Firefly Aerospace Inc. (FLY) Q4 2025 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the Firefly Aerospace Fourth Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Sheetz, Firefly's Director of Investor Relations. Michael, you may begin.

Thank you, operator. Hello there. I'm Michael Sheetz, and welcome to Firefly's Fourth Quarter Financial Results Call. I'm pleased to be joined on the call by CEO, Jason Kim; and CFO, Darren Ma, as we report for the period ending December 31, 2025. Today's call will include forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements the company will make about its future financial and operating performance, growth strategy and market outlook. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results and trends to differ materially are set forth in the annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. Firefly assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their respective dates. Also, in this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in the fourth quarter 2025 earnings release. Unless otherwise stated, financial information referenced in this call will be non-GAAP. Our earnings press release, SEC filings and a replay of today's call can be found on our Investor Relations website at investors.fireflyspace.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Jason.

Thank you, Michael, and welcome to our fourth quarter and year-end 2025 earnings call. We're coming off a transformative year in Firefly's history when we more than doubled our annual revenue to a record $160 million. We pulled off the first and only successful commercial moon landing, completed a historic IPO that strengthened our balance sheet for long-term growth and acquired SciTec, further bolstering our national security contributions alongside defense contract wins for our Elytra orbiter and Alpha vehicle. We've entered a new era as an end-to-end space services business, executing on all these milestones as we begin just our ninth year as a company. Firefly is a space and defense company, delivering innovative hardware and software to perform the hardest missions in the space for national security, exploration and commercial technology lighting the way to a bold space ecosystem that expands humanity's future. Our hardware is represented by 4 revenue-generating products, our small-lift Alpha rocket, medium-lift Eclipse rocket, Blue Ghost lander and Elytra satellite orbiter. Now with SciTec onboard, Firefly's capabilities include AI-enabled defense software proven in operations, such as missile warning and defense. The industry tailwinds behind artificial intelligence and data centers are fueling operational realities for SciTec, which is delivering crucial no-fail systems in support of national security. We are meeting the U.S. government's call for commercial investment and scale in the defense sector. We are further developing our advanced technology products and funding infrastructure upgrades, expansion of Firefly spacecraft and rocket factories as well as SciTec's data service centers and classified facilities. Late last year, we brought on Ramon Sanchez as Chief Operating Officer to drive our production scaling and operational execution as we enhance safety, quality and reliability across our product lines. Firefly's product suite is strategically tailored to support the growing opportunities in the space sector. In particular, the renewed interest in the moon as a top priority is an outstanding confirmation of Firefly's market position, verified by the success of Blue Ghost Mission 1 and accelerated with our contracts for missions 2, 3 and 4. We applaud NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman's decision to ramp up Artemis missions. The agency recognizes that Firefly's motor missions "offer a unique opportunity to test and refine technologies and integrate systems that will provide insight for future crewed missions." Administrator Isaacman's recent call for a monthly cadence of lunar landers to the moon's South Pole starting next year is exactly the type of forward thinking that Firefly embraces. Given the scale of the lunar opportunity, last year, Firefly began studying how we can scale our flight-proven technology into larger lander designs. Additionally, we've made progress on expanding our spacecraft cleaning room this year, thanks to funding from the Texas Space Commission to build multiple landers simultaneously. I also thank the industry for its celebration of Blue dose Mission 1 which is on a steadily growing list of prestigious awards. To highlight a few, BGM1 was awarded the Robert J. Collier Trophy, the Jackson Aerospace Memorial and TIME's Best Inventions of 2025. These are not trophies for us to rest on our laurels, but instead recognize the hard work and achievement of our world-class talent and serve as an inspiration for the work ahead of us with increasingly ambitious future moon missions. Together with SciTec, Firefly onboarded to the Missile Defense Agency's Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense or SHIELD contract, which has a ceiling of $151 billion over 10 years. As the Department of War pushes the industry to deliver commercial speed and scale, the SHIELD contract allows Pentagon entities to rapidly complete orders under a single contract mechanism with an emphasis on leveraging AI and machine learning capabilities that we're ramping up further. SHIELD provides a key support mechanism for Golden Dome, which we're ready to serve through our comprehensive end-to-end capabilities. As a reminder, there are multiple Golden Dome elements that we can support such as launching surrogate targets and hypersonic tests with our Alpha rocket or integrating data processing from a global network of sensors to perform fire control with SciTec. Now turning to our business updates. In the fourth quarter, despite the 43-day federal government shutdown, we completed new milestones across each of our revenue-generating products and services. Let's start with launch. On March 11, we successfully launched Alpha's seventh flight to Orbit. This mission was a journey that started last year when I stood up a dedicated reliability team within Firefly. We analyzed vulnerabilities improved processes. We added new launch ports, reinforced contamination control and implemented additional trainings. When we shift Alpha's first stage, our team was deliberately cautious. Anything we found was thoroughly investigated after delivering the vehicle to Vandenberg, the Alpha team worked diligently through static fire testing. I was there with the team while we went through 2 days of static fire attempts. We worked through multiple ports and on the second day, executed a clean 22nd static fire test. The team was calm, cool and collected throughout the process, fully committed to methodically executing every step. When we stepped into launch attempts that intense rigor continued, while scrubs can be frustrating, I'm proud of the team for pausing whenever they needed to take a closer look at potential hazards. And come launch date, the team was collaborating and listening to each other. I was standing in the launch control center when Alpha took off, launching right at the first moment of the window. I watched our data flow through during flight with the variance bar of our trajectory to orbit, showing we were dead center on target all the way up as we smoothly went through every part of launch before payload deployment approximately 45 minutes later. We also did a second stage relight as part of the flight, further verifying Alpha's upper stage performance. We completed all mission objectives, deploying a test demonstration for Lockheed Martin. As anyone in this business would know, our team didn't celebrate Stairway to Seven until after deployment. Most of all, that movement was a really satisfying feeling of pride price given the team's accomplishments and execution. Flight 7 strengthened our muscle memory, giving us the reps we need to launch a cadence. Additionally, we validated key subsystems for Block 2, which will lead to improvements, starting with Slide 8, including greater mass savings, optimized production and increased reliability across the entire Alpha vehicle. Block 2 is designed to expand Alpha deployable launch capabilities for critical response to space missions, such as hypersonic testing, national security missions, including Golden Dome and commercial satellite launches for domestic and international customers. Speaking of the international market, Firefly is taking a phased approach to launching and operating from other allied countries by utilizing a launch as a franchise model. In this model, Firefly works closely with a strategic international partner to operate our Alpha rocket from their launch site and meet the growing demand of the satellite market across the globe while adding resiliency for our nation and allies. For example, Firefly partnered with the Swedish Space Corporation to launch Alpha from Esrange Space Center in Kurina, Sweden. In collaboration with SSC, we're building on the existing infrastructure in Esrange to develop a launch complex for Alpha and enable orbital launch capabilities from mainline Europe. We're evaluating a similar arrangement with SPACE COTAN to potentially launch Alpha from the Hokkaido Spaceport in Japan. These co-launch partnerships become a force multiplier and win-win-win with the U.S. our allies and industry. Back in our rocket factory, we passed acceptance testing of the qualification article for the Alpha Flight 8 second-stage liquid oxygen tank in preparation for the debut of the upgraded Block 2. Simultaneously, we're progressing on extensive ground equipment upgrades on the Alpha stage test stand as we prepare to validate Block 2 upgrades ahead of its debut. We work closely with our domestic and international customers to incorporate data and lessons learned across our previous Alpha flights. Block 2 comes with significant improvements across Alpha, including increased length and structural strength, consolidated in-house batteries and avionics and optimized propellent tanks. We're thoroughly reviewing the data from Flight 7 as we prepare for the debut of Alpha Block 2 with the launch of Flight 8. We expect to launch another 3 times this year for a total of 4 Alpha launches in 2026. Moving to Eclipse. Everything we've learned from Alpha is scaled to our reasonable medium-lift vehicle, including the tap-off cycle engines and carbon composite structures, a key differentiator versus traditional requirements to start a new vehicle development from scratch. We found efficiencies through our automated fiber placement machine, which is versatile in building carbon composite structures at rate across all our rockets and spacecrafts. The ASP improves quality, cycle times and safety of our structures, a benefit we've seen since debuting the machine in late 2023. All the major flight articles for our first Eclipse vehicle are in build and tested with Eclipse's Miranda engine having crossed more than 100 hot fire tests and the team now preparing to enter our qualification campaign. In anticipation, we've begun assembling multiple Miranda flight engines. Additionally, we completed qualification on the Eclipse interstage, a critical primary structure milestone as we assemble the first flight vehicle. We also completed qualification testing of the liquid oxygen transfer line for the first stage of the Eclipse, putting the assembly through a rigorous campaign on our test stand as we prepare to integrate the line with the vehicles. This line feeds locks through our propellent tank to our Miranda engines and during flight, the LTL feeds locks to the engines at a rate that would fill 300 bathtubs per minute. We are progressing through assembly and integration for the Eclipse program with the targeted shift the first stage to first stage Northrop Grumman, our vehicle co-developer later this year. With the full variation of Eclipse utilizing both our first stage and the second stage built by Firefly, we are targeting first launch no earlier than 2027. In less than a decade, Firefly has valuable orbital flight heritage that scales to our medium-lift vehicle, which is a testament to our team of experts who have the lessons learned and passion to execute on these bold missions. Shifting to spacecraft, which includes SciTec. We're simultaneously building multiple landers and orbiters as well as advancing our AI data center systems, supporting the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution program, also known as FORGE. Starting with SciTec. In September 2025, the United States Space Force operationally accepted SciTec's FORGE modernized AI-enabled space exploitation architecture, delivering a transformational leap at capabilities across missile warning and tracking, missile defense, battle space awareness and technical intelligence. As a reminder, FORGE is an advanced and operational defense program for the United States that serves as the brains of our nation's multi-orbit missile warning and tracking architecture. SciTec rapidly processes vast amounts of data and satellites across all orbits, from LEO to MEO to GEO to deliver high-quality mission-critical formation to our war fighter to defend against missile threats. In the first days of the Iran conflict, the Space Force's 11th Space Warning Squadron used FORGE to provide real-time data, informing defensive operations against over 1,000 threat events. As a veteran, I thank Americas service members as well as those of our allies for defending our nation. Firefly teams are providing continuous support to the 11th Space Warning Squadron's critical 24/7, 365 mission as part of the defensive systems evolved in this operation. We are rapidly integrating unique operational lessons into new FORGE generations during what is the most extensive missile engagement in history. FORGE is ensuring the single most capable tool for missile warning, tracking and defense in the world remains ahead of the threat. In the fourth quarter, our team won an 8-figure contract from a confidential U.S. customer to deliver time-dominant space control software with potential for significant upside contract expansion. Additionally, in the fourth quarter, SciTec completed the interim ground readiness review with the Space Development Agency for SciTec's role delivering the mission management and data fusion ground components for the proliferated war fighter space architecture, satellite constellation, Tranche 1 Tracking Layer. The SciTec team was also awarded a $109 million engineering change proposal under the Space Force's FORGE enterprise OPIR services contract to accelerate and expand data center delivery, which increased the total contract value from $263 million to $372 million. SciTec's leading work on multiple elements of FORGE is exemplary as the team reached operational acceptance of FORGE for threat missile warning in September, marking the first time in 50 years that the U.S. Government changed the prime contractor for missile warning ground systems. Furthermore, SciTec's on order processing heritage, data center capabilities and AI-enabled applications positions Firefly with the differentiated software layer that is hosted on the physical layer needed for space data centers. Moving to Blue Ghost. We completed structural qualification testing on the fully stacked Blue Ghost Mission 2 lander and Elytra orbiter at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory during the fourth quarter. We also completed the payload integration readiness review for BGM2, accepting delivery of NASA's LuSEE-Night and commercial payloads, including the UAE Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center's Rashid Rover 2. We have critical Blue Ghost Mission 2 hardware coming together, progressing through structural integration of the lander and the electric transfer vehicle. We're marching onwards towards launching our next moon mission with windows opening no earlier than late in the fourth quarter and into the first quarter of next year. Similar to our first mission, we will have 1-week windows each month to ensure we arrive at the service for the beginning of Lunar Day for the first U.S. planning on the far side of the moon. Blue Ghost Mission 3 is progressing as well with the team in the fourth quarter completing the preliminary design review, which verifies the vehicle is designed to deliver payloads to the moon's Gruithuisen Domes. We also completed the system requirements review for Blue Ghost Mission 4, establishing readiness across the vehicle subsystems and ordered long lead items for the mission to the moon's South Pole. Similar to how Alpha scaled Eclipse, our Blue Ghost technologies are transferable to larger vehicle designs that can further support the U.S. government's goal of a permanent lunar presence as well as exploration of other planetary bodies. Switching to Elytra, we recently completed separation testing on the Elytra system that will act as a transfer vehicle supporting Blue Ghost Mission 2, an important milestone as we move toward flight hardware assembly. For reference, this Elytra is flying to lunar orbit with Blue Ghost before separating in orbit. It will relay data via long-haul communications from the far side of the moon. It also hosts our Ocula commercial imagery and mapping service, which will provide high-resolution imagery and videos as well as multi-spectral phenomenology data to our customers. Ocula shows how we can responsibly add on payloads and services to our landers and orbiters since we have flexibility in our modular design, processes and teams. Additionally, in the fourth quarter, we completed the critical design review for the Defense Innovation Unit's Sinequone project, progressing development of the spacecraft in preparation for the DIU's space domain awareness demonstration mission. The team also completed a NASA study contract regarding a planetary defense mission called Trinity. This potential mission would utilize an Elytra [ DART ] spacecraft for near earth object reconnaissance, highly leveraging nonrecurring engineering from our spacecraft designs. With that business summary, I'll turn it over to Darren for a review of the fourth quarter financials.

Thank you, Jason, and good afternoon, everyone. 2025 was a defining year in Firefly's 9-year history. We completed a historic IPO, achieved record annual revenue of $159.9 million, increasing 163% year-over-year and successfully closed the strategic SciTec acquisition, our largest acquisition to date. These transformative steps strengthened our company for long-term success, reflecting the dedication and vision of our team. In today's call, I'm going to review our fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results as well as provide our annual revenue outlook for 2026. I want to reemphasize that operational metrics drive Firefly's financial performance. Key operational metrics include the number of launches and execution on program milestones across both our spacecraft solutions and launch businesses. Specifically, in our spacecraft solutions business, which now includes SciTec, we generally recognize revenue as a percentage of completion under each contract. For the launch business, we focus on the number of launches. Revenue for our operational Alpha vehicle is recognized at a point in time when the launch occurs. For Eclipse, while in development, we recognize revenue as a percentage of completion based on program milestones as part of the Northrop Grumman partnership. Once the Eclipse vehicle is operational, we will recognize revenue in the same manner as Alpha when launches occur. Now turning to our fourth quarter results, which include SciTec in the last 2 months of the year. This was the highest quarterly revenue in the company's history at $57.7 million. This compares with $30.8 million in the third quarter and $9 million in the same quarter a year ago. Within our total revenue, Spacecraft Solutions revenue was $50 million and launch revenue was $7.7 million. The sequential increase was primarily driven by completion of multiple milestones across the spacecraft business. We ended the fourth quarter with a total backlog of approximately $1.4 billion. This increased from $1.3 billion at the end of the third quarter and up 22% from $1.1 billion year-over-year. Backlog is one of the key metrics we monitor and is a leading indicator of our future revenue performance. Fourth quarter gross margin was 27.7%, which compares with 27.6% in the prior quarter. I'd like to take a moment to highlight how the addition of SciTec's government contracts to our spacecraft business integrates into our financials. On the revenue side, a majority of the contracts are similar to our existing spacecraft programs, where revenue is recognized on a percentage of completion basis, balancing out the more events-driven launch business. Direct costs associated with contract execution are recorded in cost of goods sold, while indirect costs are reflected in SG&A. As a result of this mix, R&D will decrease as a percentage of total operating expenses, while SG&A will increase as a percentage of total operating expenses. GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter were $101.6 million compared with $70.7 million in the third quarter and $57.1 million in the same quarter a year ago. The quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year increases resulted primarily from costs related to our SciTec acquisition, the inclusion of SciTec's operating expenses for the final 2 months of 2025 increased stock-based compensation expense and a full quarter of public company costs. For operating expenses, the primary differences between GAAP and non-GAAP measures are stock-based compensation expense onetime acquisition-related expenses and the amortization of intangibles related to the SciTec acquisition. Non-GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter were $80.5 million, compared with $61.3 million in the third quarter and $55.6 million in the same quarter a year ago. After excluding the differences between GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses I just mentioned, the quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year increases resulted primarily from the inclusion of SciTec's operating expenses for the final 2 months of 2025, a full quarter of public company costs and increased research and development investments across all programs. This includes R&D investments into Alpha Block 2 upgrades, Eclipse development and Elytra to support our growth objectives. GAAP operating loss was $85.6 million compared with a loss of $62.2 million in the third quarter and a loss of $77.2 million in the fourth quarter a year ago. Non-GAAP operating loss was $64.5 million compared with a loss of $52.8 million in the third quarter and a loss of $75.8 million in the fourth quarter a year ago. Our GAAP net loss in the fourth quarter was $41.1 million. In Q4, we recognized a onetime $37.1 million tax benefit related to the SciTec acquisition as well as a onetime $8.4 million gain on settlement of contingent liabilities. This compares with a loss of $133.4 million in the prior quarter. Our non-GAAP net loss in the fourth quarter was $58.5 million. This compares with a loss of $51.4 million in the prior quarter and $80 million in the same quarter a year ago. GAAP basic and diluted net loss per share was a loss of $0.26 based on a weighted average share count of 155.6 million. We exited Q4 with a share count of 159.3 million shares. Our total share count will typically increase by about 1 million shares per quarter moving forward. Non-GAAP basic and diluted net loss per share in the fourth quarter was a loss of $0.38 based on a diluted average share count of $155.6 million. Stock-based compensation expense was $12.6 million in the fourth quarter, which reflects our first full quarter as a public company. This compares with $4 million in the prior quarter, which reflected approximately 7 weeks as a public company following our IPO on August 8. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was a loss of $57.3 million compared with a loss of $46.3 million in the third quarter and a loss of $67.7 million in the fourth quarter a year ago. Turning to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $893 million, which included $260 million drawn from our revolving credit facility. The strong total liquidity position gives us the capacity to prudently fund our growth objectives while maintaining a disciplined approach to capital allocation. As a reminder, in the fourth quarter, we completed our SciTec acquisition. The purchase price included $277.4 million in cash paid net of cash acquired. Capital expenditures in the fourth quarter were $12.1 million compared with $8.9 million in the third quarter and $2.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The sequential increase was driven by planned test stand upgrades to support Alpha Block 2 production, Eclipse development, spacecraft manufacturing and other facilities expansion. For 2026, we currently expect capital expenditures to increase above 2025 levels as we continue to invest in our infrastructure to support the growing number of opportunities Jason discussed earlier. Free cash flow was a loss of $79.3 million compared with a loss of $62 million in the third quarter and a loss of $42.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The change in free cash flow quarter-over-quarter is primarily driven by payments related to the acquisition and integration of SciTec. This includes $24.5 million in cash payments related to the SciTec acquisition. As a reminder, in the second quarter, we will have the final SciTec acquisition-related payments of approximately $24 million which will be reflected in our cash flow. For some additional color, we expect our cash usage in the coming quarters to increase slightly from the fourth quarter of 2025 as we continue to invest in the critical parts of our business to support our growth objectives. Now moving to our outlook for the year ahead. We currently expect full year 2026 revenue will be in the range of $420 million to $450 million. Our outlook is supported by the 4 Alpha launches Jason discussed and from a program milestone perspective. This includes execution on all 3 Blue Ghost missions, continued development of our Eclipse and Elytra programs and software development for key government programs. In summary, the midpoint of our revenue outlook would represent a year-over-year increase of 172%. I would like to thank everyone for their interest in Firefly. With that, I'll turn the call back to Jason for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Darren. We're kicking off 2026 by building on the momentum that we ended the year. We entered the year with a successful return to flight for Alpha and a robust backlog of $1.4 billion, supported by a very strong balance sheet to drive our growth objectives. We are laser-focused on delivering Alpha Block 2 with multiple launches ahead for our customers. Industry tailwinds from the intensified focus on the moon and the opportunity of space-based data centers are verifying Firefly strategy as we prepare to return to the lunar surface and leverage the operational data center capabilities of SciTec. We've bolstered our leadership and are driving forward on multiple programs with a company-wide emphasis on safety and quality. We are focused on reliably and repeatedly launching, landing and operating space systems from the earth to the moon and beyond. Thank you for joining the call. I'll turn it back over to Michael.

Thank you, Jason. Operator, we're ready to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] One moment for our first question, comes from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies.

For 2026 in the prepared remarks, you mentioned 3 additional launches this year, Jason, Darren, and including the start of Block 2. So can you maybe talk about the cadence from here how we think about those and the milestones ahead?

Sheila, thanks for that question. This is Jason. We had a tremendous success with Alpha Flight 7. We're very proud of the team for what they accomplished on that mission. They're pulling through all the post-flight data. But from my lens, I was in the launch control center with the team and everything was nominal in terms of the first stage. We launched at the first instance of the window and also the second stage, the payload deployment, the relight of the Lightning engine on the second stage as well. So very happy with the results there. But in parallel, we have been in production for our Block 2 inaugural rocket, will be Flight 8, but we're also building 9 and 10 as well. It's in production in terms of the carbon composite tanks as well as the engines and the avionics. So obviously, we are always working closely with our customer for their customer readiness. We're working closely with the range -- and FAA for the range of availability. There's -- obviously, I don't have to say too much about the weather and safety factors as well. Those are all things that are considered. But we are excited about accelerating the road map for our transition to Block 2. It is a more reliable and manufacturable rocket, still uses the same carbon composites, still uses the same Reaver and Lightning engines, but we were able to derisk the in-house avionics and batteries that we flew, especially the avionics that we flew in shadow mode on Flight 7, and so really happy with those results. But we continue to produce. So that's how we're looking at 2026 cadence.

Great. And if I can maybe ask another one on SciTec. Congratulations again on closing that a while ago. Can you talk about how you're gaining traction with the SciTec business and how it flows into your revenue guidance for the year?

Yes, I can get started and pass it on to Darren. But SciTec has been a highly strategic acquisition. The way we look at acquisitions is, we look at the strategy and the fit with our strategy. We look at the culture and the cultural fit as well as the accretive nature of the acquisition and then finally, the synergies with SciTec software capabilities. Right from the get-go, SciTec has added a lot of value to especially what we're trying to do in the national security and defense domain. They have a no-fail operational program called FORGE, which we're very proud of because it's been supporting the recent conflict since it went operational in September, processing over 1,000 missile messages for our national defense. They have been focused on execution on FORGE, but they're also working on a variety of other programs like the Space Development Agency ground processing for the tracking layer Tranche 1. They're also well positioned for things like Golden Dome because they can leverage a lot of their 40-plus years of algorithms that they developed for missile tracking and missile defense to include the FORGE program. They have a lot of capabilities, not just in missile warning and missile tracking, but also multi-domain to include things like air battle management system. And so they've been an incredible add to the team. I'll let Darren talk about the revenue.

Yes, I'd say financially, Sheila, we head into 2026 with that kind of momentum, right, with the SciTec acquisition. I mean, if you take the midpoint of what we guided at the $435 million mark, 80% of that revenue is already booked. So SciTec is a part of that. And when you think about it, as Jason said, it was a strategic acquisition. When you look at how it folds into our financials, you're really looking at the nature of the SciTec government contracts, their expenses are, as I mentioned earlier on the call, are primarily accounted for in cost of goods sold and G&A. So yes, we're very excited about the SciTec acquisition and what it means to us this year.

Our next question comes from the line of Kristine Liwag with Morgan Stanley.

So congrats on the successful launch of Stairway to Seven. So you can talk about how for launch 8, you've got some of the testing already finished. Can you give us some sort of indication with the upgrade and how technically derisked Flight 8, 9 and 10 for the rest of the year in 2026 are? Have you done further testing on any of those elements? And how do we think about the derisking?

Kristine, thank you. This is Jason. Just as much as the hardware and software is the people. And I think last year, when we did our production engineering stand down. We looked at the vulnerabilities across each department. We came up with improvements to our processes and a lot of additional training. From the people side, there's a lot more rigor and collaboration and active listening between the teams. And we really built up a lot of muscle -- strengthened the muscle memory of the team during production as well as operations. And we saw that from the fruits of the Stairway to Seven -- successful Flight 7. With that being said, there are a lot of upgrades from Block 1 to Block 2 that were derisked actually on Flight 7. We flew the in-house avionics that actually proved out some functionality, and we're pouring over that data. I was able to see real-time data telemetry from that, and it was nominal. And then in addition to that, batteries as well were derisked. The automated flight termination system was also derisked. From a routine operations, we always test out each of our carbon composite locks tanks and RP tanks as well as the Reaver engine and the Lightning engine as part of our normal course of producing and integrating and testing our Alpha rocket. So we're just going through all that. As I mentioned before, we did qualify and pass successfully our second stage locks tank, and we just continue to achieve milestones. So all that is derisking the Block 2 program. I will say that I have high confidence in the designs and the processes that really have enhanced our safety, quality and reliability culture and then especially our people as well.

Great. Super helpful. And if I could ask a second question on SciTec. You called out the FORGE program. And look, this is the first time in 50 years that the U.S. federal government selected a new plant contractor for missile warning ground system, which seems like a pretty big deal. So can you talk about the importance of this program and also with the operation that we're seeing in Iran and the threat environment, could we see acceleration of what you're providing in 2026 to the government in this program? And also, when we think about the revenue outlook for 2026, what has to occur? What's driving the difference between the low end and the high end? What's the variables we should be watching?

Thanks, Kristine. I'll get started and pass it to Darren later. But what I would say, yes, you're absolutely right, FORGE is incredibly important consequential program of record. And SciTec is not a stranger to these kind of things. They've been supporting these type of Missile Defense Agency and Space Force and Air Force programs for 40-plus years. And so they have a library of algorithms that you can mix and match that continue to get modernized and advanced. In this case, FORGE does use AI, and it allows you to force multiply each operator in the room. And so the 11th Space Wing is actually using this operational system today, and it is supporting 24/7, 365 operations for conflicts such as in Iran. So it's really important. I would say that it is the most advanced missile warning, missile tracking system out there, processing high rate, high volume of data from all the low earth orbit, medium earth orbit that are coming online and geosynchronous orbit, missile warning and missile tracking OPIR satellites. And it's really helping us defend our homeland. So I would say that there's a lot of upside opportunities to continue to add on to the program. As we mentioned, there was a hardware purchase that I'll let Darren talk a little bit more about.

Yes. Kristine, this is Darren. So heading into -- I mean, you've seen the Q4 numbers that gives us a great deal of momentum from a revenue perspective going into 2026. I mean, as I mentioned to Sheila, out of our midpoint guidance number, 80% of that is already booked. So we feel pretty good about the guidance number. And I mean, as -- and as we ramp up the Alpha launches, that will stabilize that number. But from an upside potential perspective, one thing that's noteworthy is we do have significant potential upside opportunities, and we're well positioned for that. For example, as Jason discussed on the call, NASA's need to accelerate landers to a monthly cadence starting in 2027. That's not included in our numbers today.

Our next question comes from the line of Suji Desilva with ROTH Capital.

But you talked about NASA wanting to push the cadence of lunar missions. I'm curious on how you think about Firefly's ability to support an accelerated cadence of lunar missions versus what you currently talked about?

Yes. Thanks, Suji. This is Jason. Yes, we have been investing in CapEx as well as expansion of our clean rooms as well as our in-house avionics and batteries and integration and test facilities here in Cedar Park, Texas. We just had some of the senior NASA top executives tour our facilities. And what we showed them was we're doing operations on Blue Ghost Mission 2. There's a lot of hardware being integrated as we speak, a lot of welding going on for both the lander as well as the electric transfer vehicle. We have all the payloads as well for Blue Ghost Mission 2. But we're also achieving milestones on Blue Ghost Mission 3 passing PDR and Blue Ghost Mission 4 passing SRR. With expansion, we've been able to increase our clean room space, thanks to the Texas Space Commission that gave us a grant last year. And so we're completing that this year. And that will allow us to ramp up steadily the number of lunar landers we could build simultaneously. So when we hear the NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman say, "Hey, we want to go to the moon South Pole with robotic missions every month starting in 2027." Those are just validation of the investments we've already made. And so a lot of our designs are scalable and modular. So that we can continue to take advantage of the streamline of building and integrating these lunar landers at rate. We also are able to get strategic inventory as well to help us with our suppliers. I'll pass it on to Darren.

I think you summarized it well, Jason. I mean investment in ramping up production for spacecraft.

That's good. And then my follow-up maybe is for Darren. Can you talk perhaps about the revenue per Lunar mission trend we should be expecting? Is it fairly steady from mission to mission or is there a way that it would be ramping up over the next few?

Suji. So our Blue Ghost missions with every Eclipse win that we've had has been ramping up. As you recall, the first Blue Ghost mission was roughly $100 million, and they've been suddenly ramping up to in the $150 million to $200 million range with potential add-ons as well, like, as Jason mentioned, with Ocula and data sales with the imaging services that we've gotten.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Leshock with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

I wanted to ask on Alpha given the data you got back from Flight 7 and the improvements that you previously made on its TPS. Are you expecting the thicker thermal protection to be able to fly at more stressful inclinations on future launches? Or do you foresee any other changes to Alpha's TPS going forward?

Michael, this is Jason. Thanks for that question. Everything that I've seen to date has looked nominal. We'll continue to go through all the data that we received. We actually put additional telemetry on the first stage so that we could get the temperature protection system sensors that we put on as an addition, so we can validate everything that we learned from our prior launches. So we'll be able to share more as we get all that data and crunch all that data. But we're very confident that the minimal additions of thermal protection system on our Stage 1 booster. It gives us the ability to envelope even more types of launch trajectories going forward.

Great. And then on SciTec, are there any additional contracts there that you're competing for that could potentially be step changes to the growth that you're already expecting for SciTec?

Yes. For SciTec, I've already mentioned that they have the program of record for missile warning, muscle tracking processing with the U.S. Space Force FORGE program. The Space Development Agency also has them on contract to support tracking Tranche 1 ground processing as well. I think that there definitely are other types of competitions out there, especially in the multi-domain arena, so things like air battle management system. And in addition to missile warning, missile tracking, all the algorithms that SciTec have are transferable to missions like air moving target indication and potentially ground moving target indications. So those are upside opportunities for SciTec. In addition, I already mentioned that SciTec is very well positioned because of their 40-plus years of missile tracking and missile defense algorithm work that is in operations, such as FORGE. For things like the Golden Dome program, which is now we hear $185 billion opportunity. And if you look at that opportunity, the most important thing for that architecture to succeed is the ground processing, integration of sensor data to decision-making, things like fire control. So SciTec is very well positioned for those kinds of missions.

Our next question comes from Colin Canfield with Cantor.

Do you mind talking perhaps about FY '27 National Defense Strategy, kind of increased focus on satellite-based architectures and what it implies for both intelligence and orbital intelligence satellite and orbital transfer vehicle demand? Like essentially, how much are you hearing from acquisition officers that they're going to expand beyond kind of like 2 and 3 supplier programs to a broader set of acquisition partners.

Colin, this is Jason. Thanks for that question. We are very, very bullish and committed to the national defense strategy for this year and beyond. We have a contract with the Defense Innovation Unit called Sinequone project. And in that one, we are developing -- we just passed our CDR. We're developing a rendezvous proximity operations capability with our satellite Elytra, which is able to do dynamic space operations and carry different types of space domain awareness type sensors and other. We see a future where space will not be sedentary. You will have to have dynamic space operations capabilities to either evade threats or even chase after threats. And Elytra is well positioned for those kind of missions because it's got a lot of maneuverability and precise in-house engine thrusting based on heritage from our Blue Ghost Mission. It also has a lot of ample fuel capacity and we're building a lot of autonomy into the system as well. So it really does support things like rendezvous proximity operations and space domain awareness and adjacent kind of missions. In LEO, can support MEO and GEO as well as cislunar missions as well. And then in addition to that, we do see that there will be a lot more demand for missile warning, missile tracking sensors and satellite processors. SciTec has a lot of capability because of FORGE on how to process large amounts of data and turn it into good track quality. They also have experience doing onboard processing on orbit. And so we are investing in that capability so that we can enable more on-orbit edge processing, so we can further reduce latencies from sensing to the actual warfighting decision-making.

Got it. And then in terms of the customer conversations that you're having, to what extent is the like additional SciTec capability essentially like forcing them or not or forcing them, but giving them increased confidence in pushing Firefly towards doing like hard intelligent satellite work. Essentially, if you had to put a rough time line on it, like would 2030 kind of be fair to characterize as Firefly looking a lot like kind of millennium of 5 years ago?

Well, I can't speak to other places that I've led before, but what I could say is that the capabilities that Firefly plus SciTec brings to the table are very advanced. As I've said before, space is hard, but landing on the moon is even harder, and we were the first and only commercial company to do that successfully stable and upright. If you think about it, we rendezvous successfully with the moon, and we were able to conduct the 14-day operations with 10 different NASA payloads successfully. And so all those lessons learned, also shared with our Elytra spacecraft made for a really powerful capability that can perform things like RPO and space domain awareness as well as long-haul resilient communications missions and transfer vehicle missions as well. But the addition of SciTec brings a lot of best practices for software development, existing algorithms to process any type of sensor phenomenology because SciTec does have a sensor phenomenology, subject matter experts with the software developers and they have a lot of secure software development practices that we can transfer between our spacecraft and our SciTec programs. So it does really give us a lot more capability synergies, if you will, to go after these type of no-fill critical missions that are -- need to also be affordable and advanced.

Our next question is from [ Laura Lee ] with Deutsche Bank.

This is [ Laura ] on for Edison. So first question I want to ask, do you have any preliminary thoughts on the space data center opportunities? Are those like technical or economically feasible? Or do you see this as a potential area of interest for Firefly?

Thanks, [ Laura ]. This is Jason. I appreciate the question. Long before there was a renewed interest in space-based data centers. Firefly has been envisioning a future, processing more and more in space because a lot of advantages of doing that. To name a few, there's a lot of power generation and a lot of thermal radiator capabilities in space, not to mention you reduce latency if you are able to sense things and process things on orbit and get it directly to the users efficiently. One of the main reasons our SciTec acquisition was so strategic is because we were putting the pieces together to enable such a system. And so with SciTec's capabilities of working with software applications, on frameworks, on terrestrial data centers. They have a lot of knowledge that we can apply to on orbit data centers as well. If you think about it, on orbit data centers are really the hardware and physical layers and the frameworks. But what do you put on that? Well, we have SciTec who has the software applications that you actually put on the orbital data centers. So that's what we're going to work closely with our subsidiary, SciTec on. And we'll be able to, for example, connect different orbital constellations together. So that we can enable enhanced collection opportunities by having LEO and MEO and GEO satellites collaborating with each other like they have never done before. So there's a lot of upside opportunities with the things we're doing with SciTec and our Elytra spacecraft.

Our last question comes from Seth Seifman with JPMorgan.

This is Alex on for Seth. Maybe one area we haven't talked quite as much about on this call on Eclipse. I know you guys kind of mentioned some updates on, you guys are progressing towards delivering the first stage to Northrop later this year, and the first flight is kind of targeted for no earlier than 2027. Just curious if you guys could kind of walk us through some of the milestones we should be looking for there? Over the next several months?

Yes, I'll get started, I can -- and Darren can add more. This is Jason. We're really excited about Eclipse. Everything that we've learned and we're producing on Alpha to include our carbon composite structures in our tap-off cycle engine technology is reducing risk for Eclipse. And so we didn't have to start from scratch with developing our engine technology, we're able to scale it in terms of size for our tap-off cycle engines. And then the carbon composite structures, we've been using the automated fiber placement machine already since 2023 when it was stood up in our Texas factory. So we have a lot of experience building the tanks and structures and domes and locks and transfer lines using our proven techniques. And then every different element of the Eclipse program is either in development or in-build or test. So we're really excited about the progress we're making. We have over 100 hot fire Miranda engines under our belt. In fact, I was just at Rocket Ranch and experienced 2 in a day. And then on top of that, we are already building the flight engines for the inaugural launch as well of Miranda engines. The first stage tank is making a lot of progress. We did test out the inner stage past qualification there. We also tested our locks transfer line that is a significant progress there. So all the testing is happening. We're still targeting, delivering the first stage to our co-developer, Northrop Grumman towards the end of the year. And then for the full variant of Eclipse where Firefly builds the first stage and the second stage, we're anticipating no earlier than 2027 for that first launch.

Thank you and this will conclude our Q&A session. I will pass it back to Michael Sheetz for his closing comments.

Thank you so much, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call, and we'll talk to you next quarter. Have a good one.

This concludes our conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.