Redwire Corporation

Q1 2026 Earnings Call — May 7, 2026

Analyst Suzy DeSilva (Roth Capital Partners): Hi, Pete. Hi, Chris. Congratulations on the progress here. My question is about the Andromeda Space Force program, the IDIQ program. How is Redwire positioned in this program, and how are you planning to invest specifically for this program? I appreciate the presentation of the five areas of investment you had, but how is this one going to be targeted with the investment? Thanks.

Executive Pete (Title): Hey, Suji, great question. I mean, this Andromeda opportunity is, as I noted in my speaking portion of today, is a real significant milestone for us. To have 32 bids go in and be selected as one of 14 vendors really just underscores the progress we've made on moving up the value chain, particularly in this unique white space that's emerging around highly maneuverable, refuelable geospacecraft. And therefore, we've got to invest. If you look at... are 14 competitors. It's a limited competition pool, but many of them are doing raises, are going out there and investing heavily. So Redwire has to do the same, and I think that's one of the keys to both increasing our overall IRAD investment run rate, as I believe Chris noted, going from only $1 million in IRAD Q1 last year to now ramping up to approximately $12 million in this year. And we're going out there and using the ATM, which we believe is a really efficient, low-cost-to-capital opportunity, to, much like our peers said, on that Andromeda opportunity, raise the money to make sure that we can deliver the best capability for the program. So super excited about this win. It's 10 years, so it's got a lot of period performance to it. And by them raising the ceiling from $1.8 billion to $6 billion, that really underscores that this is an area where the government is making significant investment.

Analyst Griffin Boss (B Reilly Securities): Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I guess I would love to get an update on your VLEO platforms. Obviously, that's one area where you're ramping quality growth investment. But just curious if you could kind of discuss what kind of traction you're seeing or any new developments on that front. I think that's a great area of growth for the company.

Executive Pete (Title): Hey, Griffin. Yeah, thanks for that question. So, VLEO, as I mentioned, is one of the areas where we're continuing to ramp up investment. VLEO is probably, I would say, the number one area where we're going to play strongly in Golden Dome, in my opinion. I think that particular orbital regime has something unique to bring to the fight in Golden Dome, and I think Redwire is really well positioned there. It can be difficult to talk about some specifics around our concepts of employment there, but again, much like highly maneuverable, refuelable geo, Our moving up the value chain spacecraft strategy is not a me-too strategy. We've specifically picked areas where Redwire can lead where there is no one who's in a dominant position. And I think VLEO is in particular one of those areas where with the award of honor and other programs over the last year. We have a nice jump start and we think it has a lot of potential in Golden Dome. So we're investing in maturing the technology with our partners at DARPA, AFRL and others and super excited about that. And again, one of the things I want to underscore So I'm at the risk of repeating myself.

You know, there's a little bit of a pivot happening here. Because we feel like we're so well positioned on these new opportunities and because we've been now able to execute with better cost control and more operational execution, we can go out and we can do a nice ATM raise and start applying that money to these high gross margin, high growth rate opportunities. And so that's our current strategy.

Analyst Austin Weller (Canaccord Genuity): Hi. Good morning, Pete and Chris. So, Just touching on that VLEO opportunity, if you're to compete on Golden Dome as a satellite bus manufacturer prime, can you talk about the specific layers of the Golden Dome architecture that you're targeting to bid on? Is that like tracking of hypersonic vehicles in the atmosphere? And should we expect contract awards for that in the second half of this year or 27th?

Executive Pete (Title): So, hey, Austin. So it's an interesting question. The government has not put a lot of information out publicly about the Golden Dome architecture. I think to provide an answer without just saying we can't talk about certain things, at the high level, I believe that Golden Dome is going to be a multi-orbit, all-of-the-above type strategy. It's not one space-based interceptor or one killer app technology, so to speak. So that's exciting for us because there's opportunities for us to participate, I mentioned already, in VLEO. If it's going to be a multi-orbit, all-of-the-above, resilient architecture – VLEO adds another orbital regime where the government can use to enhance the overall Golden Dome capability. I also think that this highly maneuverable refuelable geo also has interesting areas it can play in the Golden Dome architecture as well, and I think that I won't speak for the government, but things like increasing the total ceiling on that program from $1.8 billion to $6 billion underscores how important that is. Redwire is positioning itself to be a leader in the VLEO and GEO. And for those who are building large proliferated constellations in LEO, we're acting as a merchant supplier. So prime lead in VLEO, prime lead in highly maneuverable refuelable geo, merchant supplier in LEO. And that's our Golden Dome high-level positioning, if that helps answer your question.

Analyst Kira (Jefferies): Good morning, everyone. This is Kira on for Greg. So really strong gross margins in the quarter, but EBITDA was still negative. How do you think about leveraging the business and expectations around gross margins and OPEX going forward? Is it mostly about volume, and is there a certain level of fails where we would expect adjusted EBITDA to turn? Thank you.

Executive Pete (Title): Yeah, no, I appreciate the question. And I'm going to give Chris a chance here because we want to make sure he has some hair time. So I'll briefly just say, Our goal as we achieve this quarter and our goal for the remainder going forward is to have positive EBITDA net of IRAD. We are in quality growth mode, but we have to invest. But what we want to show is that we're not funding losses, but that we're actually funding investment. And therefore, if we're positioned that way, no matter what happens in the future macro environment, we can turn that dial on IRAD up or down based on opportunities.

Executive Chris (Title): Yeah, no, we're super excited about where we came in this quarter at 26%, which is the impact of a lot of different things. We've had strong bookings the last several quarters that have replenished our order book with higher margin profiles as we've moved capabilities from development into low rate and full rate production as we talked about on our last call. That's a contributor. Also excited that we managed the ACs much tighter this quarter with a net $1 million impact, which is a mark to improve it. Those two points are really helping bolster that gross margin. And as Pete said, as we're managing growth, managing that investment, without the IRAD, we would have had positive adjusted EBITDA. Now, we do see that we will probably have a little bit of modest SG&A growth, but there should be expanded operating margins as we continue to grow the top line revenue this year. We are expecting revenue to scale throughout the year. And as we continue to hold the portfolio in a similar position, that additional gross profit will help cover and expand our profitability at the bottom line, again, managing the IRAD, which could then offset some of that additional gross profit.

Analyst Alexandra Mandry (Truist Securities): Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. What do the R&D investments include for the six opportunities mentioned? Is it labor, facilities, material, inventory? And what is the expected R&D cadence for the remainder of the year? Thanks.

Executive Pete (Title): So the first answer to

your question is yes. So it's all of those things. It's going to be deployment of the capital in a way that is outlined in detailed plans as part of our execution strategy, and it is a mix of all those things that you mentioned. In terms of the template for going forward, what I'm trying to underscore is that we have a lot of these opportunities that we're well positioned for, and whether it be driving towards a constellation of QKDSATs, you know, delivering a strong capability for Golden Dome, monetizing the $6 billion, roughly, whatever, Andromeda opportunity, all these things, we're going to be dialing IRAD up or down based on how those strategies are playing out. So it's opportunistic, and it'll be market-dependent. But I think we're really positioned in these areas, but they're going to take some investment to fully realize the potential. But the potential for each one of these is strong, and the demand signal out there is really strong. And we're really excited about how many paths to victory we have on these areas. opportunities that have basically been born of the strategy we've been talking about for well over a year now of moving up the value chain and becoming a multi-domain company. So we're not providing any, like, future overall guidance for IRAD for the year, but as you can see, this quarter we are ramping. Chris, you want to add anything there?

Executive Chris (Title): I think you got it.

Analyst Michael Leshock (KeyBank Capital Markets): Hey, good morning. I wanted to ask on NASA's accelerated lunar initiatives and the goal of building a lunar base and establishing a permanent presence on the moon, what would you say is the biggest opportunity for Redwire specifically as it relates to the moon base and the lunar economy? I know there's a lot of opportunities there, but curious if there's one or two things that you're most excited about for the lunar economy.

Executive Pete (Title): Yeah, that's a great question, and thank you for that. It's really simple. There's two areas that I think we're really well positioned for. One is to be the prime to build a lunar grid. We are a power company. We have, I believe, and I'm obviously biased, the best heritage there is out there in space power on the solar side with our ROSAs. and now our ELSAs to include being the power provider with our ROSAs on the International Space Station. So one of our primary objectives, and I mentioned it as one of the areas we're investing is in positioning to build a lunar grid for this infrastructure that's going to come there with ROSA as the underpinning, the rollout solar arrays as the underpinning technology. So that's super exciting. This pivot to the moon, I think, has incredible opportunities. The second is, you know, we don't spend a lot of time and we haven't in the past talking about the fact that Redwire is, in fact, a Clips Prime and Clips, the commercial lunar payload services contract. has been a key highlight for NASA Administrator Isaacman recently, where he sees that as ramping up. I think he mentioned one a month.

So previously, Redwire wasn't really active on CLPS because we didn't have a baseline where we could achieve the economics that we wanted. for the limited amount of launches that were occurring. But now that this is a really big focus for NASA, we're going to start leveraging that prime contract position and investing there because we think there's a bigger total addressable market than there has been in the past, which presents us with the right kind of investment profile we want to go after. So those are the two, lunar grid and eclipse. But we're also obviously a merchant supplier of key things like mating technologies and just space infrastructure in general. So, yeah, so I think there will be other opportunities as well. But those are the two big ones.

Analyst Alex Preston (Bank of America): Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to turn things to Edge Autonomy, right? You're coming close to a year since the acquisition. I was wondering if you could sort of walk through maybe what's performing as planned or above expectation, things that might be behind schedule, any synergies you realize that you can note on costs or contracts, and then I guess on margins as well, right, sort of Edge seemed like it was hovering around, call it 30% EBITDA margins when you got it. Defense Tech is printing 12% this quarter. I get it's not 100% edge anymore, but sort of what's driving the differential there and how do you see the margins trending from here? Sort of any color there would be really helpful.

Executive Pete (Title): Yeah, that was a rapid fire. I'll try to make sure, correct me if I don't hit every part of that question. So we're really excited about what we've been able to do with Edge, which we don't call Edge anymore. It's fully branded now as Redwire, which for those who have been involved in M&A is a key cultural milestone and culture in many ways drives success in M&A. So we're excited about how rapidly they've been able to become part of Redwire and As you noted, on the margin side, defense tech is not representative of just the legacy edge autonomy. It includes other defense aspects of our portfolio that were previously part of legacy Redwire space. So, yeah, we're pleased with the direction that it's headed. As we've talked about in previous quarters, they, like everybody else, are ran into a government shutdown in the second half of 2025. But the 2026, you can see, is starting to ramp again, and the government has a budget now. And there's a lot of opportunities now that the Marine Corps, for instance, has a budget. They're adding to our existing 250 aircraft with more. So those and others are really bullish signs that the stalker is an important part of our platform. And, in fact, I think in Europe, you know, we're seeing a lot of defense budget scale as well. So Penguin has a really bright future in our eyes as well. Based on the timeline, we're really comfortable with the way it's gone so far.

Executive Chris (Title): Yeah, I mean, just to echo that, they did have $72 million in bookings this quarter, which was an increase in where we have been, obviously impacted by some of the government budget matters this past year. So happy to see them return to a stronger book to bill for the quarter. We do continue to see that product line holding good gross margin consistent where they have been historically. I think that's important to note that we are continuing to hold quality gross margin. Similar to what we've talked about earlier today, we have increased the rate of investment the three major product groups there that came along with that acquisition. And that has consumed some of the net EBITDA margin. But again, as we look at the pipeline and the future opportunity set, we are investing in good quality growth there. And the important point is that the gross margins are holding.

Analyst: Got it. Thank you for the color. Appreciate it.

Executive: And we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I would like to turn the floor back to Peter Conito for closing remarks.

Executive Pete (Title): All right. Well, thank you all for your questions and your active engagement. With that, we appreciate everyone taking the time to listen today, and go Red Wire. Thank you. And this does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines

at this time.

We thank you for your participation.

Q4 2025 Earnings Call — February 26, 2026

Analyst (Alliance Global Partners): Great, thanks, and congrats on the improving capital structure. My question is, how is management adjusting its pricing model in response to the abnormally low gross margin throughout 2025? Have you contemplated higher fixed price quoting in space, a more safer contracting vehicle such as cost plus or time and materials? especially for new products like ELSA.

Management: Thanks, Brian. I appreciate your question. So there's a couple of dynamic things there. So I'll address two parts of this question, starting with the easiest and the last part first. You know, we basically have to, like all defense contractors, we have to meet our customer where they are in terms of the kind of contracting that they do. The Department of War has very openly discussed that they are moving away from cost plus in time and materials and looking for contractors that are willing to take on firm fixed price development. It's for that reason that we really took the time and effort at the beginning of this call to understand the portfolio effect, that if you want to get market share in this market, you have to be willing to do some investment, whether it be through IRAD, if you want to bear the full cost, or through additional development risk if you're willing to take on risk but take on payments from customers at the same time. You have to be willing to do that in order to get through the development phase to get to production, which leads me to the first part of your question, where in terms of the pricing model, it's not so much – trying to pad our pricing and ultimately losing when we're bidding against more aggressive competitors on the development phase of contract. But it's actually having that balanced portfolio I talk about where you may be taking on a more balanced set of development contracts with higher EAC risks, maybe lower margins as you buy yourself into the baseline in pursuit of a production tail. But now Redwire is in this position where we're taking on less of that as a percentage of the total portfolio. Now, less of it doesn't mean we're bidding less. We're still aggressively going after those development programs in order to increase our market share and penetrate the – particularly on the space side of the market where the winners haven't really been determined yet. But with the transformational acquisition of edge autonomy, our portfolio, as you can see from that slide seven – It's now much more balanced. We have a production level of programs that are supporting that. And it's because of that production tail, as the defense tech side of the business starts to scale, as we anticipate it will in 2026, we expect to see the gross margin improvements that you're looking for. Thanks very much.

Analyst (B. Reilly Securities): Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So I guess for my one question, I will – yeah, ask about edge. So the 100-plus aircraft to seven countries post-close, that's good to see, but do you have any insight on how many aircraft Standalone Edge did in 2024? And then along these same lines, you mentioned that included in that 100 plus number were deliveries to the U.S. Army via LRR. Does that mean you've received production orders at this stage, or is that referring to the stocker deliveries for the training purposes?

Management: Hey, Griffin, thanks for your question. Chris, you want to take the count one? Yeah, so 100 aircraft since we closed the acquisition. They delivered about 200 aircraft this year, which is relatively consistent to where they were in the past year. We really lean forward even prior to the acquisition to build capacity to be able to handle the demand curve as the demand curve comes online. So for the production here in the second half of the year, about 100 aircraft, that is right in the middle of their production curve. But with scaled capacity, as we see the growth continue to come in with the order book, as we talked about earlier, we'll have the ability to produce those aircraft as we go into 26 and beyond. A good example of that is the investment we made in the 85,000 square foot for our fuel cell production in Ann Arbor that we'll be able to see increase aircraft full rate production in 26. Got it. Okay. And then just the second part of that was regarding LRR and whether those are production orders or referring to the testing. Yeah, that was part of the testing. So we're still anticipating the full production order here to come later this year. ==One of the things that we're excited about in terms of our ability to accelerate growth in Q4 was,

as a reminder, that was still without a fully passed budget.

== So some of the things that we talked about in our last earnings call that we were expecting to come online, one of them being orders for the LRR program, was not included in that 1.52 book to bill. So that's still upside we anticipate in 2026. Got it. Thank you, Pete. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Thank you.

Analyst (HC Wainwright): Hi. Good morning, guys. Apologies if I missed this during the prepared remarks, but how much of the backlog is expected to be executed on over the next 12 months or should I say calendar for 2026? And then are there any large concentrations within that backlog that would drive a materially outsized revenue results in any given quarter or potentially risk slipping into 2027?

Management: Yeah, hey, appreciate it, Scott. So from a backlog standpoint, we've got about 50% or so of the guide in backlog. And as we look at the risk profile across that backlog, there are no single orders that are binary that would meaningfully move, you know, our view one way or the other. Pretty balanced across, you know, the order book, you know, both with geography, diversification across the U.S. and Europe, as well as across our various value drivers. So about 50% or so of backlog for the guide. Yeah, one thing I'll add to that is although we don't have anything necessarily in our forecast that we're looking at as a big material size value driver in our pipeline, not necessarily backlog. We do have, especially on the space ties, we do continue to have opportunities like consolation size orders that could materially change our profile. We're just discounting those things in order to make sure that we are focusing on achieving our growth through what's already on the books. Perfect. I appreciate that added color, guys. Thank you very much.

Analyst (Jefferies): Hi, guys. This is Kira on for Greg. Thank you for taking my question. So I guess sticking with backlog, what are you seeing in the broader order environment given some pickup in the three months, the 1.52 booked bill in Q4? How different are the order cycles between space and defense tech? And what are the expectations for book to bill in 2026 reporting growth there?

Management: Yeah, so thank you for your question. And so in terms of in the backlog, in that 1.52, what it shows is as we start to close, so last year we talked a lot about moving up the value chain. And as we start to close bigger orders like Otter, which was a $44 million opportunity, I mentioned VLEO spacecraft order, you can see that the size of our orders are growing over time as part of that moving up the value chain strategy that we executed. In addition to that, you see another element with the eight-figure IBDM order that contributed to that 1.52 backlog that we closed in the fourth quarter, where we actually got two IBDM orders as we start to move into more of a production phase, low rate, but still a production phase, for the IBDM. So that was really the characteristic of the fourth quarter backlog build. And, you know, those are long programs, year-long or more programs that will be, that gives us confidence in our revenue build over 2026. In terms of the order cycles between space and defense tech, that's a very interesting question.

The order cycles, and this is why it's not really apples to apples when you look at backlog between defense tech and space. Space will have a really stronger backlog because it'll be a multi-year backlog in many cases, where the conversion cycle for defense tech is really fast, especially on orders where we have some level of inventory already on the balance sheet. So an existing customer that already has a fleet of Stalker or Penguin aircraft can decide that they want to scale their fleet, very quickly submit a purchase order. And if we have that available in inventory, or even if we have aircraft coming off the production line, we can fill that order quickly. And so the conversion for defense tech is a lot faster than on space. Chris, you want to add anything to that? I was just going to point out, you know, from a book-to-bill standpoint, in the fourth quarter, we were just over a 2x on the space side, as Pete talked about, and just out of one on the defense tag, which, you know, just highlights that point. Thank you so much.

Analyst (Roth Capital Partners): Hi, Pete. Hi, Chris. Congratulations on the bookings improvement. So just quick questions on the mix of space versus defense. Just some clarification on defense. Is there a material part of defense that's not the edge autonomy acquisition? And what is the growth expectation in 26 roughly across space versus defense?

Management: So let me address the first part. So yes, the defense tech not only includes the legacy edge autonomy capability, but it also includes our portfolio of space optics, other payloads and our space RF systems. You know, the reason for that is because when you go back and you look at part of our early discussion about the synergies that we expected by being multi-domain in space, a lot of the things like optics or antennas or RF payloads are very similar across both UASs and satellites or spacecraft. So by putting them in the defense tech segment, we're able to achieve those synergies and truly be a multi-domain in the way we go to market in those technologies. So yes, the material portion of defense tech came from part of the legacy Redwire space. Chris, did you want to talk about the latter part of the question? Yeah, I mean, so, Sushi, we were pretty balanced across the segment in our fourth quarter. We do see the FinTech probably driving a little more contribution as we go through 26. Just line of sight and where they are, the growth rate on the DT side probably outperforms the space side, maybe closer to 20% for line of sight.

But as Pete said, on the space side, what's in the order book is what we're managing to. But there are some really big and interesting opportunities in the pipeline. That could really accelerate the growth on the space side, but again, what we're looking at right now, pretty balanced currently, and we do expect the DT side to start to take a little larger share as we get in the back part of 26. All right. Helpful color. Thanks, Pete. Thanks, Chris.

Management: Thanks, Suji. Thank you. Thank you, and we have reached the end of the question and answer session, so I'll now hand the floor to Peter Canito for closing remarks.

Management: Great. Well, thank you all for the excellent questions. With that, we appreciate everyone taking the time to listen today, and go Red Wire. Thank you. This concludes today's conference. All parties may disconnect.