Good day. Welcome to the iAccess Alpha Virtual Best Ideas Summer Investment Conference 2026. Our next presenting company is Amaero Inc. If you'd like to ask a question during the webcast, you may do so at any point during the presentation by clicking on the Ask Question button on the left side of your screen. Type your question into the box and click send. I'd now like to turn the floor over to today's host, Hank Holland, Chairman and CEO of Amaero Inc. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. Pleasure to present at the iAccess Alpha conference. Appreciate everybody's time. Again, as it was said, I'm the Chairman and CEO of Amaero, Hank Holland. We will work our way through the presentation here. Amaero is the largest U.S. domestic producer of refractory and titanium alloy powders that are used in 3D printing of weapon systems, defense platforms, aerospace, space, nuclear energy applications such as that. We also have a pioneering and leading position in manufacturing large near-net shape parts via technology called PMHIP or powder metallurgy hot isostatic press that we'll talk about later in the presentation. I first invested in this business in May of 2022. I'll tell you a bit about myself here in a moment. We relocated this business to the U.S. from Australia in July of 2023. We actually just completed re-domiciliation.
We are now a Delaware company. We remain traded on the ASX, the Australian Stock Exchange. Earlier this year, we announced plans to re-domicile to the U.S., which we have now completed, which would position us to pursue an IPO in the U.S. later this calendar year, early next calendar year, subject to market conditions, and we remain on track with that. As you see on this page, again, we are in two primary markets, advanced material business producing spherical powder for additive manufacturing applications. Again, the largest in the U.S. by a significant margin, as well as an advanced manufacturer of powder metallurgy hot isostatic press, or PMHIP manufacturing, and we'll talk about why that's so important as a substitute for forging and castings later in the presentation.
We have stood up the largest and the leading technical team in the U.S. for both spherical powder production as well as PMHIP manufacturing. Work very closely with a number of verticals, as I mentioned, including the defense industry, aerospace, space, nuclear energy, as well as medical. Right now, one of the really interesting things about Amaero from my perspective is we sit right at the nexus of three really significant macro themes, defense industrial base, reshoring of sovereign manufacturing, and critical minerals. The two complementary businesses I mentioned are the advanced material side coupled with an advanced manufacturing side of our business. I think this is really interesting. It gives us expertise in two adjacent areas, gives us scale, also gives us interconnectivity between these various verticals and applications that we are a party to.
The strategy of the company has been very much built on a demand pull basis. We have got the most advanced gas atomization technology in the world. It's called an IGA Premium, manufactured by a company in Germany that we have made significant proprietary modifications to the equipment as well as the parameter set. We are, as I said, the largest refractory powder producer in the U.S., really with only one competitor for production-scale spherical powders, a $25 billion-$30 billion U.S. company called ATI, of which this is non-core to their business, and the largest titanium alloy spherical powder producer by multiples in the U.S. as well. Our technology's got significant benefits, including it's got a higher yield and thus requires less feedstock. This drives us to have the most attractive unit of cost economics for titanium powder in the U.S.
We also use half the argon gas. We're installing an argon gas recycling plant at our facility in Tennessee. We also have a 10-year subsidized electricity contract via Tennessee Valley Authority, which is part of our contract that was when we moved to Tennessee and negotiated with the state. Labor rates in Tennessee versus markets such as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, another area that powder is produced. On the advanced manufacturing side, I'll talk a minute about on the next slide about how I got involved in this business. Shortly you'll hear we've got a critical shortage in the U.S. of large castings and forging capacity. PMHIP is a technology that's been around for seven decades. It was first used for cladding of nuclear rods.
The last two decades, Fred Yelton and Eric Bono on our team have done significant pioneering work to manufacture large near-net shape parts. As a result of having seven decades of data, it's one of the only mature technologies that can be immediately substituted for large forgings and critical castings. This is a big deal, again, given the shortages we have. It's particularly a big deal with the U.S. submarine industrial base and the U.S. Navy in general, also the missile complex. An area that we'll talk about a bit longer, and again, really ties in with the critical federal policy meant to incentivize reshoring, scaling, rebuilding of sovereign advanced manufacturing and supply chains. A bit about my background. I'll be an engineer by education. I've spent my entire career in finance. The youngest partner at Sanford Bernstein, New York City.
When Bobby McCann was running Merrill, I did something similar over at Merrill Lynch. About a dozen years ago, started managing my own capital, Pegasus Growth Capital. It's a private equity fund of which I've invested half the proceeds into that fund. In May of 2022, Pegasus led an investment in Amaero. Amaero at the time, as I said, it was an Australian company traded on the ASX. I led an investment of May of 2022. I personally fully underwrote an investment in December of 2022, led another capital raise. Today, Pegasus owns a little bit over 30% of Amaero. I personally funded about half of that. I think this is a really interesting part of our story. I'm amazed as an investor to see the small-cap, micro-cap companies with CEOs that are given all of the stock, very poor alignment with shareholders, very poor incentives.
Every single share of stock I own, I paid for. I paid for alongside other investors in placements in on-market and off-market activity. Relocated my family to Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is where our factory is based and where I relocated this business again in July of 2023. I set out to hire a leading technical team, both on the advanced material and the advanced manufacturing side. It's anchored by Eric Bono, three decades in the industry, quite well known at the national labs. Eric was mentored by Fred Yelton, who invented gas atomization of titanium about 35 years ago. Brett Paduch, our CFO, and by the way, we will later talk about this, important that we've built out a team that can support us as a U.S.-listed company. Brett brings those credentials.
While in public accounting, he led the audit for Ingersoll Rand for six years, global audit that is. Subsequently has been with New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, as well as private equity companies in a senior finance capacity. Mick Maher, our Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer, led the material directorate at DARPA, our defense advanced research unit for five years, was at U.S. Army Research Lab before that, and the private sector, Martin Marietta, and other companies such as that before that. Importantly, why now to transition from the ASX, with the intent, as we've mentioned, to list in the U.S.? We are just completing, as in this month, a three year capital investment plan. It was AUD 72 million, about $50 million. We have completed that. We've also added some additional scale and scope to that three year investment plan.
In doing so, we built out 100,000 sq ft facility outside Chattanooga, Tennessee. We have commissioned three atomizers. It gives us about four times the titanium scale of anyone else in the U.S., and several times the refractory scale from powder production of anyone else in the U.S., as well as we stood up our PM-HIP manufacturing production capability. We've got some really interesting expansion opportunities on the horizon, working very closely with U.S. government, our counterparts, the U.S. Navy, as it relates to that. The year that we're finishing, we're currently on a June 30 fiscal year, and the year that we're finishing is really the first year of revenue. We've given guidance for the year that ends this month of AUD 18 million to AUD 20 million revenue for the year.
I think this is a business that is really nicely positioned for significant growth, 2027 over 2026, 2028 over 2027, and so forth, given the thematic trends that we've got and visibility that we have in contracts. I'll talk a bit about that later as well. Many of you are probably well aware, but I truly believe we've got a generational thematic opportunity as it relates to the themes that I mentioned earlier, those being defense industrial base. Prior to the Trump administration, we were spending as a percentage of GDP, the lowest, the trough level on defense since World War II. Again, I repeat that. Prior to the Trump administration, our defense budget as a percentage of GDP was trough spending since World War II. We're coming off of very low trough levels.
At the very same time, of course, we all know the geopolitical backdrop in the world that we live in today is perhaps the most dangerous it's ever been. Significant need, not only in the U.S. to increase our defense spending, but we're seeing the same thing with our allied countries around the world, notably Europe, Australia, et cetera. At the very same time, this administration has had a strong push to, via executive orders, via policy, via other incentives, to incentivize multinational and U.S. companies bringing manufacturing home after three decades of offshoring manufacturing places such as China. In 1980, by way of reference, we had 21 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. It was about 20% of employment. Since 1980, we have lost 7 million of those jobs.
One of the reasons I was so confident making this investment in May of 2022, mind you, we had a Democratic administration at that period of time, not knowing who the next president would be, is I am convinced for both national security reasons as well as economic policy reasons, regardless of the administration and the next administration, we will continue these policies. Why am I so convinced of that? These 7 million jobs that we've lost, these are high-skilled, high-paying jobs. The part of the country that's leading the resurgence in manufacturing, it's not California, it is not New York. It is Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan. What do those states have in common? Not only are they leading the manufacturing resurgence in our country, they are the swing states.
They will determine the next president of this country and the presidents thereafter for a period of time. Thus, I think on the economic policy front, you're going to continue to see, regardless of administration policy that is intended to incentivize the continued reshoring, rebuilding, and scaling of advanced manufacturing in this country. At the very same time, as I mentioned, we have been driven by a demand pull approach. Amaero as a small company is very intentionally addressing specific vulnerabilities in our supply chain. In all cases in our business, we have but a single competitor, maybe two competitors. In all cases in our business, we're addressing a significant bottleneck. So for example, in powder metallurgy HIP or PM-HIP manufacturing, it's a substitute for forgings. What the Ukraine war exposed was the U.S. had become incredibly dependent on Russia in particular for large forgings.
A company called VSMPO, as well as China and other places, right? Essentially adversary countries that were incumbent in supporting our large castings and large forging ecosystem. PM-HIP can be immediately substituted, as I said, with seven decades of data. The U.S. Navy, after a couple of years of development work we had done in collaboration with them, convened a meeting at Amaero December third of last year. They followed that up, which is highly unusual, with a letter that we'll see here shortly from the U.S. Navy talking about exactly this issue. Talking about the vulnerabilities that we had as a country for our lack of capacity of forgings. Talking about the maturity of PM-HIP. Talking about Amaero as a proven supplier, and requesting that our shipyards and our first-tier suppliers identify parts that were a problem in the supply chain that were good candidates for PM-HIP.
Same on the powder side. On the powder side, entities such as Air Force Research Laboratory were taking two years to source refractory powder such as Niobium C-103. That was critical for hypersonic programs and moving these programs through research, development, testing, evaluation. Again, the reason for that was we had but a single producer in the U.S., an ATI. It was non-core to their business. They had very long lead times. We have dedicated an atomizer exclusively to refractories. The refractory alloys, if you think back to your college days, are really important. These are the alloys in the periodic table that are high-temperature alloys. Think about niobium, tungsten, tantalum, zirconium, hafnium, rhenium. Whether you're talking about thermal protection systems for weapon systems or space, or whether you're talking about propulsion systems, again, think defense systems in space, these refractory alloys are really, really important.
Very high value, again, very low supply available in the U.S. Finally, titanium powder production. We do not have a single competitor in the U.S. today that has scaled titanium spherical powder production. Our two primary competitors are Canadian companies, AP&C and Tekna. Yet again, we've got a big movement afoot to relocate these businesses back to the U.S., and you're seeing large manufacturers, both in the medical side as well as the consumer side, relocating manufacturing back to the U.S. as well as their supply chains back to the U.S. Where we play— The powder market, many of you may or may not know, you can broadly think of it as kind of two different markets. First, you've got reactive metals and non-reactive metals. About 80% of the powder market are non-reactive metals. Think about nickels and stainless steels such as that.
Only about 20% of the market are high value, lower volume, quote unquote, "reactive metals," titanium and refractories. We only play in the reactive space. Again, this is a much higher value, much lower supply in the U.S. Moreover, in the powder market, you've got angular powder, often used for things such as press and sintering. Much, much lower value and higher volumes available in the U.S. You have spherical powder, much higher value and lower supply in the U.S. We only play in the spherical reactive market. The most supply-constrained, highest value part of the U.S. powder market. Why PM-HIP? As I mentioned, I won't have time for the story today, I was in Ukraine in the early days of the war.
Happened to be in Lviv the night the first Russian cruise missile came in and hit a fuel depot near where we were. Having come through the supply chain challenges that were exposed in COVID and then finding myself in Ukraine, it became so clear to me the U.S. would have to re-industrialize, this is why I came back. I looked at 19 businesses, led to my investment in Amaero. As many of you know, we are embarking on scaling up submarine production today in what we call two plus one. We're supposed to be making three ships a year right now. In fact, we're making less than one and a half. On top of that, you will have AUKUS over time. On top of that, you'll have the Trump battleship, which is going to be nuclear propulsion over time.
At the very same time, we're expanding commercial nuclear applications to support AI and data centers. A lot of demand in this area, and yet, as I said, we're very challenged when it comes to forgings as well as large castings. PM-HIP has been adopted with a lot of enthusiasm at the U.S. Navy, the shipyards, and the tier one suppliers. Speaking of the U.S. Navy, as I mentioned, we've had sustained engagement now for over two years. We have completed a significant number of programs of which have not been announced. Stay tuned. For shortly, I've alluded to a commercial announcement to come. We've done a lot of work on the demonstration side, the first article side, for a path to qualification of SUBSAFE critical parts, and stay tuned on that.
Given the success that we've had, the Navy convened a meeting at Amaero on December the third. This was at the extension of an invitation specifically from the U.S. Navy, not from Amaero. It included the shipyards, NAVSEA 08, Naval Reactors, BPMI, that is the sole defense prime contractor for nuclear Navy, if you will, and a series of suppliers. We had the roundtable, an all-day meeting. The agenda was as I described earlier, as I said, the Navy, highly unusual, followed this up days later with a formal letter that was made public, expressing many of these same issues. A real opportunity for us going forward. The business as it is today, the powder side of the business and the PM-HIP side of the business, is a business that scales to about $200 million of revenue. $200 million U.S. of revenue.
We've got significant expansion opportunities, though, and one of the things we've got to do in this country is a better job of integrating and co-locating adjacency processing capabilities. Today, we've got these parts that travel all over the country for adjacency processing. We've got to do a better job of creating regional manufacturing hubs, co-locating, integrating these capabilities. This is part of our roadmap and part of our ongoing conversations with stakeholders, the U.S. government and the U.S. Department of War. On the commercial side, we've signed a number of long-term agreements over time whereby we are the exclusive powder supplier. Companies such as ADDMAN, companies such as Velo. ADDMAN is owned by AIP, the largest industrial private equity firm focused in this area. Velo3D, the only made in USA 3D printing equipment OEM. Titomic, a leader in cold spray for near-net shape parts.
Kounis-Godwin, significant expansion underway in the Houston area, particularly with titanium machines and others. In the middle there, you'll see we currently have 11 active contracts with the submarine industrial base. We've got three active contracts with missile and space ecosystem, one active contract with aerospace. It's one of the few on here that we've announced, which is Boeing. We've got another industrial contract. 40 unique customers today, 14 different refractory alloys we'll actually atomize in the current quarter, and 16 different active PM-HIP contracts. Lastly, we have alluded to the fact, just one more page after this. We've alluded to the fact that we are re-domiciling to the U.S. We announced this a number of months ago with a plan to complete that in June. That has in fact been completed ahead of schedule.
We announced that we expected to complete a PCAOB audit by the end of June. That is on schedule, and that that would position the company to pursue a U.S. IPO late this year or late next year, subject to market conditions. Again, that remains on schedule. Lastly, why the U.S.? Obviously, the market position, the U.S. investors such as those on this call. There is very strong investor interest when you think about small cap funds, given the verticals that we play in, defense industrial base, sovereign manufacturing, critical minerals. Very strong investor interest. Obviously a much, much deeper market. Relationships and connectivity that I have over the course of my career are very, very strong, both in Washington, D.C., as well as in the capital markets. Giving us more strategic flexibility on a going forward basis.
That is the end of the presentation. We will shift to the Q&A tab and see what we may have for questions here. Let me refresh the screen, if I may. Okay, let's work through these. What milestones should investors watch over the next 12 months as Amaero transitions from a capital investment phase to a revenue growth phase? Great question. So this is, as I mentioned, we're just completing the year in June. That will be our first real year of revenue, AUD 18 million-AUD 20 million. If you look at the growth drivers of our business, we've got very good revenue visibility on a going forward basis. Moreover, the nature of our contracts is such that we begin each calendar year or fiscal year with significant contracts already secured. I would look at this business as a type of business that could grow.
We haven't given specific revenue guidance. You think about a business that could grow 75% on a year-over-year basis for a number of years, that's the type of demand and growth drivers that we have in this business, given these verticals. How much visibility do you currently have into customer demand for refractory and titanium alloy powders as production capacity comes online? So I'll take this as two separate question. They've got different drivers. The refractory side of our business is heavily dependent on government contracts, US Department of War contracts. Again, it tends to be issues where we're looking at thermal protection systems, propulsion systems, things such as that. We have very good revenue.
If you look for the next 12 months, we have already contracted about 75% of our plan over that period of time. We already are in the midst of identifying demand drivers for the 12 months thereafter. Very good visibility and very strong demand on the refractory side. On the titanium side, this tends to be more commercially driven. Some of you might know there's very strong demand right now for civilian suppressors in the firearm market, given some recently changed in legislation. You've also got very strong demand drivers in the adoption of additive manufacturing. Just last week, we had an active AM participant announce they purchased 50 EOS machines. Another company advanced significant expansion of their machines. You've got other companies expanding significantly, as well as producers that are moving production back to the U.S., that heretofore has been in China and other places.
Very strong drivers on the titanium side as well. Let's see here. It says that I have 11 questions. Okay, some more just came in. What differentiates Amaero's IGA powder production technology from competing powder manufacturers servicing aerospace and defense markets? As I mentioned, we have the most advanced gas atomization technology. It's got about twice the yield of the most valuable powder from the prior generation of that technology, which means we need half the feedstock. It gives us a far more competitive unit cost advantage over the other producers, as well as we can scale it. A lot of the other technologies are better suited for development. Our technology is best suited for large-scale production. Have you spoken extensively about casting, forging bottlenecks? How is customer interest evolving as those bottlenecks persist?
As I said, very strong uptake of demand. The U.S. Navy, given the challenges we have in the maritime industrial base, but also across other areas. I mentioned the missile ecosystem. We've got a number of other aerospace and space companies, and they're having a hard time centrally sourcing forged billet, can take up to two years. We're doing a number of things for companies such as that as well. Lastly here, we'll wind down the time. What industries are currently showing the strongest demand for Amaero's products? It is across the board, and it varies by vertical. On the PM-HIP side of the business, think the maritime, think nuclear energy, we think will be a really interesting opportunity for us.
On the powder side, the drivers refractory are defense and space, primarily, again, two really interesting growth markets right now. On titanium, more so on the commercial side of the equation. Medical is a big driver. Think orthopedics, printed knees, hips, such as that. The civilian firearm suppressor market right now, as well as just the general adoption of additive manufacturing. Hope this has been a very helpful overview and very much appreciate everybody's time. Thank you.
Thank you. That concludes Amaero Inc's presentation. You may now disconnect. Please consult the conference agenda for the next presenting company