Bridger Aerospace Group Holdings, Inc. Warrant Q1 FY2025 earnings call

• Wildfire activity from California to North Carolina led to the earliest deployment of the scooper fleet in January and the farthest east deployment to North Carolina. The deployment of the MMA fleet provided critical surveillance. First quarter revenue reached a record $15.6 million. • Two new contracts were added: a 5-year $20.1 million IDIQ contract with the U.S. Department of the Interior for the Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service, and a wildfire detection and mapping contract for the state of Montana with a 1-year term and 2 optional extension years. • FMS contributed $1.9 million in revenue; Ignis Technologies' app development made significant progress, with a focus on linking real-time sensor imagery. • The return to service work on the 4 Spanish Scoopers by Albacete Aero was on track; the first aircraft received a certificate of airworthiness, and the second was imminent; the partnership with MAB Funding, LLC was ongoing. • Bridger entered a memorandum of understanding with Positive Aviation to be the exclusive North American launch customer for the FF72 amphibious water scooping firefighting aircraft.

In the first quarter of Fiscal 2025, Bridger Aerospace achieved a record revenue of $15.6 million, which is a significant increase of 184% compared to the $5.5 million in the first quarter of 2024. FMS contributed $1.9 million to the revenue during the first quarter. The cost of revenues in the first quarter of 2025 was $17.2 million, consisting of $6.2 million in flight operation expenses and $11 million in maintenance expenses. The net loss in the first quarter of 2025 was $15.5 million or $0.41 per diluted share, while the adjusted EBITDA was negative $5.1 million. The total cash and cash equivalents at the end of the first quarter of 2025 were $22.3 million, up from $6.8 million at the end of the first quarter of 2024.

• Bridger projects a 20% growth in adjusted EBITDA at the midpoint of the range of $42 million to $48 million on revenue of $105 million to $111 million for 2025. • The guidance currently excludes the impact of the Spanish Super Scoopers; guidance will be updated as contracting for the initial 2 Scoopers is completed. • Benefits from a full year of FMS, organic revenue growth, and cost rationalization. • Anticipates positive cash from operating activities in 2025; the third quarter is still expected to contribute the majority of adjusted EBITDA during the peak wildfire activity.

Q: Just my first question here. So in the President's skinny budget request that came out, there's a significant 65% step-up in DHS and Border Patrol funding. Do you have to wait until the fiscal year '26 budget gets passed to get new awards that would be for DHS? Or are there existing contracts under which you're operating that you can generate revenues for surveillance with the PC-12s under the continuing resolution funds for '25?

A: Austin, this is Sam. Great to hear from you. I'll turn this one over to John to respond to you, and I'll add any flavor from there. John Saunders: Yes, Austin, great question. Currently, the PC-12s are on contract, and we are seeing extremely high utilization of those airframes. So we're looking at contract opportunities coming out of the budget. We would likely go after new contract opportunities and fill those contract opportunities either with upselling some of our current air attack, aircraft, leasing additional aircraft, we or purchasing additional aircraft. The Pilatus PC-12s are our highest utilization airframes. And what we're seeing is demand that started in February and is running likely through November for those airframes. So it's unlikely that we would add the PC -- or utilize the PC-12s right now for Border Patrol. We do continue to look at those contract opportunities, and I would point you to the Montana contract opportunity where we took a Kodiak and added a TK-8 and made that available for the state of Montana. So we're continuing to look at other airframes that are in our fleet that can be modified or adding new airframes to the fleet to go after those contract opportunities.

Q: Okay. And if we think about Europe for a second, I know you had said that some of the contracts are in the final planning stages, but should we be thinking about negotiations with Turkey and Portugal? Or are there other European countries that are also in the mix?

A: Austin, yes, we are talking with those countries specifically. They both have open tenders out there and are very interested in these assets. We have continued to talk with additional countries. As you can imagine, in Europe, the construct of a privately owned, privately operated fleet of CL aircraft is a new introduction there, similar to how we've expanded it here in the U.S. So part of the opportunity is expanding the contracts, both from an appropriations and a multiyear construct. So we're doing that with initial countries that have very high demand for the CL platforms, and we know that others will follow. Initially, those discussions are well underway. the preceding delivery item here is, as I mentioned in my call, the aircraft -- the second aircraft is very imminently near its certificate of airworthiness. As you can imagine, the government entities we're talking to want to see that in hand before contract award. But I'll also indicate the awards that we've seen from Turkey and Portugal for firefighting aircraft that have been delivered early this year, the activity that we see happening. And I'm sure as you've seen, unfortunately, there have been major wildfires in South Korea, although that's not Europe, but Israel as well that are obviously creating the same level of rising demand and kind of unanswered need there in Europe.