Q2 2022 Blade Air Mobility Inc Earnings Call
Good morning, and welcome to the Blade oven add mobility, Inc. Fiscal second quarter 'twenty train two financial results conference call.
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I'd now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ravi Jenny <unk>, Vice President of Investor Relations.
Please go ahead.
Yeah.
Thanks, and good morning, Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Blade Air Mobility Conference call and webcast for the quarter ended June 30th 2022, we appreciate everyone. Joining us today before we get started I would like to remind you of the company's forward looking statement Safe Harbor language statements made in this conference call that are not historical facts.
Statements about future time curious may be deemed to constitute forward looking statements within the meaning of the private Securities Litigation Reform Act 1995.
These forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and actual future results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward looking statements. We refer you to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risk factors that could cause any differences any forward looking statement.
It's provided during this conference call are made only as of the date of this call as stated in our SEC filings late disclaims any intent or obligation to update or revise these forward looking statements.
As required by law during today's call. We will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe may be useful in evaluating our financial performance reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures non-GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings press release, which will also be available on our website. These non-GAAP .
Measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP hosting todays call are Rob Wiesenthal, founder and Chief Executive Officer placed Elisa, Tom keel, President and will Haber, Chief Financial Officer, I will now turn the call over to Rob weakened though Rob. Thank you Ravi.
Good morning, everyone I'd like to thank you for your interest in blade to welcome you to our earnings call for the second quarter ended June 32022, I'll start with a few highlights from the quarter our financial performance in the second quarter was once again well ahead of our expectations revenue in the June quarter increased 175% of it.
$35 $6 million versus $13 million in the 2021 comparable period contributing to a record quarter for both revenue and flight profit on establishing total revenue of $62 3 million for the first half of this year Youre seeing great performance across the broad portfolio of diverse aviation.
Is that we have built and acquired since our inception on a pro forma basis, assuming we had owned Trinity Air Medical intelligence scheduled passenger business the prior year period.
Organic revenue growth would have been 87% as you can tell from this figure the benefits of the blade platform are paying dividends across our divisions, both old and new this is a testament to our ability to aggressively and efficiently integrate our acquisitions and blade M&A is a core competency let me.
Walk through a few highlights from the quarter.
And our men and mobility organ transplant business, we're making great progress in terms of new client acquisition and are now serving 15 nine transplant centers in Oregon procurement organizations, we remain the largest dedicated air transport or human organs for transplant, United States by leveraging the combined buying power of the entire Blake.
Customer base, both consumer and medical we provide better pricing and reliability for hospitals in a way that few others can expect us to continue rolling out our great servicing capabilities to even more clients in the coming months. We have also made great strides in short distance as well this quarter I am pleased to report that our Vancouver busy.
This return to profitability following the impact of omicron and the first quarter, while blade airport connecting travelers between Manhattan, and New York area airports showed significant improvement in utilization with its current passenger run rate well ahead of pre pandemic levels and the introduction of dynamic pricing is also driven.
Other revenue growth.
As a result of the strong demand for Blade Airport in June we announced the launch of an additional route between the east side of Manhattan and JFK.
Average seat prices increased across the short distance root portfolio contributing to significant growth in flight profit, while pricing and customer demand has remained equally strong in the third quarter to date.
More than anything this quarter demonstrated the resilience of our Flyers and enduring value proposition of our services from our blade Airport business, starting at $195 per seat up to our commuter business with seats up to $1100. We have seen unwavering demand for our short distance products, even following price increases.
Given the flexibility of our asset light model unique resilience of blades short distance fliers in the essential nature of our men and mobility organ transplant services. We believe blade is well equipped to thrive even in a potential recessionary environment.
We're also well situated to combat inflationary pressure in our consumer facing businesses pricing has more than offset cost increases while our men mobility contracts generally pass through fuel.
At the same time, we've been driving growth in revenue profit, we've driven efficiency from our other operating expenses total SG&A, which includes software development general and administrative and selling and marketing expenses continues to decrease as a percentage of revenue down to 42%.
Quarter versus 83% in the prior year period, demonstrating the powerful leverage of our platform.
Simply put we have built a diverse and defensive set of businesses with significant growth potential in almost any economic environment.
Let me take a moment to focus on this important point.
Based on the current third quarter performance to date, we are seeing both consistent strong demand and price elasticity in our consumer business at the same time, our medical business is enjoying continued growth and remain uncorrelated with the vagaries of the travel industry.
For the overall economy.
Finally, I'm excited to welcome Roshi branch to our team as our Chief Marketing Officer machine joins us from Equinox and has prior international experience at a b Ambev and DRG out we look forward to having a machine lead our marketing efforts as we expand our presence to three continents I couldn't be more.
We're happy with how we are positioned and with that I'll turn the call over to Melissa to provide you with an update on blade Europe and a few other focused areas.
Thanks, Rob we have made incredible progress on our strategic initiatives. This quarter, we are targeting a late summer close for a blade Europe transaction, where we will acquire the asset light charter and scheduled air mobility businesses of monarch are Hello security and as do our helicopter together in 2019 these businesses.
At an aggregate of approximately 30 million euro in revenue, while servicing approximately 125000 suppliers. All three businesses are performing well and we're pleased to report that 2022 revenue is tracking ahead of 2019 year to date.
We have already begun to introduce our existing customer base to the south of France, and Monica by offering deep and charters Q and from key events, including the Monaco Grand Prix and the Cannes Lions Festival, demonstrating the significant crossover demand from our U S leisure fliers.
Our new urban Air Mobility Alliance with Jetblue launched in June under the partnership Jetblue will purchase for Blade Airport transfers per year for top chairman Zhang plus loyalty program members, while all true Blue members will receive first time flyer pricing benefits from Blake, We expect this partnership to improve utilization in our airport business.
S and provide a fantastic experience for Jetblue loyal fliers.
All of our strategic and financial accomplishments serve to build an even bigger launchpad for future electric vertical aircrafts, evs or Ito industry Carlin.
Whether it's the last mile connection to bring a donor hearts of hospital health that are $200 feet between eastern Monica latest aggregating the largest and most profitable existing use cases for electric flight and we believe we are better positioned than anyone in the world to reap the expected benefit of future quiet emission free and lower.
E D a.
To that end blade has been planning an easy test flight in order to demonstrate the unique capabilities of these aircrafts to the communities. We serve today. We are pleased to announce that later, we'll be conducting that test flight during the fourth quarter using betas alia aircrafts in the Greater New York City area with that I'll turn the call over to well.
Thank you Melissa I'll start with some quick housekeeping as you may have noticed from our press release. This morning, we have realigned our disaggregation of revenue in order to provide analysts and investors better visibility into our growing meta mobility, Oregon transportation business, which is now broken out as its own revenue category.
We have provided a schedule of historical quarters in both the current and prior format in our press release to assist you with your models with that I'll walk through a few highlights from the quarter and short distance revenues were up 89% to $11 million in the June 2022 quarter versus $5 $8 million in the comparable 2021 period.
Growth was driven by our acquisition of how he just passenger routes in Vancouver increased corporate and leisure flight volumes. The resumption of our blade Airport service and price increases on a pro forma basis, assuming we had owned <unk> passenger business in the prior year period organic revenue growth would have been 77% in.
In airport, we saw significant sequential passenger growth in Q2 of approximately 50% versus Q1 with a larger increase in revenue given higher yields on a per seat basis. We've continued to see passenger volume around the 25000 flyer annualized run rate you'll be highlighted on our last call in may part of the <unk>.
For this is intentional as we made the decision to allocate excess peak hour capacity to profitable seasonal short distance routes.
We've recently added additional capacity dedicated to airport routes, which we expect to support future growth.
Turning to meta mobility, Oregon transport revenue increased 1013% to $17 2 million in the June 2022 quarter versus $1 6 million in the comparable 2021 period growth was driven by our acquisition of Trinity Air Medical. The addition of new hospital clients and significant growth within existing accounts.
On a pro forma basis, assuming we had owned Trinity in the prior year quarter.
Ganic revenue growth would have been approximately 139% fantastic performance any way you look at it.
The Trinity acquisition exemplifies the success of blades are Oh, IC focused acquisition strategy, which targets profitable businesses that can leverage the blade platform to drive incremental revenue and cost efficiencies by deploying our brand aircrafts, operator network and technology enabled logistics and customer service we have.
Significantly accelerated growth in our combined minimum mobility, Oregon transport business.
Concrete terms for the December 2021 quarter, the first which included Trinity for the full period, we saw a $9 8 million of total minimum ability, Oregon transport revenue.
In just six months, we've grown revenue, 76% to $17 2 million in the June 2022 quarter, we are well capitalized to continue executing against our M&A strategy, which we believe will both accelerate our path to profitability and enhance shareholder returns.
Turning to cost of revenue our flight margin improved sequentially to 14% in Q2 up from 11% in Q1, driven by improved utilization and pricing in our short distance business, partially offset by mix shift the minimum ability, Oregon transport due to better than expected growth are met and mobility business generally has lower <unk>.
Margins versus our mature short distance routes.
So quite margin declined in Q2 versus the 23% reported in the comparable 2021 period, we don't believe the year over year comparison is meaningful given the massive growth in our minimum ability, Oregon transport business, which increased from 12% of total revenue in the prior year period to 48% this quarter and drove a 72% increase in.
Flight profit versus the prior year period.
This mix shift was the largest driver of the year over year, a slight margin decrease.
The resumption of Bleed airport, which was operating below breakeven during its ramp period and an additional negative impact.
Absent the bleed airport ramp up we estimate the flight margin would've been approximately 150 to 200 basis points higher in the current quarter.
Looking ahead, we expect white margin to improve in the balance of the year as a result of stronger seasonal demand improve improve short distance utilization growth in blade Airport and recent price increases.
Let's turn now to SG&A, which includes software development general and administrative and selling and marketing expenses.
G&A fell to 42% of revenue this quarter down from 83% in the prior year comparable period and down sequentially from 62% in Q1.
This reduction in SG&A as a percentage of revenue demonstrates the operating leverage of our platform. We will continue to optimize our cost structure to drive further improvements on the last call. We provided an expectation for the first quarter to be the high watermark for quarterly SG&A expense for the year on an as reported basis that outlook was based on the assumption.
And that we do no further M&A. This year. Since then we've announced the pending transaction in Europe , which is the largest transaction in our company's history. As a result, we have begun necessary investments in SG&A, particularly on head count and technology to support our expanded international revenue base. Following the close as a result, we expect quarterly SG&A expenses.
To be in the $16 million to $17 million range in the coming quarters, excluding any potential one time expenses.
Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was a loss of $6 1 million compared to a loss of $2 6 million in the prior year period with a year over year decline, primarily driven by increased head count and costs to support our public company transition, partially offset by higher flight products.
Operating cash flow in the quarter was negative $11 6 million, which included a $5 3 million working capital build primarily related to a significant sequential growth in minimum ability, which saw revenue up $4 6 million or 36% in Q2 versus Q1 or.
Our hospital clients received 60 day terms contributing to a $3 7 million increase in accounts receivable. In addition, we made upfront deposits of $3 million on new capacity purchase agreements, which will be credited against our actual flying costs.
A cash benefit in future quarters.
This increase in deposits in accounts receivable was partially offset by increased accounts payable and unearned revenue as.
As we discussed last quarter, while we were not immune from industry wide inflationary challenges. We believe our business is uniquely positioned to mitigate them.
Our minimum ability contracts are generally structured with fuel price pass throughs and our significant scale in the industry has allowed us to lock in two to three year contracts at attractive rates further limiting cost inflation and allowing us to deliver the best possible pricing and service to our hospital clients and our short distance business, the low fuel consumption of our aircraft and short.
Lifetime, the majority of our routes means that our costs are much less sensitive to fuel prices price actions taken year to date have more than offset any cost inflation and it contributed to our increased byproduct.
With that I'll turn it back over to Rob for a few closing remarks. Thank you will given our formidable organic growth prospects as well as our strong balance sheet blade maintains an unmatched competitive posture.
Yeah.
As we've demonstrated over the past year with our acquisitions of trainee in Hell of jet M&A is unique component a number of shareholder value creation model we will.
Can you to pursue bolt on acquisitions of profitable companies, where we can leverage our global platform and where we see strong opportunities to generate attractive returns for our shareholders. At the same time, we remain focused on both growing and maximizing the profitability of our existing businesses or New York area airports transfer.
For service alone has an annual addressable market of over 27 million Flyers in short we have strategically built a flexible and diversified aviation business, serving resilient end markets with significant growth prospects irrespective of shifts in the economic environment with that I'll turn it over to Ravi <unk>.
Thanks, Rob as a reminder, we will take questions from analysts and investors on the call today reporters should send inquiries to meet directly operator, we're now ready for questions.
Thank you.
We will now begin the question and answer session.
I'll ask a question you May press Star then one on your telephone keypad.
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Almost.
Our first question comes from the line of Hillary Commando.
Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
I think thank you for taking my questions great quarter market demand is based on low across all segments.
In the Blade Airport segment could you just talk about.
Yeah.
It looked like the corporate Pablo.
Are you seeing a pull from the Weibo's travel.
And I guess why do you ask about simple corporate traveller and bought in the third quarter.
Yeah.
Hi, it's Rob Wiesenthal speaking.
I think we've been pleasantly surprised we were about 57% business versus 43% leisure based on our own.
Surveys.
The bulk of the action is clearly to JFK I think a number of the airlines have had some issues at Newark Airport.
And I think that.
We're seeing.
Especially the smaller companies and senior executives going back.
On the road again.
French eight themselves versus their peers to also even visit offices that you know are sometimes or mode to gather everybody who has a remote into regional offices, so business travel from our perspective.
Is definitely an important part of this product and we see nothing.
Kind of in the current quarter that we think that that would make us think that that would not continue.
We're also seeing good results in terms of the per seat yield.
Q1, we were around the $200 level and currently we're seeing around 225 with our dynamic pricing. So that's also really encouraging in terms of average price.
Oh Wow, Okay. That's great that's great to know and then and I'll vehicle you know you mentioned M&A.
And yes.
Our European deal within a closed beta.
So what can we expect in terms of like M&A.
I guess like the number the number of animals and the frequency of M&A transactions can we expect another one maybe basis here.
What should we expect.
You know one per year, how should we think about that.
And we really don't put it in terms of targets in terms of number of deals and we're really being opportunistic you know where we are right. Now is basically aggregated. What we believe are the which are the largest markets in the world The northeast corridor Western Canada.
Southern Europe in terms of Monica.
Monaco in the South of France, and we also have a joint venture in India. There are a bunch of other markets that we've targeted and essentially what we do is we do have very strong a very comprehensive and in depth analysis as to whether or not you know.
Build versus buy because theres, an investment either way.
You can buy the passenger part of our company and.
And their customer list and that brand in those routes.
And you've reduced your risk and youre paying upfront and you can be pretty close to immediately profitable or you can invest in a route build utilization take early ramp up losses, and do it that way and as you know.
And to a certain extent the M&A is that.
Many times less risky if you have an incumbent like many of the companies that we bought have been there are some for 30 years 50 years or more with huge customer list very valuable and also where there's cross fertilization between say the U S wire and the European buyer or the Canadian Flyer. So I would expect more M&A. It is our core competencies and we'll stick with what.
You know we've done in the past which are <unk>.
Very new new routes that really offer a reduction in friction in people's travel infrastructure.
Whereby we can surface. We can service more places those are really I would say kind of the two key areas that we retain our focus with respect to acquisitions or other types of alliances.
Great. Thank you so much I think okay youre welcome.
Yeah.
Thank you next.
Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Ju from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you so much so hey, Rob.
So it looked like hi, it looks like the footprint of the pending European acquisitions.
Seem more leisure focused and that is of course, a large opportunity, but as a supplement.
Can you also talk about potential commuter opportunities hopefully along the lines of what they already would be the case for the northeast corridor.
And our country.
So on the on the Europe point says will here.
Definitely a little bit more exposed to leisure markets, but we've seen incredible strength and that consumers. So we're happy to report that we're actually ahead of 2019 levels than what we underwrote for that acquisition on a pre close basis. So everything we're seeing from that market is showing real strength.
And I think Rob can address some of the points on the commuter side of things.
Yeah, I think that.
We are watching very carefully traveler patterns, but if you think about it the best way we can attack the business Flyer is from what we believe is the biggest market in the world in terms of New York, where people come from all over the globe to.
Do business, so we think with $28 million equals an addressable market coming to and from the New York City airports, we see a very huge opportunity. There are obviously other opportunities in the northeast that we continue to evaluate.
We're not we have not.
Given any.
New guidance as to specific timing, but we're going to continue to look at acquisitions versus.
Building new routes.
And I think that you will definitely see in the coming months.
New routes emerging that will have both a business and a leisure component when we have both that's obviously optimum I would also say in in Europe .
Especially with respect to.
The Monaco side.
Of the acquisitions you know there is a meaningful business component that is year round and it is not purely seasonal most of that or if there's anything else on after that.
Yeah, No. This is Melissa Tan president, but yeah leap, while we do see the.
Core group of our Flyers in Europe being leisure there certainly is a business element there because the service that we're providing provide regular and frequent connectivity from a major hub in the region.
At Nice airport.
To Monica and Theres, many business people that travel that rate every.
Every day.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Phil.
Peterson.
J P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, Hi, good morning, and a nice job on the quarterly results.
Two questions. If I may the first question on the organ transplant business I think in the past you've talked about this business, having somewhere like 15% market share.
Not sure if that was you know when this business was $10 billion business or a $13 billion business or now a 17 million dollar business. So I guess based off after your recent quarter, where do you think share is in and I guess at this point how should we think about the growth of this business over the longer term and ultimately what kind of share you could achieve I suppose.
Or what areas or geographies do you have further share opportunities.
Thanks for the question Bill will here, 15% is sort of an estimate that we still think is about right.
Our shared just a heart liver and lung so that's about half a little less of the 40000 transplants that happened in the United States every year. So there's a separate opportunity in kidneys that we're not really attacking directly right now and we think given our scale both in the retail and Oregon transport side of things we have.
Really been able to create a network across the U S. It gives us better availability than a lot of our competitors and also a better pricing for those hospitals, so, particularly when folks at transplant centers and organ procurement organizations are a little bit more focused on cost. We think we have an advantage in that market. So.
We really think there's a huge opportunity to grab the majority of share in the overall heart liver lung market and that's what we're focused on doing right now very aggressively.
Working to add new hospitals to our network across the U S.
Thanks for that I guess it takes for break it out.
The realigned segments. It makes it a lot easier to see the growth patterns as well as seasonality.
I wanted to ask about how we should think about seasonality going forward amongst the various segments.
If we think about Jack another it looks like there's some pretty clear seasonality.
On the on the short distance you have Vancouver, you have you know.
Frank Southern Southern Europe coming soon.
If you could help break that out amongst the segments. So that we can again sort of better calibrate our models.
Sure happy to help with that start with the Oregon transportation piece, that's generally non seasonal and we expect it to generally be a sequential grower you're also seeing some intrinsic growth within that market as a whole as hospitals start going farther to pick up.
Oregon's than maybe they've gone previously and as folks start working together better to make sure fewer organs go to waste. So theres theres, both hopefully some growth in volume overall of organ transplants that take place and part of the way that you unlock that is by going farther to pick up organs that maybe wouldn't have been matched that distance. So you've got a number of.
Growth drivers there that are non seasonal on the European and U S. Leisure side of things in short distance both of those businesses are going to continue to have some summer seasonality.
On the Vancouver side of things you actually see reverse seasonality from what we see here in the U S and that's because the instrument flight rules helicopters that are utilized up in Vancouver have a competitive advantage in the winter months, because they can fly and weather conditions that their competition.
It's cheap claims cannot so you actually see strength in that business coming into December January February are still still good volume in the summer, but you see more volume and you were able to get better pricing in the winter months, and then finally going to our jet and other segments.
You've got a little bit of jet charter business, but what really is going to drive the seasonality. There is our scheduled by the seat jet services believed one as we call them. That's a seasonal business. It starts around Thanksgiving and currently goes through the beginning of April so youll see that debt.
<unk> and revenue there in those months and then for the remaining parts of the year Youll see some lumpiness from brand partner payments that come in as we signed some contracts with some brands that work with US and then the rest will be some some retail jet charter and that's just a nice strategic add on for us because we're able to Youtube.
Lives the same fixed wing aircraft that we used for the medical business.
It tends to come the demand for jet charter during the day, whereas the demand for medical transport tends to come at night. So it's a nice way to put more hours on those aircrafts and ultimately create lower pricing for our hospitals.
Okay. Thanks for that color. That's helpful. If I can ask one more on flight margins you gave some nice color. It sounds like your price increases are outpacing some of the cost increases.
You mentioned you have two or three year contracts I believe you said that was related to mobility.
I guess more on the helicopter side.
Wage pressures pilot shortages and things like that do similar gifts somewhere contracts or.
Yes, I'm getting is do you still expect price increases outpace some of the presumably you are seeing some cost inflation, but just trying to understand how the contracted costs work.
Yes.
B, we enter into are generally agreements with our helicopter operators.
They are based on a fixed hourly rate that includes pilots fuel all of the above based on fixed distances.
And so they kind of so they're kind of.
Summer mid term some are long term some are short term.
We don't see any any any any kind of we don't have any concern on our part in terms of our ability to kind of outpace.
The cost of business, we don't see that kind of pilot shortages in the helicopter business that.
We see in say commercial jets and in private Jets you may have.
And no.
The short answer is that.
Also on the fuel side, we're looking at aircrafts that are burning about 40 to 45 gallons an hour of jet fuel versus say 450 gallons an hour.
<unk> board yet.
So.
Fuel is not as large component for a short distance aviation helicopters and then maybe you see plans and such that another.
Other parts of the aviation so that's something that we're not overly concerned with I think that this year in particular, we were pleasantly surprised.
Surprised by the amount of demand that we've had.
It could have certainly.
Used more aircrafts.
We have now a range too.
Enter into deals, where we do have more aircraft, which is terrific and we haven't had any kind of issues with respect to availability.
Yes, she pricing has been a margin driver for us rather than just an offset to inflation. So it's been a good driver for us.
It sounds like you have some opportunities to keep driving that higher.
The right way to think about it yes, well I think across the board.
The resilience of the Flyer that we're seeing.
They see the value in reducing the friction of the traffic is only giving we're getting worse is clearly still pent up travel demand, especially on some of the higher end products that we have we have buy the seed products that are now at the 1100 hour Mark for 35 minute flight and they just keep growing.
Sure.
Okay.
Operator next question.
The next question comes from the line of.
Kelly.
From Citi. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks, good morning, everyone.
The conversation on the slight margin maybe it could be well could you just maybe provide a bit more context into where you kind of see second half flight margin going as well just how should we think about the impact from the pending acquisitions over in Europe , and if I can maybe for Rob.
Any update on the use of drones and the medical mobility business I know, we've talked about that in the past just curious if there's any update there.
Okay. Thanks for the question.
When we think about flight margin as we've talked about before we generally see a slightly higher contribution margin from our mature routes in the short distance side of things. So as we talked about on the seasonality. There Q3 is always going to be the biggest quarter for us, particularly in the New York short distance business.
So you'll see probably the highest margins seasonally and that Q3, but then broadly across the businesses, we've talked about optimizing our pricing and so youll see a benefit across the business lines going into second half, but generally you would expect Q3 to be the highest and in Q4 as <unk>.
Not going to match the margins that you see in Q3, because some of that seasonal short distance revenue. That's on these mature routes that we've been building for seven years now.
There's going to be less prevalent as a percent of the overall mix.
Does that answer the question for you.
That's very helpful.
With respect to the medical side and drones.
We continue to believe since we're flying hospital to hospital.
And more and more organs are being moves without doctors that drones are going to be an important part of this business going forward they are not yet.
We've discussed on previous calls there has to be changes in terms of the FAA line of sight regulations with respect with respect to flying drones.
However, we do have a team and we are actively meeting with both drone manufacturers and drone service providers I think they offer unique opportunities for alliances and acquisitions, especially if they as they start to develop books of business. So this is something we're keenly focused on.
That'd be helpful. Thank you if I could sneak one last one and just what the strength you saw in the quarter, but just overall short distance demands.
It was kind of what you what youre seeing in terms of the mix of our first time Flyers as opposed to kind of repeat Flyers and kind of how you see that that you don't get that that's cheaper in the last few quarters.
Well, we're bringing a lot of new Flyers into our network, particularly through the airport products.
That's been growing really quickly and also the partnership that we've talked about with Jetblue and really increased our visibility. In fact this month you started seeing some promotion for blade on feedbacks for select flights that are coming in here to the New York market. So thats driven a lot of new visibility and a lot of new Flyers of course on some of our mature routes.
You see a higher percentage of folks that love us and come back every year.
I would say that obviously in the short distance there are a lot of kind of commuter routes that you know continue to have no repeat buyers but.
One thing it's important to note in the past blade has been varies.
Focus on advertising within the markets, we serve specifically thinking about New York for the New York market.
We've been extremely as you may see yourself about the Kennedy Airport and Newark Airport.
Very active.
And digital advertising within the airport terminals, which obviously.
Gets the attention of Flyers from all over the world. So we are seeing many.
Many more.
Flyers that are not from our core areas that are first time Flyers.
That sounds very helpful. Thank you.
Operator next question.
Thank you.
Give me a moment.
Next question comes from the line of Jason Steed from.
Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Okay.
Just wanted to ask just a bit of more about two.
Two questions around airports so.
How are you thinking about it obviously you don't give us the specific number you do give it beats, but maybe help us size, how big short distance flight services needs to get to suggest that.
Airport has really seen kind of the margin inflect.
<unk> kind of to a more run rate level or is it kind of number of seats and then maybe talk about any kind of changes to the service that you think that would drive more usage and any discussions with airports about you know.
Kind of.
Post security just any kind of enhancement you are thinking about to the to the airport business. Thank you.
Sure Jason So it's a combination right of growing the number of seats, but also growing the concentration of those seats the load factor on individual flights.
So in the past quarter.
We've had weeks that.
We're profitable on an JFK. So we're we're hovering around that level, it's not a place that we've done to consistently yet and so that's where we're starting to look at dynamic pricing, which as we talked about earlier has already driven up our average yield per seat.
So I think it's a combination of looking at the times when the value proposition is even stronger.
And making sure that you've got availability for people, who really want it by having the price match. The demand and then also continuing to grow our capacity and so with respect to some of the changes that we're making we had to make those decisions as we talked about earlier in the call to allocate capacity to our most profitable routes here in the summer because it's Rob.
<unk> mentioned, we saw incredibly strong demand for some of the seasonal short distance businesses and we wanted to make sure that we're maximizing margin above all.
We've moved quickly to bring in additional capacity. This dedicated to airport. So we're gonna have ability to service additional fliers going forward and also we recently launched an additional route from the east side of Manhattan to J F. K, which is available on the afternoons now servicing a flyer than maybe it.
Wasn't as convenient to drive over to the West 30, <unk> Street heliport. So we're attacking this from a lot of different directions to try to pull all of the different levers that help us get to the overall profitability and we've gotten much much closer.
Just trying to get to that profitability on a consistent basis.
Jason its Raj speaking.
You raised a very good point in terms of what else, we're trying to do and we've done a lot of things I think have really improved the service.
<unk> also increased the average the average ticket price in terms of checkout.
We introduced something called.
Staged cars, which.
Allows cars that are basically waiting upon people's arrival at the heliport since they're not always easy to find them you don't want to necessarily wait you are taking a five minute flight you don't wait 10 minutes for Uber.
Introduce that we also.
You mentioned in our last call and it will be opening up starting this fall.
First.
Full dedicated lounge at an airport it will be at Newark Airport at signature aviation.
So that gives a great place for people to.
To aggregate before a flight if they need it take a phone call before heading back to the city or going to beg arrived early per flight.
That will be terrific experience.
For people.
And with respect to the airlines, we continue as we have had in the past with respect to Delta and American Airlines.
Four waves with the Port authority and with the airlines to.
Get to the point, where we can have a more seamless experience getting people from behind the tarmac two helicopters, which something we've done the path and is achievable.
Achievable right now usually through some of the higher end services that these airlines as opposed to straight through Blake. So those are and create those are very important work continue to work on those to make kind of smoothed out.
Anything in terms of the experience make it as seamless as possible. It's still a five minute flight and I think we've really the guys on the ground to really master it logistics to get people to their place on time and from their flights to the aircraft for the trip back to the city.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next question concludes.
This concludes we do not have any questions any more kind of go ahead Ben.
Great.
Yes, you may now end the call.
Okay. This concludes our question and answer session.
I'd like to turn the conference back over to Robyn Friedman CEO for any closing comments.
Okay.
Hi, it's Rob we solve a very proud of the quarter proud of the team.
Great Great performance on all key metrics across our.
Across the company. So we look forward to having more calls glad we are giving you more data on the segments. If you have any questions don't hesitate to E Mail us.
Or call us and we'll be doing a number of conferences, which you can find on Bloomberg.
The week to really dive a little bit deeper into the performance of the company and we appreciate your continued support.
Have a great day everybody.
Thank you.
Conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation you may now disconnect.
Yeah.