Operator: Greetings. Welcome to the Palladyne AI Corp second quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Brian Siegel, Senior Managing Director, Hayden IR. Thank you, Brian. You may begin.

Brian Siegel, Senior Managing Director, Hayden IR: Thank you, Nicole. Good morning, and welcome to Palladyne AI’s second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Trevor Thatcher, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, Palladyne AI issued a press release announcing financial results for the second quarter ended June 30th, 2026, along with the updated commentary regarding backlog and its reiterated 2026 revenue guidance. A copy of that release, along with the accompanying financial tables, is available on the investor relations section of Palladyne AI’s website. Today’s call will include prepared remarks from Ben and Trevor, followed by a Q&A session. During today’s call, management will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws.

These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Palladyne’s 2026 revenue guidance, expected backlog conversion, anticipated quarterly operating cash burn, product development milestones, commercialization timelines, defense program activity, potential customer adoption, market opportunities, and future strategic positioning across air, space, land, and maritime domains. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These risks and uncertainties include, among others, Palladyne AI’s ability to execute on development programs, convert backlog into revenue, scale production, manage operating expenses, integrate acquired businesses, secure additional contracts, maintain liquidity, and navigate evolving and commercial market conditions. These and other risk factors are described in detail in Palladyne AI’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Palladyne undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. In addition, during the call, management will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. In general, management will adjust for acquisition, other transaction-related expenses, stock-based compensation expense, non-cash warrant income or expense that are mark-to-market quarterly based on changes in the company’s stock price, expenses related to the change in contingent consideration liabilities associated with closed acquisitions, and any tax impact these items may cause. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in this morning’s press release. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Ben.

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Every quarter, we meet with our board of directors to review our prior quarter and year-to-date performance and to discuss, among other things, the business’s prospects, opportunities, and challenges in the near, mid, and long term. Prior to that meeting, I meet with the various leaders across the organization for a comprehensive review of the same topics at a business unit and division level. Our most recent board meeting was last week. I have to say, the most recent round of quarterly meetings validated the growing optimism I developed over the quarter. I am feeling more bullish about our prospects than I have since I returned to the company almost two and a half years ago. We are seeing meaningful traction across all parts of the business.

Since I returned, we’ve built the two things that I believed we needed in order to deliver on our vision for making the United States defense industrial base more competitive, more capable, and more responsive. The first is a new kind of autonomy, a decentralized, embodied, collaborative AI architecture that enables machines to operate on their own, work together, and adapt in real-time without being pre-programmed or relying on a constant connection to the cloud or relying on human direction and intervention. What I’m describing is the definition of true collaborative autonomy. What most others mean when they use these words is really nothing more than pre-programmed action where humans have made all of the decisions for the machines well in advance.

The second is the ability to make the machines that can put that autonomy to work, which requires world-class aerospace engineering, low-cost next-generation avionics, precision manufacturing capabilities, and ultimately, complete weapon systems, including access to some of the most capable, battle-proven warrior munitions on the planet. Together, they will enable us and our customers to field affordable, attritable systems at scale that are designed from the ground up to leverage our decentralized, embodied, collaborative AI. These two objectives are closely aligned with our nation’s priorities. The Department of War has made it abundantly clear that the United States needs both more intelligent, autonomous systems and a stronger industrial base capable of designing, manufacturing, and fielding them quickly and economically. We are focused on doing our part to answer that call.

This quarter, we began to see every one of these pieces working together in a way that is showing up in revenue, customer activity, and the number of opportunities in front of us. We still have much to do. The business has meaningful momentum across the company. We generated record quarterly revenue of approximately $5.8 million, up 63% from three and a half million in the first quarter. The growth was broad-based across our business units. We expect continued growth through the second half as backlog converts to revenue and new contract awards and customer wins begin contributing. We ended the quarter with approximately $25 million of backlog, up from $17 million at the end of the first quarter, which means after taking into account our Q2 revenues, we booked roughly $13 million of new business during Q2. Now, backlog will not always necessarily increase every quarter.

The timing of bookings, the duration of contract performance, and the timing of revenue recognition can all cause backlog to ebb and flow. The current backlog and the level of new contract awards and customer engagement give us good visibility into the second half. As a result, we are reaffirming our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $24 million-$27 million. We ended the quarter with approximately $44 million of cash on hand. Operating cash burn, including CapEx, was above our guided average quarterly rate, primarily due to increased business development efforts, some non-recurring CapEx, and the expansion of our engineering team to support new business that will contribute to revenue in the second half of this year. We are also carrying infrastructure that our current revenue base has not fully utilized. This cash burn was offset by our prudent use of our ATM facility.

We continue to expect operating cash burn of $32 million-$36 million for the full year, inclusive of CapEx, which means we expect operating cash burn to decline in the second half. The defense market is moving quickly towards affordable mass. Large numbers of lower cost autonomous systems that can be deployed and replaced without the economics of traditional weapons platforms. The Department of War is also pushing the industry to develop and field those systems faster than ever. Both trends are directly relevant to what we have built. For the most part, launching 1,000 drones today requires 1,000 soldiers. Other companies are attempting to solve this manpower challenge by automating multi-drone launches that follow a pre-programmed flight path. That doesn’t really solve the challenge because most of these drones can’t react to what’s happening around them in real-time. That still requires a soldier.

Pre-programmed flight, or what we call automated flight, is not a substitute for human intelligence or human direction. True autonomous flight can be. That’s what we do, and it is essential to understand the distinction and how that distinction translates to real-world operations. We put real reasoning and decision-making abilities directly on the drone, and then we enable multiple drones to collaborate in a manner such that the knowledge of each individual drone can be aggregated and used across the entire swarm. This is what we mean when we refer to true collaborative autonomy. We don’t just do this on Palladyne drones. We enable UAVs from different manufacturers to collaborate with any drones that are also running our SwarmOS software. We call our approach Decentralized Embodied Collaborative Autonomy, or DECA for short.

The intelligence operates on the machines at the edge so they can coordinate and adapt without relying on a continuous connection to the cloud or from a remote operator. We proved this capability in the field under real operating conditions during the U.S. Army’s Ivy Mass exercise in Q2. Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division used SwarmOS to command a mixed team of surveillance drones and our own Gremlin-X drone in a contested environment. One U.S. Army operator controlled the entire group of UAVs. In June, we announced that SwarmOS and Gremlin-X were awarded contracts by the U.S. Army under its Disruptive Applications Program. Following Ivy Mass, we were informed that certain contract options would be exercised for FY 2027, and we were formally invited to additional exercises.

That exercise and the future exercises are important steps for us because the software was and is being used by soldiers in an operational setting, not simply being demonstrated by our engineers in a controlled environment. This was not a demo in the traditional sense. Rather, it was a real-world exercise. A few moments ago, we issued a press release about our success at PCC6, which was even larger and more complex than Ivy Mass. Turning to our business operations, I will start with our components business. BRAIN is our low-cost flight computer for autonomous air systems. It is built into our own Gremlin-X mini bomber drone, and it is being integrated on systems designed by us for our defense prime customers. During the quarter, we booked a follow-on order from a defense prime that was five times larger than its prior order.

The order covers more than 1,000 BRAIN FC1 units with an aggregate value of approximately $2.3 million. These units deliver the guidance, navigation, and control for a new low-cost counter UAS interceptor. As these systems gain traction with customers, we expect demand for BRAIN to grow with it, and we are expanding our domestic production capacity accordingly. BRAIN may be just the start. In building our own platforms like Gremlin-X and SwarmStrike, as well as designing third-party systems, we have developed a range of other high-value subsystems and components, all made here in the U.S. We’re now exploring the business case for supplying some of these components to other drone and missile manufacturers as well, but we will only do so where we have a unique competitive advantage and can deliver differentiated capability or performance or cost advantage.

We have no interest in being in a highly competitive, commoditized, or low-margin business. Although there can be no doubt that as a nation, we need more UAV and missile components made here to reduce reliance on foreign sources. Our precision manufacturing business accounts for the balance of our components revenue. It machines and fabricates hardware for defense programs and industrial customers. This capability is strategically important because it allows us to produce components that are often in short supply and that impair our country’s capacity to produce the volume of weapons that the Department of War is looking for. We also expect it to support the work required to bring IAI’s loitering munitions into production in the United States when and as we develop customer demand.

Our engineering services for UAVs, missiles, loitering munitions, and spacecraft generate real revenues today and give us a seat at the table to educate and inform customers about the component and software solutions we offer that could give these customers and their products a competitive edge. During the quarter, we added engineers and moved into a larger facility to accommodate the increasing demand and utilization rates we are experiencing. Specifically, the additional capacity allows us to support existing and new third-party programs, continue developing our own products, and manufacture and assemble BRAIN and Gremlin-X without one activity interrupting the other. SwarmOS also continues to mature and is increasingly being integrated with autonomous systems from other OEMs. An operator defines the mission, but the software allows the machines to respond to what is actually happening around them, coordinate with one another, and adjust in real time.

It is not tied to a single airframe or manufacturer, which is one reason the Army has asked us to deploy our software across multiple drone platforms. We are also extending the technology to integrate sensors from other domains, including sensors in space, under the recently signed $4.2 million HANGTIME contract with the U.S. Air Force. Today, revenue relating to our DECA AI solutions still comes primarily from development, integration, and trial contracts with the Department of War. SwarmOS customer engagement is increasing, and the software remains the foundation of our aerospace and defense strategy. Our autonomous systems portfolio combines that software with physical platforms. Gremlin-X is a reusable mini-bomber designed to deliver a kinetic effect for less than $1,000 per effect. We have prioritized development of this platform, which has advanced from TRL6 to TRL7 in just the past quarter.

We’re also evaluating a modular version that could support missions beyond strike, including potentially ISR and counter-UAS missions by making the payload modular rather than having to field different airframes for different missions. SwarmStrike is our low-cost mini cruise missile designed to operate in coordinated groups using our IntelliSwarm product, which combines SwarmOS and BRAIN. With our ALARM contract with the U.S. Navy, we are in the early stages of developing a low-cost, air-launched, near-hypersonic missile for use with the F-35. During the quarter, we were one of only 14 companies invited to the Air Force’s Relentless Wolfpack Industry Day, which focused on networked autonomous weapon salvos. We had proposed SwarmStrike as an answer to the challenge, and we were the only small company invited to participate. This does not mean we will land a contract, but it shows the DoW recognizes our innovation and capabilities.

Separately and importantly, a major tier one defense prime included SwarmOS in its own Relentless Wolfpack proposal. Again, we don’t know who will be down selected, but this is great validation from a large industry partner. Major defense primes don’t make these kinds of decisions lightly. I will now turn to our partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries, or IAI. In June, we announced that Palladyne had entered into a partnership with Israel’s largest defense prime. As part of that partnership, we secured the right to Americanize, manufacture, and integrate IAI’s HAROP, HARPY, and Mini Harpy loitering munitions for the U.S. Department of War. These are large, combat-proven systems, not small FPV drones. IAI pioneered the loitering munition category more than 40 years ago and today has a backlog across its business of more than $30 billion.

HARPY and HAROP, which have been sold to numerous countries around the globe, are 10-foot wingspan unmanned aircraft that are designed for long-range missions, extended loitering, and the suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses. These are exactly the kind of systems that could potentially mitigate some of the aircraft losses our country has recently experienced in the Middle East. HARPY is designed to search for and attack enemy radar emitters. I personally am not aware of any other UAV of this size or class that has anti-radiation capabilities. HAROP has an electro-optical seeker, allowing the HAROP to identify and engage a target with precision. Mini Harpy combines anti-radiation and electro-optical capabilities in a smaller system with shorter range and a lower price point.

These products have been used in combat and address missions that have become increasingly important as mobile air defense systems become more common and present our military with real targeting challenges. We believe the U.S. military has a meaningful capability gap in this area. As a nation, we typically counter these defenses by launching missiles from manned aircraft. I have been told, but have no way of independently confirming, that the current cost of striking one of these mobile or intermittent air defense systems can range from $10 million-$40 million. Our IAI systems can present an alternative at a small fraction of that price without risking human life or the cost of a manned aircraft. We believe that a successful U.S. program based on these IAI systems could ultimately amount to $hundreds of millions and potentially even $billions of revenue over time.

IAI selected Palladyne based in large part on our engineering capabilities, our U.S. manufacturing capacity, our team, and our autonomy software. Once there is a clear government demand signal and we begin the work to stand up domestic production, we believe initial units could be available in about 18 months. We also intend to integrate SwarmOS where appropriate, so these systems can coordinate their actions as part of a larger mission set rather than operate only as individual aircraft. That combination takes the mission capability to a whole new level, unlike anything else on the battlefield today. One more proof point worth mentioning is the caliber of people joining our team.

This quarter, we added senior military advisors to our defense advisory board, including retired Lieutenant General Sean Gainey, who ran U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, led the operational command behind Golden Dome, and founded the U.S. military’s Joint Counter UAS Office. To be blunt, people with that kind of record don’t lend their names to companies they don’t believe in. He joined us precisely because he truly believes in our mission, our capabilities, and our opportunity to make a real difference for our nation’s war fighters. On the commercial and industrial side, we have sharpened our strategy with Palladyne IQ in two ways. First, we are focused on applications where autonomy addresses work that is difficult, dangerous, repetitive, and hard to staff, like surface preparation and corrosion treatment, typically done by hand.

A good example is our robotic work at an Air Force logistics center, which we expanded this quarter with an additional $2.9 million contract award, bringing the total for this program to more than $10.6 million to date. Second, we are shifting to a partner-led go-to-market strategy for IQ and Pilot, rather than trying to sell and deploy every solution ourselves, and we are seeing encouraging interest from ecosystem partners. We are not ready to announce more today, but we expect to have more to share on both products over the next several quarters. I will finish with the opportunity pipeline. As of today, we have submitted proposals for more than 20 Department of War funding programs with an aggregate initial potential value of $several hundred million. The timing and probability vary significantly by program. Some are relatively near-term, others are larger opportunities with longer odds.

Of course, we will not win all of them, and we may not even win any of them. The important point is that the number and size of the programs we are pursuing are materially greater than they were six months ago. We are increasingly getting shots on goal as the Department of War’s requirements continue to evolve and begin to incorporate the types of capabilities we have been developing for years. To continue the analogy, we have been skating in front of the puck for a while now, and I believe we are just on the cusp of that strategy and focus paying off. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and much of the opportunity I’ve discussed still depends on successful execution and customer funding decisions.

The quarter showed progress in the areas that matter: revenue, contractually committed backlog, proving out our autonomy software with customers in the field, repeat component orders, and a much larger opportunity pipeline. The pieces we assembled over the last two years are beginning to reinforce one another. That is why I’m increasingly confident that we are in the right place at the right time. With that, I will turn the call over to Trevor to walk through the financials in more detail. Trevor?

Trevor Thatcher, Chief Financial Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Thanks, Ben. I’ll focus on our second quarter results, our liquidity position, and our capital outlook. Revenue for the second quarter was $5.8 million, up 470% from $1 million a year ago, and up 63% sequentially from the first quarter. Product revenue, which today comes primarily from our precision manufacturing business and our BRAIN avionics product, was $2.7 million. Engineering services revenue was $1.9 million, and AI product development contract revenue was $1.2 million, which accelerated near the end of the second quarter after the government shutdown suppressed revenue during the first quarter. Cost of revenue was $4.1 million, and consolidated gross margin was approximately 29%. Similar to the first quarter, our margin reflects manufacturing utilization running well below full capacity and includes setup costs and investments related to new program wins that have not yet been covered by revenue.

As these programs come online, we expect that these efforts will turn into a tailwind as incremental volume runs through capacity we’re already carrying. Research and development expense was $4.3 million, up from $3.1 million a year ago, reflecting continued investment in Gremlin-X and our AI software. General and administrative expense was $8.1 million, up from $4.2 million a year ago, driven by added headcount from our November acquisitions, hiring to support new business opportunities, and higher stock-based compensation expenses. Stock-based compensation expense was $2.3 million this quarter, up from $1.1 million a year ago, driven largely by executive equity awards approved by shareholders in June. This is a non-cash expense and was a primary driver of the increased general and administrative expense and operating loss versus last year.

Going into the third quarter, this expense will increase materially from the second quarter, since we only recognized roughly one month’s worth of non-cash expense in the second quarter related to the new awards. Sales and marketing expense was $2.3 million, up from $1.3 million a year ago, reflecting the expansion of business development efforts within our Palladyne Aerospace & Defense division as we pursue more opportunities with the Department of War. Operating loss for the quarter was $13.4 million, compared to $8.1 million a year ago. Below the operating line, we recorded roughly $1.1 million of other income, which includes $800,000 from a non-cash gain on the revaluation of our warrant liabilities, together with interest income of $300,000. GAAP net loss was $12.3 million or $0.27 per diluted share, compared to $7.5 million and $0.20 per diluted share a year ago.

On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes the impact of warrant revaluation, stock-based compensation, and the change in our contingent consideration liability Net loss was $10.8 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, compared to non-GAAP net loss of $6.4 million, or $0.17 per diluted share in the prior year period. Turning to liquidity, we ended the quarter with $43.7 million in cash equivalents, and marketable securities, flat with the first quarter and down $3.4 million from the 2025 year-end balance. Operating cash burn, which we define as cash used in operations plus CapEx, was $11.1 million during the quarter. This includes approximately $10.2 million of operating cash and $900,000 of CapEx. This was offset by approximately $10.8 million of net proceeds from our ATM program and $300,000 in interest income.

During the first half of 2026, we raised $17.3 million in net proceeds under the ATM at an average price of $6.84 per share. We view the ATM as a flexible tool that we can deliberately use to expand our runway at a low cost of capital. As of June 30th, we had approximately $24 million in remaining capacity under the program. Backlog ended the quarter at $24.6 million, an increase of 43%, driven by approximately $13 million of new contract awards during the quarter, partially offset by revenue recognized during the quarter. We expect a majority of our current backlog to convert to revenue over the next 12 to 18 months. Turning to guidance, we are reiterating our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $24 million-$27 million, which represents roughly 357%-415% growth over 2025 revenue of $5.2 million.

We continue to expect organic growth across each part of the company. We’re also reiterating our full-year operating cash burn guidance of $32 million-$36 million, or roughly $8 million-$9 million per quarter on average. We ran above that pace in the first half, although we offset most of that with funds raised via our ATM, and we expect operating cash burn to trend lower through the second half as revenue and margins ramp. Based on our liquidity position, our access to the ATM, and our expected backlog conversion, we believe we are well positioned to execute our plan. Operator, we’re now ready to take questions.

Operator: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from Max Michaelis with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Max Michaelis, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the quarter. A couple from me, bunch of different topics here. First, I want to touch on the IAI. You guys mentioned it, but my real question around that is kind of what sort of has been the progress being made on the Americanization process? Have you identified any domestic manufacturing sites? Do you need that? Have you sort of been in any conversations, preliminary conversations with U.S. governments, just around these systems and kind of getting your foot in the door on that end?

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Hi, Max, it’s Ben. Thanks for the questions on IAI. We have been very active. We just announced the deal, what? Seven, eight weeks ago. We hit the ground running with kind of a full-court press, ticking down the list of every potential U.S. government customer that could be interested in these systems. We have engaged now, I would say, with about half of those targets. Across the board, I would say that there is meaningful interest. Interest is just the beginning. You have to get into the specifics and details about performance and capability and all of those kinds of things. The bottom line is we have yet to have anybody that we targeted tell us that there’s no interest. We are extremely encouraged and feeling bullish about the opportunity set.

In a lot of cases, there was preexisting familiarity with these weapon systems. Obviously no perception that there was access to them here in the U.S. We’re not starting from a stopped position or a standstill position because these are battle-proven weapon systems that the community is generally familiar with. In terms of your question about the facilities and our capacity to manufacture, we have a fair bit of manufacturing capacity and space today. The real question is what kind of volumes might the government want? We could quickly outgrow our capability in terms of size and facilities.

We are in the process of identifying additional facilities, not that we would need to manufacture, or not that we would need to build and construct because of the timelines associated with that, but we are developing a short list of currently available facilities that if the government were to say, "Let’s go," we’d be ready to jump into and hopefully without a lot of modifications, be ready to start standing up manufacturing in the relatively near term.

Max Michaelis, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Awesome. Makes sense. A couple more from me. Secondly, Gremlin-X advanced from TRL6 to TRL7 in the quarter. What was that specific milestone that got you there, and I guess what is required to get you guys to TRL8?

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Over the quarter, we did five different design reps. We’ve talked in the past, Max, about how our team can move quickly. That was definitely moving quickly. Five different design iterations, flying and testing in each instance. What got us over the hurdle was getting into the hands of customers, and have the customers actually fly it as intended, not us managing or demoing the systems, but actually having soldiers in the field using them under battlefield conditions. We now feel like we’re in a great spot with that. One could argue whether we’re at TRL8 yet or not, but again, because we haven’t been in live fire, actual battlefield conditions, we’ll hold off on making that announcement. The bottom line is the systems performed as expected and ahead of schedule.

Max Michaelis, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Perfect. Last one from me. I think you need $15 million-$18 million of revenue to sort of hit the guidance range for 2026. Backlogs that are around $25 million, that’s going to be converted over the next 12 to 18 months. I guess, share what you guys can, but when we think about that last $15 million-$18 million in 2026, what % of that is already contracted to be shipped this year, if you could share? Thanks.

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: When we talk about backlogs, that number is contractually committed, binding legal contracts. What is less certain is exactly the timing of deliveries, hitting of milestones, and all of that. It is a little challenging for me, Max, to give you a straight answer on how much of that backlog will absolutely be delivered in 2026 before the end of the year. What I can tell you is we are feeling, based on everything that we see, that Trevor and I see in the business, we are confident in reiterating the guidance that we previously gave.

Max Michaelis, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Awesome. Thanks, guys. Congrats on the quarter.

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Thanks, Max.

Trevor Thatcher, Chief Financial Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Thanks, Max.

Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Latimore with Northland Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Michael Latimore, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Yeah, good morning. Great quarter. Great bookings. I guess on SwarmOS, can you talk a little bit about the exercises you’re involved with and compare that to some of the programs that are visible, like Swarm Forge? What’s the difference between the exercises you’re involved in versus, say, the Swarm Forge program? What are the different requirements? What are the relative opportunities? Maybe just help us clarify that a little bit.

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Mike, and good to talk to you. The military is like a Hydra. I mean, it’s got lots of different groups doing lots of different things. The DIU has a focus on trying to find and identify companies with products and technologies that could be useful to the military. They’re kind of on their path that is a bit of a treasure hunt, and they frequently will stand up different kinds of competitions, if you will, where they will throw out some specifications and requirements, say to industry, "Can you meet these specifications and requirements?" They’ll do a bake-off, they’ll down select, and then they’ll give some money to actually develop a product into, or technology into what they’re looking for based on the best criteria that they had to choose from.

That’s one path of a young or small or new entrant company getting their products and technologies an audience in front of people at the Pentagon. There is another path, and that other path is to have a finished product that’s ready to go, not still under development, and to get it in the hands of actual users in real-world exercises. That is what we have just done with both Ivy Mass and with PCC6. It is not a matter of having some really smart technologists and some business people take a look at a venture capital type of approach to developing a new product technology.

Rather, it is actually getting your product and technology in the hands of war fighters, let them get real-world experience with it and evaluate it, then develop a report that says to the operating units and to the buyers and the acquisition people and the requirements writers, "Hey, this is something we’ve actually got our hands on in the field. We’ve used it, and either we like it or we don’t like it, or here’s where it can improve," or whatever. They give a full written evaluation. What we’ve just announced this morning with the press release right before this call, and what we talked about in past press releases, is our success at real-world battlefield condition exercises, not demos that we control. We train the team that’s going to be using it, or multiple teams.

We give them the technology, we give them the drones, they go out like they’re on the battlefield. They are on the battlefield, they do exercises using our products. We have no ability to control it once it’s in their hands. It is not a constrained set of environments. These are generally soldiers that may or may not have any drone experience. They certainly don’t have any experience with autonomous systems. Part of what we get evaluated on is can soldiers without a lot of training or experience actually learn it? How challenging is it? Can they use it? Can they accomplish the intended mission? We have been gratified that at every turn and every exercise that we’ve been in, we’ve gotten great feedback that we’re under-promising and over-delivering.

We’re delivering what we told them we would deliver, that is resulting in getting invited to more exercises with different and diverse groups of potential users. I would say our reputation is spreading in a very organic way across different units. A couple different paths that you can go. We have opted to go for the one that says we’re no longer in a kind of a bake-off. We’re just in real-world execution. Does that make sense?

Michael Latimore, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Yep. Awesome. Thank you. I guess as you look to the third quarter here, it seems like there could be a really heavy sweeps sort of period here. I think Exos talked about spending a lot of money kind of through fiscal year-end. Does it feel like this quarter could be another healthy bookings quarter or even better than the second, given it?

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: It’s premature. When you talk about the cleanup money that’s available, it’s a little bit like watching a game of musical chairs. Everybody, we, our peers, everybody that’s in the defense industry, is hoping to go capture some of that. Much of it depends on who’s actually got access to what capital, what that individual group’s priorities are. I’m hopeful, but I wouldn’t yet say that I’m at the position of saying I have any degree of confidence in it, because until it happens, you don’t really know. Meaning, until the music stops, you don’t know who’s got a chair.

Michael Latimore, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Sure. Makes sense. I guess last one for me on IAI. They have those three products. Are there any sense of would a customer buy all three? Is there more interest in one? Just curious, any feelers there.

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Different customers have different use cases and missions. When you think about perhaps what folks are trying to do to deal with longer range and longer distances, you are talking about the bigger platforms, the HAROP and the HARPY. If you were talking about perhaps launching from a vessel to try and destroy another vessel or launching from shore, and you’re not trying to go very far to hit a target, you might be talking about the Mini Harpy. Realize, every potential customer purchaser has their own specific reason to exist and their own mission and use case. What is uncommon is to have a single customer say, "I need all three," because they generally are operating in different environments with different purposes.

If you want to talk about a customer being, let’s say, the U.S. Army, sure, you could see the U.S. Army buying all three. Absolutely. When you get down to specific groups, that’s where the mission set bifurcates a bit.

Michael Latimore, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Yeah. Makes sense. Okay, cool. Thanks a lot.

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Adam Samuelson with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Adam Samuelson, Analyst, Jefferies: Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I guess for me, I want to just hone in on the cash burn and outlook for the balance of the year. Obviously, you’ve got an outlook that has improved revenue, at least on average in the second half each quarter. How do we think about that scaling into the cash line versus margin versus working capital, kind of other operating expenses? I’m just trying to think about the kind of base cash spend underlying the business and how that can kind of scale into cash flow prospectively on greater revenues as we think about 2027. Thanks.

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Trevor, you want to respond to that?

Trevor Thatcher, Chief Financial Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Yeah. We talked about reiterating our guidance for the year, and if you do the math to hit those numbers in the back half, cash burn is about $12 million is what we’re anticipating. There is some CapEx built into that we’re going to use strategically there. We do see with the revenue trending up and more margin dropping to the bottom, that that cash flow does go down, and that cash burn requirement goes down. We have quite a bit of capacity, both from a manufacturing standpoint and from a product standpoint when we start getting into our AI software opportunities to be able to scale the business without having to add a lot of cost.

We’re optimistic about seeing that trend down and still with some planned investment in the business, being able to significantly get below what the trend has been in the first half, in the second half.

Adam Samuelson, Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. Maybe just along those lines of the $24 million of backlog, can you share, is there a proportion of that that’s actually software-related revenue or software licenses and so that would presumably carry very high incremental gross margins?

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: The backlog composition that we see going forward is roughly, and this is just kind of very rough, it is about 50% from product sales, which means our precision components and our avionics. Avionics are higher margin, the precision components a little lower margin. Roughly in the range of about 30% relating to our software. Now, I want to caution you, most of the revenues that we have coming in from software right now relate to trial contracts and development contracts with the military that have not yet transitioned into high volume licenses. It does show that we have got a fair bit of software-related backlog. It is a good margin business, but it is not the kind of 85% margins that we will expect to be getting when we start just sending out copies of that software in high volume.

The balance of our backlog is in the engineering services side of the business. Okay. That is very helpful, Color. I will pass it on. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst, Alliance Global Partners: Great. Thank you. With the successful results at Ivy Mass and PCC6, can you talk about the next steps in the sales cycle as the end customer gets educated and sees these positive results? How should we think about these events turning into production orders?

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Yeah. Two different parts of it there, Brian, because we’ve got both hardware and software that are being used in these exercises. As I try and look at my cloudy crystal ball, what I believe will happen is reports from each of these exercises will be aggregated and accumulated by the folks that are both writing requirements for new programs and contracts and also by the purchasers, the folks that actually spend the money. As the need for, on the software side, the need for autonomous solutions and swarming solutions continues to percolate up, I think that we will wind up with ultimately having, and when I say ultimately, I don’t think we’re talking about years away, I think we’re talking about months away, solicitations come out that start to define requirements that look a lot like what is being trialed in the field with our software.

The requirements come out, we respond, and hopefully we get down-selected, and we wind up getting the contract. We have been asked about how we could retrofit our software on drones that have already been deployed to units in the field, and the numbers of drones that they’re talking about are not small numbers. They’re pretty sizable numbers. Starts becoming an interesting logistics question about how do you actually then get our software onto drones that are already in the field and distributed across a lot of people and a lot of users. Just because I’ve been asked, or we’ve been asked, doesn’t mean that that’s going to translate into a contract. It shows you the kind of thought that’s now going into trying to deliver this kind of capability on a broader base. So that’s the software side.

On the Gremlin-X side, I believe that in the relatively near term, we will probably start getting some inquiries about volumes that we could deliver, both in terms of time and cost. When I say volumes, my guess is it will start with relatively modest numbers, hundreds of units, not thousands. I think that the awareness of the need for a mini bomber solution is now starting to spread. As you may recall, we originally submitted our mini bomber as a solution for one of the original Drone Dominance programs. We weren’t selected because we submitted something that did not meet the requirements. As far as I know, we’re the only ones that submitted a mini bomber type of solution for a low cost per effect or cost per kill. Lo and behold, now we have a solicitation that comes out specifically for mini bombers.

I think our message is resonating. I think that as awareness of the cost-effective nature, low cost per effect that a mini bomber can deliver, I think there will be increasing demand and opportunities for that. That’s all to say, I think we’re just at the cusp of getting to the point where we can start seeing volume coming in business on both the software and the drone side.

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst, Alliance Global Partners: Great. I have one follow-up related to that. You highlighted you have 20 proposals submitted worth several hundred million dollars. Can you speak to, is this hardware mostly? Because it sounds like the software is a little bit further out in terms of procurement, or maybe just characterize how that proposal activity can be characterized.

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: I think most of the biggest dollars there, Brian, are combined hardware and software solutions. Meaning one of the things that we think makes our hardware solutions more compelling and attractive is because of the inherent capability of jointly developing the hardware and the software in tandem. We’ve talked about that’s why we got back into the hardware business because having systems designed from the ground up that can be optimized from a sensor and compute perspective to be able to leverage our AI capabilities delivers a whole different category of capabilities to the warfighter. I don’t have numbers in front of me, Brian, but I think the vast majority of-- I shouldn’t say the vast majority. A majority of those numbers represented and reflected by what I mentioned in terms of size are combined complete systems that incorporate both our hardware and our software.

Brian Kinstlinger, Analyst, Alliance Global Partners: Great. Thanks so much.

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Thank you, Brian.

Operator: Our next question comes from James Kisner with Water Tower Research. Please proceed with your question.

James Kisner, Analyst, Water Tower Research: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to talk a little more about PCC6. Congrats again on that. You advanced pretty rapidly there from the rehearsal to the larger event. Can you just say more kind of what you learned from operating in that kind of faster, bigger environment in general about Swarmer LS?

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Some of the takeaways were that we really can get a single soldier to have the mental capacity to be able to focus on those things that really matter that’s going on in battlefield environment and not have to try and micromanage the operations of each individual drone. We knew we could do it from a technology perspective, but until you have a soldier with limited experience with drones actually get their hands on it, you don’t know that it really proves out. We saw no limitations on the number of drones that we could fly or the number of drones that a fairly inexperienced soldier could actually manage. That, from a scaling perspective and from an overall capability perspective, was extremely encouraging for us.

Some of the things that we learned, little things, like we learned that if comms is degraded or challenged, which is real-world experiences, that our system worked as advertised. That sounds like a little thing, but given the fact that you never know what’s going to happen to comms degradation on the battlefield, that was an important thing for us to not just be able to have demonstrated ourselves and be satisfied, but to actually have the military see it in action. It sounds like a small thing, but it’s really a big deal. We learned a bit about how to best train new people to the system. We compressed the training time so that you could get more people using the system faster. We got some good feedback about what they’d like to see on the user interface.

We were given a challenge, again, to integrate with Anduril’s Lattice, and we were challenged to do that in a very short period of time. Going from basically a standing position to 60 miles an hour with that, we did that well. A lot of great learnings that reinforced our assumptions, but you never know until you’re in the field and giving it a try.

James Kisner, Analyst, Water Tower Research: That 30-minute stat is pretty impressive. I guess more broadly, it seems like that hardware-independent, multi-vendor approach is resonating at PCC6. Just as the Army moves towards these larger fleets of autonomous systems, how durable an advantage do you think it is, that vendor neutrality versus the kind of closed single-platform ecosystem?

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: The mantra at the Pentagon right now is certainly open architecture, not being trapped or beholden to any particular vendor, contractor, or system. I think it plays well. You get into the real-world applications. When you have a number of different units from a number of different divisions or even services that are all trying to collaborate and cooperate to accomplish a mission on the battlefield, as you know, you can see how many different vendors are providing drones to the military today. Lots of them, right? They’re buying from a lot of different sources. How do those drones communicate with one another when you’ve got Company A providing drones to this unit and Company B providing drones to that unit, and we’re really missing an opportunity to enable full across-the-board collaboration. Our software enables that to happen.

I think it is a big deal. I don’t think that the military will ever want it to be just one provider of that kind of capability for the reasons we just talked about. They don’t want to be beholden to anybody. We’re there and we’re doing it, and I think that gives us a lot of room to run with this software suite.

James Kisner, Analyst, Water Tower Research: Last follow-up on that. You’ve now integrated a number of manufacturers’ aircraft here, including Anduril. Is it fair to say bringing a new platform on is getting faster and more repeatable at this point? Anything you can comment on that?

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Yeah. We certainly have learned a lot along the way, but it really depends on the OEM themselves and the architecture for the drone that they’ve got. We are in the process right now of integrating with our first fixed-wing platform. Everything else has been a rotor platform, we’re learning a lot. The architecture on that drone is just different than what we’ve dealt with before. When you think about the altitude that those fly at and the sensors that they have and the compute they have, things are different. I wish it was as simple to say, "All right. Well, we used to do it in two weeks, and now we can get it down to one week." It’s just not that easy because there’s not a lot of consistency in the different components that our software has to touch and manage.

We’re understanding a lot more about what questions to ask and what to get nailed down before we begin the process. It can range from 2 to 4 weeks and a couple of people doing it full time to get an integration done from our current knowledge.

James Kisner, Analyst, Water Tower Research: All right. Very helpful coloring. Congrats. Thank you.

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Thank you.

Operator: Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Ralph Wills. Please proceed with your question.

Ralph Wills, Analyst: Good morning, and those good results. Are you involved or trying to become involved at all in the Golden Dome program? If so, which of your products would fit into that? The second question would be, your STRATFI program is now, as you said, at $10.6 million. What is the potential market for that product that is used there, and where will your capabilities be used?

Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palladyne AI Corp: Ralph, good morning. On Golden Dome, the primary focus for Golden Dome right now is on larger, more exquisite weapon systems to be able to intercept big things that are coming in, big weapons. There certainly, I believe, will be an opportunity for us to talk about ways that we can deal with smaller enemy form factors of things like the smaller Group 1 drones that may become problematic. Right now, I think that the really big focus and the big dollars are, for example, trying to use space-based assets to take missiles out of the sky. That’s not us. We don’t play in that sector.

As it trickles down and they start looking at more local and regional, effectively domes, where you’re talking about dealing with the interception of smaller weapons that are coming in, I think we may have an opportunity to play there, but that’s not Golden Dome’s priority today. In terms of our STRATFI contract, that relates primarily to our IQ product, which is our industrial manufacturing artificial intelligence platform. I mentioned in my comments that that is primarily focused on doing the kind of challenging work that humans have historically had to do because you are not able to automate it. Things like doing paint stripping and surface preparation for large components on aircraft. That’s the thing that we’re doing with the Air Force right now.

If you look at the total market for that, not just military market, but the market for being able to substitute automated and autonomous machines for doing the kinds of dangerous and awful jobs that humans don’t really want to do anyway, but that have historically been too challenging to be able to automate. It is a very large TAM. Globally, it’s billions of dollars. It is a big market opportunity for us. Our focus now is on trying to go deep in individual verticals where we have gotten some success. What we refer to as a land and expand approach. Start off showing customers what we can do in a narrow targeted use case.

Inevitably, as we’re already seeing, they start asking questions about, "Well, now that I’ve seen that it can do this, can it do that and that and that and that?" That’s our land and expand approach. We introduced the version two of the software at the beginning of this year. We’ve had great engagement with customers and systems integrators to do trials. We expect to start seeing more placements of that software over the second half of this year. Is that it?

Operator: That does conclude our question and answer session. Thank you all for your participation today. This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.