Firefly Aerospace is taking its orbital ambitions to the general public markets. The corporate, which notched a string of successes this 12 months, together with a historic business moon touchdown, submitted its formal declaration to regulators Friday detailing its plans to IPO someday this 12 months.
The S-1 doc submitted to the U.S. Securities and Change Fee gives a wide-ranging look into the corporate’s funds and governance plans, although the variety of shares to be provided and their value vary has not been disclosed. This implies the ultimate valuation remains to be to be decided.
Firefly is heading into the preliminary public providing with $176.9 million in money and money equivalents. And whereas it has incurred unfavourable money flows and losses from operations, Firefly projected that its money is ample to satisfy its liquidity wants for no less than 12 months.
The corporate does have lots of debt: about $173.6 million, together with a $136.1 million time period mortgage with a 13.87% rate of interest. The online proceeds from the IPO will likely be utilized in half to repay that excellent mortgage, in response to the S-1.
Firefly reportedly scored $55.8 million in income as of March 31, up from simply $8.3 million for a similar interval in 2024. The vast majority of that — round $50 million — is from “spacecraft options,” or its Blue Ghost lander missions, and simply $5 million from launch. However {hardware} is an costly endeavor, and Firefly remains to be burning some huge cash: The price of gross sales, or incurred bills, was almost as a lot as income — about $53 million as of March 31, leaving simply $2.2 million in gross revenue.
The corporate operated at a internet lack of $231.1 million for the 2024 fiscal 12 months, up from $135.5 million in 2023. Its internet losses on the finish of the primary quarter had been $60.1 million.
But the corporate tells potential buyers that it sees nothing however progress forward, and there’s a handful of big developments within the pipeline that might show that to be true. That features a main partnership with protection large Northrop Grumman for a brand new, reusable launch automobile known as Eclipse, a launch settlement for as much as 25 launches with Lockheed Martin, and the upcoming business debut of Elytra, a spacecraft line designed for in-space transportation providers.
The corporate additionally cited robust buyer demand, noting that as of March 31 it had about $1.1 billion price of backlogged launch orders and spacecraft contracts. That’s about double from the $560 million in backlogged orders it had from a 12 months prior. That large increase got here from three multi-launch agreements for Firefly’s small Alpha rocket and a further lunar supply contract for its Blue Ghost lander.
The regulatory doc additionally states Firefly intends to be a “managed firm” — basically, that it’ll leverage Nasdaq guidelines to make sure that AE Industrial Companions, the non-public fairness agency that purchased a majority stake in Firefly in 2022, will retain vital governance management over the corporate even after it’s listed on the general public markets.
The corporate intends to checklist on the Nasdaq International Markets underneath the ticker image $FLY. The information comes after a relative quiet interval of house firm exits. There was a slew of house corporations that went public through mergers with particular goal acquisition corporations in 2021 and 2022, lots of which have didn’t carry out.
Firefly’s IPO will doubtless present some much-needed liquidity to the market. Its IPO comes only one month after Voyager Area, an area firm constructing the non-public house station Starlab, filed its IPO paperwork final month.
