Thanks. Well, it's definitely the way to travel around New York, so, you know, I'm sure the Blade team would be happy to sign you guys up for some of their products this morning. But, you know- You can fly from the top of this building right tonight. It's all set up. Really excited- Thank you. You know, thanks for, thanks for coming here, Rob. Appreciate it. Rob Wiesenthal is the kind of founder and CEO of Blade. And on in our audience, we also have Will Heyburn, who's the CFO, and Lee Gold, who's his chief of staff. And I'm just gonna have a conversation here with Rob, and you know, if you have any questions, you know, we can make some time towards the end, or feel free to raise your hand as well during our conversation. So again, Rob, thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. Sorry you didn't get to come in one of the EVAs or your helicopters right to this building, but, Give us a couple years. Exactly. We're looking forward to that. You know, for those maybe new to the story, I mean, I think that was a great introductory video, but could you kind of talk a little bit more about, you know, your asset-light model here and, you know, how you, what the business is? Yeah, sure. That video is probably more about what we're doing today- Yeah -which is terrific. But we started the company in 2014 with, the mission of creating the only ecosystem for urban air mobility and what we call electric vertical aircraft, you may know as eVTOL. So there are a lot of. There's probably about $15 billion out there invested by the major OEMs and a lot of companies that have recently gone public to build aircraft. But there's an entire stack that needs to be built in terms of infrastructure, software, customer experience, brand, routes, a lot that has to go into that. And so we said, "You know what? Okay, we're not gonna build this aircraft, what we're gonna do is use conventional rotorcraft today, have that entire ecosystem, and then at some point do an asset swap. And it was easier to do an asset swap when we are asset-light. So what we do is we enter into long-term agreements. We buy bulk hours from operators. Most of them are pretty significant. We are not a marketplace, nor are we a platform like Uber, where someone can own one helicopter and take a cell phone and suction cup on their window and start doing gig rides. It's very, very different. We have a very kind of intense vetting process, seven-member safety team. We look at financial wherewithal, we look at insurance levels, we look at hours on airframe, hours on major significant mechanical parts, maintenance logs, due diligence, you can name it. You have to have a non-compete for by-the-seat service. You have to use our branding and our cockpit technology. So we've divided the company into these three kind of, you know, these three major platforms. The most important is the infrastructure. So for those of you who live in New York City, we have the Blade terminal on the East Side, Blade terminal on the West Side, and then we also, you know, access Wall Street. And then we also have the Blade Aqua Lounge, which uses amphibious seaplanes, which is a form of urban air mobility because we're actually landing in Manhattan. Those are definitely required to do this service. Years ago, probably pre-pandemic, Uber tried to compete with us in helicopters, even having 2 million people in New York City on the Uber app. They were unable to do the volumes we did, eventually pulled out- Mm-hmm -because you need that captive infrastructure to process passengers, security, baggage assessment, and if you need to turn aircraft every five minutes, you need to, y ou know, you have safety. You need to get these people on aircraft. You can't just have them randomly in the street- Mm-hmm -trying to figure out who's who. The benefit to us is the fact that all of these places where we land for the most part or depart are private. So they were really meant back, going years back for the corporate CEO who had a helicopter or a plane, you know, or, you know, maybe an enthusiast pilot, but they weren't in the business of doing by-the-seat service. Mm-hmm. The infrastructure wasn't there. We built that infrastructure. However, we don't own it. It's very low CapEx ability to—$200,000, maybe $400,000 to build one of these terminals. And most of our deals—Well, first of all, all these are, for the most part, exclusive, but also on property, they're either there's no room for another facility or our agreements will go as long as the operator is there- Mm-hmm -which tends to be a long, long time. And on the West Side, the same operator's been operating for over 38 years. And then we have a consumer-to-cockpit technology stack. So it's everything from the consumer-facing app that now works in Canada, Europe, India, and the U.S., that allows you to get on a helicopter or some, you know, within 20 minutes of your own helicopter, or every 20 minutes for, say, New York City airport, where we're flying to Newark and to Kennedy Airport, between Manhattan and those two airports, you know, largely 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Mm. And so that has all been a growing business in the three most important markets in the world: the Northeast United States, Southern Europe, which is Monaco, Cannes, Nice, Saint-Tropez, Courchevel, Geneva, and Western Canada, which is Victoria and Vancouver. Victoria's kind of, for those of you who don't know, is kind of like the Washington, D.C. of Western Canada. And over there, like, these are not expensive products. We're talking about $195. It's mostly government lobbyists, people visiting the government who are using it, and it is not considered a luxury product. And frankly, in New York City area, we beat Uber Black handily most of the time. We're competitive with UberX sometimes during rush hour, and with an airport pass that costs $795, you can fly for as little as $95 all year long. So we're finally o ur competitor's ground, we're kind of one on one. But most, mostly important, I'm leaving kind of, I don't want to say the best for last, but the biggest for last, is our medical business. Because early on, we found out that essentially, when you look at our logistics and what we do, is we're moving critical cargo, we're moving people, right? And our most important, thing the thing that I focus the most on is obviously safety, and we're moving souls in the air every day. We're there's no company that flies more people kind of vertically by helicopter in the world, in terms of travel, in terms of travelers, so take out the military or tours or things like that- Yeah -or oil field services. We realized that all that logistics and the same aircraft could be extremely useful for the movement of human organs in the United States. We started with NYU Langone, which is literally on top of, overlooks the East Side Heliport, and we started doing organ movements with helicopters. You know, one of our first missions was from the East Side to Philadelphia Hospital. When NYU Langone used to take, you know, basically two ambulances, four ambulance trips, plus a Gulfstream trip from Teterboro to Philly and then back again, which could be a multi-hour journey and cost upwards of $6,000, we were able to turn that into a much shorter journey and basically do that for kind of $4,000-$5,000 depending on how it is. And that's a business that I think started out at about, you know, and it goes back into. We talk about acquisitions later. We started that business from scratch in New York, and I think it was about $12 million, roughly, and maybe a little bit less, $10 million. And now that has a run rate of $ 120 million, $120 million. $120 million. So that is something that has, you know, grown incredibly, and we bought Trinity, Trinity Medical on, in the West Coast, and that really supercharged our business to get there. And that was a, you know, a very low-cost acquisition. We bought the multiple, yo u know, brought the multiple down to kind of low single digits. And it is now the largest part of our business. It is recession-proof, and we're using the same aircraft that we use to move people to move these organs. So what that does is, when you're flying back and forth, whether you're going on a leisure route, like the Hamptons, or you're going to, say, Kennedy Airport, that same helicopter at night is moving doctors and organs, like you saw in that video. At night, that's what it's doing, and in the day, it's moving passengers. So what that does is it allows our operators to amortize the fixed costs of their operations, including insurance, hangars, maintenance, pilots, over 24 hours. So their hourly cost goes down. That gives us a lot more negotiating power in terms of getting, you know, lower hourly costs, which or the direct impact of our flight costs, which is what we can charge, getting prices, still trying to balance between a great offering for the consumer, but also margins that make sense. Because at, you know, at the end of the day, we're laser focused on profitability. In fact, we had our first, you know, adjusted EBITDA profitable quarter, you know last quarter, and so I think we're feeling pretty good. But that's kind of the basis of this, and then, you know, at some point, when all these manufacturers are ready or some of them that make sense for us, you'll start seeing that transition at Blade. There's a lot there I want to unpack, but maybe just to back a little bit, you talked about, you know, Uber trying to come in and do this and wasn't able to do it. It sounds like, you know, what are your defensive moats here? Because it sounds like infrastructure is one. You know, how difficult is the technology side of it? Sure. Can you talk us? Yeah. So, I think that, there are a bunch of things. The biggest, clearly, is the infrastructure, where we have infrastructure in Europe, Canada, Northeast US, New York City, most importantly, which is the, probably the biggest market in the world for this type, you know, the next generation of aeronautic technology, because we're turning two-hour drives into five-minute flights. It's ultimately, it's all about either an area being geographically contested, or highly congested. And so you're never gonna see a map from Blade. We know too much. We're never gonna see a map of Blade where dots are all over the world. It just doesn't work in a lot of places. So the idea of some of these companies coming and saying: "We're going to fly you from Orlando Airport to downtown Orlando," when they've built a ten-lane superhighway, doesn't work. Mm. You know, we do a lot of work with Bell. Airbus is an investor. They want us to go in Dallas. There's just not enough friction. You need to have real friction. And frankly, what I like to say is, if they're willing to allow you to open a vertiport, they probably don't need one. It's gonna be a really big a nd I think another competitive moat is once EVA is here, it's not like people are gonna be landing on top of buildings, as much as we just joked about it, right? There's gonna be a lot of work with local regulators, communities, people living in, neighbors who live in the community boards, you name it, the mayor, even. We already see it in New York City. To get to that next level, we're saying, "Okay, let's have an electric vertical aircraft or eVTOL landing zone right here." That doesn't happen overnight. So the new aircraft that you're seeing from these manufacturers will be using infrastructure where they're either all going around Blade, or they're working with us and going through Blade, and we're using their aircraft. And frankly, if you look at their business models, they're pouring in billions. And since we're flying so many people, our view is they're gonna have to either partner or, or sell to our operators. Makes sense. Next, on kind of more competitive note, moat here thing. I think also a trusted brand is really important. We're moving hundreds of thousands of people, right? Blade's now been around since 2014. Safety is priority, and I think that when we've done our own surveys, if you think about what an eVTOL or EVA looks like, there are going to be a lot of people who are apprehensive t o get on this thing. They wanna kind of see it. The people who fly on helicopters are probably the first people who are going to be very comfortable with this technology. So when I take a look at our user base, the people who fly us all the time, the credit cards, you know, we'll, we'll have a kind of cohabitation phase, where on certain missions, you'll be using helicopters, probably for longer missions, where there's a lot more weight or people. And then for shorter missions with less weight or people, you'll start introducing this. So we have that ability to kind of be profitable day one with these aircraft. So we're going to supercharge that industry, as opposed to, you know, companies that frankly the public, maybe the investing public not, but the consumers haven't heard of. So I think that gives us a head start, the routes, the people, and that gets you to utilization because it took many. Y ou know, airport, our airport business is now profitable. I'm not sure any company before us has actually gotten to the kind of profitability that we have at this point, trying to do this in New York. And so being able to start from a profitable flight margin, profitable business, and then bring in aircraft, as opposed to, "Okay, we got a new company, we got, you know, we're going to start selling seats," it's not as easy as it looks, that much I can promise you. A lot of working capital, then, goes in. Well, it's not working capital it's actually just, it's utilization. You know, right now in airport, once you get over two passengers in a six-person helicopter, we're profitable. Mm-hmm. Okay? All right. We're flying constant. We wanna make sure that when you get on the Blade app, you can fly pretty much immediately. Sure. In fact, there's an ASAP button. When you land at Kennedy, in Newark, you can hit ASAP, we pick you up, you go straight to the helicopter, and you're in the city in five minutes. Got it. So let's focus on, you know, turning that—getting into profitability. You know, what really kind of drove turning around the corner, and kind of what are your expectations here over the next, you know, kind of 12-18 months? Well, as I said, this was our Q1 doing that. We have $170 million of cash on the balance sheet, and I think finally, investors realized that, realized that we're not like a lot of small companies out there. We're not going to be burning through that cash. I don't see us having any need for equity in the future at all. And I think that, you know, we reduced a lot of corporate overhead, a lot of corporate expenses. We got to the point on airport where we offered an array of prices, so you could fly for as little as $95, and sometimes a ticket could be $500. The actually, the average price, last time we mentioned one, was actually in excess of $300. Now, understand, what we wanted to do is capture people who were more value conscious and people who wanted add-ons. Add-ons are like, flexible fares. We have a base fare, we have a flexible fare that allows you to have credits if you need to change your flight, full refunds, if you're maybe only here, you're coming from Europe or something and you're not going to come back for a while. You have ground connects that provide you with multimodality, so when you land, there's a car waiting for you. All of these kind of add-ons got us to that average price, which is terrific because we're not alienating the people who are more price sensitive. That helped. Obviously, the big driver is definitely the medical business which now on revenues is bigger than the passenger business. So we have this unique ability to, we have this fantastic medical business, where we're number one in market share, and that gives us profitability, gives us some flexibility to build passenger. But passenger has to stand on its own two feet. Sure Which it really is starting to. And when I take a look at the expenses as a percentage of revenue, as long as I keep seeing that going down, I know that we have a real platform here, and that's what we're seeing. And then we also said in our last earnings call, which we've never done before, is that we will be giving guidance for 2025, 2024 and 2025, you know, to give people some sense of where the company's going. And I can say that, you know, the reason we haven't done it here at Q4 is because we haven't been comfortable. But once we got to that Q1 profitability, and we were able to put together our models and see where the business is going, you know, we feel good about giving that guidance now. So, and also just maybe stepping back into the moat discussion on the medical side, it seems like your ability to use the passenger and like maximize that utilization is somewhat unique as well. Like, anything else in the medical business that kind of gives you a competitive advantage? Well, I think—look, I think that, there's no question having that aircraft there, then also having that technology stack and having 24/7 people on the ground who understand the logistics, because ultimately, it's chain of custody, it's transparency, and it's access to aircraft and trust. That's what drives, That's really what's driving the business. And we, these are, the good news is, like, these are, a lot of these are long-term contracts. V ery recession-proof, as you can imagine, and we're proving outcomes. I think that, you know, and the business is growing for, you know, a bunch of reasons, not only we're building market share, but the amount of time we can now keep an organ out of a body for transport is much longer than when we started this business. With a company called Paragonix, that has made a perfusion device that allows the organ to live outside of a body longer. We did the world's longest transplant mission, which was from Boston to Alaska. You know, that's increasing. And then also, from a medical perspective on, the aperture of what is considered an organ that's suitable for donation or suitable for acceptance is now increased. So this is really a growing business. And what we've been competing with really have been, you know, hospitals that had, you know, a couple of friends with, you know, a jet who was nearby. You know, there was never a company that had the kind of real, intense, comprehensive nature of understanding, you know, chain of custody, moving, you know, recovery, which is really important when things go wrong. The fact that, you know, surgeries can take longer, pilot duty hours, how do you solve for some of these issues if you're sitting on the ground waiting for surgeons to get done, but your pilots are dutying out, where's the second aircraft? All that kind of stuff, it's not easy, and I think people trust us, and it's working. I think size matters. We are the biggest, but also I think the throw weight of having the passenger side in terms of, aircraft definitely helps. Yeah. Makes sense. And then just on the, you know, EVA, which is what, you know, some people refer to as eVTOL. Yeah. You know, that You pronounce it like a French accent, eVTOL. eVTOL. Very French. Yeah, well, I think we're big on trying to make this simple. Help us call it EVA. We'll be having a petition outside. Yeah, eVTOL is a little bit of a mouthful. It's done by engineers. And it's funny, you, you're getting onto an interesting fact. Because at the end of the day, these EVA or eVTOL manufacturers are building aircraft in these kind of warehouses in the West Coast or in the middle of, you know, in the woods of Germany. Wherever they are being built, we are flying people in the wild every single day in the toughest market in the world, which is New York. There's no busier airspace than the New York City airspace, okay? Mm. We're dealing with everything from physically challenged people to people who, probably, you know, you know, shouldn't be flying because maybe they're on medication or they had alcohol or something, or too many bags. All the issues that they're gonna face. Mm We've been facing for years. Yeah. So we know what these aircraft need. We know what the ranges are. We know how to work with the Port Authority. We understand that the cost of these flying, that there are a lot of things that these aircraft, that these manufacturers haven't thought about, like, what about insurance? You know, you, you ask some of these companies about insurance. You know, there aren't any actual aerial data on these new aircraft. You know, what is real-life charging? What about the weather? We're cold here. You've been doing this in San Francisco. That's part of the reason why we partnered with BETA. BETA is in Vermont, more of kind of ilk. They're used to working in the cold. Private company, very focused, doesn't want to outrun their own business. And so I think that where, you know, many investors look at us as an index play, saying: "Hey, we don't know who's gonna win, but we know Blade is gonna be using something that makes sense for them, and there is gonna be this cohabitation phase. I think that because we fly so many hours, we have the ability for our operators to finance against those hours to get their own aircraft. So in your view, what's the timeline like? And, like, what's the progression like, and what does that mean to your business? Yeah. Yeah, well, we set up the business in a really specific way because, like all of you, we were uncertain as to the timeline because it's largely driven by certification by Washington. Right? And then also a lot of, I don't want to call it troubleshooting, but a lot of kind of getting the kinks out and making sure that you, as a manufacturer, feel comfortable beyond even the certification in terms of reliability and other things, passenger comfort, safety, real-life weight, real-life battery life. And, so we set up the business, so if it's late, our business just keeps getting bigger using conventional rotorcraft, more and more infrastructure, flying more and more people, the medical business keeps growing. If it comes, we're ready. So but the question in terms of when is it gonna be here is really the manufacturers and the government. They're better apt to tell you when it's gonna be. I think right now they're saying 2025. We're probably more 2026. Yeah. You're gonna see more in the area, testing of things. There was recently a test by two manufacturers in the New York City area. We did the very first test in the greater New York City area last year in Westchester. So, they're saying 2025, we're probably saying 2026. There's a lot between lip and cup. You know, if you think about the idea of certification, it took the HondaJet 10 years to be certified. You know, I think the issue that the FAA had certifying a plane that had already been in service and then changed in terms of software. T he 737 to the 737 MAX, I think that gives people pause. I see a question here in the, in the back. Yeah, I'm just curious about when will you break out your medical business on your financial statements so we can understand the profit? I think we do, we do break out our medical business, on ter- No, you do. I think, I mean, I think, Is it? I think, yeah. It's a segment. It's a business segment, yeah. $3.5 million, I think, last quarter. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. Yeah. So it is y eah, we do break it out, and we hope to have more disclosure on it. It's a terrific business. Mm-hmm. It should get to kind of be around the kind of 20% flight margin, basis. And our mature routes on passengers, you know, can be, you know, in the 30% plus range. Yeah. And, you know, we've been—and now that we have a lot of mind share in the key, key markets, we've been able to pull back marketing, because we no longer need that kind of, you know, call it top-of-funnel awareness as much as we needed at least in the big areas that we operate, like in New York, Blade is a verb. You Blade to the airport, you Blade to the Hamptons, what have you. So look, it's, you know, it's an exciting time for sure. Yeah. I do want to give the opportunity. Are there any other questions in the audience? And then maybe, again, going back- Next question. Oh, sorry, sorry. Sure. You guys have like obviously, like, ground facility to New York City. Do you have any thoughts on, like, congestion taxes, if it even relates to you, and just, you know, can you read the benefit between Uber and other types of four- Sure. That's a really good question. We do a lot of work, and I do meet a lot with Mayor Adams and his staff on a regular basis. I guess what I would say is, obviously, congestion, congestion tax, the higher the price ground is, the more competitive we are. But I think what we see is really the routes a lot of vehicles are gonna be taking are actually routes that make the airport product more valuable. Mm-hmm. So the routes that they're gonna be forced to be taking, if you take a look at what they're thinking about the flows, we're suspecting that in terms of your, your drive to the airport or from the airport will actually take longer. I can't tell you exactly how much longer it will take, but it will take longer. And there's no question that we've been aided by everything from, you know, restaurant huts on the street and new building construction and y ou know, Citi Bike parking, and, you know, and bike lanes, all that stuff is kind of added. Because at the end of the day, the value prop is how, y ou know, there are a lot of people who want to go because they want, they want certainty of travel, because with Blade, you know you're gonna get there in 4 or 5 minutes to Newark, and you know you're gonna get there between around 8 minutes at JFK. Whereas you, I think what we find is the stress for most our passengers is not like when they get in the airport, it's when they're in their car, and they just have no idea what's gonna happen on the way there. So certainty is important. They like the experience of being in the air, but at the end of the day, the most important thing is, are you creating value for them by, you know, having a well-priced product that just gets you there faster? Excellent. Yeah. Yep. Is it, go ahead. Just real quickly, do you ever think, like, you know, Uber's gonna jump into this when you start getting into the electronic, you know, the EV, EV, you know, Blade operated back and forth to the airport or something like that? Anyone- Yeah, well, Uber tried. They then shut down their Uber Elevate division and then kind of restructured it, and then I think they had Joby pick up what was left of it or the whole thing. You know, look, this is. We want a bigger market. We want people to be, you know, aware of this. You know, I think we have a big head start on it. And I think, frankly, we're now at the scale finally that they're probably gonna have to do business with us, and I think we speak to them all the time. I think we can coexist or partner with them. I think, you know, we give, y ou know, when I think about the atmospherics of the calls that we have now with them, the meetings are very different than when we started the company. I think they view us, you know, with the amount of cash we have on our balance sheet, the presence we have, you know, the infrastructure which they can't replicate. My instinct is they want to work with us. I just think it's that much easier. Why build it from scratch and take that time, which is gonna be a really long time? Yeah. Can you talk about where we're at in the transition towards commercial viability as we go, and what that timeline looks like? Yeah, I think we just, we hit on it just a little bit. I, you know, I hate to speak for the manufacturers, but the manufacturers are saying potentially 2025, and that's certification and. But also, remember, they have to not only build them, they have to assemble them, do it at a fair price. They have to get profitability, they have to get to automotive scale. So you'll probably, you know, we hope to see a couple of these in 2026. We think it's only gonna build, like, get people excited about urban air mobility in general, because people think about urban air mobility with these EVAs or eVTOLs. They don't think about it necessarily with helicopters, when in fact, when you think about the entire experience you'll have, if you leave from Blade Lounge West, and you land at the Newark, we actually have the only helicopter lounge, or urban air mobility lounge in an international airport. We have it in JFK, we also have it in Nice International Airport in France. You know, that experience, the only thing that's gonna be different to you, it's gonna be the same amount of time, but it'll be quiet and emission-free. That's really, from a consumer perspective, that's what's gonna happen. But the big thing you should know is that the reason why it provides exponential growth to Blade is because it's quiet. The more quiet you are, the more landing zones you can get. If I can, if I can pick you up two blocks from where you live, then fly you somewhere, that's more valuable than you going 20 minutes to a Blade terminal. That's the big unlock. That's what we're excited about. Of course, quiet is, you know, quiet is great just because of what it does to the community. Emissions-free is great for what it does to the environment, but from a pure economic business perspective, and we're economic animals, it's every pair of landing zones, it's an entire business. Right now, if you even think about New York City, we have East Side, West Side, Wall Street. If we had one that was kind of north of, you know, kind of where we are here, North of 42nd Street, south of Central Park, you know, that creates a network effect of not only offering people who are in Midtown, or it may say East Side, West Side, too much of a drive, but provides you with network effects of being able to go from East Side to Midtown, Midtown to Wall Street, Midtown to West Side. So there are real network effects there and everywhere we operate. Mm-hmm. And I think we're out of time, but I really appreciate, again- Thanks Rob, these insights. It's very interesting. That's great. We're looking forward to this. All right. All right. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.