Blade Air Mobility at Jefferies Summit: Strategic Growth and eVTOL Plans

On Wednesday, 28 May 2025, Blade Air Mobility (NASDAQ:BLDE) presented at the 3rd Annual Jefferies eVTOL / AAM Summit, outlining its strategic vision and operational performance. The company’s leadership discussed its profitability, market expansion, and the anticipated integration of eVTOL aircraft. While Blade is capitalizing on its asset-light model and strong market position, challenges remain in the competitive landscape of urban air mobility.

Key Takeaways

• Blade Air Mobility has achieved profitability and is expanding its market share in both passenger and medical transport.
• The company is preparing for the integration of eVTOL aircraft, with initial deployment expected in the Middle East by late 2025 or early 2026.
• Blade’s asset-light model provides flexibility and positions the company well for future growth.
• The medical transport segment is experiencing significant growth, driven by increased demand for organ transplants.
• Blade maintains a strong balance sheet with approximately $120 million in cash and no debt.

Financial Results

Passenger Business:

• Profitable with an expected $6 million in adjusted EBITDA.
• Targeting high single-digit margins.
• Average checkout for an airport flight is over $300.

Medical Business:

• Margins are moving from low teens to high teens.
• Organic growth in contractual business at a high single-digit rate.
• Purchased 10 aircraft, improving operating leverage.

Overall Financial Health:

• Expecting incremental single-digit EBITDA growth for the year.
• Clean balance sheet with $120 million in cash and no debt.

Operational Updates

Passenger Segment:

• Dominant in the Northeast US and a leading provider in Europe.
• Utilizes dynamic pricing to optimize utilization and revenue.
• Focused on convenient landing zones and brand building.

Medical Segment:

• Gaining market share through new customer wins.
• Partnership with Organox to enhance service efficiency.
• Notable transport of a human organ from Maine to Alaska.

Future Outlook

eVTOL Integration:

• Anticipating deployment in the Middle East by late 2025/early 2026, and in the Northeast US by late 2027/2028.
• eVTOL expected to unlock growth opportunities by expanding landing zones.

Market Expansion:

• Continuing to gain market share in core medical transport markets.
• Exploring new verticals in time-critical cargo across healthcare.

Q&A Highlights

• Blade’s most important intellectual property is its brand, recognition, and trust.
• The technology stack integrates booking with logistics, enhancing operational efficiency.
• Data from the app is used to optimize marketing and personalize customer experiences.

In conclusion, Blade Air Mobility’s strategic focus on profitability, market expansion, and eVTOL integration positions it well for future growth. For more details, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - 3rd Annual Jefferies eVTOL / AAM Summit:

Greg Conrad, Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team, Jefferies: Good morning, everyone. I’m Greg Conrad with the Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team. Welcome to our third annual Jefferies EV TALL Summit. Today, we are lucky enough to have Rob Wiesenthal, CEO of Blade as well as Will Hayburn, CFO, here with us. Maybe just to kick it off, if you can provide a little bit of background on Blade, what markets do you operate in, and how do you broadly think about the opportunity in the business?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Sure. Thanks a lot for, having us. I appreciate it. We’re actually dialing in remote from, our Arizona operations, here where our medical business is, based. But let’s talk about the business, how we got started.

We started the company about, we’re working on our eleventh year, so ten full years of operations. It started out, as a company, to do short distance aviation predominantly with helicopters. But the thesis of the company was always how do you create an ecosystem for short distance aviation, focus on helicopters that can enable you to transition to eVTOL, when they are ready. So that’s every part of the ecosystem from captive infrastructure, technology, brands, consumer to cockpit software, roots, marketing, customer experience, all that. But doing it on an asset light basis, because at some point, we knew that we would need to be preparing for that transition.

I think I can’t be more excited about where we are in the in vitro, you know, timeline because it really is it’s a short term horizon. I can’t I couldn’t have said that when we went public four years ago, but I can really say that now. It’s now the time we’re talking in terms of months, and no longer, years. So we started out, working in leisure markets in in the Greater New York area. We quickly added probably one of our most important businesses, which is an airport business that operates six days a week, every twenty minutes to New York and JFK Airports, in New York where we’ve, kinda shattered the Uber Black pricing.

It starts at a hundred $95. People buy airport passes for $695 a year where they can fly for $95. So we’re competitive with Graham. We’re one of one in the markets we serve. The next biggest market is Europe.

Southern Europe. That’s Monaco, Nice, Cannes, Saint Tropez, in the winter, Courschavel, Geneva, Milan, all of Southern Europe, and it’s all about great landing zones. And I think one of the things that people discovered about Blade is that, you know, we’re not trying to boil the ocean. It’s all about great convenient landing zones. And I think we have the two most important markets in the world, the Northeast and The United States, and in Southern Europe.

But along the way, we saw an incredible opportunity, and that was to use the logistics expertise that we have, and the relationships we had with operators, the technology base, the team, to move, human organs for transplants, specifically hearts, livers, and lungs. That started out in New York, and today, we’re now the largest air transporter of human organs, in The United States. It’s now a it’s about 60%, of our business. Yeah. Highly profitable, great profit margins, terrific growth, and, you know, definitely leverages a lot of our core competencies.

And I actually think that in the future, you know, certain mission profiles that we do in the medical side, you know, will be aided by VTOL. And so, you know, profitability came a year early, earlier than we expected to the market. You know, we’ll have about $6,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA on the on the passenger side, and we’ll probably add another incremental single digit of EBITDA, you know, for the full year. And we haven’t even lapped the structural changes that we made, including, you know, Europe and some other things that, you know, we’ve been working on. And the passenger business has, you know, strong margins.

You know you know, we’ve been talking about, you know, double digit margins, high double digit margins. You have strong potential there. And, again, we’re the largest. And passenger, we’re one of one, and we’re the largest in the medical business. So two terrific businesses with different but great, profiles from a financial, financial performance perspective.

And I think, you know, the company’s working on all cylinders, very pleased, with the financial performance and having overall adjusted EBITDA for the company for the first time this year, really clean balance sheet, about a hundred and $20,000,000 of cash, no debt. So I think, you know, we’re, you know, pretty well positioned, you know, where we are right now.

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: And, Greg, just to clarify on those on those margins there. You know, on on the medical side, we’re moving from the low teens to the high teens. And on the passenger side, we’ve gone from from, you know, not making a profit to now having a target of the high single digits for passenger.

Greg Conrad, Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team, Jefferies: And that kind of answers where I was going go with my next question. But I mean, kind of within that and that mix of medical and passenger, I mean, anything in terms of passenger seasonality or kind of how that allows you to utilize capacity just thinking about the the growth profiles of of medical versus passenger?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Well, I’ll I will talk about, let me talk about passenger, and then I’ll lead in a little bit of medical, and then, we’ll give some expansion on that. The passenger business is largely, is has very, has very skewed right now to, from a seasonality perspective in Europe and in The United States. And, frankly, being asset light helps us because that allows us to kind of flex the our capacity that we need to make sure there aren’t ships lying around with pilots. So we enter into, capacity use agreements or long term contracts, with our operators. A lot of many of them are dedicated solely to Blade.

Many of them actually have built their companies around Blade, and we but they also have other operations. Sometimes it could be news operations or other types of, you know, government contracts, and they enter exclusivity arrangements with us. They pass our safety standards with very large safety team, which is obviously critical to us. They use our technology, understand our customer experience. But there’s that flex between on season and off season for leisure.

But at the same time, as our prices go down and you think about Europe, especially places like Monaco and elsewhere in Milan, where it’s much more, it’s less seasonal, and the fact that we have a winter business in the Alps, and the airport business in New York, you know, we’re we are trying hard to kind of reduce the reliance, you know, just on, you know, kind of the spiky seasonal perspective. But being asset light right now does, equip us, you know, with two strengths. One is to be able to flex that capacity depending on demand and seasonality, but also to put us in a great position to help, you know, make that transition between conventional, helicopters, and eVTOL. And, Will, do you wanna just talk about the medical side for a second?

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: Yeah. Look. The medical business is a little bit of a different profile, and then it’s a contractual business. It is not seasonal. It can have some lumpiness, but it’s a great high single digit growing market organically, and then we’re continuing to add share through new customer wins.

And so when you think about that, kind of a hybrid model is a little more appropriate and allows us to maximize our margins. So though we grew the business all the way through the beginning of last year without owning a single aircraft, you get to a certain point of scale, particularly in specific markets, and you’re you’re you’re leaving some efficiency on the table by being a % asset light. So by purchasing 10 aircraft would represent about 30% of the flying that we do in medical, now we’re getting the operating leverage of flying more. So on those airplanes, every hour we fly costs a little bit less than the hour before because you’re amortizing those fixed costs of pilots, insurance, maintenance, hangar, etcetera. And so that’s allowed us not only to improve our adjusted EBITDA margins in the medical business, it’s also allowed us to provide better service to our customers.

You’re you’re able to put those aircraft closer to the locations where your customers are gonna be departing, and you don’t charge the repositioning that you would otherwise have to charge if you were trying to have aircraft serving multiple customers in different locations. So that’s really important for this time critical kind of cargo because it’s not just about the cost of the repositioning, it’s the reaction time as well. So we’re really doing everything we can, making investments to be better partners for our customers. And the good news is that that’s both allowing our customers to go and recover more organs, and it’s also resulting in better profit margins for us as we continue to fly more.

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: I think you’re think hearing also hearing a common theme. You know, in passengers on the passenger business, we are one of one. We are without competition in the Northeast United States. We’re number one in market share in Europe, and it’s about having, you know, the most recognized brands, frankly, in short distance aviation and having captive infrastructure. And, you know, on the medical side, you know, as we win contracts, just like we have a competitive mode with infrastructure, we have a very strong competitive mode with placing those aircraft by our hospitals.

So when you think about when your mission is, improving outcomes and saving lives, the vehicles the ability to scramble an aircraft really quickly for a hospital, is not only imperative, but with respect to competition who may wanna come in and try to do missions for a hospital, it’s very tough for them to be competitive because you’re repositioning an aircraft somewhere else in The United States as opposed to being in, you know, one of our hubs where we have either one or many hospitals that can be serviced literally in a minute in minutes’ notice.

Greg Conrad, Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team, Jefferies: And and I guess just maybe sticking on on medical for one more. I think you recently announced a partnership with Organox to preposition Metra perfusion devices at Aviation Hubs. Can you maybe talk about a little bit about that partnership, kind of the opportunities as that kind of moves forward?

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: Sure. And maybe just a ten seconds of background since this isn’t a a medical call. You know, perfusion technology, it’s a fancy word for pumping oxygenated blood through an organ. And the reason that’s important is because there’s a whole new category of donors in America, circulatory death donors, donors whose hearts have stopped. So much damage is done to organs when that happens that you need to use some form of perfusion technology to repair the damage that’s done.

And so that that’s what we mean when we say perfusion, and it’s a really exciting time for for people that are on the transplant list because you now have this larger availability of organs from being able to repair the damage that’s done to donors whose hearts have stopped. And there’s a number of different ways that we can utilize those kind of organs, competing technologies. Our model is to be agnostic, support our customers irrespective of of what third party machine perfusion device they wanna use. There’s also some therapies, something called NRP, where you don’t need a device to perfuse the organs. You you actually perfuse the organ in the body of the donor, repair the damage there, and then take it to the recipient, and it can be less expensive.

So we support our customers irrespective of what they decide. But Organox is is really exciting company we’ve worked with for for a long time, and currently, they have what’s called a back to base model. Meaning, you you bring the organ back to the location where the recipient is and is is gonna receive that organ transplant, and you perfuse it inside their device in order to repair the damage there. What’s really exciting is, and we’ve heard from our customers, many more of them wanna use this device. It could be lower cost than a lot of the competing devices that are available.

And and so we came to them and worked with them to try to come up with a way to solve the constraint of supply of devices they have. So we preposition these devices all around the country. We can drive them to folks who wanna use them for one case. We can fly them to folks who wanna use them for one case. And then we’re also preparing for something we’re really excited for, which is the the potential approval for this device to be approved to perfuse organs while you’re flying, which is not something the device is allowed to do today.

But we’ve gone ahead and done all the work with Organox to get our planes ready to to be able to complete that mission successfully, which we think we know our customers wanna be able to do that, but we also think it creates a whole new customer acquisition channel for us because we’ve done this work early, and are already gonna have aircraft aircraft around the country that are able to move this this groundbreaking device. So really exciting time and really great partnership with the team at Organops.

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: When we started the business, remember, this started with just helicopters in the medical side, and then it quickly moved into jets. And, you know, over the, you know, the coming years, because of perfusion devices, you know, the length of, these flights are getting longer and we’re paid by the hour. In fact, we did the the longest, air transport of a human organ, from Maine to Alaska, which is something that could be apt is was that unheard of, you know, at the time. And because of all these technologies, you know, there are more organs available, for donation. And, you know, on on top of that, these, because they can last out the body, you know, longer, you know, we have the ability to fly to the hospitals that need them pretty much no matter where they are in the country.

Greg Conrad, Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team, Jefferies: And then we’re we’re gonna get the EV tolls eventually. So so maybe if we can weave them into some of these questions. But but you talked about the asset light model. I I think 15% of your aircraft are owned. Third party agreements make up the remaining 85%, I believe.

Can you maybe talk about how those third party agreements, how you buy capacity, how that works in terms of the flexibility you know, of having that capacity through third parties.

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: And just one one clarification. We should just clarify that on the passenger side, we’re 100% SLI. And on the medical side, you know, what we’ve done to get real operating leverage and to be able to place those planes, by our customer, you know, 30%, of our business, is now on owned aircraft, and 50% are with capacity use agreements, where we kind of, you know, lock in rates and do have, you know, upside in terms of, you know, again, the more we fly, the better the economics, are for those. And, Will, I don’t know if there’s anything you wanna add on that. No.

Greg Conrad, Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team, Jefferies: Cool. And and then maybe on the the passenger side, if you can talk a little bit about the the pricing model. You talked a little bit about the subscription basis and the the cheaper, flights for people who, get that subscription. You know, how does that pricing model work? I mean, how dynamic is it and just anything around general price?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Well, yeah, it is dynamic. We’re becoming much better in terms of dynamic pricing with respect to, you know, picking peak times for airport and leisure routes, and, making sure that, you know, we get adequate value, from those flights and, you know, and places where, you know, times that may not be less competitive, with respect to, you know, that how much time does it take to go to places like the orb, the airport or pretty much, any destination. You, you know, you start to get to that kind of one ninety five level. But to give you an example, on airport, despite the fact that you can travel, fly as little as, for $95 with a pass or $1.95 without a pass, you’re talking about turning, you know, a five to eight minute flight, turning a two hour drive into a five to eight, you know, minute flight, which has a lot of value. We wanna get people on the low end, but we also wanna, you know, get people who are also, you know, willing to spend more for more services.

So things like flexible fares, things like cash refunds if they want, if they’re not gonna be around in The United States for a while. We have a lot of international travelers adding on excess luggage, cars that are harmonized with you when you land. We’re now at the point where the average checkout for an airport flight is north of $300, which means that, you know, there’s a spectrum of pricing options that people can have so you are in a situation where you’re not alienating anybody. But there is a lot more technology under the hood now that really helps us deal with dynamic pricing and making sure that we’re optimizing our utilization, you know, whenever possible.

Greg Conrad, Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team, Jefferies: And then maybe just to start touching on EV TOLs. I mean, I think you have a pretty strong strategy in terms of implementation. Can you maybe talk about the time line, how you’ve selected who to partner with and and how we think about that being implemented into the the broader blade.

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Yeah. I I think that, you know, again, I’m really, really excited. It’s probably one of the one of the first calls where, you know, we’ve recently had that, you know, we really see it on the short term horizon. You know, we’re looking again, the right place to get your information in terms of deployment is obviously with the OEMs, but we have great relationships with all of them. And I think we’re really looking at, you know, kind of, you know, late, you know, ’25, early ’20 ’6 in The Middle East, and then probably late twenty seven, maybe ’28, in the Northeast.

I think that The Middle East is obviously pushing extremely hard, to not only be tech forward, but to enable what we call kind of city two point o with all the new cities that are be kind of being built from the ground up over there. And I think it’ll be a terrific proving ground to kind of iron out any issues in the customer experience, reliability issues, understanding how these op how these, aircraft work in the wild. And that’s one of the things that we really bring to any manufacturer is to really see what it’s like working in an urban environment with everything from heliport infrastructure to ATC to numerous airports, crowded airspace, dealing with real passengers sometimes who have, you know, real issues in everything from bags, their timing, weight, size, you know, all that’s, you know, really, really important. But I think that we designed the company to pretty much work with any of these manufacturers. And I think the other thing that’s important to point out is, you know, in the beginning, this is gonna be a cohabitation phase.

This is not like a light switch. There’s gonna be kind of helicopters and EVTOL kind of living in harmony. There are gonna be certain missions based on weight, distance, weather conditions where a helicopter is gonna be more appropriate, and there are gonna be certain instances where, with the, the mission profile might be shorter, might be more more recurring, or cycles on an aircraft are not that, as important. Airport is a good example where EuVTOL, you know, really it will be the sweet spot for EuVTOL, you know, for, you know, for a decent amount of time.

Greg Conrad, Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team, Jefferies: And then I guess, tied to that, I mean, how do you think about the most significant near term and long term growth drivers of business? And does the implementation of EVTOL maybe change some of that opportunity set or or kind of how you view the business going forward?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Yeah. I mean, we’ve designed no. Our strategy has been for the past year or so is to get passenger to profitability, which we did. We did it a year early to continue to optimize, to build what we believe is the most recognized brands in the health of the helicopter business today. You know, we recently completed, you know, in, you know, over Memorial Day weekend, not only the biggest part of our business in the Northeast, but, you know, flying, you know, to the mon to and from the Monaco Grand Prix from Nice, which is probably, you know, the largest nonmilitary mission of of, people by hell by helicopter in a coordinated basis over a couple day period.

So we’re really good at that logistics turning those helicopters around. That will be swapped, you know, to eVTOL. But what’s exciting about the unlocking of eVTOL is the unlocking of the growth, and that growth is driven by the fact that it’s quiet and there’ll be more places to land. Any pair of convenient landing zones to you is a terrific business. So if you can walk across the street from your apartment building, or walk a couple of locks from your home and get into, any detail in a landing zone and fly to someone convenient, whether it be for work, you know, leisure, or going home, that is a fantastic business.

And as we’ve said, you know, in New York City, if you take you take a look at how we’re we’re situated, New York City is fantastic in the sense that we have three heliports under 13 Mile Island. They’re all on the water. We have mid we have Blade Launch West, Blade Launch East, and also now, reopened Blade Launch Wall Street. And so there’s a variety of places to go to. However, in the center of Manhattan, there’s a little bit of a dead zone.

You know? You know, I’ve said before, if you have one landing zone South Of Central Park, North Of the Port Authority, you’ve created a network of not only, places where you can go to the airport or other markets to, but intra city, Midtown to Westside, Midtown to Eastside, Midtown to Wall Street, Midtown to an airport. All of that really creates a real network, like, and it has an ability to exponentially grow the size of the business. That’s what we’re excited about. That’s what the unlock is.

That’s what turn this in turns this business into a very high grower. That will take time. But, you know, the first phase is getting those in operation, having all the stakeholders understand that these are quiet, emission free, and safe. And then I really do believe that, you know, the cities I’ve spoken to and, you know, mayors and governors, you know, and other, you know, legislators, you know, all over the world, they want city two point o. You cannot be city two point o without an urban air mobility strategy.

You have to look at this at cities and really understand there’s kind of three layers. You can have underground with subways, aboveground with everything from cars, eventually, robotaxis, buses, scooters, bicycles. And then you have the upper layer, which are the, you know, the jets, you know, operating in the thousands of feet, high thousands of feet area. And then you have that middle layer, the third layer that I call it, you’re gonna have urban air mobility that really is gonna provide a new avenue for people to get to where they want, increase productivity by having people being able to do more business in a short amount of time, and make cities more attractive that may not have been attractive in the past couple years for a variety of reasons, everything from hybrid work to congestion. And, Greg, maybe

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: just to to touch on the growth on the medical side quickly. You know, continuing to gain share in our core market, we’ve got about 30% market share in a really fragmented market for air transportation of of organs, one, two new big customers that started in April 1. And then this is also a a marketplace that is growing in terms of the number of organ transplants that happen in America because of a variety of factors that are continuing to to play out. So it’s been high single digit growth in the market, and a lot of those drivers, perfusion technology as an example, that’s getting cheaper. It’s becoming easier for hospitals to utilize those organs from donors whose hearts have stopped.

You’re also seeing regulatory change that’s allowing you to go pick up organs from farther away and prioritizing matching organs to the sickest patient rather than the closest patient. So not only does that mean that that more folks get organs in time because you’re getting it to the sickest person first, but also it means that trips are getting longer, and our unit of revenue in this business is a flight hour. So if we look at the average distance between a donor and a recipient over the last six years, it’s increased by almost 60%, and we’re still in the earlier days of moving particularly liver and heart distribution to that different set of priorities focusing first and foremost on the sickest patients. So we’re very excited about the core market that we’re in, and we’ve also launched another, a number of other ancillary products and services that are growing much more quickly than our overall medical business. That includes ground transportation, not just for organs, but for blood samples, tissue samples, things like that.

We’re also helping hospitals perform the clinical matching function for organs, determining whether or not that the organ whether or not an organ is a fit for a specific recipient. And and then we’re also exploring new verticals and other time critical cargo across health care and other markets. So lots of exciting ways to continue growing now and into the future in medical.

Greg Conrad, Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team, Jefferies: And kind of maybe just wrapping it all together, I mean, how do you think about the real IP of Blade around the technology and experience provided to the customer? I mean, what are the biggest areas providing that lasting competitive advantage just thinking about technology and the lifestyle company element, you know, more so than just transportation?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Well, I think that there’s no question in my mind after ten years. The most important IP of Blade is the brand, the recognition, the trust, that people have in it, and the emotional connection they have with it because, you know, people really do enjoy the experience. And as much as we talk about saving time and efficiency in city two point o, you know, flying in three dimensions, you know, above ground, taking off vertically is something that people, you know, really love to do. And I think the experience that we’ve created in our infrastructure, which are captive to Blade, when you walk into a Blade terminal, you’re only with other Blade customers. So it gives us ability to make sure that we manage their mission, that we, have the ability to ever do everything from assessed luggage to do security, make sure people are, you know, enjoying themselves while they’re waiting for the flight, you know, if they wait for the flight at all, depending on what time, they arrive.

And, you know, again, that customer experience starts with marketing, goes to literally the you know, it’s the app when you’re booking, the people you speak to on the phone if you have any issue, if you have questions, the people that not only are are are are greeting you in these lounges and making sure you’re all set, but walking you to the aircraft, placing you in that aircraft, dealing with weight and bounce, make sure you have a great experience getting into that aircraft and doing so safely, then greeting on the other side. And if in the case of the airport product, putting you directly into a car that takes you, you know, straight to, you know, as close to your gate as possible, ground side, you know, curbside. So I I think that is the special sauce. We figured out how to do it. The market is great if you think about it.

As much as we talk about growth of eVTOL, 28,000,000 people in the Greater New York area go by private car between the New York City airports and Manhattan. So that’s excluding subways, shared buses, all that. And we are really only hitting a the penetration is quite small. So there’s a lot of upside, but we’ve been smart about is we are only focused on the most important markets of the world where there’s either, you know, a lot of congestion or, you know, contested geography, so to speak, where Alps is a perfect example where you have five hour drives to get to certain areas in the Alps as opposed to, you know, flying a straight line over them. So that’s a big part of the IP.

Then, obviously, you know, on the technology side, you know, we’ve you know, our tech stack, took a lot of money, and we’re finally where it needs to be. And that does two things. It not only integrates the booking experience with our logistics people on the ground, but also goes directly to our operators. So unlike the way it was for the industry a couple years ago, we can change weight and balance on the fly in terms of adding or subtracting passengers so we can make sure those aircraft are properly fueled, and make sure that, you know, there all these missions happen safely, but allowing that dynamic changes so people can book twenty minutes in advance, or there could be people moving between different, aircraft based on the time that they’re there. That technology is quite important.

The other side of it is the data exhaust. Understanding how people are interacting with the app with with the app, understanding when they drop out, when to offer them certain type of incentives to book, you know, a return, having that message happen at that moment of truth when they’re landing about booking the return. So much stuff on the marketing side is now coming from that data exhaust, on the app. And, you know, we’ve cut marketing costs significantly leveraging, not only the strength of our brands, and great word-of-mouth, but also the information we’re getting from our flyers.

Greg Conrad, Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team, Jefferies: And then maybe just to to wrap it up and and leave it on a a fun note. I mean, what are you most excited about, you know, as the industry moves closer to entry into service? And I’ll weave that into you know, what what are the main messages investors should walk away with from today?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: So let me start with what the main messages are. We finally crossed, you know, the the Rubicon of of profitability. These are two solid businesses, both with real competitive stature in industries that they serve. You the medical business is, as you can imagine, you know, kind of not it’s resistant to tariffs, resistant to recession. It is paid for by the hospitals, so we are not reimbursed by insurance companies.

I think we offer the best service in the business, really good competitive, mode in terms of, you know, placing these aircraft, where our the hospitals need them to be, and we’re building market share every day. We’re really, really good at this. And the the prospects for enhanced profitability, because we now own a fair amount of aircraft where the more the fly the the the more we fly, the more we make. And ancillary services that we’re now adding on, like organ matching services, and, you know, you know, beyond that, you know, our ground business, which has lights and sirens, SUVs with very, high margins, and then the opportunities to put other add ons such as organ recovery, you know, moving, other products such as, you know, what I would call, you know, mission critical parts, even radioisotopes. So radiopharma is a great opportunity for us because anything that needs to get there quickly, efficiently, and without failure, blade memorability is perfectly, positioned for that.

And then on the passenger side, we got this business to profitability with a you know, we’re one of one in The United States’ largest, you know, in Europe. We are well positioned to both accelerate and derisk any manufacturer’s entry into that market. Because the very big difference between building an aircraft and having commercialized and having it certified, which is an incredibly daunting task that I’m glad that we’re not doing. But having back compared to having the ecosystem where that can be slotted in and you have people that are used to flying in three dimensions, used to getting places places quickly, willing to pay for that privilege, I just think it’s it’s gonna be a grow we’re gonna be a great jump start for the industry.

Greg Conrad, Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research Team, Jefferies: And, with that, we’ll we’ll leave it at that, Rob. Will, really appreciate the the time today and and look forward to following Blade’s success.

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Great. Thank you. Thanks for your time. We appreciate it. Thanks.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.