And then the second category that are novel today.
Hello everyone, thank you for joining. Welcome, the XRP audience. We are still carrying on through with the SEC meeting for as long as we need, and then we will slowly fade into the Archer Aviation earnings call. So stand by and enjoy the stream.
Infrastructure in the area of KYC and AML, where not only would it limit some of the frictionless interoperability and liquidity that this technology offers by being forced to, issuer by issuer, fund product by fund product, go through an onboarding and KYC process—but actually, just let me know in the chat if you can hear the audio. We may have some technical issues.
Create a much more robust and transparent AML/KYC system, potentially enabling some form of decentralized utility powered by smart contracts to actually manage a transparent process and ability to port KYC credentials across issuers and across fund types. Now, the industry has not yet built such a structure, but there likely will come a time where that happens. And can we hear the audio? Please let me know in the comments. Constructive dialogue such that we can help shape a regulatory approach to actually unlocking the power of that breakthrough.
We are covering the back of the SEC meeting for as long as we need, and then we'll be joining the Archer Aviation earnings call. We've touched on transfer agents, broker-dealers, Alex, and then maybe Christian, as you look at the existing framework, what should change? What's working well? Over to you.
Sure. With immobilized securities, the structure that we have works very well, right? As you were alluding to, there's trillions of dollars that is transacted on a daily basis. When you move onchain, there's opportunity. There's really an issuer and there's investors, and then everything else can kind of work its way back from there. Broker-dealers can exist onchain and have a wallet infrastructure that can work and facilitate that. National securities exchanges can exist onchain, but don't necessarily need to exist onchain, right? DeFi protocols that facilitate automated market making—there's not really an intermediary there, and that's possible and should be permitted.
What we have to do is take a step back, look at the various risks involved, and ensure that those are being adequately met. One of the things that has been alluded to is arbitrage in a negative way, but we also just brought up the ETF, which is one of the greatest innovations and is driven by arbitrage. Having the ability to have—and to beat the dead horse—interoperability, or the ability for securities onchain and securities offchain to move and go back and forth with each other, very much mitigates a lot of the concerns and the risks with regards to price dislocation that exists in our market structure right now. There's securities listed in Canada and securities listed in the United States, and there's numerous empirical studies that show that they trade within parity because there is this ability to arbitrage and keep prices within parity.
So I think all we need to do is ensure that risks are properly viewed and addressed. We think you can do that through a transfer agent or a third party that is similar to national rating agencies. They have a technical capability of determining the creditworthiness of an instrument. Maybe there similarly could be a type of intermediary that can review and judge various DeFi protocols to ensure that they meet certain standards and thresholds for resiliency and technical capabilities. So really just right-sizing the risks for onchain activity, ensuring the ability for the national market system to exist in these subsystems through the ability to move securities onchain and offchain, and then filling in the gaps from there with regards to what technical registration is needed is the approach the commission should take, rather than saying we have a clearing agency, a broker-dealer, and an issuer in this context and we need them in this other context. I don't think that rigid approach should be taken.
We are covering the back of the SEC meeting. As soon as we finish, we'll be coming on to Archer Aviation's first-quarter earnings call.
I also think—and Uno raised this in terms of the issuer voice or the investor voice—intermediaries are obviously a hot topic of debate when we talk about tokenization or digital assets. But if you go back to first principles, they have pros and they have cons. Some of the pros are: if you're an individual investor and you have the rest of your life happening, you want an intermediary who's going to do that vetting of different chains to make sure that they meet certain standards for security, for resiliency. You want to outsource that ability to other parties so that you can do the things you want to do.
In terms of the future trend, it really is about choice. There may be some market participants who want a more intermediated interaction with tokenized assets than others. Certainly they'll take into account costs and what people may characterize as rent-seeking or frictions, but they may see trade-offs in terms of the ability of scaling through an intermediary, the ability to deal with concerns about protection, security, and access. I think that just needs to sort of play itself out organically over time. The point's well taken: you can have registered entities that are showing up on chains, and you can have, through smart contract technology, the functions of registered entities acting.
The last point I would note is if you are a startup moving away from the status quo intermediated market structure—look, I think one of the great promises of this technology is it gives us a new ability, as others have described on this panel, to deal with long-standing frictions that come through the current intermediated market structure. So there's definitely benefits for all here. But one thing we are talking about trading up here a little bit is financial risk for very fundamental technology risk: relying on chains, smart contracts, automated market makers to be there to perform when you need them for capital formation, for pulling money out of your 529 so you can pay for your kids' college.
Something that needs to continue to remain in focus is: what are the technology resiliency standards, and who's going to enforce those? Is the commission going to directly enforce those, or are they going to again look to software providers? I know we've tried to get away from that; that can be problematic with unintended consequences. But the bottom line is I think intermediaries stay in the mix, but maybe the choice of intermediation is expanded, and that's probably a good thing.
Please hit the like button, everyone who just joined. We are covering the back of the SEC meeting. As soon as we finish, we will come onto the Archer Aviation first quarter.
Commissioner Peirce on May 8th made a statement about a potential SEC exemptive order that would allow firms to use DLT to issue, trade...
...and get 100 likes, the video gets promoted and it gets better coverage and better audience and better reach.
As you think about this topic broadly—pilots, regulatory sandboxes—what comes to mind for you?
I am very much supportive of having more formal programs of the sort, as a lot of firms are investing heavily into developing applications onchain for financial activities. There's a few terms that have been used across different global jurisdictions for these kinds of programs, whether it's a sandbox, a safe harbor, or a pilot. They take different forms of whether it is a group of market participants across the entire transaction chain to participate and use real market value in order to demonstrate how it is that this technology can actually facilitate a particular activity, whether it is trading and settlements on a blockchain or issuing new products on the blockchain. All of that is incredibly helpful and productive for participants to be able to actually operate these applications.
Some of the challenges, though, is where you start to set what the objectives are for having this proliferation of projects, and what are the objectives that you're hoping to be able to demonstrate, whether it is for a new market and trading ecosystem. We've talked across the panel today about a number of practical issues, so how do you actually get to a scalable pilot to be able to address many of these considerations? The other consideration is global regulatory participation, given how global our capital markets are: having global policymaker coordination and collaboration as you think about these onchain assets moving across jurisdictions. Technology is cross-border. How do different regulatory regimes recognize these assets as they become available to individuals within their jurisdictions? The idea of a sandbox is incredibly productive and helpful as we want to facilitate innovation, but there are a number of considerations that will go into creating a program that will be durable.
Will, well, I'm going to echo many of those points and first start off by commending the commission...
Hit the like button, everyone. If you want to carry on with this stream, let's get to 100 likes, please. It's very important for promotion of the video. We are covering the back of the SEC meeting; as soon as we finish, we are coming onto Archer first quarter.
...discussed, I think one of the big issues is about bringing innovation onshore. How do we maintain the sort of most trusted regulatory framework in the world and the competitive capability to continue to attract capital? I think it comes from the spirit of innovation, and this is something that we have the ability to adapt the framework to, to drive that onshore and to do these safe harbor and pilot programs that allow it to bring it into the appropriate regulatory framework that has served our investors so well. Whether that is completely calibrated or time-bound, there's the question of how do we implement this? Do we crawl, walk, run into innovation? How do we pull people into it so that we can coalesce around the protocol choices and understand that? I think key participants like exchanges, the members-based framework, and DTCC can be leaders in this space that enable us to work toward a common solution.
So we have about eight minutes left. There's two other questions we can get to...
...26 likes, come on, we can crush it. I wanted to carry on with the report.
...any of the panelists, as you're exercising the different comments that have been made, anyone want to jump in with anything that's lingering?
I'd just like to add one thoughtful request in designing, because I agree with Cynthia and Will's points about the benefit of having a robust sandbox environment and what it could create for us. I would just encourage us, though, to make it a practical sandbox. A lot of the early sandboxes focused on what could the technology do. I think there's pretty widespread understanding now throughout the world on what the technology is capable of doing. I would encourage any sandbox we design at this late stage in the game to be very focused on how can the pilot run in the sandbox or how can the test run in the sandbox directly inform the creation of legislation or the creation of new regulatory rules that would allow us to improve and move the system forward. I think the time for experimental sandboxes has passed, and it's time for sandboxes that are going to prove out how new rules might operate. That would be my only real request in thinking about and designing this program.
Johnny. Yeah, and just on that note, being somewhat crypto-native, this might seem counterintuitive to folks in the audience...
Come on, 21 likes, we can do it. 100 if you want to carry on with the SEC meeting.
...would be able to use that Treasury in various forms in DeFi. Right now, the actual user experience to hold a tokenized Treasury is terrible, no offense, but I can't do anything with it. I can look at my Securitize account balance, and that's it. But if I could borrow against it, if I could readily swap it, if I could be a market maker and get some yield from the volume that comes through the pool, that would be amazing. And it's at the low end of the risk curve. Frankly, it's not much different than a stablecoin when you get down to the root of it. Stablecoins are slowly becoming the world's checking account; I think US Treasuries could become the world's savings account. I think that'd be a really actionable and interesting thing to see.
That's better. Come on, 15 more likes. We can do 100, and then we carry on with the SEC meeting and I will stop talking as well. Once we hit 100, I will stop talking.
TradFi on one hand and then emerging technologies on the other—Una, it's a broad topic, but what do you think is important for the commission to keep in mind, whether on a pilot, a sandbox, or otherwise? Over to you.
Sure. I think the important themes are investor trust, market acceptance, and keeping the benefits that we currently have and translating that into this new technology in terms of how it's integrated into our US markets. I think it's also important to just take a step back and think about the US public markets as really the primary access point for Americans to be able to take advantage of economic growth, whether it's...
...that's better, six more likes and I will shut up...
...for retirement or paying for college, wealth both as individual families and as a nation as a whole. We've also talked about the perspectives of corporate issuers in terms of making sure that there is a clear set of roles and obligations and rights that they have by accessing the capital markets, and also just taking on those responsibilities as a market in the US economy. That's an important piece, and in that context, Congress has empowered the commission to promote fair competition. My own personal interpretation is that you treat like assets alike and you treat market participants who are performing similar functions in the same way.
As we sort of think about all the topics that we've discussed today, it's probably helpful to think about not just intermediaries or the parties in question, but what is the purpose we serve within the financial ecosystem? We should think about what are the risks embedded, like time-delay risks versus economic costs associated with different sort of processes versus speed efficiencies, and how those might also have risks embedded in them, and just sort of figuring out what those are to make sure that those standards and the rules that are applied to all of the market participants are consistent, with the understanding of what the embedded risks are as well as the sort of more obvious ones.
Yeah, I couldn't echo more how important the financial markets are in the United States and how impressive and robust the US markets are in the world. I would echo what Commissioner Peirce mentioned in advocating for the sandbox, in the sense where standing still is falling behind when technological innovation is moving very quickly. So we need to, with care and creativity, look to foster innovation and leverage and utilize the best technology that we have. I think there's many ways to skin a cat, and so we should not be beholden to using a pair of scissors just because we've used them over the years. If there's an automatic razor, we should use that, because I'm sure the cat's been nicked many, many times.
We should internalize the fact that just because we've done something through convention doesn't mean it's the best way that things have been done. There's numerous instances where the system has bent but not broken, and we shouldn't then say we have reached Fukuyama or whatever is great in saying we're at the end of history. We're not at the end of history. We're continuing to innovate, and utilizing this technology can allow for that. The amount of capital that's locked up for settlement risks and the amount of capital that's not able to be freely deployed is just immense. I welcome the opportunity for innovation and experimentation because I think we can move things forward.
The fact that fractionalization and 24/7 are things where crypto markets have tried to influence traditional markets—they're not good fits. Where they are good fits are in the markets where they were created, where things go out 6 to 10 to 12 decimal points and the markets operate on a 24/7 basis. We shouldn't be beholden to the past; we should look to the future. But that doesn't mean we do away with everything. We want to make sure they can all work together.
Archer Aviation earnings call, first quarter 2025, coming shortly. We are just covering the back of the SEC meeting. Please stand by.
We must not fall into the trap of incumbents attempting to hamstring new technology players by the same potentially obsolete or due-for-modernization regulations that they face, as opposed to leaning into the new opportunities created by the novel technology. One very natural example of this is that banks to date, for instance, had not been able to engage on public blockchains. While we advocate a technology-neutral approach between public and private, it's become very clear that the vast majority of traction and utility in this space is on public blockchains. Fortunately, there does seem to be an opportunity for banks to be unhamstrung in that way and to be able to take advantage in the same way that the new technology entrants into this space have been.
Just one other clarification on Johnny, on the point around tokenized Treasuries and Treasury funds: today, we can actually now for the first time deliver those on a peer-to-peer basis in secondary market liquidity and pledge them as collateral, including in our case with our fund with Securitize, although that's relatively recent, so I understand that.
Superstate also does that, FYI.
We are at 3:30 exactly, so I want to thank the panelists—very thoughtful, very constructive. Thanks for traveling to Washington, and please join me in giving them a round of applause.
All right, I'd also like to echo that thanks. Thank you so much for everyone on the panel. We've had a great first discussion, and I look forward to our next one. Today, we heard a lot about how much promise can be unlocked in a tokenization wrapper. Long before blockchain, another great innovation unlocked many benefits in a once-new wrapper: it was an ice cream wrapper. Like instant settlement, it offered instant joy. It serves as a snack, a dessert, and an excuse to bond with someone you like—so many utilities in one space, just like tokenization might offer. Before we go out, I ask you to look to the people next to you, and if you don't know them, please introduce yourself. One of the main benefits of these roundtables, other than the discussions we have up here, are the relationships you form. So please continue the conversations you've heard and enjoy an ice cream outside, and we'll meet back here at 4:00 for our next panel. Thank you.
Thank you very much for staying with me. That was the end of the SEC crypto task force tokenization roundtable meeting. You are here right for the Archer Aviation first-quarter 2025 earnings call. We started a bit early. We have a good buildup. I have a lot of fundamentals; I have some hot news to tell you. But before we do so, let's have a look how many people we have watching: we've got 250 watching. I would like to get 150 likes. If we get 150 likes, I will show you the hottest news that we could have for this earnings call, and I was not expecting this.
So let's all do a bit of work. Let's get the likes up. Go 110, that's good. 40 more to go, please. It's very important for the promotion of the video. That's not for my own benefit; that's for the promotion of the video. The better reach we get on this video, the more people will join us and the better coverage we get. Come on, that's not enough. We have 250 people watching. I don't have a timer; if I had a timer, I would have put it up. What I can do—I've got a clock in here. Should I use my clock? Should I put my clock on the screen? No, I won't be doing it. Hit the like button. I'll be waiting for 150 likes. Until we get 150 likes, I won't be showing you the news. But the earnings call should be starting on the hour, so we have about one and a half hours.
In the chat, we have a good audience. Let's have a look who we have in the chat, if we see any familiar faces. We've got Martin watching us. Thank you, Martin. Eugene, big supporter on X. We've got Steven the Oil Baron, Poorman to Richmond. Got some new members as well: Walker, thank you. Hello Henrik, DJ Hayes—I'm saying your name right now. Bob, Brian, Brian Bum, Midnight Bob, Samuel Redner, Boy Lucas. Anyone new? Abby joining us. William, Sensei—did Sensei send you or who sent you to the stream? Got Thomas Papulus 69, Moto 18, one of the newer members. Dalefish, brand-new member, welcome to the stream. Buxom Blonde 2008, a new member, welcome to the stream.
"People need to take public speaking." Oh yeah, that was a bit long, wasn't it? All X, hello my fellow Czech friend. Ao, Steve Mariano, Josh Monroe—there's a lot of people tuning in. Sab, hello. And we've got the first Super Chat. Thank you very much, Poorman to Richmond. Yes, hit the like button, everyone. What's the score now? 132. Come on, we can do better, 18 more to go. You won't believe the news, and you want me to be the first to air this. So let's just do a bit of work, get those 18 likes in, and I will show you the news.
Today we are covering Archer Aviation first quarter 2025. As you can see, I'll be keeping my ear on the webcast. Let's see if they start on time or not. Last quarter was a fairly decent presentation in terms of quality. We had some news that didn't impact the investor sentiment because we also picked up, amongst the positive news, a lot of negative news and a lot of downside. The main downside was the balance sheet, which wasn't as optimistic. We picked up some delay on the production line, we didn't have as big progress on the certification, and we've got a message from Sab.
"We know what time it is. Vaz, do you want me to do it? Do you want me to do it?" I won't do it until we get 150 likes. Last earnings call, we had probably not as positive or strong progress on the FAA certification, the type certification. So these things just added up and drove the sentiment around the stock a bit down. I was expecting the same. Okay, so you want me to do the intro? Okay, if you want me to do the intro, just spam the chat with "yes." If you don't want me to do the intro, say "no," and I'll be watching the chat, but I'm not seeing anything yet.
For today's earnings call, I was expecting about the same because I could see a development of the sentiment through the last weeks. There is a lot of questions that need to be—"no intro, we need to make sure this is the right channel." Well, you know what to do. Yeses started coming. Okay, if I see 10 more yeses, I will do it. Martin, Josh Monroe, Martin—no, 10 different people. Martin, let's blow up the chat. Sensei, yes. Come on, two more. No, no. Anyone else? I won't do it without another yes; I'm not doing it. Okay, Abby is the winner. Abby is the winner.
I don't have a dark screen, so I can't do the transition, but imagine it's dark now and it fades in. Hey up, everyone. Welcome to Martin Lucas Investor. I'm Vaz. Do you know what time it is? It's time to start talking eVTOL. Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. We'll be talking about Archer Aviation's first-quarter 2025 earnings call for those who just joined in the right time for the introduction. We have 200 people watching, 136 likes. That's not bad. We have some new people joining. Thank you for spamming the chat.
Why is Archer Aviation and why is eVTOL important? It's the technology of the future. It's an advancement; it's a step up in aviation. It's a step up in urban mobility, that means intercity transport and possibly extra-city as well. Let me show you a video. Who can do it better than YouTube? If I show you this video of Archer Aviation itself, you can see something that looks like a crossover between a helicopter and a fixed-wing aircraft. You have multiple propellers, and the front propellers tilt, as you can see in the video, forward and up.
Once the propellers are up, that is for the—let me just explain the definition of eVTOL. eVTOL stands for electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. What you can see in this video: we can have both options or both ways how we fly. We navigate or move either in the horizontal direction or we move in the vertical direction as well. The main advantage is that where you have limited area where you can take off, you can use the vertical takeoff phase, or in the airport you can use your traditional horizontal takeoff phase.
Let me play the video again so you have a great idea. Did you see the rotors? They just tilted up. So that's for the takeoff phase. Now we have the transition phase: when we tilt the rotors forward, that's the most difficult phase of the flight, and then we just move forward horizontally as a conventional fixed-wing aircraft. What are the main advantages of the eVTOL concept and the technology? First, it's green because it's powered by electricity and possibly hybrid power units in the fairly close future.
Another advantage is efficiency. If you look at crowded cities, especially New York and Los Angeles, the main issue is the traffic. If you are trying to move from point A to point B in the peak hour, it's horrendous. If you go on ground level, there's not many options you have to improve your travel time. So what can we do? We can either go underground or we can go above the ground. If we go above the ground, there is a lot of challenges, but it is reducing our travel time significantly. What would have been an hour, maybe an hour and a half travel time because of traffic, you can reduce down to mere minutes—say 12 to 15 minutes—and that's a massive advantage for people who don't have enough time on their hands: businessmen, top managers, CEOs, stars, whoever you name it.
Another advantage is safety. If you look at the amount of propellers, we have 8 all the way to 16 propellers, depending on the type of aircraft and the manufacturer. But if you look at a helicopter, you have only one propeller, maybe two. If this fails, the helicopter is going down unconditionally. Whilst on the eVTOL you have multiple propellers and rotors; if one of them fails, you still have enough which you can override and the aircraft can either finish the flight or perform a safe emergency landing. So these are the main advantages. Oh, there's one more: noise levels. These are allegedly much quieter. We are looking at a region between 50 to 70, maybe 80 decibels compared to a conventional helicopter, which is 80 to probably 110 decibels. So it could be quite disturbing in cities and in urban environments.
How many likes do we have? 140. How many people do we have watching? We have 280 people watching. Wow, that's amazing. That's my biggest show so far, and that's not everyone yet because the closer we get to the earnings call, the more people will be coming. I would like to show you one more thing: let's check the stock chart. Let me know in the chat if you can see it all clear. I will quickly check the chat if I haven't missed any questions. There was a lot of support. Thank you very much, Abby.
There was a question that it would be massively expensive. Actually, the operational cost of the eVTOL will be much cheaper than a traditional helicopter, but if you want to compare this to your taxi cab as a mean of transport, it will be much more expensive. But we are still not reaching the price levels of a helicopter. If you look at your Uber taxi, obviously this can't land in the middle of the street if you decide you fancy a lift. Understand this like a network of vertiports and vertipads, like bus stations or train stations where you can travel in between them. It can't land in the middle of the street and stop all the traffic so we can board and take you home. Also, you can't use this for when you have a night out—it's not going to pick you up from your house, take you to the nightclub, and then take you back home so you can spew out on the back seats.
Cost-wise, the estimates are, if you look at Uber, I would say 10x—just a safe number, 10x of what Uber would have cost you. If you are a manager trying to save a bit of time, you would be more than willing to pay this cost, unless you can afford a private helicopter. "Helicopters can autorotate emergency land in most cases." Yes, as long as the rotor is not damaged. We actually had this recently in New York—it was a very bad example, we had six or seven casualties and there was no way to carry out an emergency landing. But that is a good point.
"Does it take more power to lift off vertically?" Yes, it does, because if you move in the horizontal direction, the lift is generated by your wings, whilst if you are taking off vertically, it's all about your propellers. "Hello, Vazad." No, I'm still Lucas 8. There's no such thing as Vazad or whatever that is. "Thought we had Airwolf already doing a fantastic job." Thank you, Vanessa. Vanessa, big Archer investor, thank you for joining; I haven't seen you for a while.
"Is it not incredibly dangerous?" Can you elaborate your question? I'll be happy to answer. "A helicopter uses around $90 of fuel just taking off." Yeah, if you imagine this is electricity-powered, look at the cost of electricity. "Not unless you have a helipad on your house." Yeah, that's a good point. "10 times Uber is what taxis used to cost." That's a good point as well. "Possible XRP breakout from 2.48." Okay, we will be keeping an eye on it. Let me know if something is happening; I can bring up the chart on the screen.
"Can it go gliding?" Yes, there are multiple safety systems or procedures implemented in the actual vehicle and technology. I'll be talking about them in one of my videos. Also, don't forget to hit the like button. We are collecting them nicely; we are nearly at 150, we are at 145. When we get five more, I will show you the hottest news we could have for tonight. Speaking of hitting the like button, if you haven't subscribed, if you are new to this channel, you are more than welcome. We are giving regular updates on the whole eVTOL market as well.
We have a new show now which will be, not next Saturday but the following Saturday onwards, every Saturday morning in North America, lunchtime in Europe, and nighttime in Australia. I will be giving regular updates, but also I would like to invite you to join my X account, the handle is @eVTOLVaz. Not only will you help me to grow, but also I can't fit all insights and news in my videos because I'm trying to keep them short and sweet. There's a lot of insights on my X, a lot of news, a lot of updates—you definitely don't want to miss it.
Not that I would like to be flexing on you and other channels, but when I was promoting this event, we actually got a like from somebody from Archer, and it was actually the second man in charge: Nikhil Goel, the Chief Commercial Officer of Archer. Nikhil, if you are watching, let us know in the chat, I'll give you a big shout-out. We are one more like away. Let me line this up for you so I can show you the hot news.
I think we just hit it. Thank you very much. Are you ready for the hot news? Brace up, because we have the new aircraft which was supposed to be the piloted test flight aircraft, registration number N703AX, getting ready for a piloted flight. This is great news for Archer, and this is something that can definitely win this earnings call for them. I saw another video—let me have a look if I didn't miss it. It's the test ground in California, and you can see the aircraft is piloted and is getting ready for a takeoff. That's amazing.
In a couple of weeks, you will see a video and an update on the actual piloted flight. That is massive news for Archer and massively in favor of today's earnings. I'm surprised they haven't announced this before the earnings; that was something that sort of concerned me, because usually if you have a lot in your hand, you start feeding it through in advance. I'm still on the fence: we might not see as many positive news, but maybe I'm wrong. I have been saying for two or three weeks that I am expecting a sell-off, same as we did on the previous quarter, but I wish I could be wrong and that everyone invested in Archer or trading Archer sees their positions hit the roof and break through all-time highs.
Long-term, I'm bullish on this technology—I can't be any more bullish. But Archer still has a lot of obstacles; they probably bit off more than they could chew with their massive PR. You can see the stock is going down slowly. Would you like me to give you Sensei's stock chart analysis so you are ready for the after-hours action? If you want me to give you the stock chart analysis from Sensei on the live stream, drop "Sensei" in the chat, give him a shout-out, and I will bring him on the screen and show you the stock price analysis right now.
The stream is about 15 to 20 seconds behind, but I am waiting. Thank you very much, James; we already have 153 likes. Sensei, Sensei, yes! Okay, let's bring up Sensei on the screen.
We're going to go straight into the chart. Vaz is doing a lot of content on eVTOLs, and Archer is one of them. He's going to be covering a lot of content on Archer, so do subscribe to the channel if you're an Archer fan. We're getting you prepared for the earnings calls, earnings reviews, all eVTOL content. Keep a lookout for other content creators on the channel. I'm doing a little bit of a chart analysis; that's what I like to do and what I've trained to do, and I'm going to bring it forward to you so you can get prepared for what's ahead.
Nothing I say during this video is financial advice; it's just my thoughts and opinions. Please do not buy or sell based on anything I say. Let's firstly zoom out and see where Archer has been previously, because it does help give us an indication of where it can go in the future. The all-time high was $18. It IPO'd for a normal $10, had that initial pump to the upside, then went into a bear market and tried to find its floor. It found a base at $1.66 with a double bottom, then went back to its levels of resistance—double top—and continued going down, finding its next higher low.
You can see that there's more people and institutions holding it. It's shown by a higher low structure: the low was higher than the previous one, and then you get a higher high. More people are buying it and don't want to sell for lower prices. You then have that reset higher low back above your levels of support, and where you're sat right now is at $9.29. You have broken out of this downward-sloping wedge coming in from a bullish move to the upside, so you are expected to move up. $10 will be the level of resistance that coincides with the IPO price, so $10 is very much key. $9.89 is very strong resistance.
Would I be buying right now? No. I would potentially wait to see if we've got a confirmation breakout at $10, and then I would rather buy back at $10. What's more likely right now is potentially coming back down to $7.78, which is the level of support I'd be more comfortable buying at. But long-term, this chart is not looking too bad. You've broken out to the upside, $10 being next, and then I can very easily see us going back up to $12 and heading back towards those all-time highs. Archer Aviation is looking good for now. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.
Thank you, Sensei, that was a very good analysis. If the stock starts crashing or selling off, I wouldn't be panic selling. If you are a long-term investor, I would just hold; it's not worth it, just hold it and wait it off. There we have a crash on the hour. As you can see, I'm looking out for the shareholders letter, which I should get in my mailbox any minute. As soon as I get it, we'll have a look into the fundamentals. That is a steep dive, but that's only the first reaction; that can easily change the tide once we start talking about the fundamentals and the guidance for the first piloted flight.
Great work by Chris Wagon, to give him a massive shout-out, because he does a lot for the eVTOL market and covers Joby big time. What we could see was aircraft N703AX, which was nowhere ready for the piloted flight about a month ago, and now we are doing our run-ups. That's massive news for Archer. The stock seems to be slightly recovering. Let's see what action we are going to get. Do we have the shareholder letter? Yes, we got one, so let's bring it on.
We have 187 people, 156 likes. Amazing score, thank you very much, and we got one Super Chat already. For those who just joined: Hey up, everyone, welcome to Martin Lucas Investor. I'm Vaz. Do you know what time it is? It's time to start talking eVTOLs, and it's also time to cover Archer Aviation's first-quarter 2025 earnings call. We've got the shareholders letter in front of me and in front of you on the screen as well, so let's have a look what we've got.
We've got a nice picture from their presentation with United Airlines, which is their main partner. "United Arab Emirates launch on track"—that's something we were definitely looking forward to. "We plan to deliver our first Midnight aircraft to UAE in the coming months for its planned deployment later this year. To support these launch efforts, we recently secured design approval for the first hybrid heliport in the UAE in Abu Dhabi." New launch edition customers—this is just reiteration. I am still expecting to get an announcement of a new launch edition customer, probably this month if not on the earnings call. AI partnership with Palantir—that could be massive long-term; I'm not sure how this pans out short-term. New York City air taxi network with United. We know that Archer had a massive presentation and PR stunt in...
in New York. Jimmy Fallon was taking part in the event. I heard from the participants it wasn't as fancy as it looks in the video, but that's just great PR for Archer, isn't it? So you could see the presentation of the, at the time being, functional prototype. You can see this proposed network of vertiports in New York. And it was a great PR stunt, definitely great PR not only for Archer, but for the whole market and the technology and others. But this is what they reiterate in the earnings call, in the shareholder letter. That's a difficult word, at least to me, right? I will cut this short. So, New York City air taxi network with United, exactly what I just said. United Arab Emirates launch on track. I'll definitely be doing a video on the Middle East aerospace and the eVTOL market because that's a very interesting topic.
In there, it's not more about efficiency. It's more about status, a statement of being unique and having something that nobody else has. So it's got massive potential in the Middle East. I definitely will be looking into that. We got a partnership with the UAE regulatory GCAA, so that will open the gateway for the actual operational flights this year, hopefully. Hopefully, pilot training. Okay, that's positive for Archer that they are training pilots for their clients, for their customers. That's great.
New launch edition customers. Yeah, we know about these: Abu Dhabi Aviation, and we also know about Ethiopian Airlines. And things are getting wild on the stock chart. Something is happening. The stock is getting mental now. Jerry and Elba, thank you very much for the Super Chat. I can't read it out, but I will show it on the screen. Thank you very much, Elba and Jerry, my biggest supporters and fans. So the price is going through the roof. That's amazing. That's what we all wished for. I hope everyone is happy with this. I certainly am. Even though I sold about 80% of my position in the past two weeks, I'm still happy because it's good for the whole eVTOL market, for the whole sentiment. Let me just quickly check if we have a pre-stream. No, that's not available yet. But okay, let's keep an eye on this. If Sensei has any comments—I can see him in the chat—let us know.
Back to the letter. So we have Abu Dhabi Aviation and we have Ethiopian Airlines, the first two customers through the Launch Edition. The Launch Edition is—Lucas Ritchie says, "Did you guys just market manipulate?" Yeah, I wish. I wish, Lucas. Yeah, with 203 people watching and 161 likes, I managed to pump, and I'm going to sell and dump all Archer and it will crash down to $5. Yeah. So, what was I saying? Abu Dhabi Aviation and Ethiopian Airlines. Yes, Launch Edition. Launch Edition is sort of—I don't want to say work in progress, but it's not the certification edition of the aircraft. There's a lot of work to be done. So we are complying with the FAA, but we can now target the less demanding markets in terms of air traffic safety and regulations, like you can see on the screen, in Africa—ideal markets which are not as demanding in terms of air traffic safety and regulations. We can prove our concept and we can have operational data from our flights, from the actual operations, because you can do a billion test flight hours and, guaranteed, on the first operational flight something you haven't tested for will happen. So this is massive for Archer, a massive advantage for them.
What's next? Archer and Palantir. Yeah, I think this will be a massive drive for the—it's now selling off. Just to show you the chart, it's now slightly selling off. Let's see how we develop on the earnings call. Palantir are here to develop an AI autonomous piloting module for the aircraft, for the Midnight aircraft. Also, Palantir are here to optimize and develop and make their production line more efficient. So as soon as we are ready for manufacture, this will be in massive favor for Archer. Not only do they have Palantir on one side of the production, they also have Stellantis, who are manufacturing. They are, I think, Fiat, DS, which is Citroën, Ram in the States. There's a lot of companies under this. So they have vast experience with the production line and the assembly line. So we have massive favor again, long-term, for Archer.
This is the proposed New York City taxi network with United. You just saw it in the video. There will definitely be a vast talk about this in the earnings call. Measuring our certification progress: this is something everyone has been looking out for. This was the biggest question along with the piloted flights. I do apologize. So do we have any number, any traction? We don't. Okay, they will be talking about it in the earnings call. Upcoming events: Make It in the Emirates, May the 19th. Sorry, I won't be able to make it there because I'm away this weekend. Paris Air Show—I've been working on some things in the background. I'm not saying anything yet, but let me put it this way: there's a lesser chance I will travel to Osaka to show you an eVTOL live.
A very nice picture of the presentation with United Airlines: "Fleet of the Future with United." Yeah, massive partner. I don't remember the exact number, but again, I'll be talking about it in my videos. They have a big stake in Archer through some warrants. They have quite a lot, so this could be a massive partnership between Archer and United. And also, the livery looks very smart. We still have 200 people watching; nobody has left. Wow, that's amazing. Thank you very much. Thank you for staying with me. I'm glad I am keeping you hooked.
Right, financial review. Total operational expenses—let me just show you something. The pump is now selling off. I actually had an order for 25 shares. I left only 100 shares in my portfolio because, like I said, I sold almost 80%. But I left an order for $10.50 and it just triggered it, so I'm quite happy. I took a nice profit. What was it, 40%, 35%? The pump is now selling off. Let's see if it comes up. Let's see what the guidance is going to be. And we have more and more viewers. Thank you very much for joining. As I said, this is the biggest live eVTOL show so far, and I'll prove it to you in a minute. Let me just do a little exercise here. Let's open an incognito tab, go to YouTube, and put "Archer Aviation earnings." Let's go to live, filter live. There's only two channels broadcasting this live so far. There might be some emerging who will be doing just the earnings call, but there's only two channels doing this live. That's great, and we have 213 people for now. I expect the number will go a bit higher the closer we get to the earnings call.
Total operating expenses: we have $144 million. That's a bit more than we expected—no, it's not. That was non-GAAP operational expenses, so we are within the guidance. That's good. The company is not spending more money than they should. It looks like they are on track with their plan. Cash equivalents: that has increased. We'll definitely hear something in the earnings call. I won't be looking into this; I won't be wasting too much time. But that is a massive advantage for Archer. Let's skip this total operating expenses.
Yeah, $144 million, which increased by $19.8 million from the fourth quarter. So it's not a massive increase, and definitely that will be justified, I think, in the earnings call as well. Right, net loss and adjusted EBITDA: $93.4 million for net loss, decreased by $104.7 million from the fourth quarter 2024. Okay, I would like to hear some guidance on this because I don't want to be diving into it too deep and then start running in circles. Unless I've got the numbers in front of me, I struggle to remember all the numbers. For the first quarter 2025, adjusted EBITDA was $109 million, an increase of $14.2 million from the fourth quarter '24. So yeah, that's not so bad.
This is interesting: second quarter 2025 financial estimates. We anticipate adjusted EBITDA to be a loss of $100 million to $120 million for the second quarter. That's good. That means we are slowly upscaling; we are moving forward, but we are not spending a significant amount of money. Balance sheet: yeah, we can see a massive difference in cash and cash equivalents. That is a lot. I wonder where this is coming from. That's interesting. Okay, I won't be boring you with this. You know where to find the shareholder letter; it's on their website in the Investors tab, and also you will see it on your analysis software you are using. Okay, do we have any more? Yeah, I will wait for the earnings call for the actual guidance.
Wow, interesting news. Let's have a look at the chart—chart, not chat. Right, I'm really curious how this is going to come out on the guidance. I'm very curious. Let's see who we've got in the chat. We still have about 200 people watching. Thank you everyone for joining. We have 168 likes. That's great. Those who just joined, we are waiting for the live cast of the first quarter 2025 earnings call for Archer Aviation, as you can see above me in the header. Let's have a look at the chat, who we've got here. Do we have anybody new? Vanessa joining, Matias, Sab, James—James wasn't here before, was he? DJ Hayes, "¡Hola! ¿Qué tal?" I'm definitely not saying it right. Songs for Space, hello, welcome to the stream. Nimisha is here, hello Nimisha. And Kazanski sold at $10.50, bought back at $9.28. Brilliant! Lovely, mate. Well done to you, well done to you.
Do we have any Archer investors here? I would like you to put in the chat—don't tell me your position, don't tell me your financial situation, just tell me your average. I'm very interested in what your average is. I will tell you mine in a second. My average is—just because I quickly bought 100 shares as soon as I found out about a piloted flight, which was on the stream, literally on the stream—so my average is $8.27. Let me know what your average is. I'm very intrigued how patient investors are and how tactically we can play this. $9.52 first input, Day Trader. Do you want to do Day Trader of the Day? Yeah, I think we should. Let's finish the Archer averages and then in two minutes we will do the Day Trader of the Day. I don't have the music, but I can hum it.
Right, what we've got there: 7 from Czech Republic; 7, that's a good average; $7.30, Walker; Jason, $8.98, good. Anyone else? "I'm still high where I bought in years ago." Yeah, Vanessa, she's very patient. It will pay out, Vanessa. The end of the year will definitely pay. Good. Jose Grow—I'm not sure I'm saying that right; Poor Man to Rich Man, $9.10; Jose has got $7.89, good; Kazanski, $9.14, working on it, good; Sasha, $8.95. So that's telling me we have either investors who bought it ages ago—that's the one I was looking for: KZAML, whatever, $5.22. Yeah, we don't have many investors here who have a very low average. That is telling me that the sentiment around this stock is very explosive and can probably be very volatile, as well as the stock price. We can see it's inching up now. But if you look back to the previous week, we were around $7.
We've got more averages coming through: $9.10 and $7.73, first time during the stream. So Sophia bought it during the stream. Okay, congratulations. So yeah, don't be surprised if you see a lot of movement up and down. All eVTOL stocks are fairly volatile. Archer, they tend to pump through their PR and then there's a lot of expectations. They put themselves in the spotlight and then sometimes it happens that the stock sells off. More from Matias: $8.31. Am I saying that right, Matias? Because you are from Norway or Denmark, am I saying that right? $8.25, more averages. Okay, fair enough.
So, for SAB and whoever that was—who was it? Brian. Brian, let's do the Day Trader of the Day. I will go first. I am up 6.7%, and I've been taking a lot of profits today as well. I have taken probably 2%, maybe 2.5% of my portfolio in profits. MSK, thank you very much for the support. Lovely to see you here. I'm very happy to have all the good lookers. Right, Day Trader of the Day. Can you hear the music? I can't; it's playing in my head. Come on, I can see some. Poor Man to Rich Man—I might show you the chat as well, won't I? Poor Man to Rich Man up 2.2%. Brian Bingham, 4.11%. Santa Moon, up 7.1%. Phoenix, I'm not even attempting to sing. Brian; Sasha, 5.08%; Vanessa, 2.45%; Kazanski, 8.5%, so far the winner, great; DJ Hayes, 4.37% profits last week; Steven, $2.2K, congratulations. Do we have any more Day Traders coming through? The song is nearly over in my head. I'll have to start focusing on the earnings call. Right, I will be keeping my eye on it. The winner for now is Kazanski, 8.5%. Very good. SAB, 3.58% stocks and up 3.61% on crypto. They don't add up, SAB. Yeah, that's your average; it doesn't add up. MSK, up 5.6%. Very good numbers. I hope everyone had a very good and profitable day.
If we look at the chart, we can see Matias, 10.87% now coming through. So we may have a winner. We may have a new winner, and he's a member as well. Very good. Let's see if we get somebody outbidding him. The stock is slowly going up, but again, it can all crash with the guidance. They can mention something that will rub the investors the wrong way and we will have a crash; we will have a sell-off. "This is a long-term play for me." Yeah, I agree. I definitely agree this is a long-term play. So let me just refresh to see if we have any update on the cast. No, nothing. We have about 35 minutes to start the actual earnings call. Those who just joined, we are waiting for the live cast. We have about 35 minutes. This is Martin Lucas; I'm Vaz. It's time to start. It's time to talk eVTOLs. This is the biggest live eVTOL show on YouTube, Archer Aviation first quarter earnings call.
Let's check Twitter or X quickly to see if we have any updates, if we have any more rumors, any more hot news. I was actually expecting—because today everyone was talking about Seattle. Everyone was talking about Seattle; it's supposed to be the next North American city where we would be building our eVTOL network. But I think that would have been in the shareholder letter already, so maybe we'll get surprised, but I don't think it's happening on this call. So do we have any news? I've got a new follower, thank you. Let's see quickly if we have any more news, any more rumors.
$ACHR—I will actually show those who are on Twitter or X. If you go on your X, go to search—you can't see the search bar because it's cropped from my screen—but if you type in the dollar sign and ACHR, which is the ticker symbol, and go to "Latest," you will see all the recent tweets related to Archer. So we have some financial indication. Oh, that's quite handy: earnings per share positive $0.03. So that is what shot the stock price up: the earnings per share versus the estimated $0.04 negative. Oh, no, sorry, that's not Archer. That's not Archer. Right, anyway, Archer beat on that, and as well instead of negative 22 cents, they have negative 17. That's good as well. Revenue not specified versus estimate. All right, so revenue is not specified, but the estimate was $1.83 million. Yeah, that's probably one of the reasons why the stock shot up.
Do we have any more, anything hot? No. Adam Goldstein: "Archer Aviation is pushing the boundaries of what's possible and reshaping the future of aviation for years to come. As I've talked about before, 2025 is an inflection point for Archer. On the commercial front, after years of engineering work, flight tests—" I'm not going to read it. I'll get bored and I will bore everyone. But we have some positive news. Adam Goldstein is seeing it as positive as well. Let's see if there's any update on their testing aircraft fleet as well. Got one more Super Chat from Elba and Jerry, another $10. Thank you very much, thank you. So we have four Super Chats already. That's good, that's solid. I wonder how many Super Chats Martin gets on his earnings calls. Just saying, just saying. If you have any questions, just fire them away in the chat below or whichever side of your screen that the chat is. If you have any questions, we have a bit of time, more than happy to engage with you and give you some answers.
In the meantime, I will tell you about tomorrow. Tomorrow we are covering earnings calls for eVTOL companies back-to-back. Tomorrow morning, just after this stream, the first stream coming is Sensei's Breakfast Show. He will be doing his usual stuff: talking about the news, the forecast for the market. If you ask him, he will have a look for you at the Archer chart as well because I think he might have some update developed through the night, and I believe he will give you the short-term indication as well. But also, we are covering Vertical Aerospace. This is one of their competitors. First of all, nobody is covering Vertical Aerospace apart from Vertical Aerospace and us. Vertical Aerospace announced today—you could see it in the previous video which was live, where I was with Martin talking about the news—they have announced that they have been working for 18 months developing a hybrid power module, or power unit. That means we are now not only relying on electricity, which has got limited range; we are now going from a 100-mile range up to a potential 1,000-mile range. So we are 10-folding, we are 10x-ing our operational range. That is amazing, that's massive news.
Joby Aviation have been developing this, but their proposed range was about 500 to 550 miles. What Vertical Aerospace did put themselves—I don't want to say on par, but in a very good competing position with Archer and Joby. So you don't want to miss this. Tomorrow morning pre-market on this channel, we will be covering this live. Definitely, even if you're not interested in the stock, you will see an amazing presentation, great professionals; you will like it, you will enjoy it. Do we have any questions? Let's check the chat: "If you're okay sharing, how much of your portfolio do you have in EV?" A lot. A lot. I can have a look now if you bear with me. It is—just because I sold off Archer—Vertical Aerospace 25%, Joby 18.5%, Archer 8% pushing 9%. I've got New Horizon Aircraft, that's just a long shot, I'm waiting for that. I will explain it in one of my videos. I've got 1.3%, and that's it for now. These three—Vertical Aerospace, Joby, and Archer—are the main players for me, and I've got over 50% of my portfolio in there because I'm very positive and I'm very strong on the technology and I believe this concept will fly, if you pardon the pun.
"This is the best channel and we have the greatest investors family, the Lucas family." Thank you very much, Eat Trade Travel. "Great show." Thank you very much for your support. There's the Super Chat from Elba and Jerry. Right, let me just check the stream quickly. No update yet. We are about 25 minutes away before we commence the actual cast of the earnings call. Right, so this is out of the way. I will show you something interesting as well. Why do we have the partnership with Palantir? Because the systems were developed when Elvis was a star, the Rolling Stones were a star, when Duran Duran was making music. I mean, we go back to the '60s and '70s. We laid out a lot of the infrastructure. It looks like it was from—remember the movie WarGames or Apollo 13? It looks like equipment from the movie sets for those movies. It looks like we got the infrastructure from the Smithsonian, but it's not. It's the equipment that we use in American air traffic control towers, really, really old. It all has to be brand new, state-of-the-art.
And with regard to air traffic controllers, we're 3,000 controllers short. They didn't stand up the school during COVID, and as controllers were retiring, they didn't have a pipeline of new controllers coming in through the academy. So we've done two things. Air traffic controllers who can retire after 25 years of service, we're going to pay them a bonus. We're going to ask them to stay past their retirement date to serve their country. I think we get a lot of controllers to do that, but then we're going to expand the pipeline at our academy in Oklahoma City to get the best and the brightest air traffic controllers through that system and trained up. And then I think it's going to take us a year to three years to get fully staffed. Here's an example: I can take one of the most complicated airspace systems, say like DC, the Potomac TRACON around Washington, D.C., take a controller from there and move them to New York—it takes them a year to get trained up on that airspace. So you just can't move controllers around; they have to be trained in the airspace in which they work, and that takes time. And so we're navigating the mess that was left to us. We're hiring more air traffic controllers, we're fixing the system, but again, it's going to take time.
So what he is hinting at is that the air traffic control system, as well as the staff possibly, are a bit out of date. No offense to the staff, but it will be difficult to replace them and implement the new stuff in there, replacing the old, experienced veterans. What is the idea is to probably completely tear down the air traffic control in the United States, and maybe North America as well, and rebuild it from scratch, saying that there'll be a big implication of AI and autonomous technology and modules. A lot of Palantirians, a lot of funds and investors in Palantir, are thinking that Palantir is the greatest fit for this purpose. But let me just show you something. I quickly did this: I was getting ready for the earnings call and I was curious who Palantir would be competing with, and I asked ChatGPT just to give me some names if we rule out the abroad companies and we focus only on the home companies. So let's have a look.
We have a French company—that's irrelevant because they will definitely be involving the home-based company. So we have Raytheon Technologies, a major defense and aerospace contractor with a focus on air traffic management, cybersecurity, and network communication. Specialization: surveillance, radars, satellite communication, and cyber-resilient air traffic control solutions. Interesting. We have Indra Sistemas from Spain. We have Honeywell, which I think will be one of the main contenders. Strengths: major aerospace technology company with expertise in avionics, communication, and cybersecurity. I will definitely be focusing on Honeywell in one of my future videos because it's a very interesting company. Specialization: navigation and communication systems, avionics, cybersecurity for aviation. We have Leonardo, which I would be quite strong on Leonardo as well, but they are not based in the United States.
But we have this massive animal, Lockheed Martin, and I think somebody like Lockheed Martin could pounce this over Palantir, or they might have a joint venture. Strengths: major aerospace and defense contractor with extensive experience in command and control systems. Specialization: military-grade air traffic control systems, secure communications, satellite-based navigation. We've got somebody from Austria, Frequentis. We got Saab—SAAB, not Sab Schill—from Sweden. We have L3Harris Technologies from the United States: leading provider of secure communication, surveillance, and automation for air traffic control. Specialization: data link communication, surveillance, and secure networking. So if you hear that Palantir will be developing the new air traffic control network and system, not necessarily; it's not a given, these are just rumors. I would wait. Don't get me wrong, Palantir is probably a good investment for the long term. Martin will probably explain better why Palantir is a bit expensive at the moment, but long-term, Palantir can be a big player. Their partnership with Archer is definitely beneficial for Archer. But let's wait, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let me just turn off the fan. I'll bring you the chart because I'm getting cold now. I have a massive fan blowing in my face.
So the stock will probably be moving sideways for the rest of the day. Who do we have in the chat? Do we have anybody new joining? We have 145 watching, that's great. "Great show." Thank you. "Do you think there will be a bounce tomorrow on Vertical shares?" Well, we could see a big bounce today. If I show you the TradingView chart—just bear with me one second, I will show you the chart quickly. $EVTL, we had a massive upside today on Vertical Aerospace. Can you see the chart? Yes, you can. In pre-market we were just over $4, we were $4.20-something, and upon the news we went all the way up to nearly $5, which seems to be our resistance now. If I measure the difference it made, we are looking at an 18% upside. And on the earnings call, Vertical Aerospace have been feeding us with a lot of news recently. If you had only a few good pieces of news, that's something you want to hold for the actual earnings call. I am expecting the earnings call is going to be good. Again, not financial advice. I don't want you to start buying Vertical Aerospace in case it crashes tomorrow or retracts. But for the long term, Vertical Aerospace is a good investment for me.
Let's see, what is Archer doing? Going sideways at the moment. Steven just sent something: general chitchat, pivotal testing in Tampa, Florida, EVTL. Well, let's have a look at what we've got from the Florida man. Discord, general chitchat—that's interesting. Let's tune into that.
Today, we may not be traveling through time, but a flying car may not be such a stretch anymore. Regina Gonzalez is live to show us a demonstration that's bringing the future to the present. Hey, good morning again.
Hello everyone. That's right. We are hanging out in downtown Tampa where Special Operations Forces Week is underway, and obviously that comes with a lot of really cool demonstrations. But one site that has specifically been quite the spectacle is what's dubbed a flying car. We're actually about to get a little demonstration ourselves here in just a minute. This aircraft, you can technically call it—
We have about 15 minutes before the actual cast. They already started broadcasting the pre-
Right off the bat, can you tell us what this is?
So we have about 15 minutes to start the actual—
Vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. An eVTOL.
That's right, and its capacity is one person. It is robust and it takes off like a helicopter, cruises like an airplane, and then you can land again just like a helicopter. It's in the ultralight category. This one is deliberately engineered for very, very low mass to fit into that category, and it's something that you can learn how to fly in a couple of weeks and actually take one home to go fly in unrestricted airspace.
I think that's what's so incredible to me is that you don't need a pilot's license in order to fly it. But how is that?
Well, the ultralight category does actually permit non-certificated pilots to fly an aircraft. Oh, and here he goes. He's up and he's cruising by.
Really not that loud. So when he's in cruise flight, that forward flight at 200 feet, which is more typical cruising altitude, you might not actually hear it at all. It's very low noise. When he's in hover, it makes a little bit more noise, but even then it's pretty quiet. And off he goes. He's going to make another turn, probably come back and see us in a second. This aircraft has been in development for 13 years, and the company was actually started in Canada quite a while ago. It moved to the San Francisco Bay Area after it got some attention from some key investors, and it has had multiple generations of development and thousands and thousands of flights, many of them unmanned. And we've moved to manned flight as a predominant mode of testing flight right now. We've done a couple tech demos in Southern California over the course of the last year and hope to be operational in two sites by the end of the year doing 911 response when time really matters, and that aircraft can get there with a paramedic much faster than the ambulance does, which is dispatched as well.
That's amazing. And I feel like it would be an incredible tool, especially with how swift and efficient it is. Obviously that's one of your main goals. Is the overall goal to look like the Jetsons in a decade? What does that look like?
Well, you hear the term flying car over and over again. We did have an early access program and about a half a dozen private owners actually own our developmental aircraft, which is called the BlackFly, in advance of the Helix deliveries which start in December. And we do have at least one of those folks who likes to call it a flying car. It's not a term we typically use because you can't drive it on the road like a car, but it really is the first step towards the Jetsons if you think about it. People see it and that's the first thing that comes to their mind is the Jetsons. So, yep, it's a way that you could be up and enjoying the airspace safely in a few weeks' time if you wanted to be an owner and you had a good place to fly.
Well, I am looking forward to that. Maybe I'll be in one myself. Ken, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.
There is a lot of startups. Thank you, Steven, for sending that. That's great. The company is called Pivotal. I know about them; I'm not following them. We have probably over a hundred of these companies who are trying to develop their own concept of a flying car or a single-seater or an ultralight vehicle which can take off vertically and horizontally and is powered by electricity. I haven't been covering these because you can trade only a handful. You can trade Archer, Joby, Vertical. You could have been trading Lilium before they went bankrupt twice. We've got Eve, we've got Blade, who are not directly involved in the actual eVTOL production. We have EHang—definitely, that's a massive player—and I think that's it from the purely eVTOL manufacturing companies. You have only these seven or eight you can actually trade. Horizon Aircraft, so that's our number eight. But to my knowledge, there's not so many companies that are publicly traded. However, there's a lot of interesting concepts and a lot of news and interesting videos which I would love to show you on my Saturday morning shows.
Those who just joined, we are waiting for Archer Aviation's first quarter 2025 earnings call. The cast is supposed to start in about 10-11 minutes. Hit the like button if you haven't done yet, but we've got quite a good score: we've got 185 likes. How about that, Martin? How about that? I've been covering eVTOLs on this channel for a while, and I will be covering eVTOLs regularly every Saturday from the following one onwards, every Saturday morning on the live show. Same as Sensei does at the opposite end of the weekend—Sensei does Sunday evening, I do Saturday morning, which is the hangover prime time as I call it. So definitely you are more than welcome to join me. I'll be showing you all these startups, news, updates, you name it, and also happy to answer your questions.
Let's have a look at the stock, what we are doing. Yes, we are going sideways now. So we had a massive pump, we had a sell-off, and now we are going sideways. Who do we have in the chat? We got Kunal: "What company is that?" Yeah, that was Pivotal. Oh, Steven just answered, thank you. "'Certificated' is a funny word only used in aviation folk." Yeah. Eve and Blade, I will be looking into this for you, Matias, don't worry. "Do you still own some EVTL?" Yes, I've got 1,000 shares of Vertical Aerospace. And tomorrow morning I will tell you how to trade Vertical Aerospace—not how to trade it, but there are certain levels you should be aware of, and I will give you these little background pieces of information. Let's just check—we are still waiting. We are about eight, nine minutes away from the live cast.
"Hi everyone." Newblade, thank you for joining. Glad to be here among the eVTOL Archer fam. Dieter, you said you are covering it yourself. Thank you very much for joining. What I did, I was a bit cheeky and I did exactly what I showed you a minute ago: I put on X in the search bar $ACHR and I found the biggest accounts on X who recently reported about Archer, and Dieter was one of them. I actually sent him an invitation and he said he—thank you very much, thank you, Dieter, I do appreciate it, and Newblade as well. Thank you for joining. Certain people I've been talking to and been aware of from the market, it's nice to see these people together and coming to me. That's a great satisfaction.
Newblade says, "A lot of nothing in their shareholder letter." Yes, exactly. I think I figured out why the stock price—they pulled $200 million out of thin air probably, they beat the guidance, and that's probably the reason, and also the piloted test flight coming soon. "I was looking for someone to cover the earnings call. Thanks for doing this." Well, thank you for joining. I do appreciate it. Don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe because we are doing eVTOL content regularly. Tomorrow morning we are doing Vertical Aerospace, where we had massive news this morning and it seems like Vertical Aerospace are going to be very close to start competing with Joby and Archer. So definitely tune in tomorrow morning pre-market.
Let's check the actual cast. No audio coming through yet. We've got just music; we are not playing this for copyright reasons. We have 188 likes. Thank you very much. Shall we hit 200? I think we will hit 200 through the call. Let's have a look at the chart action. Yes, stock is going sideways. "Done and done." Thank you, Dieter. Got a new subscriber and we've got a new fan. Thank you very much. Newblade says, "Cash position." Yes, that's correct. Let me just quickly show you the shareholder letter, get back to it. Let's relapse to it again. For those who just joined, we are literally five or six minutes away from the cast of the first quarter 2025 earnings call for Archer Aviation.
This is the cash and cash equivalents position, so they pulled out almost $200 million from somewhere. No doubt we will hear this in the earnings call. This could be some warrant exercises, whether it's Stellantis or whether it's United—I keep mixing Delta and United—so definitely we will hear an update. As you could see in my previous videos, there was also a lot of institutional investing as well, not necessarily from the recent time, but from past months. So this could be reflected in the balance sheet as well. I am now checking the cast. We are still playing music. Do we have any more questions? I love your questions; that helps me so much. Not that I would be clueless without them, but I prefer the engagement and interaction with the chat.
No progress, no update. So far it looks like it was good for a nice swing trade. Brian Super Chat: "Vaz is live." Yes, I am. Thank you. This is actually my premiere on the earnings call on the main channel. So thank you very much, Martin. Hopefully you'll be happy with the numbers. You'll definitely be happy with the Super Chats because I think it's Super Chat number five. How about that, Martin? Last time you did Archer, I was the one Super Chatting you and telling you, "Thank you, Martin. I would rather watch your back than being in another channel full of trolls and idiots spamming the comments." Do you remember that? And it was on the Extra channel. You broadcasted it on the Extra channel; you set it up like 10 minutes before the cast and that was amazing. Thank you. And the last one I was covering myself—that was my premiere on the Extra channel, and now here I am, prime time main channel.
We are still waiting for the cast, just music going through. "Love the clean banner look, by the way." Thank you very much, Dieter. I'm trying to make my own layout. If you have any suggestions, let me know. I was going to put up the chart, but I can't squeeze that all in. There's a lot of work to be done. But for now, that will do. Sab: "How many hours can they fly on a full charge?" That is a great question, Sab. The battery capacity—the electric version is designed for shorter trips. So if we are talking the range of, say, a 10 to 20-minute flight, which can cover 15, 20, 25 miles depending on where we are traveling from and to, the idea is to carry out our trip, land, do a rapid recharge in 10-20 minutes, and be ready for another trip.
Saying that, we still can do probably 100 miles distance. Usually the claimed range or max range is 100 miles for the electric platform. If we are looking at the hybrid platform, whether it's hydrogen or diesel turbine engine or whatever that can be, we are looking at multiples of that. But again, that is a fresh new technology that is still in development. That is something to be fitted in the actual electric version, so we are sort of upgrading. It's like if you have a car where you fit your diesel and your petrol engine or your electric motor. Think of it this way: you have the same module, but you are just fitting a different power unit in there. So yeah, the intention of their trips is 10-15 minutes, very short distance, say 10 to 20 miles, rapid recharge, another trip. And the battery lifetime is thousands, probably up to hundred thousands of cycles depending on each manufacturer.
Let me just check the cast. We should be starting any second. Please bear with us. We are ready for the first quarter 2025 earnings call, Archer Aviation, starting any second. What is the chart doing? We might be slightly pulling up. Let's see what the guidance is bringing us. I think the music stopped.
Thank you for attending today's Archer Aviation Q1 2025 financial results conference call. My name is Cole and I'll be the moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you'd like to queue for a question, you can do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I'd now like to pass it over to Eric Lentell. Please go ahead.
Thank you for joining Archer's earnings call. This is Eric Lentell, Archer's General Counsel. During today's call, we'll be making forward-looking statements. These statements are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them as a result of new information or future events. There are risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those contemplated. For more information about these risks and uncertainties, please refer to the risk factors in our SEC filings. Today, we will also be discussing both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of those financial measures is included in today's shareholder letter and earnings release. And now I'll turn it over to Adam.
Thanks, Eric. All right, let's dive in. Archer is pushing the boundaries of what's possible and reshaping the future of aviation for years to come. Today, we're going to talk about how we're making that future happen. As I've talked about before, 2025 is an inflection point for Archer. On the commercial front, after years of engineering work and flight tests, the team is focused on transitioning to piloted operations and early commercial deployment. We remain on track to launch later this year in the UAE and are preparing for subsequent deployments with Midnight Launch Edition customers in several other international markets. The Archer Defense team is deeply integrated with our counterparts at Anduril through our exclusive partnership to build the next-generation hybrid electric VTOL for the U.S. and its allies. All of this is complemented by the work we are doing to build an AI-based aviation software platform for the future in partnership with Palantir.
Our progress speaks for itself, but it's made even clearer by the caliber of the companies who have chosen to partner with us. Anduril selected Archer to jointly shape the next generation of defense aviation. Palantir chose Archer to pioneer AI-driven aviation technologies, and soon we'll be announcing what I think will be one of the industry's most important partnerships. Stay tuned. Today, I'll share more about this quarter's progress and what you can expect to see over the remainder of 2025. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, our number one goal remains to bring Midnight safely to market as quickly as possible. This is the impetus behind our Launch Edition program. We are doing something that has not been done in decades: bringing a new type of aircraft to market. The launch program creates a scalable commercialization framework for safely deploying aircraft in early adopter markets. The goal is for us to demonstrate the aircraft's capabilities, drive public acceptance, build operational excellence, and generate—
early revenue. We remain on track to deliver our first piloted aircraft as part of that program to Abu Dhabi Aviation in the UAE later this year. We've already started the flight test program for that aircraft here in California, and we expect piloted flights to begin in the coming days. I think it is important to revisit how we got here. We started with Maker, a sub-5,000-lb aircraft with a 40-foot wingspan. It was clear to us the size of that aircraft platform would not support the payload necessary for the business case. So, we chose not to take that aircraft through to certification and mass production. Instead, we designed and built Midnight around the same configuration, but scaled up to 6,500 lbs with a 50-foot wingspan. We believe the industry will consolidate around that size of aircraft in order to support a pilot plus four passenger payload.
The second key decision we made was to shift away from pouch cells, which we used in Maker, to cylindrical cells used in Midnight's battery pack. We made this decision for multiple reasons, but primarily because of the concerns about the safety and reliability of the pouch cells that were available when we were building Maker, and because the readily available sources were Chinese suppliers. Those concerns obviously would have presented a number of problems from a safety, certification, defense, and tariff perspective. That's what led to our decision to partner with Molicel on an aviation-specific variant of their cylindrical cell that offers both high power and energy density while also being exceptionally safe, reliable, and scalable. This has been key to putting us in a position to certify our battery pack and scale our powertrain manufacturing. This cylindrical cell is being used by others across the industry, including BETA. The advantage we, the FAA, Molicel, and BETA get from this joint effort is the sharing of test and reliability data across programs. We were deliberate about both of these choices, as aviation has long design and development cycles, and the need to redesign for these types of reasons can result in years of delay. Focusing on a commercially viable product has been core to the mission of Archer.
The aircraft testing we have been doing leading up to our planned early deployment in the UAE is critical for ensuring safety, and it's just one of the facets of the larger team effort we have underway in the UAE to support our launch plans. In addition to the aircraft, our team is working with local government and industry partners across the other five key building blocks for launch.
Building block number one: government support. The government of Abu Dhabi has been incredibly helpful in launching in the UAE, in particular the Abu Dhabi Investment Office and two of the country's largest sovereign wealth funds, which have invested in Archer.
Building block number two: regulatory pathway. This support from ADIO and those investors has helped us forge a great partnership with the nation's regulator, the GCAA, to carve out a regulatory framework to certify Midnight. Our teams are collaborating through joint working sessions in both the UAE and California, and the GCAA is closely tracking all the progress we are making with Midnight as they work with us on the pathway to begin flying passengers in-country.
Building block number three: operating partner. Earlier this year, we announced that Abu Dhabi Aviation, the region's largest helicopter operator, was signing on to be our first Launch Edition customer. Over the last quarter, our teams have been working together hand-in-hand to map out our initial network operations within the country. We are close to having alignment on the first dozen nodes and we'll be sharing more on this soon.
Building block number four: pilot training. Archer and ADA are working together with Etihad, one of the world's leading operators of aviation training, to recruit and train pilots and prepare local MRO facilities. In fact, we just delivered the first Midnight flight simulator. The plan is for it to reside at their headquarters in Abu Dhabi as we are jointly training pilots for our aircraft in the region.
Building block number five: infrastructure. Finally, we're collaborating with numerous partners to ready a handful of Abu Dhabi's 70-plus existing helipads for eVTOL operations. This is an example of how we can rapidly stand up takeoff and landing infrastructure without significant spend or regulatory work. Stay tuned for a lot more excitement to come as we continue to gain momentum in the UAE.
Other potential early adopter markets are taking stock of what they are seeing from us in the UAE, and we're seeing demand in a number of other countries for our Launch Edition program. For example, earlier this quarter, we announced our second Launch Edition customer, Ethiopian Airlines, one of United's key partners in the Star Alliance, with the plan being to establish UAM's first foothold in East Africa's rapidly growing aviation market. Expect to see more of these strategic partnerships from us.
In parallel to our tremendous progress overseas, we continue to see strong momentum here in the US. Just last month in New York City, we jointly hosted an event with United, bringing together key regulatory, municipal, and industry leaders to unveil our shared vision for our initial New York City network. Thank you to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as well as the New York Economic Development Corporation for their continued support and partnership. As a longtime New Yorker, I'm deeply passionate about the impact our Midnight aircraft could have on the commutes for those who live in and visit Manhattan. We designed our network to take advantage of the existing aviation infrastructure in the New York area, including all three major international airports, Manhattan's three urban heliports, including the newly dubbed Downtown Skyport, and important regional hubs such as Teterboro and Westchester.
To support our launch plans, we continue to ramp up manufacturing across our facilities in Silicon Valley and Georgia, both of which are now fully operational. I look forward to sharing more milestones as we continue to scale those capabilities.
This quarter, I spent significant time in Washington, DC with senior lawmakers, including Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau. Just in the last few weeks, we've had important conversations with key members of the House and Senate leadership, including Senator Ted Cruz, who leads the Senate Commerce Committee and Aviation Subcommittee, as well as important White House leaders, including Michael Kratsios, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. With all the recent announcements from this administration, it is clear that they're committed to rapidly upgrading America's commercial and defense aviation technologies to ensure we retain our global leadership. I'm proud that Archer is in a position to play a leading role in that effort.
This comes in the form of ramping up our aircraft manufacturing here in the US, safely launching commercial air taxi operations in major cities across the US, designing and building the next generation of defense aircraft here in the US, and utilizing AI to build the future systems that will power our country's airspace. I'm also grateful that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his team are supportive of modernizing our fleet through efforts such as our Archer Defense initiative. We continue to deepen our exclusive partnership with Anduril as we work in earnest to mature the design for our first joint product, a hybrid electric autonomous VTOL that is targeting a program of record. As I've indicated before, because of the nature of this work, I cannot share more at this time, but will as soon as I'm able. What I can share is that this technology's compelling dual-use potential is already attracting significant interest from leaders across both civil and defense sectors.
Additionally, we recently executed on two strategic acquisitions that we believe will help accelerate Archer Defense. First, we acquired a key IP portfolio from an industry player. Second, we acquired a specialized high-performance composite manufacturing facility tailored for defense applications, significantly strengthening our capabilities.
This quarter, we also took a decisive step forward on our software plans, partnering with Palantir to jointly architect the AI foundation for what we believe can be the next generation of aviation systems across manufacturing, operations, movement control, and route planning. This collaboration has the opportunity to be a key contributor to our country's ambitious vision, modernizing our aviation ecosystem in record time so that we can ensure that we continue to safely manage the ever-growing volumes of air traffic we are seeing and lay the foundation for the scale we plan to achieve with urban air mobility.
We end Q1 maintaining over $1 billion of liquidity, the highest cash balance in the industry. As I said last quarter, we still remain in the early innings of a generational opportunity. Our team is relentless in its commitment to build. I can't wait to continue to showcase it for all of you. Over to Tom.
I'll kick off with the most exciting news. We're entering the next phase of our Midnight aircraft program: operating with a pilot. We have already begun Midnight's piloted testing as we complete the ground test campaign and are on track to start piloted flights with our latest Midnight aircraft over the next week. This milestone is the culmination of years of effort that has gone into verifying that the hardware and software on our Midnight aircraft are safe to fly with people on board. I'll walk you through what has gone into getting us here, highlighting that most of this testing needs to be done once in advance of piloted flight rather than being repeated for each airplane we build from here on out.
To prepare Midnight for piloted flight, the team first executed an extensive lab and ground test campaign covering all core aircraft functionalities, including high-voltage battery and propulsion systems. Over the last couple months, this has included weeks of incremental restrained ground tests, methodically ramping engine power, refining propeller balance, and achieving maximum thrust while the aircraft remained safely tethered. We then moved into ground handling tests. Again, taking an incremental approach, validating braking, handling, and incrementally increasing speeds towards flight readiness, putting us firmly on track to begin piloted flights imminently. Our test aircraft are extensively instrumented with a custom-built specialized flight test instrumentation system composed of a myriad of sensors and software to capture critical data for testing and certification.
For example, we've equipped Midnight with hundreds of strain gauges measuring structural integrity, accelerometers capturing vibration data, and an extensive array of temperature sensors, all supplementing the data gathered by the core systems on the aircraft that will be utilized in normal commercial operations. In total, Midnight now measures over 40,000 data parameters. The ability to capture and process this data is critical to our company testing and certification flight testing. It's crucial to recognize that our transition to the piloted phase of our flight testing program builds upon extensive unmanned and transition testing with Midnight, validating the safety of the aircraft in all stages of flight prior to putting a pilot on board. Over the past several years, we've completed hundreds of Midnight flights, rigorously evaluating everything from crosswind hover performance and complex transition trajectories to severe failure scenarios.
Last year, we demonstrated Midnight's ability to complete a flight during a propulsion system shutdown in one of the engines, showcasing the redundancy we get from our proprietary 12-tilt-6 configuration. We shared a photo of that in our shareholder letter today and we'll soon be sharing footage of that test flight later this week where you'll be able to see how the aircraft responded to this failure mode, flawlessly performing a smooth transition and landing exactly as designed. The safe and successful testing of Midnight is what gives us confidence in our path ahead on early deployments and FAA certification, particularly for our upcoming plans with our Launch Edition program in the UAE and other countries. As Adam mentioned, we plan to send one of the aircraft from our California facilities to the UAE later this summer for region-specific testing and deployment later in the year.
On the certification front, we've made continued progress alongside the FAA to finalize the remaining compliance areas that I've highlighted in previous quarters. I'm pleased to report the FAA has now aligned industry standards addressing total propulsion loss that's covered in our rule 21.105(g). And these clarified standards were as we expected, meaning they do not result in any necessary modifications to Midnight's design. This was not an Archer-specific rule, but rather an industry rule that everyone was waiting for closure on. As we transition into piloted flight and prepare for formal TIA testing, expect a marked acceleration of compliance validation with both the FAA and GCAA regulatory bodies.
Scaling up our ability to build aircraft also continues to advance rapidly. We have multiple aircraft being assembled across both our Georgia and California facilities scheduled to begin piloted flight testing later this year. During our aircraft builds, we have leveraged many of the manufacturing systems we've put together to enable the scaling of our manufacturing and are taking the time to learn and improve these so that we have a stable foundation to support our production ramp in the future. Lastly, on the new hybrid aircraft program with Anduril, our engineering teams are integrated and working well together. We've recently passed key milestones that give me confidence we're on a great path to build an amazing product. As my ninth VTOL aircraft under development, this new platform leverages core powertrain and software innovations we've perfected at Archer. We remain bullish on this initiative's potential and believe it can be a substantial component of Archer's business portfolio moving forward. And now I'll turn it over to Priya to talk about the financials for the quarter.
Thanks, Tom. So, as Adam discussed earlier, our focus this year remains on investing in the rapid development and commercialization of our business while staying disciplined with cash management as we work to get to significant revenue-generating operations as soon as possible. As you know, during the first quarter of 2025, we closed on an additional approximately $300 million of equity capital. That enabled us to exit Q1 2025 with our highest ever quarter-end balance of $1.03 billion in cash and cash equivalents, putting us in the strongest cash position in our industry. This cash position excludes the additional funding of up to $400 million that Stellantis has preliminarily agreed to fund to support the scaling of Midnight aircraft production.
With regards to our spending for the quarter, we maintained strategic investments across three critical focus areas: first, advancing the development, certification, and testing of our Midnight aircraft; second, scaling our aircraft build capabilities; and third, establishing in-country presence and operational infrastructure in the UAE to support our launch activities there later this year and into next. These investments support our commercialization roadmap. Our Q1 2025 financial results were in line with our guidance. We reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $109 million, falling within our guided range of $95 to $110 million. This represents a $14.2 million increase from the previous quarter, reflecting planned investments in personnel and material spend for aircraft build and components to support those critical focus areas.
Our GAAP operating expenses for Q1 '25 were $144 million, which increased $20 million over the previous quarter due to the increased headcount and material spend mentioned earlier. This included approximately $30 million of non-cash stock-based compensation. With regards to cash burn, our cash used in operations and investing activities for Q1 '25 was $104.6 million. This included approximately $5 million of remaining spend from the work to complete the buildout of our ARC facility, excluding which our quarterly cash burn stayed consistent around the $100 million per quarter estimate as previously discussed. Despite these core investments, we increased our quarter-end cash position by $196 million compared to year-end 2024 and more than doubled our cash balance year-over-year. Notably, this marks our third consecutive quarter of simultaneously growing our cash reserves while advancing our strategic business objectives.
Looking ahead, our 2025 priorities will remain focused on the following key initiatives: advancing Midnight aircraft certification, testing, and manufacturing capabilities; rapidly progressing our defense aircraft and software platform development; and successfully rolling out our Midnight Launch Edition program in the UAE and beyond. We approach these objectives with confidence, backed by exceptional internal talent, strong strategic partnerships, and a secure capital foundation. For the upcoming quarter, Q2 2025, we estimate an adjusted EBITDA loss between $100 to $120 million to support the focus areas I talked about earlier. As highlighted in previous earnings discussions, our strong financial position is enabling us to accelerate strategic investments in these areas, helping us create what we believe is a defensible moat between us and our competition.
We are making marked progress on several of these high-value projects, such as the acquisition of the composites-related assets and the IP portfolio acquisition that Adam mentioned earlier. And given the strength of our cash position, we anticipate bolstering our Q2 2025 capital expenditures by approximately $15 to $20 million beyond Q1 '25 levels to help strengthen our market leadership position. Our strategic approach to US-based sourcing and manufacturing has significantly shielded us from the current tariff uncertainties affecting global trade. Our domestic-first approach to our supply chain helps us minimize the potential for disruption. We continue actively monitoring policy developments to ensure we can respond appropriately to changes while maintaining business stability and cost efficiency in this developing macroeconomic environment. With that, I'll turn it back over to Adam for Q&A.
Thanks, Priya. We had a bunch of retail questions that were submitted, but most were answered in the prepared remarks. So after the analyst questions, if any of those questions remain, I will address them at that point. So for now, let's open up the call to Q&A. Operator?
Thank you. If you'd like to queue for a question, you can do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you'd like to remove your question, it's star two. But again, to join the question queue, please press star one. It has been asked that you hold yourself to one question with a follow-up question. Our first question is from Andres Sheppard with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now open.
Hey everyone, thank you for taking our questions and congrats on all the progress. Adam, wanted to maybe touch on launching in the UAE by year-end. Just curious if you can maybe help share your vision as to what that might look like. So by now we know some of the hybrid heliports, we know some of the routes, but just curious if you can maybe enlighten us as to how you see that launch developing and how we should think about it as we get closer and closer. Thank you.
