Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: We welcome now our Bloomberg TV and radio audiences because
Speaker 2: joining us now is Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim, joining
Speaker 2: us from the NASAC awaiting the trading debut. First of all,
Speaker 2: congratulations on the IPO Jason, great to have you with us.
Speaker 2: Talk to us first about why now. We were just
Speaker 2: talking about this heating up that we're seeing in the
Speaker 2: IPO market. You're seeing more companies actually come out of
Speaker 2: the pipeline after what's been pretty quiet couple of years.
Speaker 2: Why did you pick this particular moment.
Speaker 1: Well, it was always part of our strategy. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at what we've been doing. We got
Speaker 1: orbital flight heritage on our Alpha rocket on our second launch,
Speaker 1: and we landed on the Moon just in March of
Speaker 1: this year, at something that's really hard. Space is hard,
Speaker 1: but landing on the Moon is even harder, and this
Speaker 1: company did it successfully. And then if you look at
Speaker 1: what we're doing, we have a production line of Alpha rockets,
Speaker 1: and we're building our Eclipse reusable sixteen ton rocket as
Speaker 1: well as lunar landers annually, and we're building Electra spacecraft
Speaker 1: to serve you know, the Golden Dome customer space exploration
Speaker 1: as well as commercial teket And so if you look
Speaker 1: at what the CEO of NASDAC said, a Data Friedman,
Speaker 1: you know, the markets are strong and they're growing, and
Speaker 1: we've gotten really great reception and conviction from investor investors
Speaker 1: over time, and so this is the right moment.
Speaker 3: You're going to raise almost a billion dollars looks like
Speaker 3: eight hundred and sixty eight million dollars. Jason, what are
Speaker 3: you going to do with the money?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's kind of like what I already said.
Speaker 1: We're going to rate up. We're going to continue to
Speaker 1: increase capacity because there's so much more demand in the
Speaker 1: space markets right now because of national security, because of
Speaker 1: space exploration. To the Moon. You know, the Moon is
Speaker 1: really important. It's the ultimate high ground. It's also important
Speaker 1: if we're going to put humans on the Moon again
Speaker 1: starting in a couple of years, we want to know
Speaker 1: everything about the move. We want to put more lunar
Speaker 1: enters up there, more infrastructure, more power systems up there too.
Speaker 1: So we want to make the Moon more frictionalists for everybody,
Speaker 1: for America first.
Speaker 2: And we're just seeing this headline cross the terminal now
Speaker 2: that the Firefly IPO said to end more than twenty
Speaker 2: times over subscribe, so plenty of demand there. Jason, Let's
Speaker 2: talk a little bit more about the actual business and
Speaker 2: what the status of Eclipse is as I understand it.
Speaker 2: That's your rocket that's meant to compete against the Falcon nine.
Speaker 2: How is that going.
Speaker 1: Well, we see the Falcon nine as very complimentary. That's
Speaker 1: looking at the heavy and super heavy market and a
Speaker 1: lot of that is going towards good use to launch starlinks.
Speaker 1: But the rest of the world needs launch capacity and
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty seven it's going to be really scarce,
Speaker 1: and so that's why our target of launching our first
Speaker 1: Eclipse in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty six is
Speaker 1: perfect timing because we'll be able to provide more supply
Speaker 1: of medium launch for Nest Security Space Launch Program customers
Speaker 1: as well as the commercial customers. They're putting up a
Speaker 1: lot of great advanced technology that are in abundant quantities
Speaker 1: for those proliferic constellations.
Speaker 3: You you know, you mentioned Adina. You're at the NASDAQ
Speaker 3: obviously tried and true storied index there and business, but
Speaker 3: did you think about TXSE. You're from Texas.
Speaker 1: Well. Texas is a great place to do business. I've
Speaker 1: run previous companies and you know, Texas is just at
Speaker 1: the forefront. You know, they have the Texas Space Commission.
Speaker 1: And we received a eight point two million dollars grant
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five and we're going to use that
Speaker 1: to expand our production line of concurrent builds of our
Speaker 1: Blue Ghost Lunar landers. As you know, as of last Tuesday,
Speaker 1: NASA awarded us our fourth blue Ghost Ludar Lander for
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy eight million dollars and we're just
Speaker 1: proud of the team. We're going to kick that program
Speaker 1: off next week and we're hiring a lot of great talent.
Speaker 1: So if there's people that want to come and do
Speaker 1: bold missions and do more of what they want to do,
Speaker 1: Fireflies the place to do.
Speaker 3: That, all right.
Speaker 2: I appreciate the update there on that contract too. I
Speaker 2: want to talk a little bit about the Alpha rocket
Speaker 2: as well. When you think about your long term strategy,
Speaker 2: where does Alpha fit in? How important is that?
Speaker 1: Alpha is so important because it's the only one ton
Speaker 1: to space rocket in the market with orbital flight heritage.
Speaker 1: We're rating up right now because there's so much more
Speaker 1: demand than there is supply, and so we want to
Speaker 1: be able to address that demand. So there's demand in
Speaker 1: the tactically response to space market from the Space Force.
Speaker 1: They want to keep ahead of the threats and we
Speaker 1: did that with our Victimsknox mission in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: We were the first to successfully launch in a twenty
Speaker 1: four hour timeline, shattering the twenty one day previous record
Speaker 1: and it became the gold standard for launch in space.
Speaker 1: And then if you look at you know commercial customers,
Speaker 1: they want dedicated rights to mission unique orbits to generate
Speaker 1: revenue from their business models. And then finally we onboarded
Speaker 1: onto the Missile Defense Agency MAC TB two point zero
Speaker 1: program and that's an IDIQ where we'll start manifesting launches
Speaker 1: of three to four hypersonic missiles at a time. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of economies of scale with that, so there
Speaker 1: is so much demand for the one ton off of rocket.
Speaker 1: All right, very cool stuff.
Speaker 3: We look forward to talking to you again, Jason Firefly
Speaker 3: Aerospace CEO Jason cam talking to us on the debut
Speaker 3: of their public offering