Blade at J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference: Strategic Growth Insights

On Thursday, 13 March 2025, Blade Air Mobility (NASDAQ: BLDE) presented at the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference 2025, outlining a strategic vision marked by both achievements and challenges. Blade’s leadership emphasized a successful year-end performance with adjusted EBITDA profitability and a focus on sustainable growth across their air transport segments. However, the journey ahead involves navigating competitive landscapes and leveraging new technology.

Key Takeaways

• Blade achieved its first full year of adjusted EBITDA profitability with an $18 million improvement.
• The company dominates the U.S. organ transport market and urban air mobility in New York and Southern Europe.
• Blade is strategically positioned to integrate electric vertical aircraft (eVTOLs) by 2027/2028.
• The company is exploring acquisitions, particularly in the medical segment, to enhance growth.
• Blade is focused on expanding its infrastructure to support future eVTOL operations.

Financial Results

• Blade reported its first full year of adjusted EBITDA profitability.
• The company saw an approximately $18 million improvement in EBITDA.
• Aiming for high teens in segment adjusted EBITDA for the medical side.
• Ongoing discussions about margin growth opportunities in both medical and passenger segments.

Operational Updates

• Blade is the largest U.S. air transporter of human organs.
• Maintains a dominant market share in New York and Southern Europe for urban air mobility.
• Launched an organ matching service to enhance hospital services.
• Implemented a cost rationalization program to boost passenger business profitability.
• Partnered with Organox to expand along the medical value chain.
• Introducing a next-generation app to enhance sales and customer experience.
• Exploring expansion into critical time cargo and optimizing fleet operations.

Future Outlook

• Anticipates medical growth to outpace the broader industry due to regulatory changes.
• Plans to implement eVTOLs by late 2027/early 2028, increasing landing zones and lifting curfews.
• Continues to explore partnerships and backstop routes with companies and communities.
• Focused on deploying cash for tactical acquisitions, particularly in the medical segment.

Q&A Highlights

• Discussed competitive advantages in organ transport, including faster callout times.
• Emphasized growth opportunities in the medical segment by expanding the value chain and leveraging logistics.
• Long-term passenger strategy involves maintaining a strong presence in key markets.
• Open to potential business spin-offs to maximize shareholder value.

Conclusion

For a deeper understanding of Blade’s strategic directions and financial performance, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference 2025:

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Good morning, and welcome to day three of JPMorgan’s Industrial Conference. My name is Bill Peterson, U. S.

CleanTech Analyst, and really pleased to have the team from Blade here. I think it’s the third year in a row we’ve had Blade at this conference. And this year, we actually have the luxury of Rob Wiesenthal, CFO sorry, CEO and Will Hayburn, CFO here. So, going to help us understand more about the company and the direction and the high level strategy. And maybe we’ll start off with that.

And Rob and Will, thanks for supporting the conference. And maybe perhaps for investors who maybe know less about the story, you can take the opportunity to discuss the high level strategy. You just had your earnings call this morning, so maybe there’s a few areas you’d like to recap, and I’ll pass over to you.

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Sure. Thanks a lot, Bill, and thanks, JPMorgan, for having us today. We had a really strong end of the year, first full year of adjusted EBITDA profitability, driving real significant growth and an $18,000,000 approximately improvement in EBITDA for the year. So we feel really good about it. And for those who are maybe not that familiar with Blade, we operate two big segments of our business, which are both air transport for human organs, where we’re the largest air transport of human organs in The United States, and then also our passenger urban air mobility business where we fly more people by vertical transportation, predominantly helicopters, than anyone else in the world.

Key operations are here in New York, where we are one of one, the 100% market share to and from the airport to key leisure routes and in Europe where Southern Europe where we have a dominant market share. So I think that the companies have finally made that kind of transition into profitability. On the medical side, the growth is really strong, both in terms of the underlying number of organs that are being recovered for transplant, and then all the additional ancillary businesses that accompany it. We recently launched a, an organ matching service, which not only adds with incremental profitability, but also allows us to get closer to hospitals that may not know about our air transport business. And on then on the passenger side, we’ve been able to really take in price and optimize our schedule to kind of drive that profitability.

And a great cost cutting program or cost rationalization program by the team over the past year that really have gotten us to this point where, on the passenger side, we have real, what I’d call, prudent growth, taking in price, making sure that we can be that bridge until electric vertical aircraft or a VTOL are here. So at that time, when it is here, we have more people flying, a stronger brand, more roots, more captive infrastructure, a great technology stack where you just released our first really kind of next generation native app, both here and in Europe, which is you know, doing quite well and I think is really gonna help supercharge sales. And then on the on on the medical side, I think the team that we have and the salespeople that we’ve just, hired both on the conventional air transport for Oregon’s business, but also for, critical time cargo, which is a great area for us to expand into. We’re kind of really feeling good about the year ahead.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Thanks for that, Rob. Maybe we’ll spend some time on each of the main parts of the core business. It’s really interesting having covered the company for three years, how it’s really evolved. And now, at least from a revenue perspective, it’s actually being driven by medical. So why don’t we start there?

It’s been a big driver for the past several quarters, strong customer traction from, I’d say, maybe your core customers and then obviously some new customers too. One of the areas we do get questions on is around the competitive landscape. So can you comment on the landscape within organ transplant business in The U. S. And where Blade fits in?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Sure. I mean, typically, as the largest air transfer of human organs in The United States, when we started this business, which we started actually in New York with just helicopters, It really was mom and pop jet operators. And I think that the the genesis of the business was really, going to hostels and saying, you know, why, you know, why are you taking a an ambulance to meet a jet and then a jet for a couple hundred miles and then taking an ambulance as well in the other direction, having a $60,000 price for an Oregon transport as opposed to taking a helicopter and landing literally on the hospital of both landing on the helipads of both hospitals and bringing that down our $4,000 or $5,000 price. As we expanded and as perfusion technology has improved and organs could travel much longer distances, we got involved in jets. And now we have, you know, the vast majority of our business is jets.

We do own a number of jets. We have a nice balance between, owned and third party aircraft. But, you know, in terms of the competitive landscape, I think the fact that we can actually position jets at hospitals is very strong, unique in a competitive mode because not only does it make for less repositioning and caller faster callout times and a lower price for the hospitals, but it’s better for patient outcomes. And it really creates a competitive moat because if we’re working with a hospital and we have jets literally on standby five minutes away versus someone calling an operator that may have to reposition a couple hundred miles, I think you own that customer for a very long time.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Great. Maybe somewhat just coming off your earnings, it’s obviously real kind of almost real time here. It’s only an hour or so ago. But you commented that the medical growth should outpace the growth of the broader industry over time. Should we consider that still to be the case outside of variability of what you’re seeing here in the first quarter or maybe first half of

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: this year? Will, you want to take that?

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: Yes, absolutely. When we think about our ability to have growth faster than the industry, we’re continuing to win new customers. And then as Rob mentioned, you have technology that’s allowing you to fly farther to pick up organs than you’ve ever been able to fly before, and you have some new regulation that’s still working its way through the government, particularly the continuous distribution model, which has moved to lung but has not yet been rolled out for liver, which is the largest of the heart, liver, lung organs that we focus on and that require dedicated air transport. So as those new regulations start to prioritize even more the sickest patients, you’re going to see trip links continue to increase. So for all of those reasons, we see the ability over the long term to grow more quickly than the market.

And as you mentioned, we got a tough comp in the first half of this year, and we’ve seen some volatility, which we talked about on our earnings call, but that’s our long term view.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Maybe tying to kind of both sort of questions or earlier comments. So I think Rob mentioned the vast majority is now jet. So what is the mix of the business right now and what is the mix of the business going to look like? And I think it ties into the organs as well. So are you looking to further diversify exposure to various organs and to kind of maybe soften the seasonality if there is any seasonality variability?

Just maybe a couple of questions following up from the prior two.

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Sure. I think that there’s a very wide value chain here, everything in terms on the medical side. So you got organ matching, you have surgeons that are doing recovery, you have lots of different medical devices. You you probably saw our alliance with Organox. So the more we’re across that value chain of servicing, those hospitals and anything they need along that that route, which is a very long route from, you know, identifying in Oregon and having perfusion specialists and recovering it and moving all that, that’s where you’re going to see our growth along that value chain on the medical side.

Additionally, our core competency in logistics, clearly, there are a lot of things in this world that need to be moved quickly, critically, and with really a next zero chance of risk of the thing of the product or something getting there on time. It could be radioisotopes, it could be what we call AOG aircraft on the ground parts, and that’s something that we just kind of snap on to our business. So when we think about the mix of the business overall, we see these opportunities that are kind of organic on the medical side in addition to some M and A. And then on the passenger side, what we did is we got to the point where we are now, which I think many people used to be skeptical about that we have a profitable vertical transportation business. It’s the largest of its kind in the world and that it is better positioned to take advantage of electric vertical aircraft than any other company.

And we’re doing that on a profitable basis. So as whether the timelines are coming soon or later in terms of eVTOL, we’re just going to have that many more landing zones, that many more terminals, that many more users, flyers and impressions on that brand. So when we do make that transition, we’re going to be moving a lot of people to this type of transportation in terms of vertical flying. Because the first people flying eVTOL are not going to be guys taking taxis and subways and Ubers. It’s probably going to be people in helicopters.

And I think we’re going to really help jump start that industry.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Anything to add or but the mix?

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: Yes. I think it’s less about diversifying between different kinds of organs, and it’s more making sure we can, as as Rob mentioned, serve all those new and emerging constituents in the value chain. So it’s not even the way it was three years ago where it’s only the transplant center. Now we’re forging partnerships with perfusion companies like Organox. We’re working with third party surgical recovery companies.

We’re working more and more with organ procurement organizations that work regionally to identify organs, export kidneys and increasingly, as we’ve talked about in other calls, actually perform normothermic regional perfusion to help repair the damage that’s done to organs when a donor’s heart stops. So we’re expanding the breadth of who we view as a potential partner to be best positioned, and we believe we are, for this kind of diversifying world of constituents in this industry.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes. Maybe a question on scale. It somewhat ties into what Rob was saying with your passenger business too. But can you better understand the benefits of scale in terms of how that better cost structure helps you with better pricing, the pricing advantage you have relative to competitors? And maybe also touching on now that you have basically you’re positioning aircraft closer to customers.

So it’s sort of two part. You have the ability to use existing operator equipment for, I think, both your segments, but then more importantly or more recently, you’re putting the aircraft closer to customers.

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: We’ve talked a lot about how we’ve now structured the business so that we really benefit from the operating leverage of flying more. And that’s both in the passenger and in the medical business. So in medical, pretty clear, we’ve purchased some airplanes that are in our highest demand locations. And when you own those assets, the more you fly, the less it costs because we’re amortizing those fixed costs over more hours. So that makes our cost go down to your point around the competitive advantage on pricing.

And then because we’re strategically positioning those aircraft at the locations of our customers, when those customers send their procurement surgeons out to go procure on Oregon and fly back, we won’t have to reposition, and we save them money that way. So so it does give us a a huge advantage. And then the same thing is true on the passenger side, but we’re doing that on an asset light basis. So we’re entering into capacity purchase agreements that contractually have volume targets that once we hit them, our cost to fly an hour on a helicopter could go down by 30%. So you’re going to see that operating leverage in both businesses.

And then finally, in passing, there’s one more layer of leverage, which is we’ve now taken these routes like airports where you have to have a minimum load factor, a minimum number of passengers on each flight to make money. And we’re above that mark now, which means that next incremental flyer, the next paying passenger on an already profitable flight, that’s going to be close to 100% incremental margin for us. So you’re really going to see great gearing in the business, and I think it’s an awesome inflection point for the company. Being profitable is really it’s an important milestone, but this is just the start.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes. Maybe and just kind of speaking to some additional growth opportunities from here, maybe you could speak to where this going to come from ancillary revenue streams like tops or is it further share gains within the existing customer base? How should we think about your growth as well as share from here?

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: I think it’s all of the above. We’re winning new customers. The aircraft strategy is helping us win customers that weren’t accessible to us before. We’re converting tops customers, as we talked about on our earnings call, to become logistics customer, and that’s on the basis of our great performance with that customer. We’re never forcing anybody to do something like that.

We want to earn it, and we are earning it. So I think there’s lots of opportunities. And to your question on the underlying growth in the industry, we still view this as very early innings for the industry’s ability to utilize those DCD organs, those organs from donors whose hearts have stopped. Those are the organs that most of the time are going to require some kind of perfusion in order to be viable, and perfusion historically has been very expensive. And now with new competitors entering the market and with new therapies like NRP, normothermic regional perfusion, those costs are coming down and more transplant centers are able to utilize those organs.

So still very early days of making that accessible to the industry, and we think it could drive even accelerated growth from what we’ve seen in the last few years. Really exciting time to be in this business.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes. The company had we kind of started off without owning any aircraft, but now it’s you’re currently balancing kind of remaining capital light versus owning aircraft when it makes sense. Can you speak to how the medical business can see further margin expansion knowing that the first half may be lighter, but given that you’ve reached your 15% target in the calendar fourth quarter ’twenty four?

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: Flying more. The more we fly, the less it costs. We’ll continue to optimize our fleet. And then as we talked about, you’re going to see some lumpiness. We’ll dip back below that target in the first half of twenty twenty five as we have a number of aircraft that are going to be down for maintenance.

So you won’t be able to fly more definitionally, but that’s really the answer. And as we get to kind of steady state on the owned fleet and we continue to optimize the locations, we’ll approach that high teens target that we set for medical segment adjusted EBITDA.

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: I think there’s a real it’s important to pull back and say that there’s a real competitive mode, not only by having the aircraft close to really right there by the hospitals, but also by having so much throughput into these planes that we can offer lower costs. And I think if you think about just in terms of the medical cost for, in America and or for the hospitals, organ transplants are much more economic and have actually better outcomes than other types of therapies that do not require this. So it actually in terms of, you know, the health care system, and patients, it is both better economically, for insurance companies, hospitals and patients and also better outcomes. So our prognosis for the growth of this industry is very strong. It’s only going to continue.

And I think that the more opportunity and every day we see new opportunities along that value train, like chain like TOPS, which was started organically, or, you know, what we’re looking at in terms of, you know, recovery surgeons and alliance with perfusion devices. So when when you think about the size of the industry, it’s really difficult to say, okay, how much is the air transport business for medical? It’s really that whole value chain going throughout any type of thing that involves organs and patients.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Maybe just wrapping up or wrapping up around this question around owned versus leveraged partners. Do you envision the owned aircraft becoming a primary strategy going forward if demand warrants it? And then maybe just kind of how it ties to the financial performance. What steps are you taking to optimize the financial performance of your owned aircraft fleet?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: I think you always want to mix. And I think that when we started it, we set out really strong ROI targets and margins, and I think we got there in the margins. I think it’s important that as people start looking at this company that they realize, as we talked about on our call today, that, you know, maintenance schedules can change. You know, if you buy an aircraft, that are a lot of them are in the same year, and the hours in those aircraft are similar, you may have downtime. But the fact that we have capacity use agreements and we have all these other aircraft that we can use makes makes makes it certain that we can service our clients.

Then over the course of time, we see already see and we are confident that the numbers will pan out that that incremental margin, that we get and that strong ROI, is is there. So it kind of serves the hospitals. A lot of hospitals require us to use owned aircraft, but it also gives us kind of this flexibility to as things kind of ebb and flow or grow to use these third party capacity usage agreements that we have.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Yeah. I’m going to pause and see if there’s any questions, particularly on if there’s any questions on medical because I’m going to pivot more to passenger from here. Any questions? All right. We’ll continue on.

I’m actually going to start kind of high level on passenger because we’ve been discussing this, I think, close to three years now or maybe longer. And we’ve seen a big evolution. We’ve seen the company acquire Canada. We’ve seen the company divest Canada. We’ve seen the company acquire France and have some fits and starts, but it kind of appears to be maybe on the right track.

Super high level question, 30,000 foot view, like what is the long term strategy of this business? And how does this look three, five, ten years out?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Sure. I think we got to where we wanted to be, which was to be to have, either have a strong position in the most important markets of the world. Right now, we’re one of one and have 100% market share in the largest vertical transportation market, which is, the kind of Northeast United States centered around New York City. And then we have dominant market share in Southern Europe, which goes between Nice, Monaco, Cannes, in the winter, The Alps, Geneva, Courchevelle, and all summer destinations like Saint Tropez. And then we have all the leisure destinations here in the New York area as well.

So we did that and we built captive infrastructure both in The U. S. And in Europe. And we’ve now got to the point of profitability, which I think a lot of people originally were quite skeptical on and using conventional aircraft for that. So in terms of our strategy, it was to first get to profitability on here, which we’ve done.

And now what we want to have is prudent growth, and we’ve done that by not only the cost side, but by taking in price. So despite the fact that you can go to the airport, for $195 the price of a, you know, an Uber Black and get there in five minutes instead of having a two and a half hour

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Nobody’s paying 195, are they? What? Nobody’s paying 195, are they?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: They’re paying more. You know, the we literally, you know, wanted to have that bandwidth of the people being able to do that or basically take in certain options like fare classes or cars meeting them on the other side when they land in the city. So we get to a point where actually, you know, a lot of these prices are kind of can be high twos or north of $300 And so you give people that choice because with any new product, it actually tends to be a high end customer. So despite the fact that there’s a huge addressable market, the first early adopters have money. We’ve done a great job of attracting that.

Also, with the ebbs and flows of the economy, we’ve historically seen less impact, you know, on our business. And in fact, I know that a number of the airlines have come out and said with some kind of concerns about the consumer and what does this uncertainty mean in terms of what we’re seeing right now in terms of really strong we’ve seen a really strong winter season in the Alps. And in terms of presales for things in Europe, including the Monaco Grand Prix, which is obviously the largest event of its kind and probably the largest movement of nonmilitary movement of helicopters in the world on a single day, it’s strong. And so where do we want to be? We want to be so when the appointment when eVTOL is here, call it late twenty seven, early ’20 ’8, that we have all of that entire platform from the consumer to cockpit technology stack to the captive infrastructure to the brand to the hundreds of thousands of customers, our new app, our staff on the ground at airports and on our terminals and lounges that we can make that transition from, having people just on helicopters to electric vertical aircraft.

And again, it’s gonna be a cohabitation phase because, you know, you’ve spoken to a lot of manufacturers here. They have one SKU, right, to start. And we need different type of aircraft to get to the airport versus ones to get through weather long distances, ones with weights, ones one with that are certified for medical. So we are so big. We need a portfolio with aircraft.

So I think in the beginning, you’ll see us with with eVTOL, but also with helicopters working in tandem. And eventually, over time, it will be a %, electric. Now will that be in five years more? I can’t tell you exactly. But the big opportunity in terms of where the growth comes in, which is what we’re all waiting for, which is the reason we don’t want to burn any cash and we’re not.

We’re now profitable on the on the passenger side is the fact that these aircraft are quiet and emission free are gonna open up new landing zones. Because unless you have places to land, it is not a product. And I think you’ve heard from all of the OEMs that there’s finally a realization that we’re gonna be landing at places that blade lands at. We’re gonna be landing at places that have blade terminals, blade lounges. They’re fair and fair use air, airports, but we have the infrastructure, on the ground to process passengers, aggregate them, do them when they’re only with other blade passengers to make for a seamless, great and safe experience.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: It’s kind of related, but I wanted to start to understand how much more growth potential do you see in the passenger business? This is kind of maybe a bit more near term though. I can get the long term view, especially when there’s more opportunities to fly electric. But if we kind of peaked out here where we are, I mean, you exited the Canada market, wasn’t didn’t meet the criteria for your profitability. France looks like it could be getting better.

I don’t I mean, New York, I don’t know. I mean, you have the I guess, you’ll be doing more from the tip of Manhattan now, but how should we think about the growth potential?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Yes. I think we when you take a look at let’s take a look at New York, we got 27,000,000, 20 eight million people taking cars between the airport and Manhattan every year. We’re doing obviously just a microscopic portion of that. We’ve been very prudent on schedule, turn time, so the time between flights. We’ve been cautious on price.

So I think that even within our own ecosystem of passengers that we currently have, right, we can now start modulating, both on price and on schedule and on even some diversity where we talked about this Skyport deal with Wall Street where we’re actually economically protected from any type of utilization loss. So I think we have with that, you’re going to see growth from. And then also, which is really interesting, we are seeing a number of deals in place where people are people, companies, communities are coming to us and saying, we will backstop roots. So it could be to a stadium that is a bit far away that can’t seem to get New Yorkers there. We recently announced a couple months ago a deal with Wyndham ski resorts that will probably start in full steam next winter where how do I get people up to skiing that, you know, they so they’ll do it for the day or happy doing it for two weekends instead of having a six hour drive, where they’re actually creating the roots, paying for any potential utilization losses in an effort to get people to where they are.

And we’re also seeing it by communities as well. I think you’re gonna see a lot more of that. We have pockets of communities throughout the New York area that essentially in a way are crowdsourcing daily flights to get to work, to get to events. And so I think that, you know, in the next fall, you know, we’re gonna have probably the biggest, you know, one of the biggest sporting events in the world, which is the Ryder Cup, where we’re actually having eight landing pads in Bethpage, Long Island to service probably, you know, the biggest global golfing event in the world. And more and more of this kind of stuff is happening.

So I think in the short term, you’re gonna see the growth from, you know, you know, cautious expansion of schedule, finding different types of pricing, and passes have been very, you know, successful for us, backstop routes. And then, you know, at your point, we’re only talking about kind of thirty six months, so to speak, where we’re gonna start introducing, you know, electric, and that will probably take away certain curfews. And then I think you’ll see some, you know, additional landing zones pop up. Then I think certain communities who have existing landing zones that have been basically shut down, those relit like what we did in New Jersey and we did in Atlantic City.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes. We occasionally get questions from investors on, would the company just consider spinning off the business? I mean, you’re squarely profitable now, so maybe that’s becoming kind of a moot point, but we like to remind investors too there are some synergies. But what are your thoughts on that? I mean, is medical has been the key driver, albeit maybe a bit slowing here in the near term.

What are your thoughts on that?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Look, I think they’re two great businesses. But as we’re fond of saying, we are economic animals. We’re here to benefit the shareholders. We see transactions all the time. We look at all the time.

We look at opportunities all the time. If we felt that there was a real opportunity to capture the value that we see ahead by some type of transaction, whether it be for passenger or for pieces, you know, transforming the company in some way, whether in the public markets or, through other vehicles, we’re open to it. But right now, what we got to do is to kind of focus on this business, get to profitability, which we’ve done and now, like, let’s get back into prudent growth on the passenger side.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: You speak synergies maybe? I think there has been in the past, but the more I guess your other business shifts towards jets, maybe there’s less so on helicopter, I’m not sure.

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: Yes, we get some synergy in the markets where we use helicopters, which is really focused on the New York City area. But as we talked about, the vast majority, high 90% of the flights are on fixed wing aircraft. So it’s helpful. And I think it allows us to offer those rotorcraft flights, which are extremely convenient for New York City hospitals at a much lower price. But the business has expanded dramatically and diversified dramatically geographically.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes. Kind of tying into some prior questions, but how much further margin expansion opportunities do you see happening in passenger, maybe pre eVTOL, really? How much would be volume? I assume you could still drive a little bit of volume, but how much maybe you can still push price a bit?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Yes. I think that we’ve been very pleased with our ability to take in price. And I think it’s gonna be about especially with our new technology being much more dynamic about it, because I think that it was a bit manual in the past. And I think now when we’re really you know, we have so much the data exhausted blade is so strong since it was a digital first company started ten years ago that we now have the data from everything from, you know, weather to TSA numbers to, you know, just historical pricing, pricing that we’ve had and how that’s impacted utilization. So I think we’ll be a lot smarter in terms about pricing.

And then also having prices change not only like when a flight’s put up, but as you get closer to not only get closer to the point of departure, but as we look at utilization on that flight even in the same day. So I think that that optimization still remains. And as I said before, you probably know about, you know, our airport pass, you know, our pass for leisure markets such as the Hamptons. You know, we’ve done the numbers and all those, and those are very highly profitable for us. And I think there are more of those to come and also a lot of corporate deals.

I think that in especially in New York City and Manhattan, as we’re fond of saying kind of New York is kind of tilted down to the right. There’s people are back to work. Hudson Yards is full going $200, you know, a foot. We’re seeing more and more corporates using airport and airport passes as kind of part of getting their employees around.

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: And I would just say those are all great operational drivers that we’re going to push to higher flight profit margin and segment adjusted EBITDA margin in passenger. Additionally to that, we’ve made structural changes that have not yet flown through the full year results. So Canada was loss making on the flight profit line. You’re going to see the full year positive impact of that in 2025. The European restructuring, we pulled cost not just out of the SG and A line but also out of the COGS line.

So you’ll see margins expand both areas as we get the full year benefit of that.

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Yeah. I think there’s not there probably hasn’t been as much of appreciation for when we got into Europe, the drag that was originally versus where we are today. It really has been economically restructured in a positive way, and we’re really pleased with the results so far.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Maybe tying both. I was going to wrap it up more later, but I think it would be helpful to understand how we should think about the margin, not only in near term, right? You talked about the medical being down in the first half. But I’d like to understand for each of the key segments, but maybe also corporate wide, how much more margin expansion do you have? Where should we think about this heading over the next few years?

And I suppose with eVTOL, maybe there’s other opportunities to even drive it further.

Will Hayburn, CFO, Blade: On the medical side, we’ve been clear that our target is to get to the high teens on segment adjusted EBITDA. And we’re going to get there through increased scale and also continuing to grow some of these ancillary products like Ground that operate at a higher than average margin of our legacy book of business there. And I think by kind of achieving our 15% target in this quarter, I think we’ve already demonstrated the achievability of that, and we’re going to continue driving on that very hard. On the passenger side, I think we covered it a bit in your last question, but there’s the structural changes that we’ve made that are going to have some built in margin expansion. And then all the things that Rob just talked about, they’re not a moment in time.

We see a continued ability to take price, be smarter about dynamic pricing and also give people an opportunity to pay more for something that they value. And it could be something they value that doesn’t actually cost us all that much, like flexibility. So we’re going to continue pushing on all of those things. And everything we’ve seen so far is that not only that customers accept it, our customers prefer to pay a little more for those things, and that pushes our profit margins up. So I think we’re really in a great position, and it’s not going to be a binary shift just this year.

There’s continued opportunities to grow that profit line.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes. I want to pause and see if there’s any questions again. Okay. Maybe as we kind of come towards the end, I guess, Rob, I guess the investment thesis has changed a bit since the beginning of the company. But if we look out, what do you think is maybe least understood or misunderstood about the company, maybe, I don’t know, including competitive modes or growth opportunities or margin expansion opportunities?

And are there any key milestones or other things you should leave you want to leave the investors with as part of your closing remarks?

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Sure. Well, I think that for the past year or so, I think that the our number one milestone, short term was reached, which was profitability. We have a great balance sheet. We have a lot of cash that I am confident that we can deploy with high returns for specific tactical acquisitions that will really help boost our business, specifically on the medical side. That being said, I think prudent investments on the passenger side could make sense, albeit that’s probably not an acquisition focus for us right now.

And I think that, in terms of, you know, what’s misunderstood, I think we’re kind of getting our message out there, you know, pretty clear clearly. But, I think we’re probably a bit underestimated in terms of the importance that we have to the transportation market in the key areas that we serve here in The US and in Europe. I think it is gonna be extremely difficult for OEMs to who are focused on manufacturing, who haven’t actually taken hundreds of thousands of people in cities, put them on aircraft, dealt with everything from, you know, people who are physically challenged to people who don’t have IDs to people who have too much luggage. And to do that in the kind of scale and velocity that we do, that’s something that took ten years, and that’s something you really can’t do yourself. So when it’s it’s one thing to kinda build this aircraft.

It’s another thing to actually have the service, the brand, the infrastructure, and the technology to move people rapidly through cities, and I think we got that down. And now for us, it’s just an asset swap. Every other piece of that ecosystem is there. And when you fly, BELAY today from the city to the airport, it takes about five minutes. And when you go into an eVTOL, it’s gonna take you about five minutes.

The difference, quiet, emission free. What does that do besides making it maybe a little quiet in your flight? It’s going to enable cities to say, you know what, I want to open more landing zones. And every two landing zones, it’s its own business. And that’s the exponential growth that we see ahead in that business.

Great.

Bill Peterson, U. S. CleanTech Analyst, JPMorgan: Well, Rob and Will, really appreciate you sharing the insights. Congrats really. I should really start it off with congrats on really successful year. We look forward to following the progress here in 2025 and beyond. Thank you.

Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, Blade: Thanks,

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