Good morning. I'm Dan Aldridge, the founder of the SHARE Series, and welcome to the Mandate Monday Management Update. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with CEO Peter Platzer of Spire Global. The company has had a lot of great progress he's gonna tell us about today. So Peter, glad to have you back on the show. I'll turn it over to you. I think you guys are gonna play a quick video. So again, welcome, Peter. It's my pleasure to be here again, Dan, for your audience. Yeah, excited to share some updates, but, given that some of you know a little bit about us already, I thought we'd kick it off with a really cool video about a use case of our data really making an impact, leveraging AI to create a better life on planet Earth. So, ready to go with the video, and then I can tell you more stories right after that. Awesome. Awesome. So I think, I think I gave you hopefully a little bit of a glimpse of the cool stuff that we can do, and really super excited about the partnership with Met. Let me give you a quick overview. If you hop to, you know, the next slide, it's just some general disclaimers, if we can do that on the presentation side. But you've heard a lot about different forms of satellites, if you go to the next slide, and for some of you that might be, like, a little bit more new to the segment, to this space, if you allow me, that wordplay. There are three types of satellites, and they're as distinct and separate from each other as, let's say, ships and planes and trains in the transportation industry. But unfortunately, we call all of them satellites. So we try to, you know, create a bit of a categorization for investors like yourself and call them looking satellites, talking satellites, and listening satellites. Now, looking satellites are satellites that use the reflection of the sunlight on the surface of Earth as it goes towards the heavens to capture their data. It works really well during the daytime. Of course, it needs the sun, and in great weather conditions, particularly useful over the 25% or so of the land mass of Earth. And companies that you have heard of like, you know, companies like Maxar and BlackSky, and Planet, and Satellogic, and Airbus and others. Then you have talking satellites. Now, talking satellites, they use space to transport data from one spot on Earth, via space, to another spot on Earth. That is their job. And, you know, companies that you might have heard of there, anything from a Viasat to an AST, to a Starlink, to EQUULEUS, to a OneWeb, those are all, you know, talking satellites or communication satellites, transporting data from one spot on Earth to another spot on Earth. And then there are listening satellites. Listening satellites, they use radio frequencies, or RF technologies to observe what is happening on or around Earth. Now, RF technologies, they work day and night. You know, obviously, they don't require the sun, and they work in all weather conditions. As a matter of fact, they often give you information about the weather, like the moisture of the soil, or the temperature in the air, or the hurricane wind speed as it is coming over the oceans. And there is a number of companies in there, you know, Spire, GeoOptics, Planeti Q, HawkEye, Kleos, to name a few of them. And among them, Spire is, as far as we know, the largest of them. It operates and owns the world's largest constellation of listening satellites. It has full global coverage. As a matter of fact, it covers the Earth over 100 times every single day, every single spot on Earth. So by the time 15 minutes have passed by in our conversation here, at least one of our satellites has been covering you wherever you are listening from and wherever I am talking from, which, you know, right now happens to be the beautiful city of Munich. Our constellation is, at this point in time, fully deployed. It's over 100 satellites, which means, our revenue growth is not tied to us, you know, increasing the size of our constellation, and that's a really, really key differentiator for Spire, relative to a lot of other companies, where the growth of the revenue is tied to the growth of the constellation, and that means, you know, a growth in the, in the capital that is required to grow the constellation. We are now purely in maintenance and monetization mode because we have the satellites fully deployed. And the last thing I want to talk about, which is unique about our constellation, is that it is software-defined... So we can change via software what our satellites, our sensors do, because all of our technology is built, invented, manufactured, tested, and operated by Spire, the full stack. The sensors on the satellite, the firmware driving the sensors, the software driving the sensors, the satellites themselves, the ground stations, the data pipeline, the analytics, the predictions, the AI machine learning, all of that stack is in-house to Spire, and so we can change what sensors do on orbit, and that gives us an incredible amount of flexibility to adapt our deployed infrastructure to changing needs of the customer. Now, let's look at some high-level numbers of the company for those that are maybe a little bit newer to the company, and those of you that know us, as a reminder, if we go to the next slide. We talked already about, you know, the fully deployed constellation. Over 100 satellites in orbit, that then send their data down over one of the world's largest ground station networks. Now, we have over 70 antenna systems in 30 different locations across planet Earth. And they provide that stable, low-latency, high-bandwidth link from our satellites to get the data back down. Talking about data, what you see there in the background, and actually what you see behind me here, is a snapshot of all the ship and plane traffic on planet Earth over, I believe it's a 24-hour period. This is all data that Spire captures. One company tracks every single ship, every single plane on planet Earth, as well as all of the weather all around planet Earth. How do we deploy our satellites? Well, you know, Spire has done over 35 different launch campaigns with over, you know, 10 different launch providers over the last few years. So an extensive experience leveraging the rapidly growing launch ecosystem to get our assets deployed into orbit. And the unique thing about space is that you cannot simulate it on Earth. You really have to go there to figure out what works and how various things works. Now, Spire has accumulated now over 500 years of space heritage on our technology, figuring out how the various devices and configuration actually operate in space, and that's just one of the many layers of strong competitive advantages and barriers to entry that Spire has accumulated. A little bit more about the numbers side. We are over 400 people in eight offices spread across three continents, which gives us full 24-hour coverage, meaning we get to operate our devices, but more importantly, we get to interact with our customers 24/7 in all the various time zones, and we get to hire and get access to, like, the best people in all those time zones. At this point in time, we have over 800 customers that that consume our solutions. All of our solutions are subscription solutions, meaning that customers subscribe to our data stream and receive it on a daily basis, with payments generally happen quarterly or monthly in advance. And then, the target that we've given out at end of Q2 for our ARR is over $130 million, $132 million. If we go to the next slide, you know, you get like a snapshot of how we got to that number and how quickly we got to that number. Because we operate, on the left-hand side, as you see, in four big areas, you know, Maritime, Aviation, Weather, and then Space Services. One is pure data analytics, the other one is space services. They combined have over $100 billion of TAM and 150,000-200,000 potential customers. Now, as you see, we got 800 customers operating in a span of, like, 150,000-200,000 customers, and the right-hand side demonstrates that from the point in time that we had our first, you know, globe-covering constellation, like an MVP constellation in 2017, we had our first $1 million of annually recurring revenue, subscription-based, and then we grew that to $100 million in just five years, something that really happens, you know, quite rarely. And then continued to grow at this point in time, which gives us, over, like, a six-year time period, an ARR compound annual growth rate of over 100%. And that is driven by the pent-up demand for our data, as well as the net retention that we have. Customers buy from us, and then they keep on buying more from us, 117% net retention rate. So that's kind of like, much of the stuff that we have shared. If you go to the next slide, there's a few things that I want to highlight, about things that have changed, recently. Although, sorry, here's just the margin structure. You know, one thing that we have talked about is, like, the rapid progression of Spire to its, to its being, cash flow positive. We have laid it out a long period of time ago. We have clarified it even in more detail, but kept the timeline exactly the same, at the end of Q2, talking about when we reach, you know, a positive operational cash flow, Q4, and then EBITDA positive, net income, and then free cash flow positive over the course of Q1, Q2, and potentially up into Q3 of next year. So massive operational leverage, strong balance sheet that supports that growth of our margins to reach that profitability very, very near term. Now, to the last slide, some of the stuff that has happened since we talked last is, you know, on the back of the strong business execution in Q2, you know, we won a number of really, really exciting awards. There's an almost $3 million NOAA contract for satellite weather data, in particular about wind speeds. You know, we've all heard a lot of the hurricanes barreling through over the oceans, and, you know, data that we have can, you know, particularly help with the understanding them and the accuracy of the trajectory of those. We also won a NASA contract for microwave data. We got a renewal of $6.5 million for Earth observation data, and we won a €16 million contract for satellite-based aviation surveillance without the need of relying on GPS information coming off the aircraft. So really a next-generation capability for that. And then last but not least, you know, a multi-million-dollar award from the NGA for advanced measurements of understanding the magnetosphere, the magnetic field of the Earth, which has impact on every single GPS-powered device, including your cell phones. So very, very excited about that. We also did a very successful reverse stock split. It was very well received. The stock actually improved right after that reverse stock split, got us into full compliance with the NYSE, and then we launched another decision solution system, DeepVision from the weather side, providing advanced visualization of our weather solution and helping especially supply chain managers and logistics professionals, people in the operations and safety area of companies to understand a global situational awareness. And with that, I wonder, Dan, if there are any questions that we should maybe go into? Always, right? So a lot of questions. So Peter, thanks for the update. Right, a lot has happened since we last talked. Yeah, I think the first question that a lot of people have is, you're at an inflection point, right? You've guided toward positive EBITDA for next year. You know, you're generating cash, and you've got all these great awards. So, what, what's the Street missing, right? Why is the valuation in your mind low? I mean, obviously there's a ton of different reasons, but if you had your druthers, kind of what would you think is the reasoning? Well, I mean, I think there's a... There's probably a number of aspects that play into it, and I'm not sure that I actually can, you know, provide a perfect crystal ball here. But one of them certainly is that the stock is a smaller market cap stock, and that means it's a different type of universe of investors that is looking at it, which creates, you know, massive opportunities. I was to be a quantitative investment manager for almost 10 years on Wall Street, and, you know, small stocks and looking at them, you know, provide often additional upside for investors because they're not as well looked at and understood. Spire has a very, very unusual profile, given, like, the strong metrics. You know, currently trading at about 1x ARR, and that's just very, very rare for a company that at the end of Q2 had something like 70% gross margins. So one of them is, like, the size does not necessarily match with a lot of investors looking at us. I think, I think that's one element. I think the other one is that the uncertainty in the global macroeconomic environment has made investors a little bit more cautious in moving into new markets and new industries or new companies, compared to, like, a more bullish and positive outlook. I think on the counter, I would say, is that as a company that is helping humanity adapt to climate change and adapt to global security threats, I think Spire is in a pretty unique position to help us there. I think there could also have been, you know, some overhang from being out of NYSE compliance and having a BTC covenant, a curing that had to happen. You know, I've already talked about the NYSE compliance that's happened with the reverse stock split, and I think everyone should be on the lookout for some definitive news on the curing of our BTC covenant as well. I think those are some of the elements. I'm sure there might be others as well. But I think in the medium term, and you know, given the timeline beyond from a profitability perspective on the short term, I think the performance of the company will continue to make it rise to the top and create great opportunities for those that look at the underlying fundamentals of the business. Perfect. So let's dig into a little bit of what's driving the company. You know, you talked about some of the secular trends on the video. You talked a little bit about AI. But can you go a little bit deeper, right, into how you're deploying AI internally? Absolutely. So there is, like, two elements of how we are leveraging AI. You know, one of them is, you know, helping our customers have more value from our data. If you recall our value chain, you know, the first stop for getting access to Spire data is through a subscription of the raw data. Then we add, you know, analytics and fusion of third-party data sets, and then comes the mining of the data vault that we generate every single day to create predictions. That is, you know, where the increasing capabilities of AI has really started to unlock additional value for our customers as we have this proprietary data vault that is fed every single day with hundreds of millions of data points that we can now mine with better and better capabilities to deliver value to our customers. You know, saving fuel, improving their bottom line, reducing risk, more accurate predictions. And that's, like, one big area where we're using AI, but we're also using AI, you know, internally to automate processes, in particular in communication, outreach, content creation, communication, conversations, that's another area how we're using it. Last but not least, you know, we are looking quite heavily into using it for managing our assets itself, because it is a highly complex architecture that Spire manages, and we have very, very good analytics for it. But, you know, keep on pushing that is another area we're looking to leverage AI and ML. Okay, so speaking of other kind of secular trends, you talked about the contract that you signed with NOAA, and you guys have the DeepVision solution that we talked about a little bit. So can you talk a little bit more about being able to help businesses, right? Especially with supply chain, you know, risks around weather and being able to help predict some of that. Well, I think, the weather risk that is impacting just about any business is now something which is very, very obvious to people. Everything from flooding to wildfires, droughts, all of which often happen on the same country, in the same continent, at the same point in time, at different locations, are having massive impact on the operations of people as well as the bottom line of people. Anything from, like, the actual operational budget of, let's say, a logistics company, a manufacturing company, agricultural company, an insurance company, to the financial impact of someone who is trading some of those products, you know, for example, on the commodity space, is driving increased interest into capabilities that allow you to have greater accuracy, on a global basis in predicting what is going most likely to happen. And so we helped a logistics company, you know, really understand where there will be weather delays alongside their delivery route because there will be massive weather events. Or, someone who is driving, you know, ships or trucks with, with cold store cargo, needing to understand when will there be, you know, particularly high temperature for an extended period of time, creating a threat for their cargo. And they need to know it ahead of time, as especially for a ship, you know, they can't really reroute it. You know, if you are an airline or an airport, that wants to maximize the efficiency of your operations and bring down your carbon dioxide emissions from that inefficiencies, you need to know when will who be coming, from which area, needing what kind of landing spot, or if we transport it into the oceans, what kind of berth do they need, depending on the type of ship and the type of cargo. If you want to be, you know, an efficient and effective producer of alternative energy, going into, into the public net, you know, for example, because you're running an offshore wind farm, you need to know where will the wind be coming, when, and from what direction, so that you can more accurately predict how much electricity can you feed into the public networks. So everything that requires a deeper understanding of that weather and the risk that comes with it, you know, is desperate for more accurate solutions. And Spire and our partners have been able to fill in that need on an increasing basis, which is one of the reasons that has been driving our rapid growth. All right, we got one coming in from the audience. We're gonna switch gears a little bit. You talked about margins before, right? And obviously, as you begin to scale, you have the inflection point. Now, are there gonna be step changes in margins? Do you feel like there's more margin expansion from here as you continue to scale? So that is absolutely... You know, we absolutely do expect margin expansion from here. Not really on a step function basis, but on a gradual improvement basis, because we are from a, from a, you know, operational perspective, a classic data and analytics company that is selling its capability as a subscription. So as we bring on new customers, the marginal cost for serving those customers is very, very low, meaning it's gonna add to our margins. So yes, we absolutely do expect our margin expansion to continue as we grow as a company, both on a gross margin basis and, of course, on an EBITDA and cash flow margin basis as well. Because we have a very fixed maintenance cost for our, you know, data infrastructure, the satellites and the ground station and all of the analytics behind it, that doesn't grow with number of customers. So bringing on additional customers for either the raw data, or the analytics, or the predictions with AI machine learning, you know, adds very, very little additional cost to us, but adds to our margins, to the monetization of our whole infrastructure. So yes, absolutely expect that the margin expansion continues. But we don't expect, you know, step changes here. We expect that a gradual basis of margins improving, especially, you know, you take a 12-month look-back period, you know, we do expect that to get better every 12-month look-back period as we roll the company forward. Perfect. And obviously, that's gonna play into the targets that you guys have put out, you know, for generating positive operating cash flow. And so after you reach those targets in Q4, and kind of as you build throughout the year, you know, what's next, you know, after you reach those kind of hurdles? ... You know, I mean, for us, continues to be the maintenance and monetization of the data infrastructure that we have. You know, we're operating in a market that is driven by two massive tailwinds of global demand. One is climate change and increased weather impact and weather risk. The other one is global security and the impact from that on anything from supply chains to awareness to, you know, peoples' and countries' security. And so Spire is set up in a very unique position to have data covering all of the globe 100 times or more every single day, providing insights into those areas, and then being able to monetize that with analytics and with predictions and with decision-making tools. And so the monetization of that capability really is the big focus for us as we continue to drive the profitability. Because for us, then, it is about having an impact and leaving truly every single day, you know, the situation that humanity has on planet Earth just a little bit better by helping us adapt to climate change and create more awareness and safety and security on a global basis, and overall, creating a more prosperous, an equitable and sustainable future for us humans here on planet Earth. All right, so we're gonna wrap it up here shortly. We're getting to the bottom of the hour, but did want to touch on capital allocation, right? Yeah. Especially as you move into your prime cash generation mode. And so can you think about where your thoughts are with this, especially as you get into next year and beyond? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're certainly excited about deploying additional cash as it becomes available from our operations, and there is a multitude of good places, and we're gonna look at it on a case-by-case and time-by-time basis. You know, we could, of course, be paying down debt. We could be buying back shares. We could be investing in sales and marketing. We could be investing in particular products that are maybe a little bit further out. You know, we could even be deciding to invest in certain capabilities which are maybe more on the break-even side, because they're very, very much a global goods, a global commons, but, you know, foster and further the mission of the company. So there is really a great opportunity set ahead of us from anything, as I said, you know, paying down debt, you know, buying back shares, investing in sales and marketing, and driving even faster growth to R&D and other types of projects. And we're gonna make these decisions on a time-by-time and case-by-case basis and allocate our capital so that it generates the greatest return for our stakeholders. All right. Perfect. So Peter, I wanna thank you for joining us today, giving us a great update. Look forward to having you back on a future episode. Would love to dig deep, dig deeper into Deep Vision. Tongue twister. Yeah. Wanna turn it back over to you for any closing comments, and then I'll come back with just information on the next session. Yeah, absolutely, Dan. You know, I think, I think the next time we can, we can maybe have a little demo on Deep Vision. It's really a fascinating solution that is resonating strongly with our customer base, giving them insights to allow, especially those that have, you know, a global view because they need to manage something on a global basis. And it's a, it's a fascinating tool that is definitely worthwhile, an extra segment here. Awesome. Well, look forward to it. Thank you, Peter, and thanks, everybody, for joining us today on the SHARE Series Monday Management Update. Up next is private company Four Sixes Grit and Glory. Look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you.