Great to have Mark Mesler here from- Thank you. Archer Aviation. Mark, thank you for coming. Mark is CFO of Archer. Yeah. Without further ado, Mark, I think you have some, a presentation, and we'll- Yeah - Do some questions and have a chat. Yeah. And should I stay here, or? If you wanna go up there. However you wanna do it. Whatever you're most comfortable with. Well, I'll go ahead and start. Go ahead, please. I've got about 15-20 minutes of just a background of Archer. So Archer Aviation, we're, we're creating a, as much of a company as a, as an industry as well. So, we're, in the business of, of developing and manufacturing an all-electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, which you see here. The, the aircraft is focused on a very specific short-haul mission, 20 mi-50 mi, for, carrying four passengers and a pilot. So this essentially is built to displace terrestrial transportation in the high, the high areas where you've got massive traffic, and it takes you an hour and a half to go 15 mi. So I think seeing is believing. I'd like to, show you our latest flight test video from our Salinas, California, flight test facility. This is Midnight, our production aircraft, going through some flight tests. So you can see it takes off like a helicopter, and then you'll see it transition into forward flight here, using the physics of a fixed-wing aircraft. So very efficient for these 20 mi- 50 mi missions. And then you'll see it land also like a helicopter. So you know, a big value for this type of aircraft is access to places that you otherwise wouldn't be able to with a regular aircraft. So a little bit about the company. Yeah, we went public on the NYSE in 2021. We've raised over $1 billion of capital. Got a workforce of just over 700 folks. Primarily three facilities right now. We're headquartered in San Jose, California, right in the heart of Silicon Valley. Got a flight test facility in Salinas, California, and you'll see later we're building a large, high-volume manufacturing facility on 100 acres in Covington, Georgia. We've got a capital-light go-to-market strategy, which means we're leveraging a lot of the existing aerospace supply base for the components for our aircrafts. We're not really betting on anything new. We have developed internally our powertrain. So powertrain is battery packs and electric engines. We're in the heart of EV land out there with the Teslas, the Lucids, and really, as you can imagine, we've been able to attract some very high-quality people from those to help us build out our powertrain. And the powertrain is really a world-class powertrain. The electric engines are a really elegant solution for our aircraft. We've got really good partners with United is a key operating partner, and Stellantis, which we'll talk about later. Yeah, the goal of the company is to commence commercial operations in 2025. So let's go a little deeper on Midnight, which is our production aircraft. The specs for Midnight, it has a range of up to 100 miles on the current battery, the battery technology. It speeds 150 miles per hour. The targeted payload is four passengers and a pilot. These will get certified with the FAA to commercial airline safety standards, which the industry is going through right now. It's all electric, little noise. It's got a profile of noise that's 100 x less than that of a helicopter, which makes it a very attractive product for areas that are in high urban areas, where noise is not something that folks really want in their backyard. And then finally, cost is the cost to operate these things, we're gonna be targeting sort of consumer ride-sharing pricing. So this will be able to be accessed by the general public. Wrong way. There are a number of use cases for this technology, as you can imagine. There's aerial ride-sharing, there's cargo and logistics, there's emergency response, there's some military applications, non-kinetic, which means non, you know, non-war vehicles. We're focused on the aerial ride-sharing, which we'll talk about later. But... So the key development milestones here for Midnight, we're in flight test. We're, as you just saw, flying daily. We're preparing for what's called our first big transition flight, which is where most of the lift is born from the fixed wing. The video you saw while we were flying forward, it was still being... Generally, lift was being generated by the rotors. But when you're in full transition, lift is being generated from the wing, and that'll be happening this summer. We've built out our supply chain. You know, we're really getting ready for scale manufacturing right now with our partner, Stellantis. In order to operate these commercially, you do have to go through a certification process with the FAA to ensure the aircraft meets the safety standards to fly and move passengers around. That process is a very detailed process with the FAA. There's generally an administrative phase, where you agree with the FAA on what you're gonna certify and how you're going to run the tests to get through certification. The industry, as well as Archer, have been going through sort of this administrative phase, and later this year, we are pivoting to testing, for-credit testing with the FAA. The aircraft that you see here being built is our first conforming aircraft, and a conforming aircraft is one that is being manufactured under an FAA-approved quality management system, and the parts that will be put into this are the production-intended parts that will be used for FAA certification. So, the flight that you saw earlier is a remotely piloted flight. Later this year, we'll have a pilot in this aircraft right here, piloting what is called an FAA for-credit or conforming aircraft. There's a number of highlights around certification. We could probably spend a full day on certification, but as I said, we're gonna be... The goal is to have a piloted flight of a conforming aircraft later this year. Billy Nolen, the former FAA administrator, joined Archer last summer, and he's been very instrumental in helping us think through and get through this process. We'll be building six conforming aircraft for FAA certification, of which we're building the first three. In order to fly these, you have to be able to manufacture them. If you think about how do we converge everything into a commercial operation, in 2025, our partner, Stellantis, is helping us build out our manufacturing capability. This is a rendering of our 350,000 sq ft facility that we're building in Covington, Georgia. It'll have capacity for up to 650 aircraft per year. It's a very capital light. This doesn't, you know, it's not an expensive property or facility. This site has been graded, and we're starting to stand up the walls. This is the wall of the flight building. This is about two weeks ago, so we've done a lot since then. This is right next to the municipal airport of Covington, Georgia. Let's go back once. You can see in the back, there's an airport to the upper right. The flight building is there on the left, which you just saw is being built. And so that's where we'll conduct flight testing after we build these aircraft. We've also stood up a pilot line and test labs in San Jose, right around the corner from us. So the first six aircraft will be built in San Jose before we transition into Covington for high-scale manufacturing. Our battery lines and electric engine lines are also being built in San Jose. So this is a picture of our operating battery line. And, you know, clearly, batteries are important too, and we'll have high scale in our electric vehicles. I encourage you to go out if you're interested. We just posted a video, a five-minute video of a tour of this facility. It's pretty impressive. I would, you know, equate it to sort of like a Lucid or a Tesla battery line, highly automated, and assembling thousands of little cells of batteries into these battery packs. So, I think this is a little, you know, something that doesn't get as much discussion in the industry, but being able to fly these, you gotta be able to build them as well, and Stellantis has done a really good job in helping us do that. Speaking of Stellantis, great strategic partner with them. They've been an investor, they've been an operating partner. I've got dozens of Stellantis employees who are running around Archer's HQ, really helping us think about moving the aircraft from the R&D phase into the manufacturing phase. Because if you think about where some of the stumbles in the electric vehicle industry, weren't the tech, it was really the manufacturing of that. And so Stellantis builds up to 500,000-600,000 cars a month. Scale is something that they always think of, and, they're really helping us think about scale in that factory in Covington, Georgia. And actually, the goal is, from a relationship standpoint, to have them be our contract manufacturing partner at some point. And, we've talked about that publicly, and we're in active conversations of what that relationship could look like. They've also been very creative in terms of providing us some financing vehicles. Last year, we inked a deal with them for a forward equity purchase agreement for $150 million that we were able to draw down, we were able to draw down tranches of capital when we needed it, at favorable terms. We still have $55 million left on that $155 million dollar facility with them. Commercialization. So we've talked about the tech, we've talked about the certification process. What does commercialization look like? Commercialization is monetizing and turning into revenue, the use case that I talked about, aerial ride-sharing. So aerial ride-sharing is briefly touched on at the beginning. If you think about what your commute from city center of Manhattan to one of the airports is, that's generally an hour, an hour and a half trip in traffic. We can do that in seven to 10 minutes. And that's really the goal in market entry points throughout the world, as well as the U.S., is finding those high-volume routes where we can displace terrestrial traffic and take it from an hour to a two-hour trip to make it seven to 15 minutes. The timeline to commercial operations, we, the industry, as well as Archer, is sort of in the build-out phase of this through 2025. We're working on significant certification efforts with the FAA. We're also inking deals around the world with operating partners in the U.A.E., in India, and there'll be other areas that we're announcing throughout the world. Domestically, we'll talk more about it. We've got a partnership with United. You can imagine we're working with other domestic partners to build out urban air mobility networks domestically as well. So, you know, 2025-2028, we'll see those early commercial operations and start scaling. Really, I think the industry starts scaling in 2027 and 2028 once we start getting through the initial build-out of the operations. So Archer, we're going to market with a dual-prong strategy, where we're selling the aircraft through what we call Archer Direct, and then we're also going to be operating the aircraft in certain locations around the U.S. So you think of Archer Direct as more of like an OEM. So we've got, we've got partnerships with the, the U.A.E., with InterGlobe in India. United's a big partner. We're always actively looking for partners, to, to sell to, and that'll generate, you know, an upfront revenue stream. So revenue recognition is essentially when you, when you sell the aircraft. From a ridesharing standpoint, we do believe that the customer experience is something that we want to own and be able to influence, and that's a big part of the Archer brand. And so, you know, the, the ridesharing business here in the U.S. will largely start, start taking root in some of what we call trunk routes, the city center to airport, city center to, like, the Greenwich. You know, high volume, high volume throughput routes that will be priced based on, you know, standard ridesharing and, or more, priced to what the market will bear, but at, at a minimum, at what ridesharing costs are. And those are the two, the two, revenue streams. So domestically here, I've got a, a really deep relationship with, United. They've been an investor as well as a, as well as an operating partner, thinking about how these routes work. How do I get behind security? So I think that's the big advantage here is, if you took a flight, an Archer, an Archer flight from 34th Street helipad to Newark, Terminal C, you would, you'd actually be able to land on the other side of security. So you can clear security, TSA in Manhattan, and then, just get to your United flight at Terminal C. That's the goal. That's what we're working through with United on that concept of operations. United, you know, Oscar Munoz, former CEO and chairman of United, he sits on our board. We've announced routes in New York and Chicago with United. United put a $10 million deposit on the first 100 aircraft, last year, so that is really the root and the nascency of building out our domestic commercial operations. These are just some renderings of what, you know, what a typical ingress, egress area would look like. We call them vertiports. You know, renderings of San Jose Airport, which is a great hub to other parts of California. Santa Monica, LA is a classic example of where urban air mobility could take root because of the traffic, you know, and the time it takes to get from one side of LA to the other. Miami, New York Street, that's the heliport there. So just to give you an idea of sort of what a future state of what these vertiports could look like. Internationally, as I said, we have a really... We've started developing a really deep partnership with the U.A.E. We announced two weeks ago that the Abu Dhabi Investment Office has committed $multi-hundreds of millions to the company in terms of helping build out infrastructure and the ecosystem of UAM, urban air mobility, in the U.A.E. Think like vertiport investments, repair and overhaul investments. And, Air Chateau is an operator, as well as Falcon Aviation in the U.A.E. We've agreed to the purchase of aircraft with them. And then we've also got a partnership with InterGlobe and Rahul Bhatia, who is the large operator of IndiGo in India. So as much as we're focused on domestic operations, we are building out our international capability as well. Last couple slides. We've got an indicative order book for those first orders at a $5 million ASP, roughly a $3.5 billion order book across the U.S., U.A.E., and India, with Air Chateau, Falcon Aviation, as I said, United. And, you know, upon commencements of commercial operations, we would endeavor to start delivering against this order book internationally. Finally, we do have an agreement or contract with the DoD as well, through Air Force's AFWERX program, working on use cases for this within the military. It's up to a $142 million contract. We're working with them on identifying use cases, pilot training, simulation, et cetera. So, you know, as we sit here today, I think that we've put... The company has really done a great job in terms of thinking about the three or four vectors that we have to execute on to get to commercialization, as early as 2025. And, you know, the engineering team, the business development team, and everybody has been doing a great job. So that's... Those are my prepared remarks, and happy to get into Q&A. Yeah, sure. Maybe I'll kick it off, but then we'll open it up for some questions in the room, too. Sure. One thing you didn't mention, that potentially could be, I guess, another market: How do you think about, you know, maintenance, repair, overhaul, service, and support for the aircraft that you sell through Archer Direct? Yeah. Yeah, so we do believe that that's a... Clearly, that'll be a revenue stream. We'll have a service P&L that will service that. The battery packs need to be replaced a minimum of once per year. You know, your standard upkeep on the aircraft, so we do think about that. We've got a whole airline operations team led by a gentleman by the name of Tom Anderson, who was with JetBlue, was with Breeze, has been with Virgin Atlantic and helped them build out those capabilities. And so we work with him into building out those concept of operations, of what does the R&O piece look like? But that will be a part of our P&L, and it'll be a meaningful portion of our business going forward as well. I don't think it's gonna be as skewed as it potentially is with the current paradigm within aviation, where a lot of the margin is generated from the R&O facilities. I still think that, for now, initially, in the first couple of years, my opinion is a lot of the margin will be generated from the aircraft itself, but that R&O capability will start becoming a more meaningful part of the business. ... Got it. As we get through operations. When you think about the, I'll just ask one more, and then I'll go right to you, Dave. The business model on the non-Archer Direct side, effectively, you'll be building the aircraft and operating the aircraft. How do you think about that? I mean, that's just a lot to take on. It's a lot. It's being the OEM and the airline, kind of, right? Yeah, yeah. It's a lot, but there's nobody else right now that can do that. I mean, we know the aircraft, we know what the concept of operations are. Internationally, we do think we couldn't do this ourselves internationally, which is why we're partnering with you know, the Falcons, the InterGlobes, et cetera, so we can get access to the markets and help them actually partner with them. What is an urban air mobility market? How would that operate? So, but I also think that because of... It's not a lot of infrastructure, but that's an organic growth vector as well, that will initially, when we think about UAM, we're gonna be repurposing general aviation assets, think municipal airports, think heliports. So it's not a, it's not a lot of investment that needs to go into it, but charging infrastructure has to be put in place. So the why we've taken this dual-prong approach is 'cause we, we believe that the cash flow generated from the OEM side of the business will help support and build out that UAM side of the business. So I think it's a, it's a pretty good hybrid approach to the market. Gotcha. David? Hi. I had two quick questions. Thanks a lot. You said the battery packs have to get changed out every year. If you could just clarify that, and also how much do the packs cost, and who owns the packs? And secondly, I wasn't clear from the slides, are you saying you will be doing commercial passenger flying in 2025? And if so, when do you think you'll be doing commercial passenger in the United States? So, with respect to the first question, yeah, battery packs, they'll, they'll have a life of about at least a life for us. They have a second use, but for us, will be about a year to a year and a half. During natural maintenance operations, they will be swapped out wherever they're being used. The good news is battery packs have a or batteries themselves have about a 5%-7% improvement every year, so it's almost like a technology upgrade. Those will generally be owned by the operator, and so that'll be part of the repair and overhaul process to upgrade those. How much are you gonna charge per pack? We haven't disclosed that publicly, on cost on that. I mean, is this, like, $1 million a pack? No, no. $500,000? Like- No, no. These are, like, tens of thousands. They're not, they're not millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars. So that's, that's, you know, generally- How many... I'm sorry, and that's for the entire air- that's one pack for the entire- There's six battery packs in an aircraft, in the fixed wing. all six will have to be replaced annually? Yes. Yeah. Okay. With respect to your second question, sorry, your second question was, oh, commercial operations. Passenger commercial. Yeah, yeah. So the goal is, we will have a commercial-ready aircraft in 2025. The goal would be to operate those in the U.S. It depends on where the FAA is. So far, the FAA has been cooperating, but we don't control the FAA. But the goal would be to operate commercially in the U.S. or outside the U.S., in 2025. Under the assumption that, you know, we've got safety of flight and the aircraft's, which currently, current course and speed, that's our goal. If you look at the milestones you still have to hit for certification, what else has to be done? So, clearly, the first. As I said, the piloted first flight is a big deal. That will be happening later this year. Technically and tactically, we clearly have to get through the agreement of the certification plans, which we think will largely be through this year. We've submitted 15 of 18 subject certification plans that we're working through the FAA with. So once we get through the piloted flight of a conforming aircraft, we have to build. We're building three currently. Once we're through the first three, then we're building three more. So we'll have six conforming aircraft that we'll be flying for certification with the FAA. I'd say that's probably the big unlock for our certification efforts. Separately, a lot of the things that we talked about already with respect to having manufacturing in place, having commercial deals in place, having those three or four vectors all converge, such that once we get through the certification process, we've got a going concern in operating business. Got it. Got it, got it, got it. I have more, but Sam? Hi, you talked a little bit about infrastructure and- Mm-hmm ... leveraging off of existing infrastructure, but I would assume that you would still need either battery charging, storage, kind of what type of investment would you be looking at there? Yeah, the goal is to initially not have a significant amount of investment in that, 'cause we can repurpose general aviation assets, as I said, municipal airports, heliports. The charging infrastructure is what would go, you know, initially that is the only thing that's not there. We've partnered with BETA, New England up here, who's built a really good charging like Supercharger, like a Tesla Supercharger. Archer and GAMA, which is a manufacturing and aviation manufacturing association, and have all standardized on that. That's really to get this off the ground, that's the big investment that has to be made, is in the charging infrastructure. That's not terribly expensive. I think, you know, we could be opportunistic. Yeah, some of the renderings I showed are sort of like, like what a flagship vertiport would look like and, you know, had to have that full customer experience. I don't think that's day one. I think, you know, we may selectively invest in, you know, one or two of those. And that's sort of what the future state is. But really, first couple of years doesn't have to be a lot of investment on the infrastructure side. As we think about what does that look like going forward, I would, I mean, we don't want to bear the burden of building out that infrastructure. I think that's a business, a really good business in and of itself, and there could be some partners that build that out, and make a good business out. Think of the current sort of FBO operators, for general aviation. I think that is a model that we'll see take root in this industry as well. Thank you. Maybe along that same line, if the 2025 target gets hit, how do you expect the ramp up to go in terms of deliveries and aircraft in commercial service? I think that demand will outstrip supply initially. You saw our order book. I think we'll have to be thoughtful about how to deliver against that order book. Especially as we mature our manufacturing operations. Our Covington facility has a capacity of up to 650 aircraft per year, but doesn't mean we're gonna be doing 650 aircraft that first year. I think we'll take a measured approach year over year. But you know, by year three or four, we'll be manufacturing you know, hundreds of planes per year to deploy. It's also gonna be driven by customers. I mean, how fast InterGlobe or Air Chateau, Falcon Aviation, whoever else, whoever our other partners, the Uniteds, move as fast. We suspect, based on the conversations we've had with them currently, that they're gonna be moving pretty fast. Yeah. A lot of our manufacturing decisions will be driven by how fast the customers move as well. Got it. And to deploy aircraft, say, in U.A.E., do you need your FAA certification here, or can the U.A.E. certify it for usage there? Yeah, the U.A.E. has a regulat... Their FAA equivalent is the GCAA, the General Civil Aviation Authority. They're using the same standards as the FAA, but they don't... but they can move at a different, you know, they can go through their process differently than the FAA. Got it. I mean, there could be an instance where they get through the process maybe faster than the FAA. So that is, that's a real possibility, but they're using the same safety standards. Got it. Got it, got it. Yeah. Thank you. Quick operational question, can you hear me? I don't think. Can you hear me? I can hear you, but not through the mic. Yeah, quick operational question. In terms of the battery still, when you land after a trip, I know the battery life is 100 mi. You're doing 20 mi-50 mi for your trips. When you land, how long will it take to either charge or swap out the batteries, if that's- Yeah. If either of these options are being used? First question. Yeah, so we will not be swapping out the batteries. The batteries are embedded, and they'll only be swapped when needed, which is, as I said, about a year to a year and a half is their useful life. Within our aircraft, they have a second life because they still have, you know, they still have, like, 80% charge or something like that once you're done with them. So the concept of operations is that, for your next 20 mi-25-mi flight, it'll only take you 10 minutes to charge for that flight. So you've sort of got this sawtooth diagram throughout the day. Think of it like a gondola operation, where we're doing a trip every 30 minutes between here and Newark, so the plane's going back and forth between them. It lands, folks start exiting. As soon as it lands, we plug in the charger, folks start exiting, folks start entering, and then you unplug it, and it's able to go to the next 20 mi-30-mi mission. So that's the concept of operations. Got it. And separately, looking at labor side and bringing in the brains to kind of help with building out this project, how has your staff so far, from the onset of the project to now, grown in terms of headcount, and where do you see it going, and where are you pulling that talent from? So, I've been CFO for about two and a half years. When I got there, there was just probably around 200 people. We've got it over approaching 800 right now. So clearly, the nexus of our headcount is around, is around engineering and, you know, the folks who are working on building the aircraft. However, we've invested in, as a public company, you know, we've invested clearly in public company infrastructure, IT, finance, accounting, et cetera. We are starting to build out our airline operations, so as I mentioned, the gentleman who's running that. So we've invested and continue to invest in the folks who are getting the Part 135 certificate for us, and the pilot training capability, et cetera. Business development is a big part of we're starting to invest in, the folks who are going out and doing these deals around the globe. And finally, manufacturing. Manufacturing is an area where we're starting to invest heavily in, just due to the fact of the proximity as we're getting to commercialization and starting to have to build these. Now, as we transition into a growth company, once you get through the certification process, we're clearly gonna be investing in pilots, on the UAM side of the business, pilot training, folks, folks that potentially, depending on the business model, folks that would be operating in these vertiports, you know, checking you in, checking you out, et cetera, and some repair and maintenance folks as well. ... Yeah, I just wonder what's the battery tech? Is it LFP or an MC? It's a cylindrical cell, lithium ion. It's sourced by a company called Molicel, out of Taiwan, who has been producing these for decades and can produce them at scale. And there are a number of reasons why we picked that technology. Safety is a big one. Cylindrical cell versus pouch cells. Cylindrical cells, we can, you probably get to look at it too closely, but we can assemble them into a large, you know, a good-sized battery pack, where we're able to contain the safety properties that we need to for FAA cert. And then just, quickly on the pricing, I know you said it's competitive, ride sharing. Mm-hmm. Would the idea be that it would be a premium to ride sharing, though, right? Given the convenience. Yeah, yeah. I wanna be able to make margin, make a good margin at the, sort of at that paradigm. But it will, I mean, we'll price to what the market will bear. And, you know, that route from city center to, to the airport, I'm sure folks would pay double what ride share is. Yeah. I mean, ride share is probably $6 a seat mile, which would equate to about $100, $120 dollars per seat on our aircraft. I think folks would pay double that. Blade here in, is charging, I think, $195 for a trip, so we can, we can charge at least that. Sorry. If the U.A.E. and India certify quicker, and that's where you'd see the initial entry, does the battery technology need to be developed more, or other tech on the aircraft itself, to operate in hotter and harsher conditions? And would it change the economics at all? It does not. The plane itself, I mean, it is developed to operate within a certain temperature window. So, like, I wouldn't be in the Mojave Desert, probably. Carbon reacts differently, et cetera. But within our current, those markets operate very well within our current design parameters for the aircraft. Any other questions?