Blade Air Mobility Q4 Highlights and Financial Results “To Close a Monumental Year”

Blade Air Mobil­i­ty released its Q4 finan­cial results and high­lights this week which are described by Rob Wiesen­thal, CEO of the com­pa­ny as, “a strong fourth quar­ter to close our a mon­u­men­tal year for Blade”, reports a press release.

He con­tin­ues, ”Strong organ­ic growth in Med­i­Mo­bil­i­ty Organ Trans­port cou­pled with our acqui­si­tions in Europe and Cana­da drove record Rev­enue and Flight Prof­it in cal­en­dar year 2022… We con­tin­ue to believe that Blade is well posi­tioned to thrive in any eco­nom­ic cli­mate, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the non-dis­cre­tionary nature of our Med­ical busi­ness, the resilience of our fliers and the sup­ply flex­i­bil­i­ty afford­ed by our asset-light mod­el.”

Rob Wiesen­thal

High­lights

: Fourth quar­ter end­ed Decem­ber 31, 2022 rev­enue up 55 per­cent ver­sus the pri­or year to USD38.1 mil­lion; cal­en­dar year end­ed Decem­ber 31, 2022 rev­enue up 118 per­cent ver­sus the pri­or year peri­od to USD146.1 mil­lion.

: Short Dis­tance rev­enue up 51 per­cent in Q4 2022 ver­sus the pri­or year peri­od, reflect­ing high­er pric­ing across our route net­work and our acqui­si­tions of Blade Europe and Blade Cana­da.

: Med­i­Mo­bil­i­ty Organ Trans­port rev­enue up 120 per­cent in Q4 2022 ver­sus the pri­or year peri­od, dri­ven by the acqui­si­tion of new trans­plant cen­tre clients, robust growth with exist­ing clients, and strong organ trans­plant mar­ket growth.

: Flight Prof­it increased 38 per­cent in Q4 2022 ver­sus the pri­or year peri­od, dri­ven by organ­ic and inor­gan­ic growth.

Will Hey­burn, CFO of Blade, remarked, ”This was anoth­er year of con­sis­tent exe­cu­tion on our growth plan… and we remain con­fi­dent that our path to prof­itabil­i­ty is both tan­gi­ble and forth­com­ing. As a result, we expect a sig­nif­i­cant major­i­ty of our exist­ing cash bal­ance to be avail­able for acqui­si­tions that should expand our air mobil­i­ty capa­bil­i­ties and accel­er­ate Blade’s tra­jec­to­ry to pos­i­tive free cash flow.”

While Blade’s Beta ‘Alia-250 is not an exact eVTOL, as its craft present­ly requires a run­way to take-off and land ( a new and pure eVTOL air­craft is present­ly being tri­alled), it is still fit­ting that a com­pa­ny asso­ci­at­ed with this emerg­ing indus­try is expe­ri­enc­ing a rapid­ly grow­ing rev­enue stream — at present, a rare occur­rence.

Blade Air Mobil­i­ty and BETA Tech­nolo­gies com­plete New York eVTOL flight

Melis­sa Tomkiel, Blade’s Pres­i­dent, said, “This quar­ter we com­plet­ed the first pilot­ed test flight of an Elec­tric Ver­ti­cal Air­craft in the Greater New York City region in coop­er­a­tion with our part­ner Beta Tech­nolo­gies. We were pleased to be a part of this his­toric moment for the indus­try, bring­ing us one step clos­er to mak­ing elec­tric ver­ti­cal air­craft tech­nol­o­gy a real­i­ty for the peo­ple of New York and beyond.”

More in-Depth Q4 Finan­cial Results

: Total rev­enue increased 55 per­cent to USD38.1 mil­lion in the cur­rent quar­ter ver­sus USD24.6 mil­lion in the pri­or year peri­od. On a pro for­ma basis, assum­ing Blade had owned Blade Cana­da and Blade Europe in the com­pa­ra­ble pri­or year peri­od, rev­enue for the fourth quar­ter end­ed Decem­ber 31, 2022 would have increased approx­i­mate­ly 34 per­cent on a con­stant cur­ren­cy basis.

: Flight Prof­it  increased 38 per­cent to USD5.4 mil­lion in the cur­rent quar­ter ver­sus USD3.9 mil­lion in the pri­or year peri­od, dri­ven by strong growth in our Med­i­Mo­bil­i­ty Organ Trans­port busi­ness and the con­tri­bu­tion from our Blade Cana­da and Blade Europe acqui­si­tions.

: Flight Mar­gin  declined to 14.3 per­cent in the cur­rent quar­ter, as expect­ed, from 16.0 per­cent in the pri­or year peri­od, dri­ven by low­er mar­gins in Jet and Oth­er, out­sized growth in Med­i­Mo­bil­i­ty Organ Trans­port, which out­paced that of our oth­er busi­ness lines and tends to have low­er Flight Mar­gin ver­sus our his­tor­i­cal com­pa­ny aver­age, and the con­tin­ued ramp of Blade Air­port.

: Short Dis­tance rev­enue increased 51 per­cent to USD9.4 mil­lion in the cur­rent quar­ter ver­sus USD6.3 mil­lion in the pri­or year peri­od. Growth was dri­ven by our acqui­si­tions of Blade Europe and Blade Cana­da, and con­tin­ued growth in our Blade Air­port ser­vice.

: Med­i­Mo­bil­i­ty Organ Trans­port rev­enue increased 120 per­cent to USD21.6 mil­lion in the cur­rent quar­ter ver­sus USD9.8 mil­lion in the pri­or year peri­od, dri­ven by the addi­tion of new trans­plant cen­ter cus­tomers, con­tin­ued growth with exist­ing cus­tomers, and strong mar­ket demand. Rev­enue increased 7 per­cent sequen­tial­ly in Q4 2022 ver­sus Q3 2022.

: Jet and Oth­er rev­enue decreased (17) per­cent to USD7.1 mil­lion in the cur­rent quar­ter ver­sus USD8.5 mil­lion in the pri­or year peri­od pri­mar­i­ly due to a nor­mal­iza­tion in jet char­ter vol­ume, as the pri­or year peri­od ben­e­fit­ed from out­sized demand due to the COVID-19 Omi­cron vari­ant, par­tial­ly off­set by high­er aver­age price per char­ter trip.

: Net loss of USD15.4 mil­lion in the quar­ter declined ver­sus a net income of YUSD0.8 mil­lion in the pri­or year peri­od.

: Adjust­ed EBITDA decreased to USD(8.0) mil­lion in the cur­rent quar­ter from USD(5.9) mil­lion in the pri­or year peri­od, but improved as a per­cent­age of rev­enues to (20.9) per­cent in the cur­rent quar­ter from (24.1) per­cent in the pri­or year peri­od. The increased loss ver­sus the pri­or year peri­od is pri­mar­i­ly attrib­ut­able to addi­tion­al cor­po­rate and recur­ring expens­es relat­ed to Blade’s recent growth and expect­ed future growth, the con­tri­bu­tion from Blade Europe, which gen­er­at­ed lim­it­ed rev­enue and Flight Prof­it dur­ing the sea­son­al­ly low quar­ter, par­tial­ly off­set by increased Flight Prof­it.

BETA Tech­nolo­gies opens engi­neer­ing hub in Mon­tre­al

Recent Updates

: Blade Air­port, offer­ing ser­vice between Man­hat­tan and both John F. Kennedy Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and Newark Lib­er­ty Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, has con­tin­ued to show sequen­tial improve­ments, with the fourth quar­ter set­ting a record for total rev­enues and seats flown.

: On Jan­u­ary 18, 2023, Blade and Red­Bird Cap­i­tal Part­ners announced that Red­Bird has increased its own­er­ship in Blade to more than 5 per­cent, and that Red­Bird Part­ner Andrew Lauck will become a board observ­er.

: On Feb­ru­ary 14, 2023 Blade announced the com­ple­tion of a his­toric test flight of BETA Tech­nolo­gies’ ALIA-250 EVA at the Westch­ester Coun­ty Air­port in White Plains, New York. The flight marks the first test of a pilot­ed EVA in the greater New York City area and is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the com­pa­nies’ con­tin­ued part­ner­ship to bring safe, qui­et, and sus­tain­able air trans­porta­tion to com­muter and com­mer­cial cus­tomers.

Melis­sa Tomkiel

Con­fer­ence Call

An archived audio web­cast dis­cussing the results car­ried out on Tues­day (March 14th) is avail­able for one year at the Investor Rela­tions sec­tion of the company’s web­site (see link below).

To Study the Results in-Depth Please Click Below

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/03/14/2626470/0/en/Blade-Air-Mobility-Reports-Financial-Results-for-the-Fourth-Quarter-and-Calendar-Year-Ended-December-31–2022.html

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.blade.com/