Swarmer, Inc (SWMR) Earnings Call Transcript

Good afternoon. Welcome to the Swarmer, Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us for today's presentation are the company's President and U.S. CEO, Alex Fink; and Chief Financial Officer, Brooks Ensign. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements include, among others, statements regarding Swarmer strategy, market opportunity, customer engagement, product development, technology integrations, expansion into new markets, future revenue opportunities, expected customer mix, potential deployments and the anticipated benefits of the company's relationships, memorandum of understanding, partnerships and commercial initiatives. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Additional information about factors that could cause actual results to differ is included in the company's earnings release issued today and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including the risk factors described in those filings. The company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being webcasted, and the recording will be made available for replay on the company's Investor Relations website. In addition to the webcast, the company has posted a press release that accompanies these results which can also be found on the Investor Relations website. I will now turn the call over to Swarmer's President and U.S. CEO, Alex Fink, for his comments. Sir, please proceed.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. The second quarter of 2026 marked our first full quarter as a public company and an important period of progress across the business. We successfully expanded our customer base, advanced deployments across multiple unmanned platforms and continued investing in the people, technology and partnerships that we believe will support our next phase of growth. From a broader perspective, our investment thesis remains unchanged. We continue to believe the defense and security industries are in the early stages of a fundamental transition towards autonomous and collaborative systems. Millions of drones are expected to be produced annually. Yet the challenge is no longer simply manufacturing hardware. The challenge is coordinating, controlling and scaling large numbers of autonomous platforms operating in complex environments. That is the problem Swarmer was built to solve. Our software serves as the intelligence layer that enables one operator to coordinate large numbers of autonomous systems in the real time. Because we are platform-agnostic, our objective is not to build a drone. Our objective is to become the software layer that powers autonomous systems across air, land and maritime domains. What makes our platform unique is that it continues to learn from real-world operations. Since April of 2024, Swarmer technology has supported more than 100,000 combat missions in Ukraine. Those missions generate telemetry, sensor information and operational feedback that allows us to refine performance and improve our AI and autonomy capabilities over time. We believe this real-world data advantage is difficult to replicate and serves as a meaningful differentiator as autonomy becomes increasingly important. During the quarter, we continued to make progress in implementing this strategy. Perhaps the most visible example was the expansion of our SkyKnight program. As announced during the quarter, our customer expanded the original agreement adding approximately $1 million of contracted license value, increasing the potential value of the combined contract to approximately $14.2 million if all options are exercised. Importantly, SkyKnight is not one of the largest drone manufacturers operating in Ukraine today. By our estimates, there are 20 or more drone companies in Ukraine alone who are currently shipping higher volumes than SkyKnight and yet the single opportunity accounted for a contract of $3.9 million that could grow to $14.2 million if all options are exercised. We believe that this fact highlights the size of the opportunity in front of us. If a manufacturer of this scale can generate a software opportunity of this magnitude, we believe there are many additional manufacturers and platforms that could represent meaningful future opportunities as autonomy adoption continues to increase. Before moving on, I'd like to briefly address the accounting treatment of the expanded SkyKnight program as it impacted our reported revenue for the quarter. As disclosed in today's earnings release, we received $1.4 million during the quarter under the SkyKnight program, upon delivery of the software licenses to the customers. However, under the applicable accounting treatment, some of these amounts were not recognized as revenue and were instead recorded as an advance on our balance sheet. Importantly, this accounting treatment does not change the underlying commercial significance of the program. The licenses were delivered and the wire transfer was received. We continue to believe that SkyKnight demonstrates a scalable model that can be replicated across additional manufacturers and platforms, creating future opportunities for software licensing revenue as adoption of autonomy continues to expand. Beyond individual customer wins, we continue to strengthen the ecosystem around our platform, which we believe is a key driver of long-term adoption and growth. Each relationship addresses a different part of the value chain, whether that's computing hardware, data acquisition, interoperability, platform integration or operational deployment. For example, our partnership with Oak Grove Technologies demonstrate successful integration of Swarmer software on a proven U.S. platform from a company-based near Fort Bragg that is deeply embedded in the special operations community. Oak Grove is also well known as a training facility and provides courses to operators on things like drone use. So a partnership with them helped us cover the awareness layer and ensuring that operators are exposed to the existence of Swarmer's advanced autonomy and the possibilities it brings. Our collaboration with Lantronix is aimed at creating a next-generation compute platform for small unmanned systems. Most unmanned systems in Ukraine, if they require any level of autonomy use either Raspberry Pi on the low end or NVIDIA Jetson on the high end. There is no good option in between. We see an opportunity to create a wedge in the market by owning the compute platform that could become the industry standard for autonomous drones and by ensuring that everyone who uses this platform for their compute needs will also get Swarmer's operating system built in, and we'll be able to upgrade to full autonomy at the click of a button. Our cooperation with Molfar gives us access to a large database of open source intelligence data that can be used to improve our models and our cooperation with Brightline, which has already been in use by the special operations community in the U.S. allows us to gain access to operational data from a variety of unmanned platforms, even if the manufacturers of these platforms did not choose to integrate with us yet. We believe there is a data flywheel of success. Companies that get deployed more, gather more data, use this data to train better models and therefore, get deployed more because their models work better. We are already benefiting from this flywheel. But now with these additional sources of high-quality data, we can move even faster and train our models on data gathered by others too. Collectively, these relationships expand the reach of our software, increase the number of platforms we can support and create additional opportunities to scale adoption over time. We believe this ecosystem approach positions Swarmer to participate in a much larger portion of the autonomous systems market than would be possible through any single platform or program alone. While partnerships remain an important part of our growth strategy, we are also increasingly evaluating opportunities to invest and acquire and help scale complementary defense technologies that have been proven in real-world operational environments. As our Chairman, Erik Prince recently discussed in a Shareholder Letter, many of the most innovative defense companies in the world are being built under demanding battlefield conditions, yet often lack capital, commercial infrastructure, and international reach needed to scale globally. We believe access to capital, strategic support and distribution channels can be just as valuable as the technology itself. Our objective is not simply to expand Swarmer software footprint but to build a broader platform that helps identify, accelerate and commercialize proven defense technologies while creating long-term value for shareholders. Last but not least, as you'll hear from Brooks in a few minutes, we have raised over $26 million through our equity line of credit since it was announced. From a practical standpoint, we believe these additional resources may help us to explore opportunities and move faster when they arise. In accordance with the vision articulated by our Chairman, Erik Prince, in his letter to shareholders this quarter. Conceptually, we also believe it shows that investors are receptive to Erik's vision, and it has been well received. Operationally, we also continued building the company. During the quarter, we expanded our engineering and product capabilities, increased integrations across partner platforms and continue deploying systems with multiple manufacturers operating in active environments. As we discussed last quarter, revenue is often a lagging indicator in our industry because defense procurement cycles are lengthy, and deployments frequently precede scaled production. As a result, we continue to focus on indicators such as platform integrations, customer adoption, deployment success and progression from evaluation to production. We believe we are making meaningful progress on each of these fronts. Looking ahead, we remain focused on expanding adoption across a wider range of unmanned systems, deepening our integration with manufacturers, supporting programs as they transition into scale deployment and evaluating strategic opportunities that can accelerate growth and strengthen our position within the autonomous systems ecosystem. We continue to believe Swarmer can become a foundational software layer for autonomous and collaborative systems across multiple domains. With that, I will turn it over to Brooks to walk through the financials in more detail.

Thank you, Alex. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 was approximately $216,000 compared to $138,000 in the second quarter of 2025. Alex discussed, we received $1.4 million under the SkyKnight program in the quarter upon delivery of the software licenses to the customers. However, under the applicable accounting treatment, approximately $200,000 was recognized as revenue, $100,000 was recorded as deferred revenue and the remainder was recorded as an advance on the balance sheet. As a result, the financial statements reflect minimal revenue from the deal. Despite this accounting presentation, the underlying contract value remains unchanged with the SkyKnight program representing approximately $3.9 million of contracted license value and up to approximately $14.2 million if all available options are exercised. We continue to view the program as an important commercial validation of our technology and a meaningful long-term opportunity. It is also worth noting that cash usage included a separate onetime contractual prepayment of approximately $2.2 million related to the program. Gross profit for the quarter was approximately $184,000 compared to $82,000 in the prior year period. The change primarily reflected the lower level of recognized revenue during the quarter as a result of the accounting treatment of the SkyKnight program. Operating expenses were approximately $7.5 million compared to approximately $855,000 in the second quarter of 2025. The increase was driven primarily by investments in personnel, engineering and product development, together with higher consulting, legal and professional services expenses associated with operating as a public company. Second quarter operating expenses also included onetime equipment purchases that are unlikely to recur in most quarters. Additionally, our operating expenses for the quarter included $1.2 million of noncash stock compensation expense. As investors evaluate our financial performance, we believe it is important to distinguish these onetime and noncash expenses from the cash costs required to operate and scale the business. Net loss for the quarter was approximately $7.2 million compared to a net loss of approximately $1.6 million in the prior year period. Turning to the balance sheet. Cash and cash equivalents at June 30, 2026, totaled approximately $25.3 million compared to $9.3 million at December 31, 2025. During the quarter, the company raised approximately $8.8 million through its equity line of credit program. Subsequent to quarter end through August 10, we collected an additional $17.9 million, further strengthening our liquidity position and supporting continued investment in growth initiatives. We remain committed to managing capital responsibly while investing in opportunities that we believe can generate long-term shareholder value. And with that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Alex Fuhrman with Lucid Capital Markets.

Congratulations on a lot of your recent announcements and the progress you're making here. I wanted to ask about your gross margins. Obviously, these are really small numbers, what we've seen so far this year, but gross margin in Q2 was up pretty dramatically from what we saw in Q1 and what we saw last year. Can you talk a little bit about the mechanics of what's in cost of sales and why the gross margin was so high in Q2? And then just bigger picture, as you start to move into the millions of dollars of revenue where should we start to see gross margins shake out as volumes pick up?

Yes. This is Brooks. Thanks, Alex, for the question. Currently in cost of goods is a web-based data services only. We are assessing future will have some engineering services. So I would say going forward, the cost of goods as a percentage will be a little bit higher. And we're working on our methodology for this. Right now, it's customized for each deal. So in the future -- go ahead.

Okay. That's helpful. I don't know if you have more on that?

We're looking at probably around 80% or so. But yes, we're still looking at what types of engineering support will go into revenue deals.

Okay. That's really helpful. And then if I could ask on the expanded licensing deal with SkyKnight. I think the original announcement was an initial contract value of around $3 million and the potential to scale up to around $13 million if all the options were exercised. Now we're talking about bigger numbers with the expansion of the contract and the addition of the Czech Republic. Can you just help us understand was the expansion that you just announced here recently, is that a matter of SkyKnight exercising an option that it had prior? Or is this something kind of beyond the scope of the initial announcement? And if it was beyond the scope related to the additional geography, are there still more geographies where this contract could get expanded to?

Thank you for that question as well, it is beyond the scope of the original agreement. SkyKnight or Meta as the company is called has 2 types of drones. One is a large heavy quadcopter and the other one is a fixed-wing. So the initial deal included some licenses for quadcopters, some licenses for fixed-wing drones and it included operating system licenses for everything SkyKnight plans to manufacture going forward, which allows them to easily upgrade to the full platform, and that is the option. So the option is basically every time they have a drone that only has the operating system on it without autonomy at the click of a button, they can upgrade to full autonomy. Now what happened about 1.5 months later, is they increased their projected quantity of the fixed-wing drones. And so they acquired more autonomy licenses for that but that does not affect the option. They still have an option for the same quantity of drones to be upgraded from operating system to full platform.

We will take our final question from Alex Latimore with Northland.