Allan Evans
Analyst · Water Tower Research
I really appreciate it. We also have a couple of questions from an analyst that came in via e-mail, which I'll read and then answer. The first one. Can you please discuss how you expect the timing of major drone awards to interact with U.S. government shutdown dynamics versus looser budget spending requirements for drone purchases? What does reclassifying drones as munitions mean for UMAC's growth versus regular waste spend? How is growth appearing between acquisition officers and base combatant commanders? So, I think the major drone awards for the U.S. government shutdown, I really don't expect them if the shutdown goes on much longer to probably occur until early 2026. Where I do see a lot of the overly allocated stuff of the looser, the smaller buys occurring when the government gets back online because those are just easier. They require less oversight, less people for approval, someone's on vacation, et cetera. Reclassifying drones as munitions helps our growth in that it allows much smaller groups to just buy drones and not have to track them. And so, it means our customers can sell $100,000 or $200,000 worth of drones to these sort of base level buyers rather than have to be all centralized and go through a really long process. So, that -- those looser spends, I expect to come online much faster when the government comes back and to drive sort of maybe fewer headlines, but a lot of the revenue in the category. And then growth between acquisition officers and then base combatant commanders, that to me is pretty opaque. I would say we'd have to go talk to our specific customers. And it also feels like they're still figuring that out, like what is the ratio or who's in-charge of what. And so, I think in another 6 months, we'll have a good idea there. The second question. Can you discuss the acceleration of customer interest post-AUSA? How does getting the 101st Airborne as a customer raise awareness, not just for UMAC, but also the importance of domestically-sourced drone components? AUSA was a great event. We were able to go and see a bunch of our parts that were priced out on a wall with members of the armed services flying those drones, and we're really excited about it. One of the things I think it does is there's an initiative called SkyFoundry, where the Department of war, and I think the Army in particular, is considering spending several hundred million dollars -- $200 million or $300 million, starting to build drones inside the military to understand them better. And I think really AUSA drives a lot of awareness as us as a vendor for that. And I really think it being so inherent even in our customers wanting to use American source components. I think it points out to everybody that this is an important thing from a redundant supply chain perspective. And so, it's been a real positive. And there's -- it's also helped to highlight that we don't have, like, just at-scale suppliers yet. And so there's a real need for that. The next question. What engineering approaches, materials or form factors are you most excited about with respect to drone components? How do you expect those dynamics to feather into your growth algorithm? I would say, right now, I am the most excited about doing the powertrain. I think we sit really well there and can be complementary. And so as I alluded to earlier on Barry's question, I think batteries is something we're going to have to look at, and that will come into our growth algorithm. There may be some opportunities to move to like cameras, like gimbaled cameras and the ISR stuff if our customers want it. I think that's a little further out. But I do think putting this all together is going to put us in a place to continue to add new components and get a more diverse group of customers, but also a more diverse portfolio to, again, really prevent any concentration risk. And I think that's what's awesome about where we're already at, is we're getting this growth, and we don't have customer or product concentration. And so we're able to be really dynamic and not really put ourselves in a situation where it could all come tumbling down. And I think that's what I like the most about it. And those are the questions from the e-mail. So, I think that's all the questions.