HOVR April 14, 2026

New Horizon Aircraft Fiscal Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call - Full‑scale prototype due by year‑end to launch ground tests and early 2027 flight program

Summary

Management doubled down on a near-term engineering sprint: the company expects to complete its full-scale Cavorite X7 prototype by year-end, a milestone they say will lead to ground testing and the start of flight testing in early 2027. Horizon is pitching a hybrid-electric, turbine-backed architecture that avoids dependence on vertiport charging, and management leans heavily on that architecture as the commercial and defense differentiator.

The quarter shows heavier development spending and a lean cash position. Horizon finished the period with about $20 million in cash, raised $25 million year-to-date via ATM, grants and warrant exercises, and the CFO says that represents roughly one to two years of runway at current burn. Management is emphasizing partner contracts with Rampf Group, North Aircraft Industries and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries RJ Aviation Group, an independent KPMG-verified operating-cost study claiming ~$0.97 per available seat mile and a certification/commercial readiness target around 2030. Expect more partner and government funding conversations as the prototype completes, but the company warns it will be patient on dilution while preparing for the next capital step.

Key Takeaways

  • Management reiterated a top near-term goal: complete the full-scale Cavorite X7 prototype by year-end, enabling ground testing and planned flight testing in early 2027.
  • Company positions hybrid-electric, turbine-plus-electric architecture as core differentiation, arguing it delivers range, payload and operational flexibility beyond pure-electric eVTOLs.
  • Hybrid design intended to remove dependence on ground charging and vertiport buildout, because the turbine can recharge systems airborne and after landing.
  • Management is explicitly pursuing full IFR and flight-into-known-icing certification, using anti-icing systems, electrothermal coatings and the nearby ACE Climatic Wind Tunnel for testing.
  • Independent audit firm (KPMG) performed an operating-cost evaluation that Horizon cites to claim about $0.97 cost per available seat mile, and up to 75% lower operating costs versus some all-electric peers and conventional helicopters.
  • Horizon contracted Rampf Group for fuselage composite production and North Aircraft Industries for wing production, marking a move into full-scale production readiness.
  • Horizon announced an engineering collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries RJ Aviation Group focused on flight test instrumentation and specialized certification/engineering support, with potential for deeper engagement.
  • Q3 cash balance roughly $20 million; company has raised $25 million year-to-date at an average price of $2.03 per share via ATM, grants and warrant exercises.
  • Quarterly operating expenses were $7.6 million (up from $3.6 million year-ago); Aircraft Development costs rose to $4.3 million in the quarter, and year-to-date operating costs nearly doubled to $19 million from $10 million a year prior.
  • Cash used in operations was $12 million for the nine months ended February 28; CFO estimates 1 to 2 years of liquidity at current burn and expects cash from operations to remain consistent or modestly increase through demonstrator completion.
  • Management expects increased investor, manufacturing partner and government interest after the full-scale prototype milestone, and plans to prioritize non-dilutive government funding (citing prior INSAT grants, including up to CAD 10.4 million).
  • Company frames itself as an OEM rather than an operator to keep capital intensity lower than many AAM peers and to concentrate capital on aircraft development and certification.
  • Management described potential flight-test approach using two aircraft, one more conventional mass-balanced airframe and one VTOL-configured test article, to parallel high-speed and hover/transition test regimes.
  • Design tweaks have been applied after large-scale prototype testing, for example reducing canard fan redundancy to cut drag and improve speed while retaining claimed safety redundancy; flight controls development is still a critical in-house or partner-led challenge.

Full Transcript

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the New Horizon Aircraft Fiscal Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are present in a listen-only mode. Following management’s prepared remarks, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. For operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and will be available for replay on the company’s website at www.horizonaircraft.com later today. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Chesler. Matt, please go ahead.

Matt Chesler, Investor Relations, New Horizon Aircraft: Thank you operator. Good morning everyone. Joining me today on the call are Horizon Aircraft’s CEO, Brandon Robinson, and the company’s CFO, Brian Merker. Before we get started, I’d like to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements during today’s call. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. For more information about these risks and uncertainties, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31st, 2025, and filed on August 22nd, 2025, as well as the Form 10-Q filed with the SEC today, all with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and under the company’s profile on SEDAR+ in Canada, as well as other documents filed by New Horizon Aircraft and the SEC under the company’s profile on SEDAR+ in Canada from time to time.

Any forward-looking statements we make are based on assumptions as of today. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. Now, I would like to turn over the call to our CEO, Brandon Robinson, for his prepared remarks. Brandon, please go ahead.

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I’ll start off by saying that we believe the advanced air mobility sector continues to grow in a very constructive way. What began as a concept-driven phase just a few short years ago for many companies is now shifting towards practical execution, where real-world performance, certification pathways, and economic viability are becoming the defining factors for long-term success. At Horizon Aircraft, we’ve always taken a pragmatic approach to this market. Our focus remains on building an aircraft that solves real operational challenges. We are building an aircraft for operators that will offer meaningful improvements in cost, performance, reliability, and safety across a number of missions. That laser focus on developing an operational tough, high-performance aircraft continues to guide our progress on the Cavorite X7. A little bit about technical progress and developmental roadmap.

From a developmental standpoint, our primary focus is now on the continued design and production of our full-scale aircraft prototype. Very exciting. Our intentions remain to complete the full-scale aircraft by the end of the year, which is the single most important engineering milestone for the company over the next nine months. This will position us to begin ground testing and ultimately flight testing in early 2027. Our hybrid-electric architecture that we incorporated into our aircraft from the very beginning continues to be a key differentiator. By combining a turbine-based power system with electric propulsion, we have the best of both worlds. We’re able to deliver a level of performance, safety, and operational flexibility that we believe is not achievable at regional distances over 100 mi with pure electric aircraft in this space.

The hybrid-electric core power system, the X7, will have the ability to operate independently of any ground charging infrastructure. No need for any lagging vertiport construction to hold back initial operations. While airborne and after landing, the aircraft will be able to recharge itself, adding to safety. We also plan on pursuing full IFR capabilities, so flight into clouds, and also flight into known icing certification, capabilities that are essential for many commercial and defense applications and unlikely for almost any of the other eVTOL concepts. In addition, a leading independent audit firm has also verified that the Cavorite X7 is expected to deliver up to 75% lower operating costs, measured on a per mile basis versus both conventional helicopters and some advanced air mobility aircraft being produced by our peers, all while offering superior speed, range, safety, and payload capacity. On to partnerships.

In recent months, we’ve made some really meaningful progress in furthering key strategic partnerships. We contracted the production of our fuselage structure to Rampf Group, an international manufacturing company with over 900 employees that specializes in advanced composites. This marks a very significant shift into the production of our full-scale aircraft, something extremely exciting to report. In parallel, we have contracted production of our wings to North Aircraft Industries. Their world-class expertise in precision aerostructures and complex wing structures in particular support both performance optimization and production readiness as we move closer to full-scale assembly later this year. We also recently announced a key collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries RJ Aviation Group, MHI RJ for short, a company that brings decades of experience in aircraft development, certification, and support stemming from its history with the CRJ regional jet program.

This collaboration brings highly specialized engineering support to the Cavorite X7 program, particularly in the area of flight test instrumentation, which will be critical as we move towards our flight test program in early 2027. These strategic collaborations significantly strengthen our technical roadmap and is a very meaningful step forward in developmental capability, technical progress, and sophistication of our program. Of course, as we continue to be actively engaged in discussions with several additional potential strategic partners to join Horizon Aircraft mission and vision, we are encouraged by a significant level of interest with a range of companies that include the best across aerospace and defense and manufacturing sectors. These discussions are ongoing, and we remain disciplined in pursuing opportunities that align with long-term shareholder value. As for our financial position and capital runway, Brian will shortly explain this in more detail.

Our financial performance demonstrates that we remain disciplined and focused on capital efficiency. We entered the third quarter with approximately $20 million in cash, providing us with working capital runway in excess of 12 months, based on our current operating plan. Importantly, our development strategy is intentionally structured to be significantly more capital efficient than many of our peers. By focusing on a hybrid architecture, leveraging strategic partnerships, and by not implementing an air taxi service strategy, so being an OEM versus an operator, we are able to advance the program without a level of capital intensity typically associated with the all-electric eVTOL development in this space.

In addition, with the requirements of the Canadian federal government to increase its spending to defense of up to 5% of GDP, or an increase of approximately CAD 15 billion-CAD 20 billion each year, we continue to pursue non-dilutive sources of funding, similar to the $10.4 million INSAT grants we previously announced. We expect those types of opportunities to remain an important part of our broader funding strategy going forward. We also have very significant government tailwinds that are building. If we take a step back from our near-term objective of building the Cavorite X7 prototype, we are seeing increasingly supportive regulatory and policy developments for the advanced air mobility sector. In Canada, as I just alluded to, the recently announced Defense Industrial Strategy outlines a substantial increase in long-term defense spending, with a clear focus on innovation and next-generation technologies just like ours.

We believe this creates a multi-year tailwind for companies like Horizon Aircraft, particularly given the dual-use nature of our platform across both commercial and defense applications. In the United States, recent developments from the Department of Transportation and the FAA around the advancement of eVTOL integration pilot program represent another important step forward. Government support at this level helps accelerate the path forward towards integration of eVTOL aircraft into national airspace systems and ultimately supports broader adoption across the industry. Taken together, these developments reinforce our view that the regulatory environment is moving in the right direction and that our timing is perfect, very well-aligned with the broader industry tailwinds. With that said, I’d like to now pass it over to our CFO, Brian Merker, to discuss the financials in more detail. Brian, over to you.

Brian Merker, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), New Horizon Aircraft: Great. Thanks, Brandon, and good morning, everyone. On the financial side, we closed the quarter with $20 million in cash, continuing with our healthy liquidity and longer-term working capital availability. We always strive to be patient and careful with our fundraising activity. Using a combination of our at-the-market program, non-dilutive grants, and warrant exercises, we have raised $25 million at an average price of $2.03 per share thus far into the year. This has put us in a position to focus on our engineering progress and the development of important partnerships as we plan for the manufacturing phase of our business. These Q3 financial results reflect our continued investment in aircraft design, build, and plan certification. More specifically, total operating expenditures were $7.6 million for the quarter, up from $3.6 million in the same period last year.

Notably, Admin costs were largely flat, with our spend on Aircraft Development costs up from $0.4 million a year ago to $4.3 million in the current period. Similarly, on a year-to-date basis, operating costs nearly doubled to $19 million from $10 million this time last year. Again, with Admin costs relatively flat while our Aircraft Development costs increased from $1.2 million to $9.6 million. These Aircraft Development costs are directly related to people, components, and tooling connected to building our full-scale aircraft that we expect to complete by the end of 2026. On the liquidity side, cash used in operations totaled $12 million for the nine-month period ending February 28. This was higher as compared to the same period the prior year, driven by our amplified investment in building our full-scale aircraft.

Looking ahead, we’re anticipating our cash from operations to remain consistent or modestly increase as compared to the current Fiscal 2026 quarterly run rates through to the completion of our full-scale demonstrator aircraft. As Brandon noted, during the quarter, we engaged a well-recognized independent audit firm to conduct a comprehensive Cavorite X7 operating cost evaluation. This analysis focused on taking our aircraft performance, notably speed, range, and payload, and apply the cost to operate the machine to arrive at a reliable economic model for future customers. We believe as we begin to target aircraft buyers over the next year, that this evaluation will provide the substantive corroboration customers need to commit to the Cavorite X7.

In particular, the $0.97 cost per available seat mile is materially favorable as compared to our peers in the AAM space, who are publicizing a $3-$5 operating cost per seat mile range, as well as comparable legacy helicopters that have costs in the $4-$7 per seat mile range. As a result, our aircraft is expected to deliver up to 75% lower operating costs versus other all-electric advanced air mobility aircraft being produced by our peers and versus conventional helicopters, all while offering the superior speed, range, and payload capacity that we’ve been talking about. We do expect these significant operating cost efficiencies will resonate with aircraft operators. These are not incremental improvements. They are meaningful product differentiators that we believe will be critical as the industry moves towards commercialization.

Finally, as we look ahead, our focus remains on disciplined execution, advancing our full-scale aircraft flight program, furthering our certification efforts, and preparing our customers for commercial flight ops prior to 2030. With our strong liquidity, proven technology, and outstanding talent, I’m eagerly anticipating these developments over the next several quarters. That concludes my prepared remarks, and now I’ll pass the call back to Brandon.

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Thanks very much, Brian. In closing, we are very encouraged by the progress that we are making. We are advancing towards a clearly defined and highly meaningful milestone, the completion of our full-scale prototype by the end of the year. At the same time, we are expanding our team, deepening our partner ecosystem, and continuing to engage with potential strategic partners that could further accelerate our path forward. More broadly, we believe that the industry is beginning to converge around the realities of what it takes to build a commercially viable aircraft. With safety being one of our top priorities alongside performance, economics, and operational flexibility, we believe our hybrid-electric and fan-in-wing architecture positions us very well on all three fronts. This is truly an exciting time for Horizon Aircraft.

Our team is growing, our momentum is building, and we truly believe that we are focused on executing against the milestones that we believe will create long-term value for our shareholders. That concludes our prepared remarks, and I’d like now to pass the call back to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Operator: Thank you very much, Brandon. We are now opening the floor for questions. If you would like to ask a question, you can press star one on your phone keypad now. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For any participants using speaker equipment, it might be necessary to pick up your handset before you press the keys. Please wait a moment whilst we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is coming from Dick Ryan of Oak Ridge Financial. Dick, your line is live.

Dick Ryan, Analyst, Oak Ridge Financial: Great. Thank you. Congratulations, guys, on the continued progress you’re making. Hey, Brandon, just a question. I mean, you’ve ticked off a couple key collaborations, partnerships. I’m wondering if you could give us just a high level of what should we be expecting next. I mean, what are key collaborations that you need to check off over the next 6 months-9 months as you get ready for early 2027? I mean, are we talking electronics, more in manufacturing, power distribution? Can you give us maybe just a rough roadmap of what we should be expecting?

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Well, I’ll say for those who don’t know, the Canadian advanced aerospace ecosystem is pretty substantial. One of the few countries in the world that has full design, production, certification capability. Companies like Bombardier and Bombardier Defense, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, like we talked about, CAE. There are a lot of really vibrant and significant capabilities up here in Canada. That trickles down into supply chain realities as well. You’re talking a lot about power electronics, et cetera. Those are a lot of supply chain questions. The great thing about 2026 is, through the excellent work of a lot of the other companies, a lot of these technologies are advancing quite well. We get to use some of these advanced technologies and the partnerships that offer these advanced technologies.

We can’t announce anything, of course, but it would be silly if we weren’t talking to the Bombardiers and the Bombardier Defenses and other Mitsubishi, parts of their company, it’s a very large company, to build out capacity for engineering and production, primarily. We have a lot of extremely rich talent inside the company. Like I said, we’re surrounded by an awesome ecosystem that can support all aspects of development, engineering, production, certification.

Dick Ryan, Analyst, Oak Ridge Financial: Great. Thank you for that. You mentioned down the road, one of the key differentiators would be the ability to fly into known icing conditions. When would that testing kind of kick in? What’s the timing of that?

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: This bears emphasis, right? There are only a handful of helicopters, and there won’t be any VTOLs, I don’t think, that will be able to be certified for flight into clouds, let alone flight into known icing. Any sort of open rotor technology is extremely difficult to get certification where ice can build up on the main rotor system and then shed into the other blades. There’s only, like I said, a handful of helicopters in the world that can do this. This makes us very unique. If people can take a look at one of our latest press releases, the INSAT grant for up to $10.4 million takes a look at anti-icing technologies. We had planned from the beginning to incorporate anti-icing and de-icing technologies across the aircraft, the main propeller, the aircraft intake, all of the main wings, and the canards.

From the very beginning, this aircraft is designed really, really tough to be able to fly in IFR conditions, in clouds, and in icing. Now, to test it, we happen to have the ACE Climatic Wind Tunnel next door to us. Think a wind tunnel where you can drop the temperatures down to -40 degrees, add precipitation, see how it sticks to the aircraft. Through our grant, we’re testing all sorts of icephobic coatings, electrothermal coatings on the wings. Of course, with the turbine engine on board, we have bleed air, warm bleed air, to use conventional de-icing that just typical commercial aircraft use now. A lot of different layers, a lot of possibilities, and a great place to test to make this machine really tough.

Dick Ryan, Analyst, Oak Ridge Financial: Great. Good to hear. Thank you.

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Yep. Thanks, Richard.

Operator: Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Josh Sullivan of JonesTrading. Josh, your line is live.

Josh Sullivan, Analyst, JonesTrading: Hey, good morning.

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Hi, Josh.

Josh Sullivan, Analyst, JonesTrading: On flight testing in 2027, can you just walk us through roughly on the schedule, ground testing to flight? When might you start adding additional aircraft, or how long are you looking to test the first aircraft to kind of inform the design improvements on any subsequent aircraft for certification?

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Yeah. I’ve talked about this before. Okay, the ground testing is the first thing you do. You get the aircraft assembled, you start doing the basic ground testing, and then it’ll turn into high-speed taxi testing, bunny hops down the runway. It would make sense for us to have two aircraft. Again, I’ve spoken about this before. We haven’t made any official announcements. Maybe one is a conventional aircraft without all the hardware in the wings, but properly mass-balanced, where we could test it in a very conventional way, while we concurrently test like a VTOL version of the aircraft and doing hover testing and then slowly move towards transition.

You approach the transition phase from both ends of the spectrum, the high-speed spectrum and the low-speed spectrum, and that really doubles up the efficiency of any flight test program. As for the milestones, we haven’t announced exactly what the flight test milestones are, but we have announced that we want to be through flight testing and certification and have aircraft rollout prior to 2030 or in and around 2030. That can allow people to kind of construct a timeline of flight testing in their minds, if that makes any sense.

Josh Sullivan, Analyst, JonesTrading: Sure. Just one on the X7’s projected operating study cost that you guys did. The assumptions on passenger load, range, maintenance, where do you feel you’re most differentiated? Again, the overall cost is fantastic, but on the individual metrics versus other AAM, just where would you highlight?

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Well, essentially, to summarize it comes down to the fact that, okay, against helicopters, we’ll take those first. We’re about 20%-30% cheaper to operate per hour, but in that hour, we go about 1.8-2 times further with our speed as a helicopter in a much more efficient fashion. Those two things multiply together to create a situation where on a per mile basis, so if you’re just moving critical goods and people around the planet, which about half the helicopter fleet does in the world, then that’s very compelling. Like I said, it’s been audited by KPMG. Versus helicopters, it’s pretty simple. The aircraft is much more slick en route, it’s faster, and it has lower operating costs per unit hour. Helicopters are expensive to maintain. Their per hour maintenance costs are pretty significant.

A lot of single point of failure type of stuff, the main rotor system, if anything goes wrong, and it’s going to be the same for eVTOL. I think there’s a lot of optimism with the all-electric folks in terms of their maintenance costs with the complex rotating mechanisms and the concordant maintenance on the rotor systems and the battery costs. Essentially, versus our peers, we simply travel much further in a much more efficient way. The fuel source that we have on board is 40 times more energy-dense, and that translates directly into economics. You add on our efficiency en route and essentially our very low-drag configuration where we’re just flying like a normal aircraft using normal commercial routes in the sky. That’s kind of our secret sauce right there.

Insurance companies love the fact that we fly around 98% of the time just like a normal aircraft that they know how to insure. They see the VTOL portion of the aircraft as just another additional layer of safety over and above what a traditional commercial aircraft might have. On the insurance side, that helps. Again, on the speed and the maintenance side, that really helps. We don’t need any infrastructure, so we can land anywhere. We don’t need to pay these hefty fees at a vertiport when we land to take advantage of their high-power charging infrastructure. Again, our aircraft being hybrid-electric, it can recharge itself. Finally, we have significantly less batteries on board. Now, regardless of what the other companies tell you, these batteries are very expensive in some of their machines. I can’t get into the details.

I know a little bit too much as an ex-military guy with competitive intelligence sort of baked into me. These are very expensive battery packs. They’re going to be changed out more often than people think, and we have significantly less batteries on board. That combined with the simplified structure compared to the rest of the folks and lower maintenance costs overall, it all kind of stacks up together to produce kind of a very compelling cost comparison. That’s where all the numbers kind of come from on a high level. We can take you through under NDA, of course, the detailed KPMG audited reports.

Josh Sullivan, Analyst, JonesTrading: Perfect. Thank you for all the details. Have a good one.

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Okay. Thanks, Josh.

Operator: Thank you very much. Just a reminder, if there will be any more questions, you can still join the queue by pressing star one on your phone keypad now. Our next question is coming from Brian Lantier of Zacks Small Cap Research. Brian, your line is live.

Brian Lantier, Analyst, Zacks Small Cap Research: Great. Thanks. Brandon, I was wondering, you’ve been really active on the conference circuit. I was wondering if you’ve received any particular feedback from industries or operators that has helped shape the redesign that you announced about a month ago.

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Yeah. What we have received from feedback, it’s a great question, Brian, thank you, is that they appreciate our approach. When we talk to operators, even the initially skeptical ones that have fleets of helicopters that are operating, the more they talk to us, the more their heads start to nod and go, "Wow, you guys have really thought this through." My father has been building airplanes since he was 14 years old. I’ve been flying them since I was three years old. We live the operational realities of fixing these aircraft in remote locations, keeping the maintenance, repair, and overhaul costs low, keeping things simple as possible, really designing an airplane that is laser-focused on the operators. The feedback is almost universally positive when they see how it operates and the potential economic advantages.

Again, a mining company I was talking to, they had a fleet of 15 helicopters just moving stuff around the North without infrastructure to land. That’s a very expensive thing to do. Our aircraft could immediately drop their costs very significantly. Oh, by the way, get a mine set up and much quicker because it’s moving around a lot faster than typical helicopters, yeah, in a much more serviceable way. It’s quite compelling when you talk to these operators. Like I said, even the initially skeptical ones, where by the end, the feedback is almost universally positive. Now, pertaining to the OML changes, that is just us making the airplane better. We saw an opportunity through testing on the canards. For example, we are able to lose an entire canard side.

We didn’t need the dual redundancy of having two fans per canard, so we could go down to one and make the aircraft faster, slicker, and more stable. I remind everyone that each one of those fan units has two electric motors in it for redundancy. Should the worst happen and an entire canard fail, it is still able to hover just fine. Its robustness was a little higher than we realized during our flight testing of the large-scale prototype, and so we were able to make the design just a little more efficient. Drop one fan from each wing to make five fans in each wing and make the canard a little more efficient as well. It’s slicker, faster, and just as safe as before.

Brian Lantier, Analyst, Zacks Small Cap Research: Okay, great. I know this is a really recent bit of news, but in light of the Prime Minister’s remarks the other day that the days of 70 cents of every dollar of military spending in Canada coming to the U.S. are over, has that caused any internal conversations at New Horizon about what ways that you could capitalize on that in the future?

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Oh, it’s such a great scenario for us. Again, I say that fully realizing it’s a very complicated world, and I feel bad for the folks that are caught in the mess. We’ve realized in Canada, of course, that we have to focus on our own sovereign defense, and their spending up to 5% means a very significant opportunity. Actually, I flew as a fighter pilot with the Secretary of State right now, who’s trying to figure out how to buy Canadian, procure indigenous capabilities that we’re producing up here. We’re also talking to a lot of very interesting folks on the defense side in the U.S. as well. A lot of tailwinds like we alluded to, and yes, the short answer is yes. This is a fantastic time to be exactly where we are right now.

Brian Lantier, Analyst, Zacks Small Cap Research: Yeah. Okay, great. One quick question for Brian. Were there any one-time expenses in the operating costs, the R&D side, related to some of the startups with either Rampf or North Aircraft?

Brian Merker, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), New Horizon Aircraft: Yeah, I don’t know if I would define them as one-time costs. I think you’re going to see those types of costs, and they certainly grew in the quarter as you’ve seen, or you will see if you haven’t read the Q yet, but those will be ongoing as we look to complete the full-scale aircraft. They’re supporting us, as Brandon was talking about, on the main structure and the wings, flight controls, and that will continue to be the case until the aircraft’s completed.

Brian Lantier, Analyst, Zacks Small Cap Research: Okay. All right, great. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you very much. Well, we have reached the end of our phone line questions. We would now like to turn the call over to Matt Chesler from Investor Relations to answer questions from the investors that were submitted in advance or via the webcast chat feature.

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Thank you very much. Let’s start with a first question around the potential military design for the X7, following on Brian’s most recent question. Is the full-scale prototype being designed with any defense-specific requirements in mind? The answer is absolutely. Matt, sorry, go ahead.

Matt Chesler, Investor Relations, New Horizon Aircraft: No, go ahead, Brandon.

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Yeah. The answer is absolutely. We have a number of advantages for military use. Specifically, I would’ve loved to have this capability in the Air Force when I was flying jets. Often we have missions where we have to get in and out of a place without any sort of runway infrastructure. Think dropping off Special Forces troops or removing a casualty or an injured person or a pilot from beyond enemy lines that has ejected. That just happened, right? Helicopters, relatively speaking to jets that I flew, are very slow, 120, 140 knots max. Having a capability to land vertically but fly much faster and in a much stealthier way than a helicopter beating the air to death as it travels behind enemy lines, it is immediately an aircraft that could be used across a number of missions in the military.

Another advantage is a hybrid-electric aircraft has a certain amount of power generation on board that allows very significant sensor payloads to be powered. We’re talking to a number of different defense prime contractors, and of course, the services themselves about different surveillance options, different payloads that it could support. Yeah. Essentially a helicopter capability that’s twice as fast that has sensor payload support built in, and it’s baked into our DNA. Like I said, I would’ve loved to have this capability. We’re preparing the aircraft for dual use.

Matt Chesler, Investor Relations, New Horizon Aircraft: Next, a question for Brian on capital and cash runway. Nadia first is asking if you could provide some clarity on the current cash runway and whether additional capital will be required before initiating full-scale flight testing in early ’27. Just a question around how we’re approaching future funding while managing potential shareholder dilution.

Brian Merker, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), New Horizon Aircraft: Got it. Okay. Thanks, Nadia, for that question. It’s an important one. I would say with $20 million of cash that we have currently, and I look at the cash we’ve used in operations on a TTM basis, which is about $14 million, we believe we have another one to two years of liquidity on the balance sheet today. We expect as we complete the full-scale aircraft for the next several quarters, much like the few advanced air mobility peers that have achieved that milestone, there’s going to be significantly increased interest from the investment community as well as manufacturing partners and government bodies. I wouldn’t say we’re in any hurry to raise funds right now. Rather, we can be patient.

We’ll certainly continue to bring in non-dilutive funding from our friends in the different government bodies, continue to build rapport with potential partners that may wish to deploy capital to Horizon, and certainly, focus on executing our technical milestones. That’s not to say that we won’t have to eventually raise money, but we have been, and we will continue to be careful about the timing and the terms so as to respect our existing shareholder group. We expect we can get to the next major milestone, which as Brandon has been speaking about, completing that full-scale aircraft, and without urgent fundraising efforts.

Matt Chesler, Investor Relations, New Horizon Aircraft: Thank you. If we could double-click on the milestones, there’s a follow-up question around execution milestones, prior to the achievement of the ability to engage in full-scale flight testing. What does that potentially look like over the balance of the year?

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: The first thing is locking down all the suppliers. We have the majority of that sorted out, which is great. It’s building up test rigs. We’ve already tested a significant amount of the core technology. Full-scale fan units are producing requisite thrust, staying cool, building out wire harnesses, checking the main structures, building out the main structures as we’re doing right now. Yeah, preparing to assemble the aircraft. Building out test rigs, getting the subsystems completed for integration alongside when the fuselage and the wings arrive, then we have something to put in them that has been fully tested and is ready to go to be put in the aircraft and tested in situ in the aircraft.

We’re concurrently working one of the most challenging things for any advanced air mobility company. Building one of these machines is flight controls. We are looking to partner with a very significant group for flight control development, so more to follow on that. Yeah. It all comes together to be able to be assembled and rolled out of the hangar, like you said, in the next nine months or so. Pretty exciting times. Hopefully, that answered the question.

Matt Chesler, Investor Relations, New Horizon Aircraft: Hope so too. We have a question from Maxim Riley, who is asking if we could quantify the scope of our partnership with MHIRJ. Is this a limited engineering engagement or part of a longer-term certification and flight testing strategy?

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Well, I have to be careful what I say here. I would encourage everyone to take a look at the Mitsubishi Corporation writ large. It is a multinational company with very significant capabilities across a number of commercial and defense applications. In Canada, MHIRJ, again, has full clean-sheet design, production, certification, engineering capability. That’s just alone, that one small piece of Mitsubishi is quite exciting. MHICA is another very interesting part of the company that has production capability, has facilities that are attractive as well in the Greater Toronto Area. Writ large, Mitsubishi has capital arms. They’re interested in investment across a number of different technologies, and they have the pockets to be able to do so. Right now it is essentially an engineering and expertise partnership. Of course, there’s potential there for a lot more.

Matt Chesler, Investor Relations, New Horizon Aircraft: Okay. That’s great. With that, Brandon, I think I’m going to turn the call back over to you right now for some concluding remarks. I did want to say to all of our shareholders, thank you very much for submitting in your questions. If we didn’t get to them on today’s call, let’s follow up offline. Thank you.

Brandon Robinson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), New Horizon Aircraft: Okay. Yeah. Thanks, Matt. We really appreciate everyone, so thanks for attending. As always, we appreciate your interest and support, and we really do look forward to updating you on our progress in the exciting quarters ahead of us. Thanks, all.

Operator: Thank you very much. This does conclude today’s conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.