NextNav Inc. (NN) Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the NextNav Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Jared Pollack. Jared, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to NextNav's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Participating on today's call are Mariam Sorond, NextNav's Chief Executive Officer; and Tim Gray, NextNav's Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call will include certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of the words may, anticipate, believe, expect, intend, should, could and similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements, which may relate to NextNav's forecast of future results, future prospects, developments, business strategies are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions, many of which are outside NextNav's control and could cause actual results to differ. In particular, such forward-looking statements include the achievement of certain FCC-related milestones and FCC approvals; NextNav's projections, plans, objectives and expectations; and NextNav's future business strategies and competitive position. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs as well as a number of assumptions concerning future events. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made, and NextNav undertakes no commitment to update or revise the forward-looking statements, except as required by law. For additional information regarding risks and uncertainties, please refer to the risk factors and other disclosures contained in the company's filings with the SEC. Following prepared remarks, the company will host an operator-led question-and-answer session. In addition, a replay of our discussion will be posted to the company's Investor Relations website. I'd now like to turn the call over to Ms. Sorond. Please go ahead, Mariam.

Thank you, Jared. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today. Since our last earnings call, we have strengthened our position across every dimension of our business from balance sheet and strategic partnerships to our regulatory engagement and technical validation. Financially, we took decisive actions that transformed our balance sheet and increased available liquidity to approximately $300 million. This enhanced financial position provides NextNav with substantial resources and flexibility to execute our strategy from a position of considerable financial strength. Tim will provide more details shortly. Operationally, I'd like to highlight our recently announced partnership with Safran Electronics & Defense, an important milestone that enables NextNav to demonstrate the potential of our terrestrial 5G-powered 3D PNT solution in real-world operating environments and validate its role within future resilient PNT ecosystems. Taken together, we believe these and other recent accomplishments leave NextNav stronger and exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on our next phase of growth. Turning now to our process with the FCC. We have continued to make meaningful progress and remain encouraged by the positive momentum. That momentum continues with the recent and significant development. Yesterday, SpaceX filed an ex-parte letter in our proceeding, urging the FCC to encourage fast investments to put scarce low- and mid-band spectrum to use for terrestrial, direct device and IoT services, expressly calling out NextNav's 900-megahertz proposal. In the filing, SpaceX cited the ongoing interest in new spectrum bands to serve Americans in innovative ways. We view this as meaningful validation of the ongoing need for additional low-band spectrum from a key voice in the industry. The filing from SpaceX reinforces both the urgency of putting scarce low-band spectrum to productive use and industry recognition of the value these spectrum resources can unlock. I'll now step back and provide an update on the broader process. As we have discussed previously, the FCC has formally submitted a draft notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM, focused on promoting the development of PNT technologies and solutions for an interagency review process, including review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs or OIRA. We believe this represents a critical step that underscores the FCC's focus on addressing the national security urgency of identifying resilient backups and complements to GPS. Moreover, in early July, Chairman Carr released the FCC's fiscal year 2026 to 2030 strategic plan, which included spurring development of the new PNT technologies as an alternative to GPS to ensure redundancy against GPS outages and reduce vulnerabilities. As we have mentioned previously, while OIRA reviews are relatively new for FCC rulemaking, review across executive branch agencies has been a long-standing process, and timing remains subject to such ongoing reviews. These processes are designed to incorporate input from all stakeholders, and we continue to support that work through regular engagement with the FCC and various federal agencies. As is typical in proceedings of this significance, a range of questions has been raised, particularly by unlicensed users of the band. Our team has been working closely with the relevant agencies to provide technically sound education, ensuring concerns are evaluated thoroughly and transparently. As a result of these efforts, we believe our team has made meaningful progress across multiple departments to support the FCC's process. Beginning with the FCC's notice of inquiry in March 2025, we have seen a depth and breadth of stakeholder responses to our proposal that is more typical of the period following the issuance of an NPRM. As a result, NextNav has been addressing matters at an earlier stage, which we believe has made this proceeding more mature at this stage than comparable proceedings. This dynamic has in part facilitated ongoing engagement with freight railroads, tolling industry stakeholders and utilities, making good progress towards coexistence planning to develop a practical path forward for deployment that aligns with industry stakeholders' priorities. We believe this approach has been constructive as introducing later-stage considerations into the record earlier may help streamline a post-NPRM process and support a more efficient path towards report and order. At the same time, we continue to see meaningful support from key stakeholders. In addition to our long history and continued constructive engagement with various federal agencies, we are continuing to mobilize third-party supporters, including leaders from the public safety community. Such support was reflected in a letter submitted by the International Association of Firefighters, or IAFF, to Congress and the FCC in advance of the June 2026 hearing on PNT by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications & Technology. The letter emphasized the urgent need for more accurate, reliable and resilient location tracking and positioning technologies to help protect firefighters, improve emergency response capabilities and ensure first responders have the tools necessary to safely carry out their missions. The hearing underscored strong bipartisan agreement on 2 key points: first, the need for a resilient complementary PNT system to strengthen America's critical infrastructure; and second, the FCC's role as the expert agency and ultimate decision-maker on spectrum matters. The hearing provided a valuable opportunity to educate various lawmakers on GPS vulnerabilities and the importance of a system-of-systems approach to PNT. Notably, NextNav was one of only a handful of recognized experts participating. Additionally, we shared our views with the FCC on the draft unlicensed direct-to-device or D2D NPRM proposal and continue to believe in the inherent value of lower 900-megahertz spectrum for D2D services. While the FCC's draft NPRM proposed changes that would permit unlicensed earth-to-space transmissions in the lower 900-megahertz band, that band was ultimately not included for consideration in the FCC's final NPRM. I will now turn to operational progress where we continue to build meaningful momentum. First, as I highlighted at the start, we recently announced an agreement with Safran Electronics & Defense, an important milestone in evaluating the role of terrestrial 5G-powered 3D PNT within future resilient PNT ecosystems. The collaboration will integrate and demonstrate interoperability between NextNav's terrestrial 5G PNT network and Safran's navigation and timing receivers, providing an opportunity to validate the performance of our technology in real-world operating environments and assess its contribution to the resilience and continuity requirements of mission-critical applications. This partnership paves the way for NextNav and Safran to deliver solutions to the urgent and growing need for resilient PNT in defense, UAV, aviation, energy and other critical infrastructure markets. Next, we continue to develop wide-area sensing capabilities for counter-UAS detection. Through our Santa Clara pilot network and growing ecosystem of integrated sensing and communications partners, we are advancing such solutions. Today, we're very pleased to announce Tiami Networks as a sensing ecosystem partner supporting the development of 900-megahertz 5G PRS-based counter-UAS detection solutions for homeland security and critical infrastructure applications. We also entered into a new partnership that expands the delivery of our Z-axis technology through an innovative device-based model. This agreement provides important commercial validation of our technology by bringing NextNav's Z-axis software and reference data directly on to a Tier 1 partner's devices for 911 vertical location services. Beyond adding a new customer, it highlights the versatility of our platform, advances our device-based strategy and creates a pathway for future 3D PNT offerings and incremental revenue opportunities over time. Additionally, we achieved a significant technology milestone during the quarter that underscores the growing importance of PNT in the AI era. We demonstrated approximately 20 nanoseconds of timing accuracy over our operational 5G PNT network in real-world outdoor, indoor and GPS-denied environments. As AI infrastructure scales, precise and resilient timing becomes increasingly critical, making PNT a foundational enabler of AI data centers and our other mission-critical systems. Our results significantly exceed critical infrastructure requirements and further validate the commercial readiness of our terrestrial 5G-powered 3D PNT platform for applications spanning AI, utilities, telecommunications, public safety and national security. We also strengthened our position in the emerging drone ecosystem by joining GSMA and other industry leaders in an industry-first initiative to help shape the future of safe scalable drone operations. This collaboration highlights the growing recognition that resilient network-based PNT capabilities will be essential to enabling trusted low-altitude aviation and reinforces the potential role of NextNav's 5G-powered 3D PNT platform in supporting the next generation of commercial and public sector drone applications. We believe these operational developments reflect steady disciplined progress across the business and further validate the strategic foundation of our solution. As it relates to our process with the FCC, the engineering case for a viable GPS backup and complement is well supported by our technical studies. We are confident in our position as a one of one within a system of systems requiring capabilities that only NextNav can provide a unique combination of wide-scale positioning, timing and 3D geolocation services, which are commercially viable and we believe can be made available during the current administration with swift action from the FCC. Moreover, our solution is future-proof and does not require taxpayer funding. Concurrently, we remain in active dialogue with potential strategic partners across not only wireless carriers but also satellite operators, big tech, among others, to help realize our strategic goal of enabling a 5G-based backup and complemented GPS. From our perspective, what was already a constructive commercial environment has only improved as interest continues to expand for access to low-band spectrum. In sum, our conviction remains unchanged. We are confident that we will resolve the remaining technical and policy questions within the time-tested FCC and inter-agency decision-making processes as we continue to engage constructively with both supporters and our opponents. Our confidence is based in part on the knowledge that the FCC is historically renowned for getting the process right. With that, I will turn things over to Tim for a review of our financials. Tim?

Thank you, Mariam, and good afternoon, everyone. Our second quarter was absolutely transformational financially. We've gone debt-free, eliminated our public SPAC warrants and increased our available liquidity to roughly $300 million, comprised of approximately $230 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities as of June 30, 2026, plus $70 million of warrant exercise proceeds collected on July 1, 2026. This significantly strengthens our balance sheet and provides us with the flexibility and resources to execute our strategy from a much stronger position. Let me give you a few details on the warrant and debt actions that we took in the quarter. We converted all of our debt to 15.2 million shares as all of our debt holders converted to shares instead of receiving cash for their positions. I believe this is a sign of confidence from our shareholders. On our public SPAC warrants, holders exercised 14.8 million warrants for shares delivering nearly $170 million to NextNav by July 1. Lastly, for our second quarter, a reminder that the gains or losses related to our outstanding private warrants and derivative liability fluctuate based on movements in our stock price. During the second quarter, we recognized a loss of approximately $32 million associated with the change in fair value of the derivative and warrants liability. This noncash loss was partially offset by the company's gain on debt extinguishment of roughly $21 million for the quarter, resulting in a net loss of approximately $33.8 million. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Mike Crawford with B. Riley Securities.

I was hoping you could dig a little bit more deeply into this comment made public today in the PNT proceeding for SpaceX, where it's great to see them saying that they want "mobile broadband operations" consistent with NextNav's 900-megahertz proposal, but there's also this Attachment A with spectrum deployment commitments regarding quality of service and uplink user throughput, spectral efficiency. Can you just walk us through that spectrum deployment commitment's aspect of Attachment A and how that relates to NextNav?

Thank you, Mike, for the question. First of all, let me just reiterate, we are very excited to see their involvement in this proceeding. They're validating the demand for low-band spectrum and in a market where the supply is very limited. We've always said we plan to partner on this and we find this as a very great involvement. They did ask for a rulemaking designed to put spectrum with flexible use spectrum allocations to support a range of terrestrial services and D2D operations. They are also putting in the details as they want this to be supported in the configurations that they want. Notably, they mentioned, as you highlighted, our configuration, and they are talking about the build-out and other details as it goes with this. But this is a very exciting involvement for us.

Okay. And then just a separate question is you have this ongoing investment in MetCom in Japan in collaboration, but there are certain aspects that haven't been met triggering additional funding and/or warrant conversion there. Is there any update on MetCom and where you might be going with that?

We continue to partner with MetCom. We find the partnership extremely valuable, especially as it is one of our international focuses where they're using our Z-axis capabilities. I am not familiar with the warrant conversion. Tim, do you have any data on that? We can get back to you.

Yes, Mike. They're still working to achieve the considerations that we would need to be able to do the warrant access, which is some agreement from the Japanese government on their spectrum positioning. So as that moves forward, we'll talk more about it when we're -- when we go ahead and do that conversion.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Tim Horan with Oppenheimer.

I'm going to break the rules here and ask 3 multipart questions. I guess, first, why do you think SpaceX is doing this? Do they want to lease your spectrum, do -- partner with you, buy the spectrum? What's their motivation here?