Sky Harbour Group - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 revenue rose 82% year over year and 18% sequentially to $6.588M, driven by the Camarillo acquisition and higher occupancy at existing campuses; rental revenue was $5.225M and fuel revenue $1.363M. Net income was $14.356M, entirely driven by a $21.8M non‑cash warrant fair value gain; operating loss (EBIT) was $(7.528)M and adjusted EBITDA was $(3.016)M.
• Operating cash outflow improved to approximately $(0.9)M for the quarter vs $(5.0)M in Q1; management reaffirmed guidance to reach consolidated operating cash‑flow breakeven by year‑end 2025 as APA, ADS, DVT and BFI ramp.
• Announced an expected $200M, 5‑year tax‑exempt bank “warehouse” facility at 80% of 3‑month SOFR + 200 bps (indicative ~5.47%), closing on or about Aug 28, to fund 5–6 next airport projects; longer‑term plan to term out with PABs in 3–4 years.
• Strategic highlights: higher‑than‑forecast revenue per square foot at stabilized campuses; first pre‑leases at BDL and IAD with above‑target revenue rates; vertical integration across manufacturing (Stratus) and construction (Ascend) to improve quality, speed, and cost.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Higher‑than‑forecast revenue per square foot at stabilized campuses; re‑leases capturing inflation and brand premium (e.g., Miami leases rising from ~$32 to ~$46 per RSF, with Phase 2 expected higher).
• Pre‑leasing pilot success at BDL and IAD: signed deposits and “introductory pricing” while still above target per‑square‑foot revenue, reducing lease‑up time and enabling customized improvements during construction; management expects more pre‑leasing.
• Obligated Group positive operating cash flow of ~$2.2M in Q2, up 117% q/q, supporting bond coverage as new campuses lease up. Quote: “Cash flow from operations generated a positive $2,200,000 in the quarter and we expect this number to continue to increase…”.

What Went Wrong

• Core operations remain loss‑making: operating loss (EBIT) widened to $(7.528)M vs $(4.958)M in Q2 2024 as ground lease expense and campus operating costs rose ahead of revenue from new sites.
• Fuel expenses and fuel revenue recognized gross at Camarillo added cost volatility; fuel expenses jumped to $0.923M vs $0.082M in Q2 2024, while fuel revenue increased to $1.363M.
• Construction costs elevated by prior hangar design retrofits ($26–$28M aggregate) and steel tariff headwinds; while mitigated by pre‑purchases and vertical integration, these factors increased project costs and extended build timelines by 3–5 months at APA, DVT, ADS.

Transcript

Speaker 3

Good afternoon. My name is Sarah, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Sky Harbour Group Corporation Second Quarter 2025 earnings call and webinar. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply submit a question online using the webcast URL posted on our website. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call to CFO Francisco Gonzalez. You may begin your conference.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Sarah. Welcome, everybody. I'm Francisco Gonzalez, CFO of Sky Harbour. Welcome to the 2025 Second Quarter Investor Conference Call and Webcast for the Sky Harbour Group Corporation. We have also invited our bondholder investors in our parent subsidiary, Sky Harbour Capital, to join and participate on this call. Before we begin, I have been asked by counsel to note that on today's call, the company will address certain factors that may impact this and next year's earnings. Some of the information that will be discussed today contains forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management assumptions, which may or may not become true, and you should refer to the language on slides one and two of this presentation, as well as our SEC filings for a description of the factors that may cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements.

All forward-looking statements are made as of today, and we assume no obligation to update any such statements. Let's get started. The team with us this afternoon, you know from our prior webcasts, our CEO and Chair of the Board, Tal Keinan, our Treasurer, Tim Herr, our Chief Accounting Officer, Mike Schmitt, our Accounting Manager, Tory Petro, and our Assistant Treasurer, Andres Frank. We have a few slides we want to review with you before we open it to questions. These were filed with the SEC an hour ago in Form 8-K, along with our thank you, and will also be available on our website later this evening. We also filed our Second Quarter Sky Harbour Capital Obligated Group Financials with MSRB, EMMA, an hour ago.

As stated by the operator, you may submit written questions during the webcast through the Q4 platform, and we will address them shortly after our prepared remarks. In the second quarter, on a consolidated basis, assets under construction and completed construction continue to increase, reaching close to $300 million on the back of construction activity at the new campuses in Phoenix, Dallas, and Denver. Consolidated revenues experienced an increase of 82% year over year and 18% sequentially, reaching $6.6 million for the quarter, reflecting the acquisition of Camarillo last December and also higher revenues from our existing campuses. It is important to note that Q2 had roughly only $200,000 of revenues from our three new campuses that just opened.

Operating expenses in Q2 increased moderately, reflecting the purchase of fuel at Camarillo and the naked expenses of bearing the payroll and others of these three new campuses without associated revenues, as we have been preparing in the past six months to open and commence operations there. In terms of SG&A, we strive to keep our expenses in check as we grow, keeping costs as low as possible. Cash flow used in operating activities on the lower right-hand quadrant improved and stood at less than $1 million for the quarter, a significant improvement from the $5 million used in Q1. This is a key metric we pay attention to. We reaffirm our guidance that we expect Sky Harbour to reach cash flow breakeven on a consolidated basis at the end of this year, as we ramp up the leasing and cash flowing of these three new campuses over the fall.

I need to note that the potential revenues for the three new campuses total a projected $14 million annualized, which is why mathematically we feel confident of our profitability expectations in the near term, given the operating leverage of our business. Next slide, please. This is a summary of the financial results of our wholly owned subsidiary, Sky Harbour Capital, that form the Obligated Group. This basically incorporates the results of our Houston, Miami, and Nashville campuses, along with the CapEx and operating costs and little revenues that came in the quarter for our three projects in Denver, Phoenix, and Addison, Texas. Revenues increased 20% sequentially from the first quarter. As just discussed, we expect a step function increase in revenues in Q3 and Q4 and into the new year as these three campuses are leased up and rent and fuel revenues commence to flow.

Operating expenses increase, as we just discussed, given the onboarding of all the line personnel and Harbour Masters in Q1 and Q2 in anticipation of the campus opening in Q2 and Q3. Cash flow from operations generated a positive $2.2 million in the quarter, and we expect this number to continue to increase with the higher cash flows from operations as if new three new campuses are leased. Let me now turn it to CEO Tal Keinan for an update on site acquisitions, leasing, and construction.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Francisco. I think everybody has become pretty familiar with the chart on the right, which is self-explanatory. Sorry, the chart on the left. The chart on the right, which we've been showing for the last few quarters, we've given a little bit more color here because we're getting questions on how this chart is derived. What you're seeing in the bar chart itself is the rentable square footage of site plans on Sky Harbour existing ground leases times the Sky Harbour equivalent rent, which is the number we use for available revenue per square foot on each campus. What you'll see is today the revenue capture potential is at about $140 million. If we meet our guidance by the end of the year, we expect it to be approaching $200 million of revenue.

I want to call everybody's attention again in response to questions from the last quarter as to the methodology to the chart, the embedded chart right above the bar chart. The 2022 CBRE projected revenues are a pretty close proxy for share for Sky Harbour equivalent rent, meaning that is what we underwrote going into these airports. The average expected revenue on these airports is the revenue that we have contracted under leases plus additional fuel margin that we collect. The highest expected revenue is a weighted average of the highest paying residents on each existing campus, which gives we put that in there to give people a sense of the step up in second leases. When you initially lease up a campus, or at least up until now, as we originally leased up a campus, we achieved one level of rent.

When a campus is fully leased and leases begin coming to terms, we have a significant step up in rent. That's what's captured here. All of this to demonstrate why we feel that methodology of using share as the multiplier against revenues rentable square footage is a conservative methodology. Next slide, please. This is an update on leasing. We've broken this slide into two components. One is the first five airports. What we're showing is actual results from Q2. The second is contracted. These are airports that are under lease out where we don't have actual results yet. The contracted is what's in the lease, what are you paying in rent? In some cases, we have a minimum uplift guarantee for fuel. That's also captured in contracted. In some cases, we don't, in which case fuel margin is not captured here.

Any fuel margin in excess of the minimum uplift guarantee is also not captured here. That is for the remainder of those airports. I will call everybody's attention, and you'll see it in our filings and our press release, to this pilot project that we initiated this quarter to actually pre-lease hangars at campuses that have not begun construction yet. We are doing that now because we feel that within the business aviation community, Sky Harbour has established a strong enough reputation that people, if you can picture it, for an aircraft owner to make a commitment a year or a year and a half in advance and put down a hard deposit for that commitment, they've got to really be confident that we're going to deliver exactly the product that we said we were going to deliver and that we're going to deliver it on time.

The service offering, because remember, these are long-term leases, if the service is not there, the value of the lease is not there, that the service offering is really bulletproof. We went to market on two pilot airports, Dulles International and Bradley International in Connecticut, and have entered our first pre-leases at both of those airports, and more to come. I think this is a good initial result from a pilot project. It might become part of the leasing strategy going forward where you could significantly pre-lease a lot of these future campuses. What we're seeing is that, at least for the time being, we don't feel like we're paying a significant penalty in revenue per rentable square foot.

When you see that $47 average for those two airports, that's signed leases, contracted, meaning that's without the excess of fuel margin that is in line with our targets for those airports. Next slide. Manufacturing construction. In the last quarter, we started unveiling our plan to really scale up Sky Harbour's construction efforts. We've gone from being a little bit of an upstart in airport land to a really not minor construction company. In fact, probably the largest developer of hangars anywhere. What we've done in order to, number one, increase quality, number two, accelerate the pace of our construction, and number three, lower our per square foot cost, is this process of vertical integration. Starting from the left side of the page, I'm looking at the bottom of the slide. The wholly owned development subsidiary of Sky Harbour is called Ascend Aviation Services.

It's run by Phil Emes, who was actually the first general contractor that Sky Harbour ever worked with, built our Sugar Land campus on time and under budget. Phil's been doing just metal buildings for 40 years. Few people have more experience in the space, a lot of airport experience as well, and we've brought in a lot of players with specific airport experience here. The subsidiary is 100% dedicated to Sky Harbour. It does one thing, it's built a Sky Harbour 37 hangar across the country. We have our own in-house general contracting capability now, which we'll use selectively and construction management where we're not acting as a general contractor. That model, or kind of the breakdown of which projects we're doing, you know, we're kind of performing as general contractors and which ones we're construction manager, will I think evolve over time.

The fact that we have that capability brings a lot of advantages. Then manufacturing, Stratus Building Systems, I already saw a question come in on that. The old Rapid Built is now Stratus Building Systems, restaffed, retooled, new leadership that's been in place for close to a year now that has, you know, not only the experience but the tooling and is, again, dedicated only to manufacturing Sky Harbour 37 hangars across the country. Put that all together and integrate it, you have, or what the intention at least is to have process coordination. We're far less exposed to the vicissitudes of supply chain interruptions, which we've experienced in the past. We have our own design, which is constantly refined and value engineered in coordination with the field. We think that's a big advantage.

Maintaining Sky Harbour quality standards, not being subject to other manufacturers or other builders' standards, is important. I think the heaviest lift that we've undertaken in the company in the last, call it three quarters, and we're really ready to roll with that now. With that, let me hand it back to Francisco.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Tal. As many of you know from prior webcasts and disclosures, we have been dual tracking our net debt issuance. We have finally settled in pursuing a warehouse bank debt facility with a major U.S. financial institution. The indicated terms are listed here: $200 million, five-year, tax-exempt, with an expected floating rate equal to 80% of three months' SOFR plus 200 basis points, which in the current market is approximately 5.47%. We expect to close, subject to final documentation and approvals, on or about August 28. With this facility and associated equity, we will have over $300 million in funding to finance the next five to six campus developments. Please note that we're contributing at cost our Cloud9 hangar complex at Camarillo that we acquired last December in an all-cash, 100% equity transaction as our first equity contribution to this portfolio of projects. Next slide, please.

We illustrate here the sources and uses of this facility over time with red being equity contributions, beginning with Camarillo being the left-hand bar chart and the gray being debt drawdowns. We closed the quarter with approximately $75 million in cash and U.S. treasuries, which now will be enhanced with this $200 million committed facility upon closing. Why do we like this warehouse facility versus a bond issue now? First, it's also tax-exempt. Second, we draw as needed, reducing significantly the negative arbitrage of about 125 to 150 basis points if we were doing a bond deal upfront. We like being in a floating rate in the current market, given expectations coming out of D.C. for the next few months and years of potentially lower short-term rates. We're also comfortable with refinancing and going to the bond market in three or four years from now, ahead of the five-year term.

We also like the fact that we can optimize the timing of our GMP, you know, maximum guaranteed price contracts with our general contractors and subcontractors, in that you pay significantly by asking people in the construction industry to provide hard pricing too far in advance of groundbreakings. We like that this represents a risk transfer of construction risk away from our permanent bond program and should be one more element as we strengthen our obligated group bond credit profile even further. This warehouse facility also provides flexibility in project sequencing. We have many projects in pre-development and permitting, and sometimes delays or acceleration in the final construction permits may have us shift the sequencing of projects. Lastly, this warehouse facility provides us flexibility if we decide to entertain an offer to sell any individual hangar.

We have been approached recently a couple of times by potential tenants that prefer to own rather than rent and would like to enter into a 30, 40, or 50-year ultra-long tenant lease in exchange for an upfront payment. To the extent that any of these approaches materialize into a deal, the warehouse facility provides a flexibility not easily available in a bond setting. It also provides a new potential source of equity capital formation accretive to our current shareholder. Let me turn it back to Tal for Q2 highlights and forthcoming initiatives in the four pillars of our business.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Francisco. On Q2 highlights, I'm just going to focus on the bolded lines. Those are the ones that we think are most noteworthy. On site acquisition, again, our targeting now is on what we call tier one airports. I think we're beginning to see that reflected in the rent, and I think the kind of the pre-leasing numbers might give a hint as to the direction that we're trying to head with that, really the best airports in the country. It's not that we're going to ignore tier two airports when they materialize, and they do. I mean, remember, we've been at this for a number of years now. The focus is increasingly on tier one airports. On development, as we've discussed for the last two or three quarters, this has been the heaviest lift in the company, is preparing us to scale on the construction side.

We're very excited and confident in the leadership that we have in place. We've been very, very deliberate in building the machine that we have in place right now. It burdens on us to prove that it works, but now is the time. On leasing, I just want to call everybody's attention to that pre-leasing pilot, which, again, based on initial results, may end up being a key component of the leasing strategy going forward. We have a few more things that we want to confirm on that. Please, please stay tuned, but that's a big, I think, a big change in the way we conduct our leasing activities. Lastly, on the operations side, again, for people who've been tracking us for a while, we started off very dogmatic about being a real estate company and focused on delivering a real estate product.

As we grow and learn, it's becoming increasingly clear that operations are not just a necessity for kind of animating the value proposition of that real estate. They're actually a key differentiator. We're delivering not only a level of service, but specific services that really can't be offered anywhere else in business aviation. Increasingly, that's a big deal. We do significant survey work with our residents, and increasingly with coming back, yeah, people love the facilities and they're special. They're different from what people see in aviation. They're very thoughtfully designed and high quality, but what most people come back to is the service. What makes us particularly sticky is the service.

The fact that we have top-tier residents around the country really evangelizing for Sky Harbour is exactly what allows us to go out and pre-lease and ask people to go out on a limb and put their faith in us that we're going to deliver an outstanding physical offering and an outstanding service offering in 12 or 18 months. We're going to continue to invest there. I think it's one of the maybe most noteworthy areas for us, and frankly, kind of a relatively new insight for us as well, how important that has been. Next slide, please. Looking ahead, I'm going to do the same thing and just focus on the bolds and happy to take questions. Everyone has the slides, so feel free to drill down on anything that's not bolded here. Starting on the site acquisition side, again, our target remains maximized revenue capture.

We have been putting out guidance and targets in terms of number of airports, and that's a good, you can call it gross proxy for how we want to grow this company. The square footage of hangars is a tighter, more precise proxy, and the maximum revenue capture is the ultimate proxy. That's really what we're going after, right? 100,000 square feet on an airport that can generate $100 per foot in revenue is worth more than 200,000 feet on an airport that could generate $40 a square foot in revenue. That increasingly is the focus, and what I encourage people to watch more closely as they look at our site acquisition. As I think you'll see in the press release and the filings, we continue to grow the site acquisition team, and it continues to be working for us to have military aviators.

It's an all-veteran team, and that's been working very well for us, and we continue to grow from that community. On the development side, I think we've spoken about it enough. The system's in place. It's time to execute. On the leasing side, I'd say stay tuned for more pre-leasing. Most of the leasing team's focus now is on the new standing campuses, Denver, Phoenix, Dallas. As soon as those start achieving or approaching their full first round revenue potential, you'll see the focus increasingly, I think, moving to pre-leasing, just based on the initial results that we've been able to post. Lastly, on operations, I'll say it again, we're going to continue pressing. That resident feedback loop is critical for us. It's maybe one of the most powerful assets that we have in the company, a very, very loyal and delighted resident base.

We are in very close touch with the residents. I personally spend a lot of time with our residents seeking feedback, and in general, they're happy to give it and happy to see us implementing it as well. They're our best evangelists. On the defensive side, we never want to lose sight. We need to be absolutely bulletproof on safety, security, and efficiency. We have delivered, I think, a good track record on that. I think we are the best offering in business aviation from that perspective. On the offense side, just continue innovating, widening that value gap because I think it's been quite emphatic, and again, I think the pre-leasing results tend to corroborate this, but that is perhaps the biggest component of value that Sky Harbour delivers to its residents. With that, I think we're ready to move on to questions.

Speaker 3

Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please submit it online using the webcast URL. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question is from Gaurav Metax with Alliance Global Partners. Can you provide details on actual revenues as compared to forecasted revenues? What's the % variance between actual revenue and forecasted revenues? Are there any airports where you are seeing higher variance?

Speaker 1

Yes, it's Francisco. Thank you, Guarav, for the question and for your work at AGP covering the company. You know, we don't put out projections, but we do track how we've been doing, especially in the first group of campuses with the projections that were put together at the time of the bond offering by CBRE, the consultants, and then those were updated a year later as part of the bond program. We are tracking to indeed exceed those projections for those various campuses that form the Obligated Group number one, which are basically, as you may be aware, Houston, Nashville, Miami, Dallas, Denver, and Phoenix. We're tracking—

Speaker 2

By the way, Tim, can you put up that slide while Francisco is going through this?

Speaker 1

Yeah. The projections, the actuals are expected to exceed those projections, which means that, you know, this is an important element because the opening of these three campuses, as I mentioned earlier, is going to have a step function effect in our revenues and our cash flows in the next two or three quarters. That will lead for also the coverage on the bondholders to be at or exceed what the consultants forecasted at the time of the bond deal three years ago. In terms of any airports where we see higher variance, I will say that, and Tal, chime in if you wish, I think Miami has proven to be a very strong market. Some of you who have, you know, participated before know that our first lease was at $32 per square foot, and our last lease, or one of the last leases, was around $46.

Now that we're working on a second phase of Opa-locka 2 that's under construction, we are expecting and feeling that those leases will be at higher rates than our highest in the phase one.

Speaker 2

Guarav, I'd say the biggest variance we're seeing is not actually between airports. It's what Francisco just said. It's between the first round of leases and the second round. You know, if you do a two-year lease that comes to term and the resident either renews or we, you know, replace that resident with a new one, that's where you see this kind of big jump in revenue per square foot. That's probably where the biggest variance is.

Speaker 3

Thank you. As a follow-up, can you provide details on the pre-leasing hangar space at Bradley International and Dulles International airports? Is there opportunity to do more of these at other airports? How much is the intro pricing advantage?

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's a good question. Look, we haven't made any decision yet as to whether this is going to be adopted as our kind of main strategy. What we can say is, you know, it is working well initially, and we have signed leases with deposits. We like the pricing. You know, on the one hand, I think we're giving a kind of an advantageous introductory pricing to the first residents, and they're very blue chip residents. They're the kind of people that we want anchoring these campuses. On the other hand, they're above our target revenues for those campuses. I think it's happy. Are we leaving something on the table? Maybe a little bit. We probably are. All told, I think it's looking like a good approach.

Of course, the idea that you're going to achieve certificate of occupancy with a significant roster of residents already, in itself is at least a partial payback if you are leaving any value on the table with those initial pre-leases.

Speaker 3

The next question is from Ryan Myers with Lake Street. Congrats on the continued progress. If we think about the nine campuses in operation and the operating expenses associated with them, do you feel like you are seeing the scale gains in line with expectations?

Speaker 1

Thank you, Ryan, for the question and for the coverage from Lake Street of our company. Interesting comment that you made because, yes, our first set of campuses ended up being, from a schedule perspective, it took us a little bit longer than originally planned, even though the revenues, as we just discussed, have exceeded our original forecast. This is a scaled business. Now, on the back of these three campuses starting to cash flow, we're all going to feel and see the operating leverage of our business model because SG&A will remain fairly constant. We already incurred, or from a run rate basis, in Q1 and Q2, the type of operating expenses for the setup of these three campuses. As these revenues come in, they obviously are able to flow directly to the operating line in terms of profitability from a run rate perspective.

The other thing I will add is, from an accrual perspective, something that Mike has mentioned in the past, because the way we account for ground leases, every time we sign ground leases, we have been incurring expenses, even though they're not cash. Similarly, given that we compensate all our employees, top to bottom, everybody's a shareholder, we also have non-cash expenses in the context of our compensation policy. As we scale, those things remain fixed or semi-fixed, and you're going to see the improvement in profitability also from an accounting perspective in our financial statements. Next question.

Speaker 2

By the way, I'm going to add on that, Ryan, I would just add on that the, I think we're going to see the most benefit from scale is going to be in development costs. Again, I don't want to speak before we actually post results on that, but you know, just conceptually, that's where you're likely to see the most gains. The operating costs on campuses, yes, there definitely are efficiencies, but I think you'll see more on the development side.

Speaker 3

As a follow-up, you mentioned that you are seeing higher than forecasted revenue at campuses in operation. Just wondering if you can walk us through and highlight what these drivers are.

Speaker 1

Yes, thank you, Ryan, for the follow-up. I think there are a couple of drivers. I'll mention a few, and then Tal, please chime in. First and foremost, simply our rents that we've been able to secure were higher than originally expected. I think that's driven by the fact that there's scarcity for hangars at these airports. The second thing is our ability to secure fuel margin as part of our revenue work. That's also important. For those of you who have been following us from three years ago, at the time of the bond deal, we really were not looking at fuel margins and fuel revenues. They were not even in the projections from CBRE back three or four years ago. Fuel revenues and fuel margin will be an important driver as well.

Lastly, what I will drive is when we move to have not only private hangars, but also semi-private, the possibility to, back to Tal's point about achieving occupancy levels higher than 100% from the standpoint of being able to rent the same space twice and sometimes even three times has basically found its way into revenue per rentable square foot and per hangar being higher, especially when you are able to have semi-private settings. As we move forward in our campuses and our prototype has doubled in size, yes, there will be some tenants that will take an entire hangar because they have fleets, but more and more, you're going to see semi-private hangars as part of our offering.

Theoretically, if you're able to maximize the way you play the Tetris game in terms of putting planes and the latest models into our new prototype, you can achieve theoretically 137%, close to 140% occupancy from the standpoint of stacking, which again, that will reflect itself into higher revenues than originally forecasted at our campus from operations and our future campuses. I don't know, Tal, if you have anything to add there.

Speaker 2

I agree with all those. I'll add three things. Number one, look at the second turn of the lease. I think it's very important. Part of that is really a supply and demand issue, because if you think about it, when you're leasing up a campus in the traditional way, take Miami, right? You open up 12 hangars, there's 12 vacancies when you start leasing, and they're operating. There's a full line crew, you know, and as you can imagine, we're dealing with financially sophisticated residents. They understand that they have a lot of leverage in that negotiation. Francisco's point about that $32 a foot first lease in Miami and the $46 a foot less than a year later, a lot of that has to do with the supply and demand. On the second turn of the lease, there's only one hangar available by definition.

Typically, there are many takers for that hangar. Your leverage is reversed on the second turn. The second is, again, it's difficult to measure this, but our feeling is that our reputation in the business aviation community is such that we are increasingly the first choice. If you can get into Sky Harbour, you have a jet, you can get into Sky Harbour. From a security, safety, efficiency perspective, that's where you want to be. It's more expensive, but if you're flying a $50 or $60 million airplane, your time is very expensive. The fact that you're very unlikely to encounter delays at Sky Harbour, for example, is an advantage that increasingly people are saying, "Okay, I see value there. I'm willing to pay a premium for it." I think the third is just inflation. I think it's worth watching that.

We think airport inflation has absolutely nothing to do with CPI. It's simply supply and demand. You cannot build a new airport. Where there's land for an airport, there's no need for an airport. Where there's a need for an airport, there's no land. We are stuck with the inventory of airports that we have right now. If people look on the website, they can see we track this. The size of the U.S. business aviation fleet in square footage terms grows every year dramatically. It's simply a supply and demand question. When Francisco is mentioning these prospective residents who have called us asking if they can purchase or do an ultra-long-term lease on a hangar, I'm in those conversations myself personally, and they typically start with, "We agree with your assumptions on inflation at airports. We don't want to be subject to that with a five-year lease.

We want to own this thing." We understand that. I think those three factors are all playing.

Speaker 3

The next question comes from Alan Jackson. Are you seeing any changes to the electric aviation industry since the Trump administration has been elected? Will this have any impact on the electric optionality on current Sky Harbour campuses? Does Sky Harbour have any intention of acquiring any construction trades that are currently not in-house?

Speaker 2

Okay, two questions. On the electric aviation side, I think the Trump administration has probably successfully removed some of the regulatory hurdles that we're facing in electric aviation. There are a lot of other hurdles. We think it's coming, perhaps not quite as fast as a lot of the market does, but as it seems from your question, we do pre-wire our campuses to be able to accommodate electric aviation. We think we've been pretty thoughtful on how you lay out the infrastructure that's going to support electric aviation at scale and how you do it in a way that's not expensive today. It's expensive when you hit go, but you're ready to hit go. You don't have to reconfigure anything on the campus in order to accommodate electric aviation. We'll see.

On the second question, I think we're probably not there for now on actually acquiring the trades, meaning manufacturing and general contracting is probably enough. A lot of the trades are, by definition, going to be very local anyway. There are a few exceptions. One of them that we kind of look at every once in a while is erection because we're manufacturing it. We've got a good feedback loop. We've got a couple of erectors around the country that we like that are increasingly learning how to do it. I think of it as kind of assembling IKEA furniture. If you've got a set of eight chairs to assemble, the first one, you're going to get something wrong. You're going to mix up left and right, and you're going to have to disassemble it and do it again. The second one, you probably get it all right.

The third one, you don't need the instructions anymore. The fourth, you're ready to go faster than the first one did. It's quite similar here. We've got very specific connection mechanisms, very specific sequencing for erecting our hangars. There might be a case for specialization there, but again, I think it's less than 50/50 because right now I think we've got some very good partners on that side that are learning exactly how to assemble Sky Harbour hangars. It's a good question, and it's something that we do discuss quite a bit internally.

Speaker 3

The next question comes from Alex Foster. What aspects of your product offerings, service, and training differentiate Sky Harbour from what a tenant would receive at an SBO? Second, many of your ground leases include land for a future phase two. Have you considered ways to utilize this vacant land to generate income while awaiting a suitable time to proceed with phase two construction?

Speaker 2

Okay, thanks, Alex. Thoughtful questions. Look, on the product offerings and service offerings, I'm glad you phrased it like that because they do go together, right? It's difficult to put out the service offering that we put out on a different physical infrastructure, right? Cloud9 was an exception in that they really built it to our standards. In terms of, you know, everything from, you know, for the electrical to drainage to lighting, it all has to work together if you're going to marry it with a successful service offering. One of the things that we keep thinking maybe we should try to start measuring, and we get this input from our residents, is time to wheels up. I'm just giving you one example. Time to wheels up is, you know, when you are, remember, everybody in business aviation flies at the same time. Everybody's flying on Friday afternoon.

Nobody's flying on Wednesday at midnight. That is when the system, particularly the FBO system that's managing transient traffic, is at its peak capacity utilization, and that's when service suffers the most, right? That's where line crews are stretched the most thin, ground support equipment is stretched the most thin. That's where the delays happen. I'd say right now, if you're leaving New York on a Friday afternoon in the wintertime, you better have decided a few days in advance that you need the airplane ready, or you lose all your spontaneity, and there are going to be delays. We don't have delays, and not because we're so clever, but because we don't have transients. That's an example of one differentiator. On the training side specifically, kind of something, again, we don't really advertise this because we're not trying to poke anybody else in the eye.

If you think about how a line crew member learns how to train and to tow an aircraft, it's by towing aircraft, and it's not the FBO's aircraft, it's the customer's aircraft. The greenest line crew members are, you know, towing $50 million aircraft on a regular basis. As you may know, hangar rash or kind of the fender benders that happen in and around aircraft hangars are the most frequent insurance claim in business aviation. I mean, and it's a huge problem in the industry. We look at that. Again, we've got a steel manufacturer. We developed our own training rig where, you know, we train already experienced line crew, both in initial and recurrent training on a rig that simulates an aircraft. It has the same wheelbase. It's an adjustable wheelbase. You can simulate different types of aircraft, connection, disconnection, that kind of thing.

It's subtle, but it's something that our residents really take note of, is that we are treating them very, very differently, and the result is very different. I don't know if it's one big thing, but it is a lot of small things that end up making a big difference for aircraft owners. What the second question was on phase two, I'm trying to think, Tim, Francisco, have we ever generated revenue on phase two land pre-development?

Speaker 1

Not really, because it requires you to pave the apron, and that's expensive, and we don't want to just do that and then have to break it again in the context of the construction. Actually, I take that back. In Miami, we actually rented to NBAA, I think, two years in a row for the regional conferences, that empty lot for parking, and we got NBAA passes for free for the company for a couple of conferences. We have used it tactically to make a little bit of money. The answer is not really.

Speaker 3

The next question comes from Randy Binner. What is your estimate of timing for DBT phase one, ADS phase one, and BFI to be fully leased? Any one-timers in the ground lease expense line this quarter, or is this representative relative to ongoing square footage buildout? Second question, any one-timers in the ground lease expense line in this quarter, or is this representative relative to ongoing square footage buildout?

Speaker 0

Hi, Randy, it's Mike. Thank you for your question. As discussed in our earnings release and in the slide deck, our estimate for the timing on DBT phase one, Addison, and BFI to be fully leased is within the next six months. With respect to the ground lease, the impact you see in the quarter is actually just the impact of the recognition of the Hillsborough and Stewart International leases that were signed during the second quarter. As Francisco touched on earlier in the call, as soon as we sign those leases, we start recognizing expense under GAAP, regardless of whether or not we're paying cash. Next question, please.

Speaker 3

The next question comes from Pat McCann with Noble Capital Markets. Can you talk about how you expect to finance new campuses over the long term? As you continue to scale, how might new long-term PABs fit into the picture relative to options like the warehouse facility?

Speaker 1

Pat, Francisco, thank you for the question. We are flexible and also deliberate, meaning ultimately we're going to end up in the bond market with the program that we started three years ago that, as you know, is a programmatic approach, meaning that as we do new bond deals with permanent debt, it becomes joint and several with the existing bondholders and so on and so forth. With the recent past six months or nine months, you've seen long-term rates spike up to a certain extent. For all the reasons that I discussed earlier, we decided to take the opportunity and do this financing with a tax-exempt with a major financial institution in the U.S., and we're going to announce all the details, further details when we close in a couple of weeks.

Ultimately, in year three or four, we will go ahead and do a long-term PAPS offering and take out that warehouse facility. Depending on market conditions at the time, we may do more bonding and pre-fund whatever campuses we are working on at that point, or we might decide to do the bond deal and then have another warehouse facility to deal with our new projects. Time will tell. A critical thing here, especially for our current bondholders, is that with this strategy, we are shifting the construction risk and even some of the early leasing risk to the fans and not to the bond program. This will further strengthen, as we look to approach rating agencies to rate the existing bondholders, we're basically risking the program going forward by doing this warehouse facility strategy.

Speaker 3

The next question comes from Buck Hartzell from The Motley Fool. You've done a lot of work on scaling and vertically integrating construction activities. Can you provide an update on the impact this might have on future build costs per square foot?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Buck. Go ahead. I think at this point, the proof is going to be in the pudding, or the proof of the pudding is going to be in the eating. You're right. We've invested a lot in this. We do have some very ambitious targets on quality, time, and cost. Francisco, I don't know if we've actually put out anything specific, but bottom line, now's the time to perform and demonstrate it.

Speaker 1

Yes. That is the following, yes, we have invested in terms of being vertically integrated on manufacturing. My analogy, and some of you may have heard this on one-on-ones, is Lego sets. Once you have a prototype like we have now, narrowed to our SH37 hangar prototype, I'm going to be building so many manufacturing and then constructing and building so many of these. By being vertically integrated and given the scale that we're going to now enjoy, it should result in lower cost per square foot, or at least be something that helps us minimize the construction inflation that the economy has been exhibiting in the past several years. When we look at that, obviously, we're going to be doing more work on presenting as we scale what has been the benefit.

Let me say it, if I will, there'll come a time, given our growth, that even Stratus Building Systems, our manufacturing facility, will be insufficient in terms of capacity, which is fine. We still have continued to enjoy the benefit of being able to outsource to other manufacturers of prefabricated metal buildings. That will be also a good opportunity to keep tabs on what the market out there, even though it might cost a little bit more, what they charge. Similarly, on general contracting, we are going to be able to general contract internally through Ascend Aviation Services, but that doesn't stop us in some particular markets to hire third-party GCs and be able to leverage the private market as well. We're going to continue being deliberate and tracking what costs are internally or externally, and obviously do what's best for the company.

Speaker 3

The next question comes from Philip Rustill. How will future pre-leasing influence future debt offerings, such as the timeframe for investment grade rating in the future?

Speaker 1

Yeah, thank you, Philip, for the question. I think what pre-leasing does is, you know, as Tal mentioned earlier, allows a little bit of de-risking for some of these campuses. As we contemplate debt offerings, either in the bond market or in the bank market, it supports obviously a better credit profile for the projects. If you already have a hard lease on a project that you haven't even broken ground on, like we just assigned in this quarter in Bradley International and in Dulles International, it's again going to be supportive of the credit profile of either a bank facility or a bond deal. I agree with you that investment grade rating will also be supported with this type of activity of pre-leasing campuses.

Speaker 3

The next question comes from Robert Lynch. Is the SH37 hangar prototype now fully standardized, and what's the impact on speed unit economics?

Speaker 2

Yeah, thanks, Robert. The answer is yes. I'll refer to what we said earlier to Buck, that we don't, we're not going to put out any projections yet, but absolutely, the intention is to increase speed, decrease cost, increase quality. That's the idea behind it. You can see how that's happening, right? It's through procurement. We know exactly how many lighting units we need for the next 10 campuses. We can do that as a single deal. We know exactly what each component is going into this. Any value engineering insights that we gain will now apply to every hangar going forward. Based on your question, I think you understand the value of having a prototype. Now, it burns on us now to maximize it and demonstrate that we can achieve those efficiencies.

Speaker 3

The next question comes from Gaurav Mehta. Why did you choose bank facility instead of bond? Can you provide details on the five-year drawdown? Is the structure like a credit facility?

Speaker 1

Yes, thank you, Guarav, for the question. Yes, as I said earlier, we see all the benefits. Next page. Yeah, we saw a lot of benefits at this juncture, tapping a bank facility than the bond deal. They are listed here, as I mentioned earlier. Here is the detail also of what we expect the drawdown to be. It allows us to draw as we need it. It also allows us to put the equity, that contribution, later than if we were to do a bond deal right now, where you have to put it all up front. It is structured as a committed drawdown facility that we can also refinance without penalties when the time comes that we find that the opportunity arises to go ahead and do a bond deal in a couple of years. Next question.

Speaker 3

Thank you. The next question comes from Atul Joshi. Was there any cash stock consideration involved in the creation of Ascend Aviation Services? How does this impact your approach to RFPs for greenfield developments? To what extent would this move also help you play offense on brownfield situations, like in the case of Camarillo, where you were able to take over a world-class facility at the low replacement cost? Does the creation of Ascend impact your view on how many development projects your team is capable of managing simultaneously?

Speaker 1

Tal, do you want to take that one?

Speaker 2

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Atul. No cash or stock consideration, meaning Ascend was established, not acquired. There is, as part of the compensation packages of the leadership, cash and stock consideration, but we didn't pay to acquire it. We established it. The approach to RFPs for greenfield developments, there is so much more that's standardized now going forward. A lot of what was inside the kind of development and pre-development bucket of activities is now in the site acquisition bucket of activities. We're a lot more integrated, a lot more systematized. I think on RFPs, for example, or any approach to greenfield developments, we can, and look, this is not just because of Ascend. It's also the SH37 hangar prototype. It's just the experience that we've accumulated as we go.

We can be a lot more precise on rough order of magnitude price, cost for a project before we go into it. We had to make some very conservative assumptions before, which might have invalidated certain projects. In fact, I'm thinking of one specific project that it did invalidate. That ended up being a mistake. It's a project we should have done. I think it makes us a lot better on that. On brownfield situations, I think having in-house diligence capability is always a benefit. It's a lot more decisive, of course, in greenfield than in brownfield. Lastly, does it impact our view on how many development projects we can manage simultaneously? Yes. That's a big part of this idea. This allows us to scale, and it's only justified by scale, right? This would not have made sense to do when we had two or three projects in development.

It's almost a necessity now, where you've got a dozen. You've got to run simultaneously. Like we said earlier, and I want to make it clear, we're easing into that, meaning we're taking a hybrid approach at the beginning. Some of these projects we will GC. Some of the projects we're just going to construction manage. Again, you can construction manage a lot more intelligently when you're yourself a general contractor on very similar projects, building an identical hangar at other airports. I don't think it's certainly our intention to be able to be general contractors across the country on a dozen projects at the same time. It's certainly not at this point. As Francisco noted, on the Stratus side, Stratus will reach its capacity limitations at some point as well.

We're always looking to have good partners in the pre-engineered metal building space to handle that excess demand when it hits us. At some point, if we do all this well, we'll be looking to expand Stratus' capacity also, but we're not there yet.

Speaker 3

The next question comes from Connor Keem. With OPF phase two coming online next year, do you expect there to temporarily be lower step-ups in the lease rates, less than the 25% you've been seeing for lease renewals, given the increased supply at the location?

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's a good question, Connor. We'll see. Opa-Locka phase two was not in the pre-leasing pilot, but, again, based on results, that's probably the natural next airport to start looking at pre-leasing. We'll have a more empirical idea of what that's going to look like once that gets underway. That's probably something that happens in the fall. That's kind of Miami leasing season anyway. Look, demand at Opa-Locka is extremely high. Our waiting list on phase one is much longer than the resident list on phase one. I don't think we come anywhere close to fully satisfying Opa-Locka demand with Sky Harbour phase two at Opa-Locka. That said, you're right. It is a lot more supply coming out to the market. We'll have to see what that looks like. I think we're quite optimistic. I think Francisco noted it earlier.

It's one of the markets that's really surprised more on the upside than many of the others.

Speaker 3

The next question comes from Gabe Owners. Does the new debt facility alleviate your need to raise equity for the next few years? The presentation suggests you need $75 million of cash to your unrestricted $40 million. Also, how do you plan to fund the properties not addressed by the $20 million facility?

Speaker 1

Yes, Gabe, this is Francisco. Thanks for the question. Yes, the presentation suggests that we will need about $75 million. We have unrestricted $40 million, but remember, we're contributing Camarillo that was paid with cash and all equity as basically equity. $32 million is going to be contributed by contributing Camarillo, as you can see the sources that use it here. How do we plan to fund future properties? We have more ground leases and more projects that can be satisfied with the $200 million. A couple of things there. We left that with the bank. More details to come in a couple of weeks that in the future, once we're close to the $200 million, we can go back and potentially increase this up to $300 million. Another $100 million, obviously, that's subject to credit approvals and so on at the time.

If we do a bond deal alternatively to the takeout, we could refinance the $200 million and then do another $100 million of new money, for example, to a $300 million bond deal. We will need additional growth equity in the future, but not yet, but in the future, given our pace of growth and so on. We could satisfy some of that with now that we're going to be operationally break-even or positive next year, you know, with Opa-Locka II and so on. As we mentioned earlier, there are a couple of other ways that we could continue to grow. We've had discussions with people on a sidecar with some private equity infrastructure funds. Also, we have introduced in this call the concept of potentially, you know, selling 100. They're

Speaker 3

That will be something that we will entertain on a case-by-case basis as these discussions proceed. We feel very comfortable where we are in terms of the runway in front of us and our liquidity resources right now.

Speaker 1

The next question comes from Robert Lynch. What's the expected quarterly pace for assigning the remaining five-gram leases by year-end?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Robert. I wish we could be precise on this. We debated whether we should even be giving annual guidance on ground lease signing. While we are confident on an annual basis, it's very difficult to break it out month by month. Maybe as we continue to scale and we grow bigger, we'll get a little bit more precise in our visibility. It's not like it, as you can imagine, none of these really work on our schedule. By the way, all five, six, seven of the next ground leases are processes that we started years ago and are just kind of coming to termination. We've banged out terms. We've jumped through whatever local hoops we've needed to jump through to get to these. To kind of say, "Hey, we expect two in October, one in November," unfortunately, we're not able to get that precise.

Speaker 1

That is all the time we have for questions. I'd now like to turn the call back to Francisco Gonzalez for closing remarks.

Speaker 3

Thank you, operator. I noticed that, indeed, there were more questions that remain unanswered. I encourage everyone that had questions that we couldn't get to, to submit those through investors at Sky Harbour Group, and we'll be happy to answer those in the coming days. We want to thank you all again for joining this afternoon and for your interest in Sky Harbour. You can also check our website at www.skyharbourgroup.com for additional information. With this, we have completed our webcast, operator. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call and webcast. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.