Surf Air Mobility Inc. (SRFM) Q3 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Hello. My name is Elodie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Surf Air Mobility Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now pass the call over to Hudson Andrews. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Surf Air Mobility's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I'm joined today by Deanna White, our Chief Executive Officer; Liam Fayed, our Co-Founder; Barrett Brown, President of SurfOS; Joshua Lowton, President of Surf On Demand; Louis Saint-Cyr, President of Airline; and Jason Secore, our Chief Financial Officer. Our earnings release can be found on the SEC EDGAR website and on our Investor Relations page at investors.surfair.com. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that during today's call, we will discuss our outlook and expectations for future performance. These forward-looking statements may be preceded by words such as we expect, we believe or we anticipate. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from the views expressed today. Some of these risks are set forth in our earnings release and in our periodic reports filed with the SEC. We will also present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Additional disclosures regarding non-GAAP measures, including a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP are included in our earnings release posted on our Investor Relations website and in our SEC filings. I'll now turn the call over to Deanna White, CEO of Surf Air Mobility.

Good afternoon, everyone. Surf Air Mobility is moving from an airline-centric company to a technology-powered platform for air mobility. Our company is building the infrastructure to connect and optimize the broader aviation ecosystem. Our Airline and Charter businesses generate revenue in real operating data. SurfOS turns that data into better economic decisions. Better economics then bring more operators, brokers, and customers onto the platform. We believe the company best positioned to lead Aviation's next chapter is one that already operates aircraft, understands the regulatory environment, has existing demand and uses software to build on real operations. Surf Air Mobility has all of this. When we introduced our four-phase transformation plan, we made specific commitments for each phase and the time line to deliver them. We are now in the expansion phase, which focuses on commercializing SurfOS, scaling our tech-enabled Surf On Demand business and expanding airline profitability. Our results for the third quarter of 2026 show continued progress on each, demonstrating our ability to execute against the plan. The third quarter of 2026 was the highest quarterly revenue and best adjusted EBITDA in Surf Air Mobility's history. Revenue was $36.5 million, within our guidance range, up 25% from the third quarter of 2025 and up 24% from the second quarter of 2026. Our adjusted EBITDA loss of $6.7 million was within our guidance range of $7 million to $4 million as we continue to execute on our path to profitability. We set three priorities for the second half of 2026. For our SurfOS business, sign new customers and commercialize OperatorOS. For our Surf On Demand business, grow revenue and expand margin. For our scheduled airline business, continued focus on efficiency and profitability through the use of SurfOS. We made strong progress on all three. SurfOS launched OperatorOS commercially and has signed five operators, three within the quarter and two since quarter end. Surf On Demand quarterly revenue more than doubled year-over-year to a record $19 million. Our airline generated positive adjusted EBITDA of $1.2 million, reflecting the benefits of SurfOS, and we secured a four-year $19.4 million contract to serve Lanai in Hawaii through 2030. We also added two experienced leaders to the management team. Barrett Brown, formerly Head of Asia at Palantir as President of SurfOS; and Jason Secore as Chief Financial Officer. Each of our business leaders will now take you through their results and priorities, starting with our Co-Founder, Liam Fayed, to discuss SurfOS.

Thanks, Deanna. We started building SurfOS because private aviation and air mobility lacked an integrated operating system, a need that will only increase as next-generation aircraft come to market. Over the last two years, we've been developing SurfOS inside our Airline and Charter business. Using our teams as R&D and solving our own problems first. The impact from our software is already tangible, lower costs, better reliability and higher productivity across our businesses. We now have what we need to grow SurfOS quickly. The products are proven internally. It runs on scalable, modern infrastructure from Palantir. We have a robust and growing pipeline of prospective customers, and we have the right team in place today. Leading the team requires someone who has seen what success looks like many times before. When I met Barrett Brown, I knew he was the right person to take SurfOS into the next phase of growth. Barrett spent over 10 years at Palantir, most recently as Head of Asia, where he built the playbook for launching new markets. His rare combination of technical and commercial expertise makes him an ideal leader for building and deploying software quickly and growing our customer base. In his first month as President of SurfOS, Barrett has sharpened our go-to-market strategy and put us in an even stronger position for commercial expansion. I'm very glad to introduce you to him today. Barrett, over to you.

Thank you, Liam. I joined Surf Air Mobility because SurfOS has what I look for in a software business at this stage. Product work and real operations have already made a measurable difference in our own business, and we have a strong pipeline of customers with a real need for our solutions. It's my job now to take the work Liam and his team have started and scale it into a growing business. Here are the highlights from the third quarter of 2026. We launched OperatorOS commercially in September and have now signed a total of five operators to date. SurfOS will earn a percentage of revenue on every trip these operators manage through the software. We received FAA authorization for OperatorOS as our airline system of record. This replaces paper with electronic signatures, records and manuals, giving us more real-time data and better insight as we fully digitize our airline. We deployed the initial phase of enterprise BrokerOS with Wheels Up and expanded the implementation period to include additional scope. This is our first enterprise customer under a contract worth up to $12 million over the term. We grew BrokerOS adoption with powered by Surf On Demand bringing new users onto the platform. Our Palantir partnership has become a force multiplier for our software business and has strengthened SurfOS in two important ways. The flexibility of Palantir's infrastructure platform can support small charter operators to large enterprises while keeping each customer's data secure and under their control. In addition, Palantir's engineering and go-to-market teams allow us to develop faster, onboard customers more efficiently and shape larger enterprise contracts. We have four SurfOS priorities for the fourth quarter and into 2027. First, onboard our OperatorOS customers and sign more contracts from our operator network. Second, close enterprise software deals with large operators, brokerages and/or aircraft manufacturers. We believe our pipeline is worth tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue, and we are in active negotiations with several industry leaders. Third, release additional AI-enabled modules for OperatorOS and BrokerOS and continue to accelerate our pace of development with Palantir. And fourth, extend SurfOS beyond our initial products. With a strong technology foundation in place, we will identify and deploy new use cases across the industry. We are still in the very early stages of commercialization, and my focus is turning our early traction into a durable software business. I will now pass it over to Joshua Lowton, our President of Surf On Demand.

Thanks, Barrett. Surf On Demand delivered the best quarter in its history. Revenue was $19 million, up 121% from the third quarter of 2025 and up 57% from the second quarter this year. This was our highest revenue quarter and our highest year-over-year revenue growth ever. Compared to last year, growth has accelerated every quarter, more than doubling the first nine months of 2026. Every On Demand trip we book sends more business to operators and every operator relationship we strengthen through the platform gives our brokers and therefore, our charter customers more aircraft inventory. As the platform grows, both supply and demand benefit, and our third quarter results reflect that. Revenue growth came from both increases in flight volume and price per trip in the third quarter. More demand resulted in our number of departures reaching a record high, over 1,400, which is up 86% year-over-year and up 20% compared to the second quarter this year. And we're growing share of wallet with average revenue per departure increasing 17% year-over-year and 29% compared to the second quarter this year. Our customers are flying larger aircraft and longer trips. As a result, we flew to nearly 30 international destinations this quarter. We said our priority for the second half of 2026 was to pair this revenue growth with margin improvement. That's exactly what we did by increasing gross margin over four percentage points compared to the same period in the previous year and increasing gross margin over 10 percentage points compared to the second quarter of this year. Three key levers drove the improvement, and we expect each one to continue. First is aircraft supply. We now have seven preferred operating partners. These agreements go beyond standard wholesale pricing, and they give us preferential aircraft rates, better booking and cancellation terms and exclusive access to select aircraft that further differentiates our charter business and gives our customers better value and a better experience. In return, our partners get consistent demand. Second is the Powered by Surf On Demand program, which continues to grow and contribute to revenue and positive margin. And third is the mix shift towards larger aircraft and longer trips that increases revenue per flight and expands margins. Our software underpins our record-breaking quarter. With BrokerOS, our team is working more efficiently through streamlined sourcing and communication with both operators and customers. The software has also enabled the launch of new revenue lines, including our wholesale, travel agent and cargo programs. Each new program uses SurfOS with shared insights and efficiencies across each one. I will now hand over to Louis Saint-Cyr, our President of Airlines.

Thanks, Josh. Last quarter, we told you the airline would be the bright spot for profitability this year. The airline is more profitable and more reliable than ever. Adjusted EBITDA for our airline has improved every quarter this year, and we expect it to improve further in the fourth quarter despite industry-wide fuel price increases. The airline's profitability is tied to SurfOS. Our software has given our teams better visibility and lets them make decisions faster and earlier. Year-to-date, here are the benefits to the airline. Direct operating cost per block hour is down 6%. Fuel burn per block hour is down 9%. Pilot cost per block hour is down 9% and labor productivity is up 15%. Our airline also gives us the scale and the data to develop SurfOS in a live operation. And what we've done digitizing our airline makes the software credible when we showcase SurfOS to external software customers. Hawaii continues to be a major focus for us. Our Hawaii network is one of the clearest proof points anywhere in the world for advanced air mobility. Mobility's revenue increased 9% from the same quarter last year and 3% from the second quarter this year. We now serve 9 airports and 12 routes across the islands, and that includes our relaunch service between Kona and Maui. We also won a four-year essential air service contract to serve Lanai. It's worth $19.4 million in subsidies through August 2030, and that's double the term of the previous award. I also want to talk about reliability because this quarter put it to the test. Two hurricanes hit Hawaii during the third quarter. Even so, the operation held up exceptionally well. Our system-wide controllable completion factor rose two percentage points to 98%. On-time arrivals were up four percentage points to 87% and on-time departures were up four percentage points to 80%. I'm proud of our teams for the work that they've done, which brings me to electric flight. This quarter, we completed our demonstration program with BETA Technologies with support from Hawaiian Airlines. BETA's ALIA aircraft flew 64 flights across four islands on the same routes we fly every day. We also took two steps with the FAA. We became the first Part 135 passenger operator to join the FAA's Center for Advanced Aviation Technologies Consortium, and we joined the FAA's Smart Airspace Program. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter and into 2027, we have two priorities for the airline. First, keep growing profitability across our Hawaii and Mainland networks; and second, finish our digitization initiatives with SurfOS. With that, I'll turn it over to Jason, our CFO, to talk through our financials.

Thank you, Louis. I'm pleased to be with you for my first earnings call as Chief Financial Officer of Surf Air Mobility. By way of introduction, I spent my career in aviation finance, most recently as CFO of Matternet and before that in finance roles at AAR, one of the world's largest independent MRO providers and Republic Airways. For the third quarter of 2026, consolidated revenue was $36.5 million, within our guidance range of $35.5 million to $37.5 million. Revenue increased 25% from the third quarter of 2025 and 24% from the second quarter of this year. It was the highest quarterly revenue in the company's history. Surf On Demand revenue of $19 million exceeded scheduled service revenue of $17.5 million, an important milestone that we believe shows our platform strategy is gaining traction. Scheduled service revenue declined 15% year-over-year, primarily reflecting our exit from certain EAS routes, partially offset by productivity improvements. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $6.7 million, within our guidance range of $7 million to $4 million and a 36% improvement from the second quarter of 2026. Net loss was $20.4 million compared to $27.2 million in the third quarter of 2025, a 25% improvement driven by a lower operating loss and lower fair value charges and interest expense. Two drivers stood out in our adjusted EBITDA improvement. First is our airline operations expanding their positive adjusted EBITDA margins. And second is the significant growth in profitable revenue from our Surf On Demand business. On the balance sheet, the second $14 million tranche of our asset-backed loan funded in August, completing the $21.6 million facility, and we ended the quarter with $10.7 million in cash. Turning to guidance. For the fourth quarter, we expect revenue of $36.4 million to $46.4 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $5.4 million to $2.4 million. For the full year of 2026, we are reaffirming our guidance of revenue of $128 million to $138 million, and we are modifying our adjusted EBITDA loss to $35 million to $32 million due to higher fuel prices and extended implementation periods for SurfOS. Looking ahead, our priority is to maximize long-term shareholder value through disciplined capital allocation, investing in our most profitable and fastest-growing businesses. Today, that means continued investment in SurfOS, where we see the greatest long-term margin potential and Surf On Demand, where revenue more than doubled year-over-year. Alongside that, we are focused on continuing to narrow our adjusted EBITDA loss, improving free cash flow conversion and funding growth from a stronger balance sheet. With that, I'll hand it back to Deanna.

Thank you, Jason. When we introduced our transformation plan, we told investors what we would deliver and when, and we continue to successfully deliver against that plan. This quarter, we posted the highest revenue and our best adjusted EBITDA result as a public company. OperatorOS is now a commercial product with five signed operators. Our Surf On Demand revenue more than doubled, and our airline business is generating positive adjusted EBITDA. We also strengthened our team with leaders who have scaled businesses like ours before. Each quarter moves us further along our path to profitability, and our third quarter results are further evidence of that progress. For the rest of the year, our focus remains the same: commercialize SurfOS, grow revenue and improve profitability. Thank you for your continued interest in Surf Air Mobility. Operator, you may now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is from the line of Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners.

Nice to see all the progress. Can you highlight... if there's any revenue right now coming from the SurfOS product in the third quarter? And then with the five operators added, how you see these contracts structured? Are they paying a platform fee and transactions? And how we should think about them ramping over the next few quarters in terms of revenue contribution?

Thanks, Brian, for your question. I really appreciate that. I'm going to turn it over to Brian -- I'm sorry, Brian, to Barrett Brown to provide the answer.

Thanks for the question. So the initial revenue from SurfOS was not material in the quarter. We launched OperatorOS commercially in September and Wheels Up is in its initial deployment phase. To your point about basically how does operator make money. We'll earn a percentage of revenue on every trip an operator manages and distributes through the platform. And so our revenue grows as the customers' businesses grow. This is just for the core feature set. And beyond this, we'll continue to develop and sell more advanced modules as well.

So it's all transactions. It's not -- there's no platform fee, for example.

So no, I mean, it depends on how you look at it. It's the same thing, right? So yes, there is a platform fee, and it's based on the transaction volume, right?

Okay. And then can you speak to the pipeline, both in terms of some of these small operators as well as enterprises. Maybe you could help size and where are you in negotiations? Are they advanced? Are they going to take quite a while? Maybe talk about the next leg of progress after the first five.

Sure. So for the OperatorOS customers, especially the smaller ones but even medium-sized ones, the cycle is much quicker, right? And we have this existing network of operators that's part of our moat, so to speak, right? And so getting -- they all need this. It's the most amazing product market that I've ever seen. It takes like a couple of meetings essentially, right? So for the operators for OperatorOS, it's very quick. We'll give guidance in due course on like the scale and the number we're going to get on the platform over a time period, but it's faster. Enterprise Software is always a much longer deal cycle, but it started long before I got here. So we are in advanced discussions with the key players in the industry, and we're shepherding them towards close.

Great. Last question I have is on the gross margin. What is the target as this ramps for the overall business? And is it only a function of SurfOS ramping? Is it stronger revenue from the airline? Just kind of take us through how you get to your target in the next four to five quarters and what that might look like.

Brian, this is Jason Secore, CFO, and thanks for the question. And are you specifically SurfOS, are you asking about the entire business?

Well, I'm talking about the whole business. We were about 8% trying to think about how -- before you joined, I thought we were thinking about somewhere in the 20s next year, and I'm curious how you get there. What are the puts and takes to get you to something like a 20% plus gross margin?

Yes. Well, we've not provided guidance yet for 2027, but I can provide a little bit of context in terms of how we can get there. Barrett just shared a little bit about SurfOS. I mean that's a business that's going to have software-like gross margins. So you can think about high double-digit margins, right? So that by itself will obviously increase the overall level, right? You then look at the other two businesses we've not guided to except we've stated that, right? The airline business is positive EBITDA for this quarter, right? And as well as Josh's business, right, has also improved. So we've not guided yet towards gross margins, Brian. We'll provide that a little bit later, but for 2027. But hopefully, I've addressed your question there.

Your next question is from Dave Storms with Stonegate Capital Partners.

This is Maximus asking questions for Dave. I wanted to start off, if you guys could walk us through how the higher fuel costs and longer implementations factored into the updated EBITDA outlook and how you're thinking about those pressures heading into 2027?

Dave, I'll take the fuel question, right? Fuel is up this quarter. We've seen an increase year-over-year of about 37% if you look at price per gallon. But with that said, we've been able to utilize lower burn in our operation. So ultimately, we've only seen about a 9% increase year-over-year in fuel.

And just a follow-up...

What you Correct.

Yes, the second part of my question.

Can you repeat the second part, Dave?

Yes. I guess how would you describe the mix of the updated EBITDA outlook and also with the implementations as well and the higher fuel costs?

For Q4?

Correct. Yes.

Yes, we've not provided any guidance for 2027. We've reaffirmed our revenue guidance for the full year. We slightly lowered our EBITDA guidance for the full year as well, as we mentioned, due to two things, the higher fuel costs as well as the delays in SurfOS implementation.

Okay. And just one more question. What specifically has it taken longer with the SurfOS implementations? And if these are mainly customer-specific integration issues or any other challenges that you guys could touch on.

So this is Barrett again. It's just like every enterprise buffer implementation at any scale, you think you know -- everybody thinks they know what they want. And then once you get in there and uncover everything, you find more things to do. And it's a great problem to have. I think we are learning that we will expect that every time, frankly, in my experience. And when the customer has more scope and more things they want you to do, you want to do it.

The next question is from Austin Moeller with Canaccord Genuity.

So just my first question here, can you detail some of the recent productivity improvements that have been achieved with SurfOS within the airline operations unit?

This is Louis. Thanks for your question. We've been basically kind of on this path all year to transform the airline. We basically improved our reserve utilization with pilots. We've got better visibility on all our contracts and our fuel utilization. Our flight management software is really where we integrate everything with maintenance and with our daily operations. And so that visibility, what it does is really allows us to see day of flight and forward 48 hours, 72 hours into the operation and really make the critical decisions to make sure that we're on time. And by being on time, we avoid a lot of costs associated with an airline that's just not performing. And so we've got a lot of benefits that way. And we're also basically from a maintenance planning perspective and on the maintenance side, where we basically are doing a better job forecasting our return to service aircraft that also improves our reliability. So when you start packaging everything together, we've really seen some nice momentum throughout the year.

Okay. And if we think about BrokerOS, should we think about the contract size being similar to the Wheels Up agreement, which was $12 million over three years with the operators? Or do you think most of the contracts would be more single-digit millions over a multiyear period?

So I think there's two paths here, right, because you've got smaller operators that are going to be using a limited set of features and price accordingly, right? And then you have the actual full enterprise agreements that can extend the size of any full enterprise implementation, right? And so the idea is to go down both paths simultaneously. And so for -- you asked about BrokerOS in particular, it can be relative to the size of the operation, right? And then full enterprise would be additional use cases beyond BrokerOS as well.

I would assume you'd want to prioritize the full enterprise, though, just given the larger contract dollars and probably the associated margin uplift.

Well, are you asking if I like money? Yes. But remember, the thing it's a platform here, right? And so you need the supply side, you need the full marketplace, right? And so we need to be doing both in parallel to build up both sides of the market.

We have reached the end of the analyst Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Deanna White for the retail questions. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you. We got a number of questions from our Say Media application. Really appreciate all our retail investors, their interest in our company and their continued support. We look at these and take the top questions. And so the first one is going to be for Barrett. It's with five OperatorOS contracts signed and Wheels Up deployment underway, when does management expect these agreements to begin generating meaningful revenue? Additionally, can management provide any expectations for SurfOS revenue growth in 2027 as commercialization continues?

Right. So we will announce the full year 2027 guidance in due course. And at that time, we can provide more detail on the expected revenue growth of SurfOS broadly. We're in the early stages of commercialization, as I said in the call, but we have a very healthy pipeline of both SMB and enterprise prospects. And we expect 2027 to be our first year of meaningful revenue as adoption of our core products, hopefully skyrocket certainly grows. As I touched on before, operator is earning a percentage of revenue on the trips. Every trip that an operator manages, meaning that the revenue begins as soon as each operator is onboarded and starts running trips through it. So onboarding our five signed operators is our top priority for the fourth quarter. And then as we said before, it Wheels Up the initial phase of enterprise broker OS is deployed under a contract over a little more than $12 million over its term.

Thank you, the next question is more on SurfOS strategy. I'm going to give it to Liam, our Co-Founder. Is there a chance SurfOS can expand to bigger airlines, cargo airlines and near future to drones? I am seeing a lot of potential for this kind of application for this product.

Thanks, Deanna. Yes, we absolutely see opportunities beyond our current products, extending SurfOS to new use cases across the industry is one of sort of core to the SurfOS initiative. And I think what we're seeing is as we deploy the core features across operators, flight management system, there's more to sell within the airline. You can start going into maintenance and predictive planning, AOG recovery. There are several others sort of as we sell the products just inside a small operation, but also as we're building kind of the operating system for an airline, I think everything -- there's many other industries that need an operating system. It's built on top of Palantir, which is an infrastructure we can build at a really fast pace. And I think that it really creates an interesting product market fit within air mobility, within current air operators with new next-gen aircraft drones. I think there's -- a lot of the problems that we're solving of flying airplanes is common across in other industries. So I definitely -- as we've developed the product pipeline, I think there's many other verticals where this software is relevant. So it's an exciting time on the product front.

Thanks, Liam. The next question will be for Jason, our new CFO. What is management doing to increase the value of existing shareholders' investments while balancing the need for additional capital, debt reduction and future business expansion?

Thanks, Deanna. We're directing our capital to our most profitable and fastest-growing businesses. As I mentioned, SurfOS has the greatest long-term potential and Surf On Demand, where revenue has more than doubled year-over-year. We're also strengthening our balance sheet. In the third quarter, we completed our $21.6 million asset-backed loan. Of course, we're continuing to narrow our adjusted EBITDA loss, which was the best in our history as a public company this quarter.

Thank you, Jason. Next question, Jason, is also for you. What specific milestones must Surf Air Mobility achieve over the next 12 months to reach sustainable profitability? And when does management realistically expect the company to become cash flow positive?

Thanks again, Deanna. As you mentioned in your opening remarks, we built a four-phase transformation plan with a clear path to profitability, and we're now in what we call the expansion phase. We're not giving a date for adjusted EBITDA or cash flow breakeven today, but here's what's to watch out for in the next 12 months as we execute on the phase. First, commercializing SurfOS. I think that's been a theme of my comments today. Over the next year, we'll onboard our OperatorOS customers, sign more SMB operators and close more multimillion-dollar enterprise deals. Second, we're going to continue scaling Surf On Demand. Revenue grew again 121% this quarter, while margins expanded. Gross margin improved more than four points year-over-year and more than 10 points from the second quarter. And then third and finally, we're going to continue to expand airline profitability. The airline is already adjusted EBITDA positive. It has improved every quarter this year, and we expect to improve again this next quarter. So putting this all together, our adjusted EBITDA loss has narrowed each quarter this year by 36% from the second quarter to the third. And our fourth quarter guidance of $5.4 million to $2.4 million loss implies it narrows again. Cash flow breakeven will follow adjusted EBITDA breakeven since we're continuing to invest in SurfOS. We have enough visibility to give a specific target, we'll share it.

Thanks, Jason. And that ends our retail questions, Say Media section of this earnings call. I appreciate everyone who has joined us and taking the time and for your interest and your investment in Surf Air Mobility, our company. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending, and you may now disconnect. Goodbye.