Red Cat Holdings Inc (RCAT) reported a wider-than-expected loss in its fourth-quarter 2024 earnings, with actual earnings per share (EPS) at -$0.18 compared to the forecasted -$0.09. Revenues also fell short at $1.53 million against a forecast of $4.13 million. Despite these disappointing financials, the company's stock surged by nearly 20% in aftermarket trading, closing at $9.856.
Key Takeaways
- Red Cat Holdings missed EPS expectations by $0.09.
- Revenue decreased by 24% year-to-date.
- Stock price rose by 19.76% in aftermarket trading.
- Strategic partnerships and contracts could drive future growth.
- Negative gross margins highlight ongoing financial challenges.
Company Performance
Red Cat Holdings has faced a challenging year, with revenues declining by 24% compared to the previous year. The company's gross margin turned negative at -12%, down from a positive 25% last year, indicating significant cost pressures. Despite these hurdles, strategic initiatives, such as the partnership with Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) and the Army contract for the Black Widow drone, signal potential future growth.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: $1.53 million, down from forecasted $4.13 million.
- Earnings per share: -$0.18, missing the forecast by $0.09.
- Year-to-date cash used in operations increased by 11% to $12.5 million.
Earnings vs. Forecast
Red Cat Holdings reported an EPS of -$0.18, significantly missing the forecast of -$0.09 by 100%. Revenue also fell short of expectations, coming in at $1.53 million against a forecast of $4.13 million. The miss highlights ongoing financial difficulties and contrasts with the company's strategic growth initiatives.
Market Reaction
Despite the earnings miss, Red Cat Holdings' stock rose by 19.76% in aftermarket trading, closing at $9.856. This stark increase suggests that investors are optimistic about the company's future prospects, possibly driven by strategic partnerships and new military contracts. The stock's performance is notable against its 52-week range, where it has seen lows of $0.563 and highs of $12.57.
Company Outlook
Looking ahead, Red Cat Holdings is focusing on expanding its product offerings and entering new markets. The company expects additional revenue from its partnership with Palantir and is exploring a strategic capital loan of up to $150 million. With plans for an Analyst Day in early January, Red Cat aims to communicate its growth strategy and improve investor confidence.
Executive Commentary
Jeff Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer, stated, "We're going to have the most dominant platform in this market space globally." CEO Jeff Thompson added, "This administration wants to build the largest drone and robot army in the world," highlighting the company's strategic position in the defense sector.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Red Cat's ability to export drones internationally and the potential market opportunities arising from manufacturing restrictions. Executives addressed these questions by emphasizing the company's competitive advantages and differentiation strategies.
Risks and Challenges
- Continued negative gross margins could impact profitability.
- Declining revenues pose a risk to financial stability.
- Increased cash usage in operations may necessitate further financing.
- Dependence on strategic partnerships for growth could present risks if partnerships do not yield expected results.
- Market saturation and competitive pressures in the drone industry remain significant challenges.
Full transcript - Red Cat Holdings Inc (RCAT) Q2 2025:
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: do you have a copy of the disclosure?
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: Yeah. I was just gonna say, why don't I get our opening remarks going for Stan here?
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: So why don't I welcome everybody, and then hopefully Stan jumps in here. And thanks again everybody for joining us for our call for the last parts of 2024 as we switch to our new calendar year in 2025. I'm gonna have Leah start with some of the disclosure stuff. She'll then hand it off to me and, we'll get moving here. We've got a lot to talk about.
So, Leah, can you read the disclosures for us?
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. So welcome everyone to the Redcat Holdings fiscal 20 5 Second Quarter Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you just can submit it through the Zoom (NASDAQ:ZM) Q and A function.
Hopefully, Stan will be back in to moderate that. Participants of this call are advised that this conference call is being recorded for playback purposes. So joining us today from Redcat Holdings are Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer myself, Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer and Geoffrey Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer. During this call, management will be making forward looking statements, including statements that address Redcat's expectations for future performance or operational results. Forward looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from these statements.
For more information about these risks, please refer to the risk factors described in Redcat's most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10 ks and in Redcat's press release that accompanies this call, particularly the cautionary statements in it. The content of this call contains time sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, December 16, 2024. Except as required by law, Redcat disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer. Jeff, go ahead.
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: Thanks, Leah. Well, so just a little bit of housekeeping again, as we usually start off, like I said, we have a lot of fun stuff to talk about, today's news and a few other great things that are happening and Jeff's updates and a little bit more color on guidance, but, not all of it's going to be super fun. We do have a little bit of sad news. And I'm going to hand this over to Leah for a second here.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: Thanks, Jeff. So I'm just going to take this opportunity to inform everyone that I have resigned as CFO of Redcat due to family reasons. Just to share a little, one of my children has a disability and his needs have increased such that I can no longer devote the time required to do my job well. This has been an extremely difficult decision, to say the least. I'm very sad to be leaving, especially such an exciting time for the company.
But I've chosen to prioritize the needs of my family and truly the needs of the company. On a more positive note, I'm also actually 5 months pregnant. So we've been planning for, you know, some kind of interim support after I have the baby. You know, so now with this change, we're just kind of accelerating that timeline. Jeff, I'll let you add anything that you want to
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: that. Thanks. Yeah. This is, you know, we're sad to see you go, Leah. You know, we we have, the the only good news out of this is that we do have a bunch of candidates that we've been talking to to help when Leah had had the baby.
There's some great CFOs with some industry expertise in the drone space that have been doing it for quite some time. So I think this is going to be, you know, we're going to be okay. We're going to miss Leah, But, we have been kind of planning for this. We're just gonna have to accelerate everything. So with that, I'm gonna kind of move on into some of the stuff that's happened.
Mostly today, I've been on the phone all day. Everybody wants to know about what's what's going on with this new partnership that we did with Palantir, and it is really amazing. We've been working with these folks since AUSA in DC. And what we are doing now is we're taking the Black Widow, which is the winner of SRR Sole Source, which is gonna be, you know, 12,000 drones out there. And we're partnering with Palantir's visual navigation and their artificial intelligence, MAVEN or Maven, I always say it wrong.
So this black widow is gonna be one of the most capable birds, ever fielded by the DOD. And it fits you in rucksack. I keep saying that all day long. So this drone has a capability to identify objects. It can, well, let's just go back to some of the high level stuff and Jeff will dig into this because he's been selling drones for forever.
The 2 biggest problems that you're gonna face when you're at a battlefield right now is EW, electronic warfare, which we, actually have some, great testing that we've done and completed in the EW world with doodle. And again, Jeff will dig in a little deeper. And GPS, GPSs are don't work in any battlefield. They're basically useless. Our goal is to not even ship a GPS on the Black Widow in the future and just continue to utilize visual navigation.
The visual navigation that Palantir has is unlike no other. There's 40 companies out there trying to do this right now, but they have access to real time capabilities in the satellite images. So if you're in a battlefield and 3 of the buildings disappear and the road disappears, most visual navigation will not work anymore. We can get real time updates to that mapping that you're comparing the visual, what the camera sees to what the the map you have onboard, the black widow. So so this thing is gonna be very difficult to defeat in the battlefield.
And when you add our strike capabilities, you're really giving a war fighter something that's gonna make them safer and and more lethal. So that that's a really great thing that's just happened and we finally announced it today, but we're we've been working on this for quite some time. They're already working on on the drones and integrating this. So a lot of good stuff is going to happen there. The other question we get with this deal is, you know, how does this work financially?
So this is just going to add additional revenue to each drone that we sell. We haven't put the pricing out yet. We haven't put out the revenue share that we're working with with Palantir. But this is gonna be very high margin software that's gonna go on every bird that people people want visual navigation, specifically visual navigation that we believe is gonna be the best in the drone space. So this is gonna be an add on.
It'll bring our margins up even once we get to the 50% gross margins with just the hardware side. This software will add to our margins and hopefully accelerate our our path to profitability. Just going to touch on guidance a little bit because we'll be coming back to it. And we upped our guidance from 50,000,000 to 55,000,000 goalposts, and we put some kind of wide goalposts out there, 80 to 120. So that's basically, you know, adding what we think SRR related revenue is going to be to the total.
The wide goalposts are, you know, we're not completely into all the contracting that we need, which will be happening in the next few weeks. We will be probably having an Analyst Day in New York in early January. We're hoping to pin it down before tonight. So we'll be actually giving an update just in a few weeks after the holidays, and we'll be able to give you more detail on all the contracts that we've been signing and maybe firm up those goalposts a little bit for everybody. But with that, I am going to hand it over to Jeff Hitchcock, our CRO.
Jeff Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer, Redcat Holdings: Thank you, Jeff. Thanks everybody for joining. I'm looking at the numbers. It's astounding that we have like 1.1. I know we have 1100 people watching this right now and it wasn't too long ago.
It was 10 or 12. So thank you all for joining. I do want to take a minute and thank Leah for everything she's done for the company up to this point. I wish her the best. I understand her reasoning for it, but it does make me sad.
She was a joy to work with. Hopping into a little bit of what we got going on. So first and foremost, since the SRR announcement about 3 weeks ago, we have been inundated by customers requesting quotes and pricing in response to RFPs, both through DoD, USG and internationally. And I think as of Friday, the quotes that have gone out the door right around $14,700,000 This is no SRR customers. This is all Black Widow customers.
Preponderance of those are going to be U. S. DoD. They're doing budgeting now. So when the CR ends, they can pull the trigger on that.
So we're super excited about that. We're getting great demand signals globally on the new platform. So we're super excited about that. And then again, as I stated, when the CRNs and the budgets are allocated out to the individual entities, we expect the triggers to start getting pulled on those. We have been in discussions with the Army since the award.
Right now, we've responded to their request for a R and D, 6 month R and D contract. We're expecting to kick that off. That's to finish up some of the hard stuff, visual navigation being one of them. We're expecting that in the January time frame for award. We have the short range reconnaissance contract kickoff briefing scheduled for some time in January.
That's when we're going to get a lot more understanding of what initial LRIP and full rate production contracts are going to look like. So over the next couple of months, we'll have some answers for you. Right now, we're still don't know until we have the sit down, right. But again, that's supposed to be scheduled in January sometime and we'll keep you guys updated on that. As Jeff was talking about the Palantir announcement that went out today, right, we've been looking at a lot of companies and this is one of the hardest remaining problems to solve that the Army had requested, which is both day and night visual navigation.
Palantir has been a market leader in this space for a while. And the fact that they're bringing it down to a platform our size solves the GPS problem. And I do honestly feel that a day will come where we don't need GPS at all and we're just flying visual based navigation. And that would that'll make us all domain, all weather, day and night ability to navigate safely and accurately, and make us more lethal on the battlefield. The other problem that was one of 2 problems, right?
The GPS jamming or GPS contested environments and then the RF jamming contested environments. And we've our partnership with Doodle Labs is very strong. They offer something in our space with their frequency hopping sense software where it's not actually hopping within a band, it's hopping within 6 radio bands. So makes it very hard, very difficult to jam. So again, to kind of reiterate, Palantir, we're going to be working very hard.
I think we're going to I take us about 6 months. Jeff, you could pipe in. I think it's going to take us about 6 months before we're showing to the Army that software. They're very excited. We're very excited.
But I think it's going to be a good year. Lots of work still to do, but work continues, but we will have the most dominant platform in this market space globally when we get this integration done. Subject, rather than that, I'll wait for your questions
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: later. Before we hand it off to Lee, I just want to, you know, translate some of the Army speak from Mr. Hitchcock. The CR, he's talking about continuing resolution on budgets. So that money is going to be loosened up pretty soon.
It just needs to be signed. On some of the contracts that he was talking about, again, we're getting additional newfound money that's going to be approximately $3,000,000 Jeff, I think you said that we're going to get in January for these new features. LRIP starts again continues to still start in the first half of twenty twenty five, Full rate production still starts in the second half of twenty twenty five. And since I'm the guy that's been dealing mostly with Palantir, we're going to have the software on that drone a lot quicker than that. We're hoping to demo it in just 2 months to the public.
So, we will have it ready for LRIP. That software will be ready. Now another exciting point is once we have it integrated fully onto the Black Widow, we're going quickly right onto the flight edge 130, probably be into the TRICON version when we put visual navigation on there because we'll be putting the doodles technology on the Edge 130. So it'll also be able to do EW and go through GPS denied locations. The 2 hardest things to do on a battlefield with small drones, and we have that cured.
And not only that, we have artificial intelligence from the best artificial intelligence in the world, on our drone. It's it's really great. So with that, I'm gonna hand it off to Leah. Take it away.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: Great. Thank you, Jeff. Before I dive into the financial highlights of our 2nd fiscal quarter, I just want to remind everyone that we're changing our fiscal year end from April 30th to December 31st, beginning December 31, 2024. So today, we're reporting quarter 2 results for the 6 months ended October 31, 2024 in accordance with our previous fiscal year. Our next report will be a transition report 10 ks for the 8 months ended December 31, 2024.
After that, all future filings will be based on calendar year. We're kind of in this middle transition phase. Year to date revenues totaled $4,300,000 compared to $5,700,000 for the same period last year. This is a 24% year over year decrease and is due to the company's strategic decision to focus on Black Widow. While we're still selling the TL2, we have dramatically shifted manufacturing and sales efforts to prepare for mass production of Black Widow in calendar 2025, prioritizing long term growth over short term revenue.
Similarly, gross margin year to date was negative 12% of revenue compared to positive 25% in the same period last year. This was primarily due to the final delivery of the prototypes for the SOR Tranche 2 program at the start of the fiscal year. Also, our focus on Black Widow and Webb led to lower than planned production quantities of TL2, which resulted in lower than targeted gross margins. In spite of this, our efforts have been successful and we're thrilled to have been selected as the winner of the US Army's Short Range Reconnaissance Program of Record. We plan to, we've said this before, but we plan to produce the Black Widow for several years, steadily increasing margins over time.
Additionally, during quarter 2, we closed the acquisition of FlyteWave, adding the Edge 130 to our product mix. So now with our family of systems, we expect to reach up to 50% gross margins in the future under mass production. So cash used in operations totaled $12,500,000 representing an 11% increase compared to the same period last year. This is this is similar, right? In the 2nd fiscal quarter, we began increase staffing and other resources to ensure our ability to fulfill the demands of not only the army contract, but also, other sales of Black Widow Webb and the EDGE 130 that we anticipate in the future.
We ended the quarter with $5,700,000 in cash and accounts receivable and have since closed an additional $6,000,000 financing. So we're still evaluating our long term cash needs as we prepare for future growth. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Jeff. It should specify. I mean, Thompson.
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: Yeah. Great. So, we're kind of moderating ourselves here. We're we're not the practice round, it was much easier when when Stan was guiding us around here.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: You know, I can I can take questions, Jeff, if you want? I'm I've got that pulled up so I can do that. I know Right.
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: Yeah. He just emailed me a bunch of the the ones from some of the, analysts on there. So, but, let me just also, just kind of round up because a lot of the I bet you all the questions are going to be coming in are about fundraising. So, as Leah just said, we've got cash in the bank. We ended the quarter.
We just closed on $6,000,000 worth of we got some more cash. We got about possibly $3,000,000 coming in January from the new features on the Army. We believe that the debt holders have warrants that are not cashless that are weighing the money. We expect them now that their shares are registered to probably exercise those. That's another 5,000,000.
So we are very healthy to wait till we need to make a decision to hopefully raise as little money as possible, as we also have been notified to that we should be applying for the office of strategic capital, which does loans between 10,150,000,000. They just appropriated 998,000,000 for that program. It's available now. We're applying for it in early January. We're supposed to know by the end of February, early March, if we can receive that $10,000,000 to $150,000,000 They only want to give it to 10 to 15 10 or 15 companies.
There's about 15 categories. I think we we check off 6 or 8 of them. We're a perfect candidate. They have a program of record. So we we hope that we can get that strategic capital.
It's a very low interest, and there's also, you can read it. It's all out there publicly that they can't you can also waive repaying the loan for years. So it's very grant like type of funds. So we've we've got plenty of ways to access capital without dilution. And with that, I'm going to grab some of the questions as we've already had coming in.
The first questions are from Glenn Mattson of Ladenburg. I'll read the questions. It's going to sound goofy when I read the questions, but I'll read them and respond to them. I want to touch more on the relationship with Palantir. Can you talk further about how that came along?
How much collaboration was done before? How much integration still has to get done, and was the relationship driven by customer asking for the 2 of you guys to work together? That's a great question. We are actually going to be working with a joint customer that requested this technology on one of our drones. I'll just leave it at that.
We've been working with them for, like I said, since AUSA in early September. And we hope to have this complete in the next couple of months for at least initial testing. So this is moving pretty quickly. Also, is there upside from Palantir built into the guidance? And if not, can you frame how much upside it could provide?
That's actually a good question. So we did give guidance of 80 to 120,000,000. That does not include any additional revenue on each, Black Widow drone that will probably, I think, I don't think anyone's not gonna wanna take this software. So there'll be additional revenue on every drone that you get this Palantir, Visnav and artificial intelligence on every single drone. So that will add to our guidance, but this is a relatively new situation and we haven't given pricing or any details yet.
So once we have those pricings, that will add to the guidance. The next question is, in terms of funding, can you just remind me the time your latest assumptions or needs of investment, either OpEx or CapEx level of commitment from DoD? And I think we I covered that a little bit, but again, we are trying to wait and find out what type of upfront payments we'll get for LRIP and full rate production. And as I just mentioned, that we have the capital to get through that part. Next (LON:NXT) question.
Shuk Kumar from ThinkEquity. Would you expand on the previous question of what revenue per drone we can expect with AI software from Palantir? Oh, gosh. I knew everyone's gonna wanna know that. We we don't have the per drone revenue number yet.
We hope to get there as quickly as possible. We'll let The Street know. And, obviously, software has very high margins compared to hardware, and we're hoping to get to that 50% gross margins as we continue to stamp out the Black Widow. As soon as we know, we'll let you know. When do you think the Flightwave factory will be up and running?
That's a good question. So we are just starting to move in now. We just signed the lease. We hope to have a, you know, more of a startup style factory in about 3 or 4 weeks where basically they're sitting on top of each other in their office right now. They'll be able to spread out, put a bunch of tables out there and just get a production line that's mapped out.
And then it'll look like a real factory like the Teal factory hopefully in about 2 months. So we are trying to meet some goals that they have at the with all the orders they have. They've got orders for almost 250 drones already. So we need to build them and ship them. So we hope to ship them in Q1.
So it'll be up relatively quick. And while we'll be adding the Palantir software to the Edge 130, I did mention that earlier. Yes. Once we're done with the Black Widow, we're gonna move right to integration on the Edge 130. Next question.
Kevin Mack of Creek Drive Capital. You said Black Widow was basically built to spec for the army SRR program. How do you expect to adapt it for winning non army business in the United States, I e, law enforcement and first responders, etcetera? This is a really good question because there's actually some some other things that we were gonna bring up later. So the the ban of DJI and Autel is passed the house.
And I'm not sure if the Senate's voted on it yet, but when this new NDAA bill goes through, it usually goes through on December 20 something for the last 2 years. DGI and Autel will be banned within a year. So you will not be able to get Chinese drones anymore. Now what that does, Brendan, who does our government work, is we with the numbers that we have been able to derive from the customs holding the DGI equipment, in customs, we think that there's going to be a TAM of about $975,000,000 once this DGI ban is put in place. And as Kevin's question was, we did build the Black Widow specifically for the war fighter, specifically for the requirements that the army gave us.
But in the past, we've done the same thing, and we have first responders, border patrol. Almost every agency is either has a TL2 or is asking for a black widow right now. So, you know, these do work for first responders and could work for law enforcement. So with that TAM of, you know, dollars 975,000,000, I'm I'm going to be, very generous to, one of our competitors. If if if Skydio gets 2 and we get one for every of these of that TAM, that that that could be a big market that we weren't looking at.
And and and, frankly, we're ignoring it while we focused on the army. So that's a that's a massive TAM that we are gonna put some efforts towards now that DGI and Autel are gonna be banned. Great question, Kevin. Tim Weitraub from Alpha Wolf Trading. Is our cat going to be presenting at any investment conferences in January February?
Yeah. We've been invited to quite a few. We've been invited to so many things in the last few days. We will get our our conference schedule out right after the holidays, but there's gonna be quite a few of them, and they're gonna be some some bigger banks than last year. I'll just say that.
Here's one of the emails. I mean, chat. This came in that I just go forward it. Listened to the AVAV, that's Aero environment, FYI call, and they said that small drone business is difficult, referencing our cat financials, and that's why they did not participate in SRR. Well, that's interesting.
Well, if they're looking at our financials right now, we haven't shipped a single SRR drone. So look at our financials in 2 quarters, and I think you'll realize when you have a product like this, it will have 50% margins. And now with software on it, that's better than almost anything in the industry or better than everything in the industry. I'll just say that. And I will also remind that company that, and Jeff might have something to say about this, but they did participate in tranche 1.
And that's that down selected. There you go. They they lost. We won. Okay.
So that's all the ones that Stan keeps feeding me. I will have to go to the live ones as I don't have a feed anymore from Stan. And Leah, if you have
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: I've got this, Jeff. Yeah. I can read these in. Okay. So from Hassan Kakley, what is the competitive landscape for drones being able to land in the water, recharge, send data, etcetera?
Does anyone else have a partnership with a company like OPTT?
Jeff Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer, Redcat Holdings: I can address this. So competitive landscape, there's not much competitive landscape actually for drones being able to land in the water because that has to be a purpose built drone, right? The only reliable one that I know of is AeroVironment (NASDAQ:AVAV)'s Kuma because it was purpose built. I was there when they did it for amphibious ops. That being said, it doesn't necessarily have to land in the water.
But if it lands on something that's in the water and that's the approach we're taking with some Hive solutions and unmanned surface vehicle approaches that we're talking about when we talk about Red Cat future initiatives. So there's lots of ways to skin a cat. We've just selected to use unmanned surface vehicles with hives that will keep the drones on charge while they're in the box. Not many people doing that. I don't know anybody actually that's doing that cradle to grave.
That's what makes the Redcap Future initiative so compelling.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: Right. Great. Thank you. We'll take another one here. I apologize if I'm messing up these names, but Sambodhi Sarkar says, can you please describe how the Palantir contract will help increase gross margins?
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: Yeah. It's pretty simple. So if you look at what we've been seeing for quite some time and the modeling that myself, Jeff and Leah have done while we're in the factory in Salt Lake City recently, we do get to about 50% gross margins, just stamping out the same aircraft quarter after quarter. So excited that we don't have to switch aircrafts for the first time ever and just build this airframe that's going to be so important to the industry so people can actually put their software on top of our drone now, knowing it's going to be there for years, not only to the army, but all the other branches, and all the other, parts of the DOD and MODs across the globe that want this product. So So you're 50% gross margins with just hardware.
It's hard to get any further than that. I mean, this you could squeak out a little extra with scale and getting better prices because of the amount of ordering we're doing now and because we're a program of record. We move up the list because we're critical to we so we get moved up on the critical chips list and all that stuff. So that helps with margins a little bit. But no, you're not going to get to 70% gross margins with just the hardware side.
Now add Palantir software that can do visual navigation, which is very difficult to do with real time updates, combined with artificial intelligence from someone that's been collecting objects and data for machine learning for 20 years in wars, That is very high margin revenue. So if you throw some number, I'm not going to give a number on the software, I'll just you can do it $10,000 $20,000 per drone of software that can do those things. Their margins are up near 80%, 90%. So you put those software margins add on to our 50% gross margins, you can dramatically increase the margins going forward, which hopefully gets us to cash flow profitable profitability quicker.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: Thanks, Jeff. Okay. The next question here, is from Akshay Rao. Have we seen any movement on NATO and other EU contracts that were awaiting clarity on the SRR award? Any timeline expectations here?
Like, that he's pointing to Hitchcock. Why don't you answer that for us?
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: Yes. Thanks for asking that question, by the way. I ask it every day.
Jeff Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer, Redcat Holdings: Yes. There were several NATO countries awaiting the SRR announcement. We are actively engaged with them. Timing, we're not going to release at this point. As it continues to work through that values, we won't either until it continues to work through that.
But part of that's 14.7 over the last couple of weeks. Some of that is for FMS cases, some of it's for direct commercial sales. But we have several opportunities for working in NATO.
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: Actually, let me add to this. So our guidance is the new guidance is with SRR related revenue. And we I was going through the weekly forecast with Jeff and his team the other day. And one of the things that, they did bring up and so, I'm going to probably scare Hitchcock right now, but, we have no idea how to predict foreign military sales. They come in out of nowhere.
They come in hot. We had a very large request the other day, but it wasn't for a class 1 drone. It was for a class 3 drone and they thought we had 1, but the number was huge. So, but they just coming out of anywhere. So none of there's no foreign military sales predictions in there, but I'm sure that we'll get some.
All right. And
Jeff Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer, Redcat Holdings: it's important to keep in mind, folks, that right now we're in the process of doing the first engineering build, which is going to net some marketing assets. So we haven't even taken Black Widow out to show anybody. So after the 1st of the year when we have those assets, we're basically going to revisit everybody we've ever visited and start that process all over again. So most people want to see it and touch it before they buy it. So we're starting to work demo after demo after demo after demo.
So I think the numbers are only going to improve. But the fact that we've got 14.7 in quotes out there for somebody that's never even seen it fly, I've never seen that in my 20 years in this space. So I think it's pretty incredible.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: All right. Thank you, guys. Another question comes from Christopher Johnson. How does Redcat Holdings plan to differentiate itself in the drone market, particularly in defense and
Jeff Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer, Redcat Holdings: commercial sectors? And what steps are being taken
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: to secure long term and commercial sectors? And what steps are being taken to secure long term contracts in both spaces?
Jeff Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer, Redcat Holdings: So I'll take that as well, Jeff. So I
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: was going to hand it to you. Yeah. That's why you're here.
Jeff Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer, Redcat Holdings: Yeah. So right now focus is getting ready for the SRR program, finishing up the system for both U. S. And international government work. The next big thing we have to do after that is get our ID, remote ID incorporated into the drone.
The board design already has the hooks for that done. But the first thing we're going to do is get it right for the Army. And then we will start looking probably mid year, getting our ID integrated into that. We're looking at some other things that would be very disruptive to the community that first responders are going to love. I'm not going to talk much about it right now because I don't want other people to start working on it, But we have an approach that's going to be very unique to that.
And 90% of the 90% DFR and USG asking for the same thing the military is asking for, right? So you can if you've got GPS jamming, the Palantir software is going to work both ways. The doodle radios are going to work both ways. Flying in urban environments are always contested. There's nothing but RF blasting.
So we're looking at new and creative ways to make sure we're addressing that market as well.
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: I'll just add a little bit to that, Leah, before we go to the next question. So again, we've basically been laser focused on building a drone that's for the Warfighter. But having a drone and swarm capability, or even the, the smaller hive, which does 12 drones that can fit in the back of a truck, you know, that's think, think of the border patrol and things of that nature. That's a, that's a great way to do those things. But now with the new total addressable market of almost $1,000,000,000 is becoming available and taken away from the Chinese drone manufacturers, you know, that's a chunk of revenue that it's probably going to be significant, but we've been focused on SRR for quite some time.
So all of all of those locations, they could all use a small swarm. They could surround a building. They could do all the things that they want to do for safety. There's all there's a lot of great things or or you could chase down a bunch of drones in New Jersey. Just kidding.
But, yeah, this new TAM is pretty exciting to us. You know, we will be putting some effort on it and does expand our capabilities for 2025 calendar. So glad I can say that now.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: All right. This next question just came in for Hitchcock, so don't even have to throw it to him. I'm gonna
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: call him your name.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: From Luca Soja, does a contract with the US DoD limit you from selling drones to foreign countries?
Jeff Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer, Redcat Holdings: Not at all. Not at all. There's going to be a slice that go to our partners and foreign countries, right? As long as you're not on the bad boy list, we'll be able to sell to anybody. It'll still be EAR99.
So it'll be totally exportable. The Palantir software add will have to be worked through, right? That may require an export license, but it's not something we're unfamiliar with. So it's a matter of getting that approved through state. But yes, what we're developing for SRR, there will be a slice of that that we'll be able to sell internationally.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: Great. Thank you. Our next question is from George Raymond (NS:RYMD). I think this might be the last one, but, yeah, we'll see. Can you address sentiments of the future administration and how it might affect the size of contracts or volume of contracts available?
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: Well, I can start with that. And if mister Hitchcock has any more he wants to add to that. So there's been a lot of talk from this administration how they don't like big exquisite machines that cost tens of 1,000,000 of dollars when you can buy drones like ours that are probably more capable than any drone ever fielded. And now it fits in your rucksack and cost a lot less. We fit perfectly into the efficiency models to make soldiers better, safer, more lethal.
And this administration has said many times now, specifically in the last couple of days, they want to build the largest drone and robot army in the world. So that's one great thing that we think is going to be very good for us going forward. And, we do have a good relationship. My other company that I'm on the board of, I'm I'm one of the founders is UMAC. We actually have, Donald Trump Junior on our board as as an advisor.
They're really excited to bring U. S. Manufacturing back into the United States in the drone space. They've got a 1989 capital, I mean, 17/89 capital, sorry, when the constitution was by the right. So, I think that, this administration will be great for Redcat.
I think that's the last one, Leah.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: Yeah. And I just want to say, you know, if we've missed your question, I do apologize since we're kind of trying to sift through everything here. We will continue to improve in this new format that we're digging into here. So I think that will end our question and answer session. And Jeff, if you just want to have any final closing remarks, that would be great.
Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Redcat Holdings: Yes. So let's just do a little bit of review here. So we're pretty darn excited. We don't have to talk about possibly winning an SR anymore. It's so nice to not have to say that.
We want a sole source contract. We're getting some extra cash from that contract to do a few more features that we'll get in January. We'll start LRIP. We got the kickoff meeting for LRIP in January at Salt Lake City, which is great. I love seeing all those guys and Steve Hitchcock will be there taking care of that.
And, then we go from LRIP to full rate production with the Black Widow, and now the Black Widow has a lot more capability. We just announced today artificial intelligence for the battlefield, visual navigation, no GPS required. And those same type of things are gonna be going on the flight wave. We have not spent nearly enough time on the flight wave Edge 130. It's a very unique bird.
It's very capable bird, has the best flight time out of anyone in the Blue UAS list. There's gonna be a lot more on the on on the Edge 130. We're gonna have a lot of updates, by the way, right after the New Year. So stay tuned for our Analyst Day. Stay tuned for any news.
I wanna wish everybody a Merry Christmas, and thanks for being on the call. I think we broke a record with almost 1200 people on here at one point. So thanks everybody.
Leah Langer, Chief Financial Officer, Redcat Holdings: Thank you.
Jeff Hitchcock, Chief Revenue Officer, Redcat Holdings: Thank you.
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