XTI Aerospace Full Year 2025 Earnings Call - Drone Nerds now the engine as XTI pivots to domestic drone manufacturing and defense bids

Moderator/Host, XTI Aerospace: Good afternoon, and welcome to the XTI Aerospace full year 2025 earnings call. Joining us today from XTI Aerospace are Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer, and Brooke Turk, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, please note that certain statements made during today’s call may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties can be found in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements made today speak only as of today, and the company undertakes no obligation to update them except as required by law. This morning, the company posted its earnings news release, slide presentation, and prepared remarks to the investor relations section of its website.

Today’s session will be conducted as a live video earnings call. Scott Pomeroy and Brooke Turk will be responding to questions from participants. The discussion today will focus on full year 2025 results, and the company will not be providing or discussing fourth quarter results separately. Additional information may be referenced from the materials available on the company’s investor relations website. I would now like to turn the call over to Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. Mr. Pomeroy, you may begin.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: Great. Well, thank you. On behalf of the board of directors and the management team, I want to extend my appreciation for your joining the call here today with us at XTI. As the moderator noted, earlier today we filed the 10-K. We issued an earnings release. We filed our script as an 8-K. We also posted the investor deck on the website. By the way, all those materials can be found on the website. That’s a lot of information, and obviously this is a different approach for us. We intend to maximize information that’s both compliant and clear for you as investors. Our objective here is not to waste your time simply reading to you something that you are perfectly capable of reading through yourself, thus we filed the script in advance.

We really want to ensure that our time is spent talking with you, not at you. The objective here is to maximize the time that we have to entertain your questions, what’s on your mind, and try to maximize the amount of information that we convey during the short period of time we have together. Obviously, we’ve been very busy, as the information would suggest that’s out there over the past five months since the closing of Drone Nerds. We have fully integrated the company. We’ve established new objectives, targets, strategies to drive growth into a business that’s got an 8+ year history of growth and profitability. We exited one of our divisions, and we established a clear and bold new vision for the overall company as we seek to take full advantage of one of the most significant market opportunities in modern aerospace.

We look forward to entertaining your questions and hearing what’s on your mind. With that, I’ll turn it back over to the moderator, who will have a few instructions to provide, and then we’ll open it up for you to extend to us your questions.

Moderator/Host, XTI Aerospace: At this time, we will open the floor for questions. To ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn, you will receive a message on your screen from the host allowing you to talk, and then you will hear your name called. Please accept, unmute your audio, and ask your question. We will wait one moment to allow the queue to form. Our first question will come from Matthew Galinko with Maxim Group. Please unmute your audio and ask your question.

Matthew Galinko, Analyst, Maxim Group: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Just confirm you can hear me.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: We can. Yes. Thanks, Matt.

Matthew Galinko, Analyst, Maxim Group: Perfect. Well, Scott, Brooke, thanks for taking my question. Maybe could you walk us through how you’re navigating the DJI FCC potential disruption? Are your customers prepared, and how is your engagement with them on preparing for that?

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: Yeah. Thanks, Matt. Good question. Obviously, as you know, we’re under a ban from the administration under a prospective perspective. In other words, the ban that’s currently in place is for future SKUs, future models of foreign drones. In particular, DJI and Autel that are on the list. So that’s intended to provide for a ramp of compliance on the part of the customers, those like us that are in the distribution. We find a mixed bag of adoption, frankly. We’re seeing that some of the governmental agencies are taking more of an aggressive stance and beginning to make the migration and move sooner. Then we have many who are looking at this as a slower adoption, that it’ll take a few years to take effect as some of the new models that come out are no longer FCC certified.

From a customer standpoint, you see a different kind of reaction depending on who they are and what sector they’re in. Certainly one of the things that you’re seeing from our strategic statements that we’ve made about what we’re looking at in getting more into the manufacturing. One of the objectives there is to mitigate this potential risk. We don’t see it as a flash cut. We don’t see it as something that’s going to take place overnight, that we’re going to have time to address that sunsetting. We also don’t want to rely on that because we don’t have control over those regulatory pronouncements. We’re preparing to fill that gap. I’d also point out that as the largest distributor in the U.S., we’ve got a multitude of brands that we represent.

To the extent that our customers begin to sunset their dependence on or their willingness to use DJI, we are replacing that with other models that are manufactured and produced in other places, including the U.S. There’s still a lot of foreign manufacturing that we’re having to rely on and make sure that they’re Blue UAS compliant, NDAA compliant. We’re also seeing our customers rely on us more heavily, to discern that regulatory labyrinth that we find ourselves in to ensure that what they’re doing is going to be NDAA compliant both now and in the future. That enhances our relationship with our customers or the necessity of our involvement with them as well. In total, while we see it as disruptive, we don’t see it as traumatic. It’s something that we have to address.

We think we’ve got time to address it, but we’re looking at this under a multitude of facets that we’re addressing.

Matthew Galinko, Analyst, Maxim Group: Thank you.

Moderator/Host, XTI Aerospace: Our next question comes from Michael Molnar with MiG Advisors. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Hi, Brooke and Scott.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: Hi, Michael.

Moderator/Host, XTI Aerospace: Michael.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Good afternoon. Thanks for doing this, and thanks for putting out your voluminous filing this morning. That had to be heroic. Whoever pulled that off, I have to say, was heroic and did it in a timely fashion. That’s impressive. Scott, is there any remnant of the engineering and development and R&D capabilities that came with the vertical takeoff and landing efforts, the internal combustion efforts, that is relevant for you going forward? I think the way I see the business is it’s disproportionately Drone Nerds, which is a nice business, and you got it at a nice price at a good time, and you got UMAC on board, which is great. Alan’s terrific. I’m just curious, are there other components here? Maybe some of the legacy R&D and engineering abilities are relevant in future product development efforts. How might the revenue composition look by year-end?

Is it just disproportionately Drone Nerds, or are there other sources that might evolve?

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: Yeah, good question, Michael. First and foremost, the simple answer is yes, right? We looked at that as we made the determination to pause the VTOL business. As we pointed out in our filings, it’s really a capital allocation or prioritization issue for us when you look at the development of the VTOL, which is a long-dated asset juxtaposed against the market that really is more short-term in nature in terms of capital raising. We were able to take, though, some of the capabilities. Frankly, any kind of an aircraft, vertical takeoff and landing kind of an aircraft, and I’d include drones among that mix, you’re really looking for three things. You need engineering, you need what the industry calls touch labor, which is really the ability to take your engineering and turn it into a product that you can test fly, and then flight control system capabilities.

When we looked at the potential repurposing and then filling in some of the needs that we had, we looked at those three areas, engineering, touch labor, and flight control systems. You see in our filings, as we’ve talked about what we refer to as our ADS or Autonomous Defense Systems division, formerly the XTI Aircraft, we’ve retained those skills, and we are currently bidding and proposing on numerous different government programs that are dealing with autonomous flight. Historically, the TriFan was a vertical takeoff and landing. It was just a manned aircraft. We probably could not have picked a more difficult aircraft to go build initially, a manned version of a drone, in essence. What we’ve really, in essence, done is rolled that back and said the current future is in autonomous flight.

We need to ensure we have that capability to ever make the VTOL truly viable in the ecosystem out there. Our focus is on drone technology, drone capability, drone manufacturing, and obviously the core business we have is a distribution business. That is beginning to move into governmental or military focus as well, but it’s historically planted its flag very squarely in the commercial and enterprise market. Yes, we have retained that capability. We’ve already put that to good use as we’re bidding and proposing. That bid and proposal has us looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of up to $150 million, roughly, of contract value with over $1.5 billion of production value, should all those be won. Now, we don’t anticipate winning all those by any stretch, but we are relevant in those contracts.

As you think about future revenues, I would think about both the distribution revenue, contract revenue, manufacturing revenue in the future, in the not too distant future for us.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Okay. Scott, just repeat so that it’s command and control, or how would you describe those capabilities that you just referenced? Like what, navigation?

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: With regard to the team, yeah, well, it’s basically the ability to design, produce and manufacture at scale. Productize your manufacturing, if you will.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Okay.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: The skill set that our leadership has, and I think we’ve highlighted Steve Zaurabian in particular, who leads that group, comes out of Boeing Phantom Works. He’s had a long stint at Piasecki doing just exactly what he’s doing for us now, which is government-related work.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Okay

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: Around aircraft. Where focus is on the autonomous drone flight and programs that the government’s currently looking at. By the way, we’re much more facile and flexible. What you’re starting to see.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Right

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: even in the drone market, whether it’s Anduril, Shield AI, they’re starting to become the industrial military complex in their own right. Having somebody who’s more conversant in, more flexible with, more capable in the area of your Group 3, 4 and 5 drones is something that the military relishes.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Okay. Does counter drone fall broadly into that realm?

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s certainly an area of focus.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Okay

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: for the military.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: I think.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: As does your Group 1 and Group 2.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Okay.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: We’re seeing different agencies, departments within DoD and otherwise starting to look at Group 1 and Group 2 because we’re still in the Group 3 through Group 5. It would be a fair accusation to say we’re still killing gnats with bazookas. While we’re being taught in theater, like Ukraine and Iran and other, Israel, that you can do some serious damage with a $30,000 drone.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Yeah.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: The military’s trying to figure some of that out.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Is the $160 million guide for calendar 2025, if I have that right, how does that break down Drone Nerds versus other?

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: We haven’t specifically broken it down.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Okay.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: It does incorporate all of our revenue.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Right

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: that we anticipate for this year. You probably could do as good a job just on the back of a napkin given our current base of $121 million that we reported for last year, $41 million for the quarter, roughly. It’s a formidable business, Drone Nerds is.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Yeah. Okay. Yep, for sure. Okay, that’s great. Well, it’s nice to see you both. Brooke, thanks for all your help in keeping us up to speed. Thank you for your time, and congratulations on your progress and happy to be a shareholder.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: Great. Thanks, Mike.

Michael Molnar, Analyst, MiG Advisors: Thank you.

Moderator/Host, XTI Aerospace: Our next question comes from Matthew Galinko with Maxim Group once again. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Matthew Galinko, Analyst, Maxim Group: Hello again. Couple of follow-ups. First being maybe how your capital allocation philosophy has evolved with kind of the new operating structure and objectives for the business. You do touch on a little bit of potential for M&A in the press release. So I’m curious where things kind of shake out and whether you expect to be acquisitive under any of the segments in the next year or two. I have a follow-up after that.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: Yeah. Thanks, Matt. Again, simple answer would be yes, we do expect to be acquisitive. Obviously, there are constraints on that. Our market cap is what it is. We don’t have some of the cash arsenals that some of our peer groups have, that have taken advantage of some of the market conditions out there. But we do, and we have signaled that capital needs for potential acquisitions is something that we will be considering. We have to be smart about it. We’ll be looking for opportunities. We think we did a very, very good job of buying Drone Nerds right. We think that’s one of our areas from the senior leadership team of the company. It doesn’t take you much digging to figure out that this is a team that comes from a legacy and heritage of M&A.

It means we understand how to buy right, we understand how to integrate, we understand how to derive value out of an M&A strategy. We will absolutely be looking at that. The industry is consolidating. To the extent you’re not a consolidator, you’re a consolidatee in this market and environment, likely. We believe we’ve got the makings of being a successful consolidator as we take the advantages that we have. We occupy a space that very few others really can boast, which is a clear understanding of the market. We know what the demand signals are out there, and we understand who’s buying, what they’re buying, why they’re buying, what they’re buying. It makes us an ideal candidate for really moving laterally both into manufacturing and government applications.

We’re confident that we’ll be active in that area, but you can expect us to be as disciplined and as smart as we were on the Drone Nerds acquisition.

Matthew Galinko, Analyst, Maxim Group: Thanks. On the revenue mix, can we kind of expect a similar shift in 2026 as we had in the prior year? In other words, enterprise and government grow faster, distribution shrinks? Do you think it’ll be a relatively steady mix compared to the prior year?

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: I think we’ll start to see growth in government. I think you’re also going to see continued growth in enterprise. If you take a look at the chart that we provided in the deck where we showed some of the mix shifting, what really is happening there is we’re moving more and more to direct interface with customers. The objective of Drone Nerds itself is to become a highly valued value add reseller as we look to consume more share of wallet. We look to have a stickier relationship directly with our customers that are more enterprise and commercial related and government related. Historically, the company was built on a high volume of retail. They have systematically moved themselves out of that for margin considerations.

As we moderate the mix, as we diminish our reliance on some of the Chinese products, as we expand share of wallet, my expectation is that you’ll see some margin expansion.

Matthew Galinko, Analyst, Maxim Group: Great. Thank you.

Moderator/Host, XTI Aerospace: We received a written question that asks, what is the core driver of XTI’s business today? As a reminder, if you’d like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button, which can be found at the black bar at the bottom of your screen.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: Yeah. I’d probably amplify a few of the points in answering that question with some of the points I’ve already made. Really, our XTI Drones, which is represented by Drone Nerds today, is really the engine of the company. As we’ve noted, we generated over $121 million in 2025 pro forma revenue and positive cash flow. It’s a scaled commercial platform, serving enterprise and increasingly defense customers. That profitability allows us to fund some of our operations. It allows us to move with some investment into some of the other areas of our business, as I’ve highlighted. We view this as a flywheel, with our anchor in the core driver of the business, which is in fact our distribution. It informs us. Data is incredibly important.

As I mentioned earlier, we understand the demand signals, and that’s a consequence of the data that we derive by serving over 14,000 customers, tens of thousands of units that we sell each year. We derive a tremendous amount of information about what’s driving demand out there. That data feeds the other elements of our strategy around government development, around our manufacturing aspirations. We think we’re well-positioned because of our knowledge and understanding of the industry, to be one of the more efficient operators, as we seek to be a gap filler, and assist in gap filling what’s clearly a shortcoming in the United States today, which is drone manufacturing capability.

Moderator/Host, XTI Aerospace: Our last question is also a written question. How is XTI positioned in the defense and autonomous systems market?

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: As I mentioned earlier, our ADS or Autonomous Defense Systems was born out of our legacy roots of XTI Aircraft. We brought over the capability, and intentionally so, in the area of engineering and touch labor and in flight control systems, which are all necessary to be able to design, develop, produce aircraft in the Group 3-Group 5 space in government drone production. As a consequence of that capability, we find ourselves now with the opportunity to be bidding and proposing on nearly $150 million of contract value that has $1.5 billion in production value. I’ll reiterate again that we don’t expect to win all those, but we think we’re a relevant and positive entrant into that process. We think that we are going to have success in that area. We aren’t necessarily forecasting or projecting exactly what that’ll be, but we do anticipate some success.

In addition to some of the work that we’re bidding directly with some of the government agencies such as the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, SOCOM, to name a few. We’re also looking to bid with primes who are further bidding into some of the government contracts. We’ve got an abundance of opportunity. We’re evaluating that. We think it gives us line of sight to be able to bring forward, ultimately, NDAA-compliant domestic production. We’ll continue pursuing that, and you’ll hear from us as we progress our successes in that area. Certainly where we fall short and what our learnings are as we go through that process, but we think we’re well-positioned.

Moderator/Host, XTI Aerospace: There are no more questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Pomeroy for any closing remarks.

Scott Pomeroy, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, XTI Aerospace: Excellent. Well, thank you very much, and again, appreciate the participation and the questions. At the risk of being repetitive, I suppose, I would leave you with a handful of thoughts. The thing that we would want you to remember. Obviously, we have a strong foundation. We secured an asset with Drone Nerds that constitutes the baseline for us, and the foundation upon which we’re building the rest of our strategy. It’s a scaled commercial platform. It’s our engine. We’re performing. We’re delivering over $120 million of revenue at over 20% gross margins. Strong EBITDA out of that. We’re looking to expand share of wallet, expanding customers, moving closer to the customer as we increase our value. We’ve got opportunity to expand both geographically and vertically as we go deeper with that in the area of M&A.

It really provides the basis of everything else, which is embodied in the data. We’ve launched our advanced technology and manufacturing. It’s powered literally by our understanding of the demand signals from our distribution platform. We won’t be product-biased as we build out capability. We will be relying on those demand signals to determine what we produce and for whom. We’re targeting NDAA-compliant, domestically manufactured hardware that’s purpose-built for enterprise and defense procurement. Ultimately, it’s led by an individual, Dr. Williams, who we highlight in all of our materials. You can see his credentials. This is an individual that has studied, understands, and is capable in the area of manufacturing. We got a long ways to go in this country to make up the ground against some of our foreign competitors.

In the area of Autonomous Defense Systems, we determined that we had a need to pause the TriFan. We made that decision. To reiterate, we are currently not spending money against that program. That has been reappropriated, and we’ve put ourselves in a position by keeping engineering, touch labor, and flight control capabilities that we now have a foundational bid to propose, and ultimately produce opportunities with the military. I listed before some of the departments that we’re bidding with, that we expect some success with, and the magnitude of the contract and production value that that represents. Bottom line is what we’ve established strategically as our flywheel is working. Ultimately, distribution drives customer adoption and data at scale. That data gives us an understanding of those demand signals that enhances our manufacturing effectiveness and efficiency.

Those capabilities in manufacturing enhance our credibility and the success that we expect to see in the productization for the military. Ultimately, all of that feeds success in the military, feeds civilian and commercial product placement and adoption. When taken together, it all will drive growth at the top line, margin expansion, and strategic value creation over time. We’re encouraged by where we are. It’s only been five months since we closed. As I opened some of my comments with, we’ve been extremely busy putting all of these pieces in place and together. We’re moving at a rapid pace. We’re thankful for the support and the interest in the company, and we look forward to further conversation and bringing you further information in the not-too-distant future.

Moderator/Host, XTI Aerospace: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect.