Surf Air Mobility Inc. (NYSE:SRFM) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ido Gruberger: Hello everyone. The only thing I would add is the initial STC will be applied even to new aircraft as they’re rolling off the line. If you have a customer that’s bought from Textron directly a one powered Caravan EX that SEC will be initially applied after the aircraft has been constructed. So it would’ve been rolling off the line as a Caravan EX rolling into a hangar next door and having the STC apply to it. That’s the initial state. The next state of that. And part of what we’re doing is in our relationship with Textron and the coordination of the STC development with Textron as we’re holding hands with them so that this phase is short as possible, but that next phase will be them ingesting our STC into the TC and making it what was called in the industry aligned fit.

So you apply the STC as if it were part of the TC, and that could happen as early as six months after we have the STC and that really depends on how good a job we do at the, at the coordination of that.

Stan Little: And that would be a Textron decision and a Textron issue, not internal to Surf Air, just to clarify. Did that answer your question, Ben or did you have anything else?

Ben Johnson: That’s great.

Operator: Your next question comes from David Vernon with Bernstein.

David Vernon : Couple questions for you. First, is there a comp for the $29 million in 1Q revenue that you expect? And is there a way to think about whether the top line in ‘24 is growth rate anyway, is better or worse than the 12% you realized on an adjusted basis in ‘23?

Stan Little : Let me hand that over to our new CFO Oliver and he can opine on both of those. Oliver?

Oliver Reeves : So you didn’t come in very well, would you just mind repeating the question?

David Vernon : Absolutely. The $29 million in revenue you’re expecting for 1Q, is there a comp for that number? Like what’s the growth rate on a year-over-year basis for the 1Q sort of like for like. And I’m just trying to get a sense for whether you think ‘24 is setting up to be better or worse than the 12% adjusted revenue growth rate you realized in 2023?

Oliver Reeves : To answer your first question, our guidance does imply some growth top line. I don’t think we’ve particularly guided to the number but somewhat similar to what you saw for the full year. And with regard to your second question, we haven’t really — I think, what I would do is I would invite you to our Analyst Day where we’ll be far more prepared to answer that question for you. We have a lot to offer there and I think that that would be a good use of time

Stan Little : We can get back to you David on the issue of the comp question, let us get back to you on that one.As you can imagine, Oliver wasn’t here this time last year and is just getting settled in. We will get back. Sorry to interrupt you. What’s your follow-up?

David Vernon : We look the comps with the merger and everything, it’s foggy. So I’m just trying to get a sense for the exit versus entry rate rates of growth. So, second question would be around, you mentioned in your prepared remarks that some of the work you’re doing on the software side is actually going to become commercializable before you are getting certification for the electric powertrains. Can you talk a little bit about what you might be able to do to further sort of stimulate the top line outside of just traditional route expansion on the software side and whether that can be meaningful ahead of electrification?

Stan Little : Absolutely. I was talking about it this morning at our Insurance Underwriters Summit here in Palm Beach. We’re always looking for a way to increase revenue without burning a single gallon of jet fuel. And because we’re an electrification company, someday we’re going to make most of our revenue by not burning a single gallon of jet fuel. But in the meantime, it’s from these ancillary sources. And one of the ones I’m most excited about is the software package. So, right now, we are actually beta testing on the southern airway side, on the operational side, the crew scheduling AI unit. And it’s really remarkable what we can do right now with AI. The AI scans emails and can detect when, if it detects a sick call on an email, it’s already looking for a replacement crew before a human being has even realized that a sick call has occurred.

Tons of things like that when you, especially when you tie in the maintenance side of it and the regulatory side of it that we’re going to really be able to take the human element and the human error rate out of this. And I think that’s something that we’re going to be able to market to other airlines with a recurring revenue component every single month. They’re paying for the license for this software. There’s also the distribution element that comes with it. I was speaking at a conference down in Panama City, Panama for operators in the Americas three or four weeks ago. And I talked to several small operators that are looking for the ability to get their tickets distributed outside of just their own website. So they how can you get us on Kayak and Google Flights and Expedia and can you potentially get us, if we’re going to do a connection with one of your airline partners, can you get us onto their website?