You know, there's a general recognition by GE that we have very, very high levels of safety and technology, but sometimes it's the sound that makes the music and the way in which we present these plans and procedures. So it's really been a great relationship with GE.
And of course, we're getting introduced to things that I never anticipated because of the relationships at the highest level of GE. You know, on the other side, they recognize that we have a particular operating philosophy. You know, in the case of the motor, for example, we elected to take the hardest nut off the wheel first. If you can't get that one off, you don't get the wheel off the car. And they appreciate this because they are learning a ton from the groundbreaking kind of trail breaking exercises we're doing with the FAA. And that bi-directional trade of kind of intellectual institutional knowledge is valuable to both of us. And that's how that type of resonance continues. So all in, I don't know how to say enough about the goodness of that relationship and the people there.
Analyst Andreas Shepard (Cantor Fitzgerald): Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thanks so much for taking our questions. Kyle, congrats on all the great progress. I wanted to maybe touch on EIPP. So beta obviously selected for seven out of the eight projects, highest in the industry thus far. Just curious how you're thinking about each of those projects starting up, whether one at a time, all at the same time? How do you anticipate, I guess, ramping up through those projects? Thank you.
Executive Kyle (CEO): Yeah. So, I mean, I think one of the important differentiators is that we are ramping into real-world operations as opposed to demonstrations. So how we're ramping into those projects is we are recalling our fleet, our international fleet of airplanes. We're immediately applying them to the near-term applications of And as Herman outlined, we have ramped our building of the aircraft, first with our supply chain, then with our tooling and our labor, and now with the construction of the aircraft. And as far as the operations go, Kristen, you want to talk a little bit about that? You did ask the question, are we thinking of launching these all at the same time? The answer is yes. I think that the intent is once the OTAs are signed, we are uniquely positioned to put these out into the market today. We are ready to meet the call from a fleet readiness perspective and operational readiness perspective. So we're really excited to partner with our operators and get these out.
Executive Herman (Title): Andreas, it's Herman. Maybe just a little color that I could share. You know, I think one of the things that Kristen's really been focused on is what we're describing internally as a frictionless customer experience. And what we mean by that is that the whole ecosystem is working together. So not only do we have a great aircraft but we have great charging that goes along with it, great maintenance that goes along with it, great training that goes along with it, and we're flying every day with customers like Bristow and we're learning and it's giving us this opportunity to, you know, as Kyle said, step away from demonstrations and really get into operational support. So when we talk about repositioning aircraft, we're ready to go as soon as the OTAs are negotiated we will be ready to go immediately. And some of the costs that you're seeing as we took the guide up is really to support things like repositioning those aircraft and getting them ready to do missions immediately when everything is negotiated and we're ready to go.
Analyst Andreas Shepard (Cantor Fitzgerald): Excellent. Thanks, everyone. That's very reassuring and very great to hear. Maybe as a quick follow-up, maybe a quick two-part question. First one being, you know, I think one area that maybe we aren't talking a lot about is the charging opportunity for the EIPP program, since Beta will be providing that. So maybe help us understand or maybe help us quantify kind of how you're thinking about the charging opportunity specifically for the EIPP. And then lastly, just remind us where you are in the or what are the next milestones for the piloted VTOL test program. Thank you.
Executive Kyle (CEO): Sure. I'm going to hit the top of the waves in the charging. You know, back when the IPP was clarified in September, our team went and proactively started securing permits both at the airports, the local jurisdictional level, and the FAA and interconnection with the local utilities. It takes time to work through those interconnection agreements and, of course, the FAA permitting. Those are now turning into pre-build and engineering permits. And by the time the EIPP stuff is launched, we will have those chargers in the ground. So from a clarity on strategy perspective, EIPP has been absolutely wonderful. And then you see places like Florida and another large state is following in quick succession is these active procurements of charging networks within their state at state-owned airports, municipal airports, and connecting these things together for not just Beta to use, but for Archer and Joby and others to use specifically in Florida, where they're also, I believe, on the EIPP selection. And this isn't something that you just can say and immediately do. We had to become experts in the deployment of infrastructure in order to do this. And we have a team that's put in a ton of different grid-tied power electronics for a variety of different applications, and they're very good at doing this efficiently and cost-efficiently.
And then your other question, and then maybe Herman or others can go back to the charging, is... The VTOL, we don't talk about it a lot, but we are testing every day the VTOL. You know, I mentioned in the prepared remarks, and this is really an important takeaway, we had a 6% reduction in power required for the aircraft. And that was a function of some really advanced blade design that we did for our vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. And that, of course, resulted in lower noise and lower energy of transition. And back to the four principles, it was, you know, carry a lot of energy, make your airplane slippery, build it light, but most importantly, convert that precious energy in the battery into propulsion efficiently. And that's one of our expertise here. So we're testing regularly on it. I've flown the aircraft. It is smooth. It's beautiful. It is really a nice transitioning aircraft. And I don't want to go out making claims, but, you know, we've flown now three different designs of VTOL aircraft. The latter two through transition in both directions with all azimuth winds, with multiple different angles of attack, multiple different aggressive stopping and starting profiles. And this is something that like it just takes time to execute on the campaign. And we're doing it. And if you want to chalk up the milestone of doing full piloted bidirectional transitions, you can put us down for four across multiple different types of aircraft.
Executive Herman (Title): Andreas, it's Herman. Just one point I want to make on the charging opportunity that we described. So we didn't take the revenue guide up. As Kyle pointed to, when you go and put these things in the ground, there's permitting, there's contracting, there's a whole bunch of coordination that has to go on with the airports and the FAA. So we have to go and do that work before we could see the timing of when we'll actually recognize the revenue. So stay tuned on that. I'm sure that's a natural question that you may have been thinking about.
Executive Kristen (Title): Yeah, I just wanted to say on that note, because we do talk a lot about the installation process and what goes into it on the FAA side. And, you know, we've been working hand in hand with them since our first installation in 2020. And it's really a testament to the strong working relationship that we have with the agency and the proactive approach that Beta takes. We recently actually hosted an FAA webinar where the team educated about 300 people from the FAA about our infrastructure and just a way to reduce the friction on those future proposals. So we are being very proactive and looking at that deployment schedule now.
Analyst Andreas Shepard (Cantor Fitzgerald): Excellent. Thank you so much, everyone. Really appreciate all that great color. Congrats again on all the progress. We'll pass it on.
Analyst Ron Epstein (Bank of America): Hey, good morning, guys. Maybe I'll start off with a question for you following up on Christine's question. And maybe Kristen, too. When you're working with the FAA on a set of rules that was made for a fundamentally different machine, culturally, how do you navigate that, right? Like, you know, I mean, in some sense, they're asking you to let a rock on fire. Your rock doesn't burn. It almost seems nonsensical. So culturally, how do you navigate that so you can get to the place where you want to be?
Executive Kyle (CEO): Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, without getting deep into the strategy, Ron, I can tell you that we spent a lot of time with the frontline specialists, and they kind of put their hands up and say, hey, look, this is the policy we have to work with. We get it. We get that you have a safe and reliable motor, but this is the policy that we have to work with. And then, of course, at the upper levels of the FAA, they are guided by the executive order, the intent of the president, and what we're trying to do as a nation with advanced air mobility. And it's not ever to compromise safety, but there needs to be policy that is attainable. So at both ends of the FAA, we have champions that believe in what we're doing, understand it. And really the strategy comes down to making sure the folks that are then asked to provide clarity to the frontline inspectors are looking at this holistically and understanding the technology in the context of the rules. So just like we did a subset of us, you know, we went down to Washington when we got into a similar situation with lightning and we met with everybody at all levels in a true partnership way.
And we were able to get that resolved. And of course, lightning manifests itself differently in an electric airplane with a giant transorb called a battery in a fly-by-wire aircraft that has secondary effects on all of the flight computers than it does in a fuel-powered aircraft where the risks are very different. So we had to get to a common understanding and move forward. So really, it takes time, it takes partnerships, it takes mutual respect, but most importantly, it takes a deep technical understanding of the product that we're certifying. And you're absolutely right we are struggling to make that equivalency to a turbine engine but I believe we're going to get there in a pretty efficient way we have the attention of the FAA they've committed the resources and the strategy is a ton of data, really good relationships and partnerships and a forcing of the deep understanding of the fundamental physics of the problem we're solving.
Analyst Ron Epstein (Bank of America): And then you made some comments about the VTOL aircraft. So that 6% energy you saved doing vertical, does that just convert to more range in forward flight?
Executive Kyle (CEO): Yeah, it does. And it's obviously nonlinear because the amount of power that you're using during vertical flight, which then the integration becomes the energy we've used across that time of transition is significantly higher. So if we reduce the transition energy by 6%, for example, or the hover power in this case for 6%, which roughly equates to that transition energy, you get more than that in return because you can add thrust and you can get through it quicker, which means you spend significantly less time in transition. You know, it's 40, 50 seconds in transition down to 30 to 40 seconds in transition. And that's a big difference in the transition energy and the consumption and your erosion of your thermal margin during that period of flight. But, you know, the thing that I've observed the most, both in the plane and out of the plane, is that the noise goes way down. And I want to clarify one thing I said. When I said shock us up to four to the last question, I didn't mean four transition. I meant four different types of vehicles doing those transitions and hundreds and hundreds of flight tests.
Analyst Ron Epstein (Bank of America): Yeah, yeah. And have you said that what you expect the range to be solved?
Executive Kyle (CEO): We have with customers and typically we talk about a planning range that's sub 100 miles. And that's because you need to have reserves and you need to account for weather conditions. But again, that's a starting point. You know, we already have batteries in hand that are 55 percent higher energy density than the ones we're flying with now. But we go through all of those long term characterization tests, testing and safety testing before we incorporate them in the aircraft. So, you know, it's really like, you know, the first aircraft is not our best aircraft and that's a totally new paradigm for aerospace. The other thing is just IFR versus VFR reserves. Our customers for medical cargo logistics operations, we're always talking in IFR planned flight ranges.
Analyst Ron Epstein (Bank of America): Got it. Got it. Got it. And then maybe one quick question for Herman. In the quarter service, the service revenue outpaced product. Can you give us a little color on that?
Executive Herman (Title): Yeah. So, um, we had a program with a partner that we recognize this month. And if you go back and look, it was similar to last year as well. We've seen that. So right now our service revenue is higher. We expect that to transition to product revenue when we get into the future programs like GD as an example.
Analyst Ron Epstein (Bank of America): Got it. All right. Thank you.
Analyst Billy Healy (Jefferies): Thanks for taking the questions. I'm on for Sheila today. Can you just speak about the potential revenue and margin profile of the defense business with the GD contract and how the GE partnership on MV250 could scale over time?
Executive Kyle (CEO): Yeah, I think when you think about military, you should model that business with a higher gross profit margin because we will be investing in R&D to get that off the ground. We will have the ability to recoup some of the margin later in the future. So the margins with military will tend to be a little bit higher than the commercial aircraft because of that R&D mix.
Analyst Billy Healy (Jefferies): Great, thanks. And then just following up on R&D, stepping up to $92 million in the quarter, how much of this is driven by certifications versus EIPP versus the turbo generator with GE? And what should we expect going forward?
Executive Kyle (CEO): Yeah, so inside of the quarter, less about EIPP and more about certification. The programs like MV250, investing behind that, the VTOL. And then, of course, we're spending a lot of time and energy right now with the motor certification and also the CTOL certification. I think the other from a research development and kind of product development strategy perspective, each of these programs like the General Dynamics, the GE program, the Embraer program that are adding to our service revenue. It's kind of a funny thing to say service in this case because it's in many cases somebody's paying us to integrate our products into their vehicles or products. So what's really important to note is that that growing high margin revenue has a long term tail on it that's meaningful. And as I mentioned in our prepared remarks, the program we did in phase one last year, growing into a phase two on that and other programs is exactly the trajectory that we want to be on. And I think on our last earnings call, I identified that each of those programs, ironically, is about one order of magnitude greater. It goes from about $3 million to $30 million, a potential of $300 million on a per contract basis for these programs. And really, as you would expect, the early days, quote, service revenue of these programs is we see the technology that you have beta, make it work in our vehicle. And it grows to low rate initial production and then, of course, production.
Analyst Billy Healy (Jefferies): Great. Thank you.
Analyst John Godden (Citigroup): Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Kyle, I wanted to revisit the charging network. It's sort of bigger picture because you described this is a growing theme in future calls, and I think a lot of people can kind of appreciate that and agree with it. As the charging network continues to grow and take shape, can you just sort of remind us and maybe revisit the economics of the business at large? You know, there's a big chunk of it that was customer-funded initially. There are other parts that you're funding. Maybe in the future there are different funding sources. And then there was this toll road dynamic issue. You know, that, you know, my recollection is, you know, we didn't quite have a very granular sense of how the economics work. So maybe this is a good opportunity just to kind of revisit the economics of it, how you plan on the economics kind of evolving as the scale takes shape. Thanks.
Executive Kyle (CEO): Yeah. I mean, starting at the highest level. The charging network is extremely strategically important to the advancement of advanced air mobility, period, for us and everybody else. We don't have a business unless we have a charging network that's fit for our customers. Some people conflate that with vertiports, but the airplanes still have to get there. They need to be service maintained. People need to train on them. And from our perspective, the right entry point is cargo medical logistics using regional airports and hospitals to serve this. That's why you see the initial deployment of our charging network. When we say customer funded, it's really important to understand the nuance of that. In many cases, in fact, in most cases to my accounting, that customer funded means the customer pays a priority access fee that's roughly equivalent to the cost of our deployment in order to get access to that with proper reservations, let's say 24 hours in advance to use those chargers. But we still own them and we get to sell the capacity adjacent to the non-reserved or the reserve times in the non-reserved times of the network.
So revenue model number one is sell a priority access fee. Obviously in medical, that becomes really important. The other one is sell the chargers themselves. And we've done that, specifically a lot of the small chargers where people are going to have them in their own facilities and not at public use airports. And then, of course, there are other customers like DOT backing, from the state of Florida, the Department of Transportation in Florida, I should say more specifically or accurately, backing the procurement of these chargers because they want to enable electric aviation and advanced air mobility in their state. So those are all revenue streams. There is a trickling of revenue coming in. I think I reported we had maybe 30,000 charging sessions last year on our chargers that just doesn't really, I say, meaningfully hit the books right now. But, you know, as this grows, the asset value of having these chargers that allows us to kind of turn the knob on the profit strategy, it's all a part of Beta's network. No matter who buys them, one of the things that we demand or we require in that purchase is that it remains a part of the network.
And that is extremely valuable to our aircraft customers.
Executive Herman (Title): John, it's Herman. Let me jump in for a minute. You know, Beta has taken a full stack approach to designing an aircraft. I would say from the beginning, we believed electric aviation would only scale if the entire ecosystem worked together. As I said earlier, building a great aircraft wasn't enough. Customers needed confidence that the infrastructure, charging, and operational support would all be there and working functionally and reliably together. So early on, we saw that as a risk that the industry could end up waiting on different parts of the ecosystem to develop independently. And aircraft manufacturers would be waiting for infrastructure, Infrastructure providers could be waiting for aircraft adoption. And it's really the customer who ends up getting stuck in the middle. So the forward thinking that went into really designing, you know, in this example, the charge network was all about this frictionless customer experience that we're trying to provide our operators with.
Analyst John Godden (Citigroup): That's great. Appreciate it. And if I could just double-click on supply chain, clearly it's on your mind. Clearly you guys are preparing to ramp production, et cetera. We are in an environment where a lot of OEMs are ramping production, and, of course, they have a different type of engine than you do, so there isn't as much overlap. But can you just talk about and maybe just spend an extra second on supply chain in light of, you know, tightness across the industry and, and a lot of different players, um, trying to ramp at the same time. What, what are the pitfalls? What, what are the things on your mind and any kind of, um, uh, you know, any, any sort of, uh, uh, orange flags, if you will, that are on your mind for managing. Thank you.
Executive Kyle (CEO): Yeah, I mean, look, we are acutely aware of the broader supply chain issues. We are highly vertically integrated, which really negates a lot of the challenges that other folks historically have had. You know, we have no major forgings. We have had a strategy from securing in advance. We've got a great liquidity position, so we're able to really stack the inventory for our planned builds. And then we've advanced some things to negate our internal supply chain, which I think are quite insightful with rapid prototyping of tooling for production units, for example, where we have full stack machine shop printing and coding capabilities that allow us to kind of not be in that cycle of sending things off for outside processing or being waiting on tooling suppliers, which is the secondary kind of limit in supply chain management. Ironically, Beta has had very little problem with hiring people. We have a very, very large and healthy stack of applicants. And so we marry that kind of foresight with tooling development and internal vertical integration. And for some reason, people actually really want to work here. And we proved that in the first quarter of this year. You know, on demand, we were able to add, I think, how many people, 300 people in 75 days, I think it was, of high quality, really, really dedicated technicians and execute a training regimen with them. And that's all part of the supply chain, you know.
Analyst: We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Kyle Clark for closing remarks.
Executive Kyle (CEO): Excellent. Thank you very much. I guess just to wrap things up, I'd like to just kind of thank everybody, appreciate the questions, everybody and the analysts. But as I've said for the past couple of quarters, and I'll say it again, we're continuing to position ourselves just to win in the market. And the EIPP, these partnerships, the work we're doing with GE and General Dynamics, I think all of these things are just reinforcing this stepwise, methodical, dedicated, persistent approach to bringing a new product to market. We're not looking for the flash bang. We're not looking for the quick turn sugar high. And I hope you see that in the way we're thinking about the long-term strategy of the charging network, our stepwise approach to certification, and really our long-term collaboration with the FAA. And these things aren't easy, but we're getting through them. We have a track record of resolving really hard issues, of developing.