Hello, and welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we're very pleased you have joined us for the Small Cap Growth Conference. Our next presentation of the day is from Volatus Aerospace. Please note, you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides. You can also see a company's availability for a one-on-one meeting by clicking Book a Meeting in the top toolbar.
At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Glen Lynch, Director, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Volatus Aerospace, which trades on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol TAKOF, and on the TSXV under the symbol FLT. Welcome back, Glen.
Hi, Greg. Thanks for having me. So, thanks everybody for joining us here today. Super proud to tell you the story of Volatus Aerospace . I'm gonna start by being clear about what Volatus is and what it is not. So Volatus is a dual-use aerial intelligence and logistics platform operating at a commercial scale and delivering mission-critical services in regulated environments like energy, infrastructure, and public safety.
What's really important is that these are the same capabilities that governments around the world and militaries are prioritizing today: remote operations, autonomy, persistent sensing, and logistics. And what's interesting for Volatus is we actually didn't pivot into this space, the company was built for it.
As we walk through the deck today, I'd really like you to think of Volatus less as a drone company, a collection of products and services, and more of a capability partner that's aligned with how sovereign and defense organizations are looking for partners today. So why now? There we go. Sorry, technical difficulty. Why now? Obviously, there's a lot changed in the world. It's not a single event, but rather a clear shift in global priorities.
Sovereignty and operational resilience are now top of mind for governments and critical infrastructure operators alike. At the same time, there's a strong preference for dual-use capabilities that are already proven in commercial environments rather than bespoke or experimental systems.
Autonomy and remote operations are prioritized on an increasing basis and are no longer optional, but actually required. Finally, customers are shifting away from buying point solutions towards long-term operating partners that can deploy, run, and sustain capability over time. That shift really favors platforms like Volatus.
A key point I want to make today is the change in opportunity is driven by defense tailwinds, and there's literally no scaled player that's building from a commercial-first foundation as Volatus is, and that great gap is what actually creates the opportunity. Let's talk about how Volatus actually creates leverage. We start with our commercial operation. That's how we generate scale, operational data, and we gain regulatory credibility in complex real-world environments. On top of that, we apply autonomy and our remote operations.
This allows us to operate persistently and grow without increasing our headcount on a linear basis, controlling costs. Importantly, we don't deliver the isolated services or products. We integrate the platforms, the infrastructure, autonomy, and train teams to deliver outcomes that customers either can't or don't want to build themselves. Because our model is proven commercially, it translates and transitions well to sovereign and defense applications, which is why we view ourselves more as a capability partner rather than a vendor.
This slide is the simplest way to understand Volatus. At the top are the mission outcomes that our customers actually care about, things like surveillance, logistics, infrastructure inspections, or security operations. To deliver those outcomes at scale, we rely on autonomy and centralized control. That allows us to manage missions remotely, operate persistently, and coordinate multiple systems efficiently across multiple geographies.
Underneath that are the platforms and infrastructure, the technology platforms, and the aircraft families that allow us to operate different missions without being tied to a single system or OEM. And critically, all of this rests on top of our people, our trained operators, our red teaming, our counter UAS experience, and regulatory credibility. The human and institutional layer that allows the rest of the stack to be used responsibly, safely, and at scale.
Together, this is why we describe ourselves as a platform and a long-term capabilities partner, not a products or services company. This slide actually illustrates how we scale. We operate through a centralized operations control center. That's actually a photograph that you can see in the middle of our facility, centralized facility.
That allows us to execute missions across wide geographies without having to have people physically present everywhere we operate. Autonomy and mission orchestration let us manage multiple vehicles and missions simultaneously, which is critical for efficiency and, and, persistence. The result is that growth does not require a linear increase in personnel or infrastructure. As volume increases, our leverage actually improves rather than compressing margins.
The model is also more resilient because it's less dependent on individual sites, people, or assets being in one place. We're very deliberate about where we operate. Our core markets are definitely energy, critical infrastructure, public sector, and, and, safety missions. Sovereign and defense are obviously major growth areas for our entire industry. These markets all share some similar requirements. They're all regulated environments. They require persistence, reliability, and trust.
Importantly, for Volatus, we focus on serviceable near-term opportunities in areas where we already operate, rather than relying on speculative markets or unknown or unproven demand to justify our business. This allows us to focus on building scale, reuse our capability across sectors, and expand selectively as our business expands or evolves.
Key point I want to make here, it's extremely important to note that we're very conservative about how we forecast defense work, mostly because we see that as a major growth area across countries, sovereign nations around the world. But the interesting thing, because it's new, it's very difficult to understand how quickly, if or how quickly this business will actually convert into revenue and contracts. So this is why our position is durable if you look at our moat.
First of all, when you operate in a regulated, safety-critical environment, you have to have approvals, processes, and trust that takes years to build. That alone creates a meaningful barrier to entry. Secondly, our centralized remote operations and autonomy allow us to scale in a way that traditional service providers can't.
Third, we're platform agnostic. We operate across multiple pilot and piloted aircraft and helicopters and remotely piloted aircraft systems or drones, which give us flexibility and reduce our dependency on any one platform or single OEM. And finally, our relationships are long-term and outcome-focused. Customers rely on us to operate and sustain capability, not just deliver a transaction, and that makes our position very, very difficult to replicate, as we'll see here in a moment. So Volatus isn't a conceptual story.
If we pay attention specifically to the left-hand side of this screen, the North American market, we're already operating across multiple jurisdictions, multiple regulatory environments. We're across Canada, the United States, U.K., Europe, and we have an office in Latin America.
But what you're looking at there, if you're looking at a dot, it doesn't matter if it's green, white, yellow, gold, those are all areas that we're either doing work or have recently done work. The area that I want to bring your attention to, because it really gives you an idea of what the capabilities are to scale, as I mentioned earlier, energy and the energy sector is probably our biggest sector right now.
Where you're looking at that blob of red ink, almost looks like somebody's pen exploded over Western Canada, that is approximately 650,000 licensed pipeline segments. And you can see that the skinny little red line goes from about Kitimat, British Columbia, or Victoria, all the way out to Montreal, across the country, down into Southwestern Ontario, and then from North Dakota, all the way down to Houston.
This isn't the pipeline that exists. This is the pipeline that Volatus flies on a regular basis, anywhere from daily to quarterly, annually, monthly, depending on what's going through the pipeline and so on. And if you were to list the majority of the major oil and gas companies or pipeline operators, we would have contracts with probably eight out of 10 of them, would be my guess.
But a key point to understand what our potential is in terms of growth on our commercial side. Canada has approximately 500,000 miles of pipeline right of way. The United States has 2.5 million. You can see that we've built a substantial business in Canada in that sector, and we've now demonstrated our ability to operate in the United States. Quite recently, at the tail end of last year, we established a base which should be up and running in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That's our U.S. base for the pipeline operations.
Our objective is to continue to let that red ink bleed down into the United States by adding additional pipeline contracts as time evolves. Some of these are flown with piloted aircraft and helicopters with a long-term technology roadmap to introduce drones to replace those aircraft.
But it just gives you an idea, 500 miles of pipeline versus 2.5 million miles, and in many cases, the exact same customers. So we've now demonstrated our ability to do that, and we expect that'll continue to be a significant area of growth for us. Looking at this next slide, this highlights our QoQ revenue throughout the company. Our revenue has grown by 60% in Q3 2025 to CAD 10.6 million.
Gross margins are consistent between 32% and 34%, and a revenue mix balance at 47% services and 53% equipment. That's the sale of hardware and other solutions. Profitability is improving, and we've reduced our EBITDA drain from approximately CAD 3 million a quarter to less than CAD 500,000.
The company sits at CAD 40 million on the balance sheet at the end of the year in December 2025, and we're exiting 2025 with approximately CAD 20 million in long-term contracts, annual recurring revenue, and about a ten million dollar backlog, sorry. Moving to the next one, these are our market comparables.
Now, what I really want to stress here, you'll see that the median of our comparable companies is trading at over 90 times the last 12 months revenue, while Volatus is trading at less than 13 times trailing 12 months revenue. Our fundamentals are strong, as you saw in the last slide. We're generating real revenue with a real path towards profitability. But there is a significant disconnect between where Volatus is trading and our peers.
We believe that this actually is what creates an opportunity as the market continues to recognize the sector and recognize Volatus as a participant. Onto our capitalization, our cap table. So, a key point I wanna make here is the insider holding. So we have approximately 21% insider holdings right now on a basic basis.
That's the board of directors, the management, and in actual fact, with our employee stock option program, 100% of our full-time employees actually become shareholders in the company. We try very hard to align the interests of our employees with those of our external and stakeholders. But a key point that I wanna make, if you look at Volatus's stock chart, we had a nice healthy improvement over the last 12 months.
Despite a significant increase in the market cap of the company, going from, I believe, somewhere in the vicinity of $60 million middle of last year, to in the neighborhood of $350 million-$450 million, is depending on where the market is at these days, not a single insider sold their share. Even more than that, there wasn't a discussion in the leadership or board for selling their share.
We believe that it's a very, very good time to be in this industry, and we're committed long term to the success in the organization. Now, for the strategic option value, what I really wanna point out here is that the company continues to execute on its commercial activities.
You've seen power utilities, that's, you know, oil and gas and power utilities being huge for us. We'll continue to grow that business. But as the defense and sovereign demand continues to increase, a key point with Volatus is it doesn't require a change in our business to be able to grow. Our business actually naturally scales, which actually gives us an asymmetric opportunity as we scale, because we don't have to change the way we do business to be able to capitalize on that.
Before I move on to the next slide, the other thing that I wanna point out that's made a major difference, obviously, with the opportunities that are developing in sovereign nations around the world, they've really started c ountries such as Canada, for example, and the United States and others, have prioritized domestic manufacturing to support the needs of their, their own defense communities and the countries, and ultimately reinforce economic activity.
That shift in Canada, particularly, motivated Volatus to move forward with a manufacturing facility that we announced late last year, and the acquisition of a portfolio of intellectual property, very large drones, large medium altitude, long endurance platforms, that we're in the process of relocating to that facility in Montreal. It's actually Mirabel, just north of Montreal, where they'll be in manufacturing and in production, likely sometime in early Q2. So we're in the process of configuring that factory right now.
So very much, an increased focus on technology and domestic manufacturing, mostly because we're aligning our capabilities with the current market demands. Now, the next slide I want to point out is our leadership team. Key point here is we have just between three of the leaders, senior leaders, have approximately four decades each in the aerospace industry.
Very seasoned group, work extremely well together, and I would say, from Abby, Greg, Rob, and Luc, those are the people that actually make the company, succeed on a daily basis. Very dedicated, and as you can see there, 130 years of combined experience in aerospace. So that's the leadership team of Volatus. Now, with that, that brings us to the end of the organized presentation.
I'll flip over and see if I can answer some of the questions now. So this question is: Given the highly regulated environments you operate in across multiple jurisdictions, where do you see regulatory change as a tailwind, and where could it be a step or deterrent to your continued growth? That's an excellent question. I appreciate that. So here's a few things. Regulations are evolving at different rates.
So Canada, in November of last year, had a major step forward from a regulatory standpoint, allowing larger drones to be flown in low-risk airspace beyond visual line of sight. Basically, it enhanced the capabilities that we could how we could operate in Canada. That's created significant opportunities or a significant facilitation for us to be able to seize on the tailwinds that are happening in Canada, specifically.
Now, the question about where it could be a deterrent to our continued growth, the reality is we actually adapt. We focus our growth on the areas that we can grow. So we don't tend to be the company that tries to push the rope uphill, but rather line up and pursue opportunities in markets where the demand, the technology, and the regulatory opportunity align. It allows us to grow our revenue more quickly without having to depend specifically on regulatory progress.
And because we operate across Canada, the United States, the U.K., and Europe, they move at different rates, and the opportunities are significant across all of those markets. The next question is regarding market comparables. It says, "Clearly, we have lower multiples than your, than our comps.
What do you believe will help in the re-rating, re-rating the company higher?" I think there's a number of things that are there. Obviously, you know, it's really up to the investor to determine where we belong. But the first thing I would say is we are, at this moment in time, trading on a Canadian junior exchange.
That's probably one factor. I would say one of the other things is really working hard to continue to gain better exposure to our, to better expose our company and our story to institutional, larger institutional investors, not only in Canada, but a much larger focus on the US markets. I think that'll help. At the end of the day, I mean, I think it's a matter of time.
I think it's us continuing to tell our story, and I believe continuing to generate improved financial results, move towards profitability, and increasing our revenues. Those will be the key things that I think will ultimately pay off in time. I must admit, we don't tend to overspend in investor relations. We're very much focused on the business itself. That said, we're trying to balance out those interests as time go as well.
The next question is: "Given the US Army's stated intent to dramatically ramp drone acquisitions, what concrete steps have you taken to ensure that Volatus is positioned as a qualified supplier or partner in that procurement wave?" That's actually a really good question, not just applying to the US. It's happening in Canada, it's happening in the United Kingdom.
So we have a well-established sales team in the United States, managed out of Syracuse, New York, and in Canada, managed out of Toronto, and in the U.K., managed out of London. So we focus on all of those markets. We're active with the military organizations. There's a lot of tenders that are coming out right now, so we pursue the tenders actively. And ultimately, we try to engage with the military.
If I use Canada as an example, because I tend to spend a lot of time engaging with the defense community directly ourselves, they're in the process of engaging with industry to script out what the Canadian Armed Forces need going forward, and we're actually part of that conversation.
So we're engaged actively with the defense communities in multiple jurisdictions right now. "How much of our current revenue is directly or indirectly defense-related, and where do we expect to be in that mix in three years if the geopolitical trends persist?" You know, ultimately, the key thing I'm gonna say there, and I think we may be running out of time, so I'm gonna have to make this the last question, but I really can't answer what the actual percentage is right now.
What I will say is the demand on the defense side is significantly higher than anywhere. We've got strong demand in kind of that dull, boring revenue sector of commercial activities. But on the defense side, it's quite substantial.
What I truly believe personally, that if all of the hostilities ceased tomorrow, defense organizations around the world have realized that they've got a deficit, they've got a deficiency. I would expect the requirement for autonomous technologies, not just drones, but autonomous technologies in general, that demand will probably consider for the-C ontinue, in my opinion, for the next three to five years.
And with that, I think we're up against a hard stop right now. So I do wanna thank everybody for dialing in today, and I would encourage anyone to reach out to Volatus if you've got questions that I haven't been able to get to. We'll certainly do our best to respond to any questions if you send it to the investor link in the investor section of our website. With that, thank you very much.