Thank you for standing by. My name is Carly, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Vertical Aerospace Full Year 2025 Business and Strategy Update Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Samuel Emden, Head of Investor Affairs. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I'm delighted to welcome you to Vertical Aerospace's Full Year Business and Strategy Update Call. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that during today's call, we'll be making forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties and may cause actual results to differ materially. Any forward-looking statements we make are based on assumptions as of today. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. We've posted an accompanying slide deck to our investor relations website at investors.verticalaerospace.com, which contains detailed information on forward-looking statements. For a more complete discussion about these risks and uncertainties, we have filed our 2025 annual report with the SEC earlier today. Please now let me hand over to our Chairman, Dómhnal Slattery.
Good morning, and thank you, Samuel, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Over the past several weeks, we've had the privilege of hosting a series of Valo showcase events here in the UK in London, New York, Miami, and most recently in Atlanta. These events brought together our airline partners, our investors, regulators, our suppliers, and the broader advanced air mobility ecosystem. What has stood out most was the energy and the enthusiasm around the opportunity ahead. Before getting in today's earnings call, we wanted to give you a taste of it.
I'm standing in front of the electric aircraft that could revolutionize the way we get around cities.
Could the answer to Atlanta's traffic headaches soon be flying above us? David, it's great to see you. The CEO of Vertical Aerospace-
Unveiling its latest vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
The aircraft could one day carry passengers, cargo.
It's a game changer in how people will move around the mega cities of the world.
This is a new way to connect all of those passengers that come and use Miami International every day.
Let's go take a first look at Valo.
It's going to be a much more efficient and quiet ride compared to a helicopter, let's say. It can carry a lot of luggage, which I'm very impressed with.
Sounds like a win-win for all of us.
We spent a lot of time looking at the right partners within this space. Who are the right people to partner with?
At each step, the message was consistent. The market is ready for safe, quiet, zero emissions urban air mobility, and the response to our aircraft, Valo, has just been extraordinary. This is the product that is redefining the eVTOL market globally. Now, before we dive into the detailed content of today's call, let me take a step back just to address some key top-of-mind issues. First, on our flight test progress. I'm delighted that our Chief Engineer, David King, will go into this in further detail later. To sum it up, we are in the final innings of completing full pilot transition under the regulatory oversight of the CAA. We are close to being complete with the five profiles and expect to have this finalized soon. On capital, as Stuart will speak to later this call, cash is critical through certification.
Despite annual spend being a fraction of our peers, we will need to continue to raise capital. We are exploring all of the options that are available to us right now across the capital markets, strategics, and with government support. We will execute that when it is the right moment for the business. Stuart will take you through the detail of that later. Today, our call will be broken into four sections to address some of the key issues and questions we hear from our stakeholders. First, we'll talk you through the aircraft. We'll talk you through Valo, the size, the modularity, and safety that makes Valo the industry-leading electric EVTOL. Following that, our Chief Engineer, David King, will walk you through our piloted transition flight test progress, and he will provide a detailed breakdown of where we are today and the remaining elements to be completed.
Our CEO, Stuart Simpson, will do a deep dive on our battery technology, and we believe this technology underpins both Valo and our hybrid aircraft and gives Vertical Aerospace a differentiated power platform. Finally, we will discuss our current financial snapshot and our plans for capital raising. First, Valo. The excitement around Valo is not just about the promise of the category, it's about the product itself. Unquestionably, Valo is the highest quality EVTOL aircraft in development globally today. It combines the safety architecture of a modern commercial aircraft with the performance and efficiency required for real-world commercial airline operations. Our design philosophy has always been clear. Build an aircraft that meets the standards of the best airlines in the world today.
We have developed Valo together and working in collaboration with our customers for well over five years, and that is why it has some key differentiators other eVTOLs in the market simply do not have and cannot have because of their designs. Why Valo has a seat next to the pilot for training, separation between the pilot and the passengers, and why we have, without doubt, the roomiest cabin and the largest luggage bay. Critically, the aircraft sizing to accommodate four, then five, and then six passengers. This is the first truly upgradable aircraft, improving economics for our operators. With our largest cabin and the modular architecture, Valo is without doubt the perfect fit for multiple applications across the emergency, medical services, cargo, and beyond.
We plan to be the leader in the hybrid electrics defense space, and we look forward to deepening our discussions already underway with militaries around the world, but particularly here in Europe, in the run-up to the Farnborough Airshow later this year in July. As we've spoken about several times, we are deliberately a pure play OEM, relying and collaborating on tier one aerospace partnerships who allocate the best talent in the world, the absolute best resources and IP to the development and the certification of our aircraft. We have now contracted the vast majority of those partners, and we look forward to bringing the final partners on board later this year as we progress towards critical design review this summer. With that, I'm delighted to hand over to David King, our Chief Engineer. David.
Good morning, all, and thank you, Dómhnal. Let's talk about flight testing. We've been flight testing a full-scale piloted prototype of Valo for 20 months now. In November, we began piloted transition, the phase where the aircraft moves between hovering over a spot as needed for vertical takeoff and landing and wing-borne flight, Valo's cruise condition. This flight testing is progressing steadily under disciplined U.K. CAA oversight. Here's a short video to give you a flavor.
Lessons we've learned during our flight test campaign so far have validated our choices to fly at full scale and with a pilot on board.
The unique thing we're doing here at Vertical is we're flying out of a public airport in public airspace.
We're working now with the prototypes with the same specialists at the U.K. CAA that will be involved with the certification of Valo, and that's a huge de-risker.
Working with the CAA on this prototype aircraft is a unique opportunity for us to get a leg up on certification. It's essentially a mini certification program.
With the Valo prototype aircraft, from the outset, we planned to attack transition in two ways, starting from hovering flight and accelerating, and then starting from conventional takeoff and wing-borne flight and decelerating. The idea is you incrementally chip away and join up the dots to understand that whole path and how the aircraft behaves in that whole speed range from hovering flight to cruise and back down. 20 months of piloted flight testing with our prototype aircraft. We've gone from tethered hover with the aircraft physically connected to the ground, right the way up to wing-borne flight across Class G airspace in the U.K. What's next is obviously full transition. We're really close. So close we can visualize what that's going to look like now, but we're really committed to doing things the right way. We're not going to take risky leaps into the unknown.
It's going to be measured, controlled, and safe route.
We're very nearly there. We have just a few more knots to close that gap. Once we complete piloted transition, we're going to be focusing on doing some operational demonstrations to get us to the next part of our flight test program so we can continue progression.
We are nearing completion of the transition flight test phase, and the data we are collecting each flight is directly informing certification of our final commercial design. By doing the disciplined engineering and regulatory work up front in close collaboration with the CAA, we reduce certification risk and avoid redesign later. As Simon Davies, our Chief Test Pilot, explained in the video, we've approached full transition incrementally from both ends, validating performance and building an evidence base before moving to the next test point. We've accelerated from a hover, tilting the propellers forward from vertical orientation of 90 degrees. We've decelerated from wing-borne flight, tilting the propellers aft from horizontal.
We are methodically and incrementally closing the gap, studying the wealth of valuable data at each step while working side by side with our certification authority. For example, we recently took advantage of a break in the U.K. weather to complete a piloted profile with a conventional runway takeoff, a deceleration from wing-borne cruise condition, a controlled deployment of the stowed rear props, 40 degrees of upward prop tilt while slowing down towards thrust borne, and then accelerating back to wing borne and restowing the rear props before landing. This test demonstrated smooth transitions with optimized software, with the propellers deploying and reparking exactly as designed. By working closely with the CAA upfront, we now have a clear, well-defined, tried and tested path to certification. The standards, the criteria, and the means of compliance are published, approved, and have been dry run on the prototype program.
This upfront work puts us on track to certify Valo to globally portable airliner safety standards. After certification comes entry into service. I want to briefly touch on initiatives to accelerate deployment of an eVTOL operational ecosystem across the globe, including the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, known as EIPP, recently announced in the United States. We applaud the EIPP program as a means to accelerate the introduction of eVTOL into United States National Airspace. As a non-US eVTOL manufacturer, we were not eligible to participate directly in the United States EIPP program. However, we are participating in similarly focused European initiatives to advance the introduction of eVTOL in Europe. In the U.K. and in the European Union, flight demonstrations are planned and supported by government-backed programs, including the U.K. government's Future Flight Challenge and in due course, SESAR in Europe.
These are taxpayer-supported initiatives designed to develop infrastructure, air traffic management technologies, and operational procedures for optimized eVTOL operations. These programs will also build public and stakeholder confidence through structured and visible demonstrations. In the U.K., we've been a long-standing participant in the Future Flight Challenge, a GBP 150 million government-backed program focused on demonstrating operational readiness and accelerating safe integration of eVTOL technologies. Through this program, we're supporting funded flight demonstrations, including upcoming flights at Skyports Bicester Vertiport and related work to demonstrate the feasibility of eVTOL operations between Oxford and Cambridge. By combining learnings from EIPP in the United States and similar European initiatives, we expect to see accelerated deployment of a safe and effective eVTOL ecosystem across the globe. At Vertical, we are laser-focused on executing to our clear pathway from prototype to pre-production, to certification, and then to full-scale production.
Our final prototype aircraft number three has completed its commissioning tests, and last week was the first time we had both of our prototype aircraft running at the same time. By the middle of this year, we will complete critical design review for Valo, the gate which freezes design and enables full throttle on building seven pre-production aircraft to be conformed to type design and used for certification credit. Now I'll hand the microphone to our CEO, Stuart Simpson.
Thanks, David. It's great to hear about Valo and our testing progress. We heard Dómhnal speak earlier on what makes Valo a differentiated eVTOL aircraft. Let me touch on Vertical's true secret sauce, which is our battery technology. While our core strategy is to operate as an OEM, utilizing partnerships across tier one aerospace suppliers to minimize certification risk, the battery system is our core in-house technology and a key value driver for the business. We source cells and then manufacture the batteries at our world-class facilities. As cell technology evolves, our battery packs will provide increased payload and range to our customers. Vertical's proprietary battery system will support both the electric Valo eVTOL and our hybrid aircraft.
The testing we have done to date confirms our current battery's capabilities to deliver power such that at launch, the Valo will be able to provide lift for one pilot, four passengers, and 70 pounds of luggage per person. We are already testing the next generation of batteries that will further improve payload and range, ensuring this aircraft will only get better over time. As announced last week, our battery pilot production line is now operational. In fact, I had the pleasure of undertaking many of the process steps yesterday. In addition, we are expanding our battery manufacturing capability and capacity through the development of a new 30,000 sq ft Vertical Energy Centre 2, adjacent to our existing facilities.
This new facility will open later this year, and in July, just before the Farnborough Airshow, we will be hosting an investor day at the Vertical Energy Centre to allow our shareholders, prospective investors, and analysts to see the progress we are making. More details to come, and we look forward to seeing many of you there. Here is where the true value proposition comes in, our battery as a service business line. We expect batteries to be replaced approximately one time per year over the circa 20-year operational life of the aircraft. What this means is a long-term, predictable, high margin revenue stream. As we have said before, we anticipate margin for this to be circa 40%. Note that our published Flightpath 2030 figures don't include wide-ranging second life opportunities for our batteries.
Given European Aerospace Standards, once the battery degrades below a particular level, circa 93%, the battery will be removed from the Valo but will be perfect for other applications. Our lightweight and high power batteries have multiple second life opportunities, including VTOL aircraft, surface transport, marine, and storage. This drives significant additional revenue and margin opportunities for Vertical. We have had multiple inbound requests from third parties wishing to understand our technology and see if and how it is for sale above and beyond us using it in the Valo and our hybrid aircraft. As mentioned in our prior earnings calls, we have shifted from dream to reality and as David mentioned, laser-focused on execution. As seen in 2025, we completed almost 100% of our stated milestones, the final one being transition, which will be closed out imminently.
We have made a tremendous start to 2026 across product, customers, and ecosystem. We kicked off the Valo roadshow in key U.S. hubs, signed a critical supplier partnership with Evolito for the development and supply of EPUs for the Valo, and made strides on further integration and partnerships in artificial intelligence. We launched new customer partnerships with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Héli Air Monaco, JetSetGo, and launched customer networks in and around London, New York, Miami and Atlanta. Now looking ahead to the balance of 2026, we've categorized our operational goals into three buckets: aircraft, industrialization, and commercialization. I'd just like to draw your attention to a couple of things. First, we'll be flying at Farnborough Airshow, and we look forward to seeing many of you there. Second, this year we will open two new manufacturing facilities.
Third, we will complete the CDR for Valo, locking in the final 25% of suppliers. Finally, we will begin assembly of the first pre-production Valo. This next slide shows that through fiscal year 2025, our spend was in line with our guidance of $110 million-$125 million. As stated, this is a fraction of what our main competitors spent, but our progress, particularly in full-scale piloted and regulated test flight, remains industry-leading. Our cash and cash equivalent position was $93 million as of December 31, 2025. As of today, our short-term liquidity is estimated at approximately $85 million, comprising cash on hand and anticipated near-term receipts. Our ATM facility, which was put in place in September 2025, has a remaining capacity of approximately $78 million.
Over the next 12 months, we anticipate spending circa $190 million-$200 million as we ramp up our manufacturing footprint and move into the assembly of the first Valo. With that, I'll hand back to Dómhnal for closing remarks.
Thank you, Stuart, and thank you, David. We would like everyone on this call to walk away with just three key messages. First, our approach to flight testing is intentional, it's disciplined, and certification focused. We are deliberately expanding the flight test envelope systematically to extract maximum value to de-risk the ultimate Valo certification program. Secondly, we have optionality when it comes to capital raising, and we will execute when it is the right time for the business and our shareholders. Three, as Stuart illuminated, our battery technology is a key differentiator in our business model. With its high power and light weight, use cases support our eVTOL and hybrid aircraft, along with multiple other applications in adjacent industries that we intend to pursue. With that, we'll hand over to Samuel to open up the line for questions. Thank you, Samuel.
Thanks. Yeah, we asked our social media community for some questions. Just going to kick off the Q&A with one of them. The question was, with EU delegation and British government representation at the Valo event in London, is there a credible likelihood of meaningful state financial support from the UK?
Stuart, maybe you could take that one, please.
Thank you. It's a good question.
We have had tremendous support from the U.K. government. If you look at it over the prior years, this is up to around $100 million, and it shows the U.K.'s commitment to aerospace, and it's why we're based here in the U.K., in the heart of the European aerospace industry. Now, the government knows we've had approaches from several other European countries as we move from the R&D phase to the industrialization phase of being a business. We have had incoming requests for us to relocate to several European countries and many U.S. states. However, we remain committed to being anchored in the U.K. and working closely with government to find a way to make sure that happens.
Great. Thank you. Hand over to the operator.
At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank.
Hi. Thank you for taking our questions. First, I just want to check in on your comment. You said about the pilot of full transition. You know, you said it's very soon. Are there any regulatory hurdles that you're waiting for? I know weather has been an issue at times. Perhaps just elaborate on what's left to do.
Thanks, Edison. This is David. Thanks so much for the question. The short answer is the S-curve. This is normal for envelope expansion. If you were to plot test passes on the Y-axis versus time on the X-axis, this type of testing you typically see a curve that looks like an S leaning to the right in that it's the last few tests that have this tail end with this low slope, and that's where we are right now. Over the last couple of months, we did have a difficult winter, as you said. Records were broken in Bristol. I think there were 22 straight days without any sun and 45 straight days with rain.
We did have some weather difficulties, but with the springtime now, we're starting to see the forecast starting on Thursday to start getting a little bit better. Yes, we just have these last few tests to pass. As we go through it, what we have done and we tried to highlight this in the messaging is that we are doing these tests side by side with the certification authority, the UK CAA. We are using our approved design organization, our DOA procedures, which are the same procedures we're going to use for certification to conduct the flight testing. Just to give you an example, as we conduct a test, we take the thousands of data points, and then we compare it against our predictions that come from physics-based models.
Where we see a slight deviation, we flag that, and we say, "Hey, we need to understand what that is before we move on." When we have to go update and tweak our performance predictions and our models, then we go back to our airworthiness data package and update the appropriate sections to ensure that we still comply with the full airworthiness with this modification to the models before we move on to the next point. It's using a certification process on the prototype, which is dry running it to reduce the risk of certification later.
Understood. Appreciate the color. Separate topic on the strategic. From my understanding, there's been discussion going on. Any update on when we could maybe get something? Should we think about the full transition I just asked about as a precursor for some type of strategic to come in?
Edison, it's Dómhnal. The conversations that we are having with strategics are ongoing, and they've been ongoing now for a number of months. I'll refer back to our last earnings call. I think it's clear that the successful transition is a catalyst to moving to deepening those conversations into something tangible occurring, okay? The focus right now from the entire organization is to complete that transition successfully and as quickly as possible from where we stand today. The reality is it's taken us longer than we anticipated. On our last earnings call, I specifically said it's weeks, not months. Well, actually, as I was thinking about it this morning, it's months, not weeks. We are very, very close at this juncture.
Understood. Just lastly for me, on the hybrid military side, I know you sort of alluded to some things earlier. Is that something that could, you know, happen as we get closer and farther where you know where we announce some efforts or some programs? That's obviously very, you know, hot topic or hot area given, you know, what's going on in the world. Just curious your thoughts there.
Yeah. Maybe I'll bring in David just to give you some flavor from Vertical, and we can supplement that. David?
Yeah. Thanks, Dómhnal. Just to give you the perspective that I heard from the vertical lift community at the Vertical Aviation International Trade Show in Atlanta a week and a half ago, where people looked at the Valo and the differentiators resonated, and one of those was the size of the aircraft and the ability to upgrade it to a hybrid configuration without changing the airframe. Essentially just taking the spacious baggage bay and inserting a turbo generator system, and we are demonstrating that on our prototype aircraft number three. The feedback that I heard was with the size of Valo and the versatility, what we were forecasting for the defense market, we're not forecasting high enough is what I was hearing from the people.
As you mentioned, with the geopolitical situation as it is today, there are different opportunities. One that was talked about was distributed contested logistics, where they said, if you look at the defense opportunities that are coming, they're based on vertical takeoff and landing in a configuration that can be turned into an autonomous platform quickly. That's part of the value proposition of Valo and the Honeywell flight control system, is it's one small step from fully autonomous. Then to be able to have the room and the payload and the capacity in the baggage bay for the logistics, to be able to turn it into that mission and open up a large set of demand.
Maybe just to supplement that, Edison, we believe we are the only eVTOL manufacturer in the world that can basically create a hybrid from the current airframe, as David touched on. From a timeframe perspective, we'll have that aircraft certified in 2029. Our competitors are multiple years behind in that regard. Now, in terms of commercializing that and actually generating sales, we're now dedicating a significant amount of internal resources to defense sales. I hope during the course of this year, maybe as soon as the Farnborough Airshow, we'll be able to share some progress in that regard. Unquestionably, we've got the best product. We now need to make sure we can sell it.
Understood. Thank you so much.
Your next question comes from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. With respect to the timing for the fully, you know, the piloted transition flight, should we expect timing on that to be sort of mid-2026 or maybe later in the second half of 2026?
Hi. Thank you for the question. As David alluded to, we're really down to the very last little bit of this. Now, we don't want to commit to a timing because as David said, each time we put the aircraft in the air, we learn a little bit more. But with the weather improving, we actually flew yesterday, which was fantastic. We got some more learnings. Nothing hindered us. We have literally a handful of flights to do to accomplish full transition as we sit here today. Now, the timing of that, very difficult to commit to because as David said, we have the weather to contend with, we have new learnings. It's something we anticipate over the coming weeks, I would say. Hopefully, that gives you a bit of color commentary about it.
No, that's understandable. Just wanted to see, you know, if there was sort of a concrete timeline to that, but I can take that offline. The other question was the battery efforts. Does the GBP 190 million-GBP 200 million spend for the next twelve months include your battery needs as well?
Yes, absolutely. The GBP 190-GBP 200 is a rolling twelve months from end of March. It covers everything we need to do to remain on track with Flightpath 2030, delivering our new battery facility, our new aircraft manufacturing facility, the conversion of aircraft 3 into a hybrid, and the build of the first Valo. That financial number I mentioned covers all of the things we said we'd be doing in 2026.
Got it. Thank you, Stuart. This last one, the strategic investor you are sort of courting and the other financial options that you are sort of, you know, looking at, how urgent are these, you know, needs given where the balance sheet is? Or are you comfortable, at least for the remainder of 2026, you know, to execute according to plan?
Hi. We're pretty comfortable as we sit here today. We've got line of sight to circa $150 million-$160 million as we sit here today. We're in constant discussions among a range of options for financing, and we'll execute as and when the time is right for the company. We don't feel under pressure to do it. We'll do it as and when it's right for the company and the current shareholders.
That's all I have, guys. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Thanks for the questions.
Your next question comes from Louie DiPalma with William Blair.
Stuart, Dómhnal, and David, good afternoon, and congrats on the development of Valo and the demonstrations in London, New York City, and Miami. For my first question, I was wondering, following these demonstrations and your tests thus far, how do you feel that your Valo aircraft stacks up with peers in the market? Is the main difference between Vertical and peers the balance sheet right now?
Yeah. Louie, great to hear from you. I mean, we fundamentally believe that we've got the best product in terms of the size, shape, and scale, and its capabilities. We've believed that for a very long time. We've now shown the physical embodiment of that to our stakeholders, particularly in the United States, over the last couple of months. People have sat in the aircraft. People have seen the quantum of baggage that the aircraft actually takes. They've seen the cockpit and the segregation, which provides a very safe environment for the pilot. People are now getting really convinced that Valo, as designed, is the category killer in this space. It is not a minimum viable product that we believe some of our other competitors are developing. Bar balance sheet, we think we've got the best product.
We also think we've got the best supply chain collaboration globally, particularly with some of the major partners we have, like Honeywell, Aciturri. Finally, we've got the best customer base. At the end of the day, it's the customer base determines the success or failure of an aircraft. If you look at our customers, they're globally diversified, tier one airlines, many of them, and all of them are fully engaged in the constant development of the aircraft. Today, we're actually speaking from our battery facility here in the U.K., where I've just been brought through some of the unique proprietary battery systems that we've developed. We've basically collaborated on almost everything else with the aircraft because we think almost everything else is going to get commoditized. The battery, as Stuart said, is the special sauce.
Our team is the best in the world in the development of our battery technology. It's no surprise that we're convinced that we've got the best product, but all of our stakeholders are telling us that now.
Great. That's it for me. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you, Louie.
Thanks, Louis.
Your next question comes from Austin Moeller with Canaccord Genuity.
Hi, good morning. So just my first question here. Can you talk a little bit about the R&D and CapEx plans over the next 12 months that fits into the GBP 995 million in cash you expect to burn? Like, how many aircraft do you expect to build as part of that?
Hi, Austin. Thanks for the question. Thanks for the continued support. The $190 million-$200 million is a rolling 12 months from the end of March. As I mentioned earlier, it covers everything we have laid out in Flightpath 2030 and today that we are going to achieve over the coming 12 months. That is the public flight displays of the current prototype. It is the conversion of one of those into a hybrid. It is the expansion of the battery center where we are today, as Dómhnal mentioned. It's the build of our aircraft manufacturing facility, and really importantly, it is the start of the build of the first Valo. Everything we said we'd be doing over this 12 months, that is funded within that $190 million-$200 million.
Okay. Is there an active program of record or the equivalent in the U.K. of Ministry of Defence right now to procure a hybrid VTOL aircraft? Are there other similar programs in the works with some of the allied NATO militaries?
We've had multiple conversations across many different defense customers and defense partners in Europe and U.S. There is no official program of record that we're attached to. However, we're in deep discussions with the U.K. government about this hybrid product. As David alluded to from his feedback from Vertical, we are totally unique in this space in that we will be certifying a hybrid product in 2029 in an airframe that is sized and capable and perfectly usable by the military now. We do not have to go and redesign and defer this. That is generating significant interest across the whole world for our product. We anticipate being able to close out something in that space over the coming months, the rest of this year, because we definitively have the best product for the military.
As Dómhnal said, it's been widely recognized now we've showcased Valo, and that reads right across into the hybrid space as well. David also touched importantly on autonomy. We are perfectly placed to jump quickly into autonomy because of our deep strategic partnership with Honeywell. We are the first choice for military.
Okay. Just my last question, have you narrowed down any of the on the market or available hybrid powertrains to like one or two options yet?
Actually, we've got a short list. I don't think we've announced who we're going with yet, but we've had wide-ranging discussions. Interestingly, everyone wants to work with us because they've seen we have an airframe that is going to be highly successful. We have had inbounds for us for people that are absolutely desperate to be our partners on this because we are leading the way in the military and dual-use space.
Yeah. In that regard, Austin, we have European and U.S. alternatives from tier one suppliers who have gone from being, I would say, mildly interested in Vertical and our hybrid to being intensely focused because they can see the applicability. To David's point, they also can see the absolute scale of the market opportunity, which I believe right now we are currently underestimating, and we're going to have to take a good look at the scale of that defense opportunity globally, not just in Europe, but globally, to ensure that our internal forecasts are really accurately reflecting the depth of that market opportunity, which is getting literally deeper by the month and quarter, given the scale of the budgets, particularly in Europe, that the European governments are allocating to defense.
Very exciting. I'll pass it back there. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thanks, Austin.
Your next question comes from Chris Pierce with Needham.
Hey, good afternoon, everyone. I was hoping to go a little bit deeper on the transition delays. Maybe delay is too harsh a word, but either way, I'd just love to hear sorta if we think about a pie or a hundred percent, however you want to bucket it, like, what's within your control and what's been that you haven't been able to control from November till now? Like, in the US, we have, like, FlightAware, we can sort of track and see flights that people are kind of flying. Have there been weeks where you haven't been able to fly, and that's significantly pushed things out? Or I guess kind of just let us know sort of what's, you know, kind of what's been going on in, at Cotswolds.
Let me just give you a little bit of color commentary, then I'll hand to David. You said were there weeks we couldn't fly. I mean, there were months we couldn't. It rained for 46 days in a row, as David said. We need a permit to fly every time we put the aircraft in the air, and we can't do it when it's raining. There were 46 days in a row we could not fly, just to orientate you. It isn't all in our control. Now, David, if you want to give maybe a little bit more technical color commentary.
Well, certainly around the pie chart, David. I mean, how close are we? I mean, if you were to give a sense, in a pie chart basis.
Yes, in terms of the number of tests that we have to do, it's less than 10% in a pie chart. It's in the tail end of the S-curve. We're on that tail end of the S-curve. You know, as Stuart said, if you were then to create another pie chart that said, okay, what were the sources of not flying when you initially planned to fly? The biggest one was weather, and it was you know, a really rough January, February. On top of that, we also are doing envelope expansion testing. As we do envelope expansion testing, each test point brings a database of data that gets compared with our predictions.
The wind conditions, we have a tight tolerance as well because we don't want to have that noise associated with the atmospheric disturbance. In terms of the weather, the clouds, the wind conditions, that was the first one. The second one was as we conduct the tests and as we find that we have to make some adjustments to our predictive models to update our database, then we update the database and go through our full design organization procedures to get that new airworthiness document approved side by side with the CAA before we go to the next test.
Yes. Maybe, Chris, just to bring that a little bit more to life because the environment that we're here in Europe is different to the United States. We are testing under a regulatory oversight. In the United States, it's an experimental. The regulatory oversight effectively means that every time we fly, we have to receive a permit to fly, which means we sit with the CAA, we walk them through the learnings from the previous flight, any observations, any amendments, any changes, and that process is, because it's the safest in the world, it is sequential, and unfortunately, it's slow. Slow is good because it means it's intentional, and it ensures that we're flying in the safest manner possible. We all wished this was faster, but we're very comfortable about where we stand.
To David's pie chart, picture there, we're into the last 10%.
Can you sort of help us with how slow is slow on those two sort of guidance, you know, buckets that you just talked about? You fly, you compare the data, you have to tweak to, you know, versus what you saw versus what you expected, and then you need to take that to the CAA and then get approval to fly the next time. Are we talking days, weeks? Like, what is the timeframe between when you fly and when you're ready to fly the next time? And what's in your control and out of your control as far as that goes as well?
It depends on the issue. We've had some issues that we get resolved in days. We've had a couple of issues over the last few months that have taken several weeks, actually. The good news in that scenario is we weren't able to fly anyway because of the weather. That's just the nature of the regulatory framework that we find ourselves in. It is the nature of 10 to the minus nine. When we get through it, we will have the safest, commercially safest aircraft in the world. The pain will be worth the gain.
Chris, just to give a final little comment on that, where we've taken learnings and made little tweaks, the joy of this is this aircraft we're flying now directly reads over to the Valo. If you look at a top-down view of the Valo prototype, the rotors are the same size, the wing is the same size and shape, the rears are almost exactly the same. A lot of this stuff where we've had a few days delay or, you know, weeks delay, for example, this is stuff that we don't have to revisit because it goes directly into the Valo design. We may have lost a little bit of time here, but we've actually de-risked certification. This is one of the key things you've got to remember here. This de-risks certification.
Every single time we go back to CAA, we sit with them, with their experts, with our experts. We agree a way forward, and that is baked in knowledge, learning, and technical results and technical solutions that will be baked into the Valo. It actually accelerates the whole program, which is why I don't.
Okay. I appreciate all the
Really confident.
Thank you for all the detail. Very much appreciated. Okay, just one other one. You guided to a 12-month cash burn of $200 million-$195 million. Is there any reason to think the next 12 months prior to that will be meaningfully different from that? As you ramp, like if I'm looking at slide 17, you've got the seven certification aircraft you're going to build. Like, as we think about burn going forward before you have entry into service and revenue, how should we think about burn beyond the next 12 months? Just conceptually.
Yeah. We've actually put that out. I think Flight Path 2030, we've talked about the cash to certification. It might be a little bit up on the GBP 200, but it's in that ballpark. That's the way to think about it.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks.
Great.
Your next question comes from David Zazula with Barclays.
Hey, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question.
Hi, David.
First question is, with respect to the selection of Evolito as the EPU supplier, how has that been received by CAA and EASA? You know, I guess do you perceive any risk with respect to, you know, certification with them relative to kind of the prior, you know, established tier one supplier you had on the EPU side?
Actually, we didn't have an established tier one supplier for certification. We're very proud to have been working with YASA on that. Evolito, we believe from a certification perspective, they're already up and running. They already have a DOA in place. They're working on a POA. They're highly respected, and it's proven technology. This is something from a certification perspective and support from regulatory bodies we're very positive about. David, if there's anything you want to add?
No, I mean, it's a great question, and there are a couple of attributes of Evolito that are really a good fit for Valo. The first is, as Stuart said, they have excellent certification processes in place, and they've really leaned forward on that. They're not too far away, right? They're near Bicester. As we mentioned earlier that Bicester near Oxford is in the Oxford-Cambridge arc, which is one of the prime use cases for Evolito in the United Kingdom. Being here in the United Kingdom, it gives us advantage to work together on the UK CAA certification, and we have very complementary certification processes in place.
Super helpful. I mean, maybe can you frame how do you think they'll fit into the broader supplier strategy, how you think the supplier coordination is going to go, and I guess broadly, how the suppliers will support your ability to ramp up production over the next couple years?
Hi. David, thanks. We have been working with most of our supply chain for many, many years. They're deeply embedded in our process. Our whole flight path 2030 and certification date of 2028 has been done hand in hand with our supply chain. They are there, ready, willing, committed, and as David alluded to, our CDR, our critical design review, where we'll have done the full design envelope of every single component, we're around 75%-80% through that. Every single complex, long-term, difficult, high-value component we've done. EPUs, batteries, avionics, flight control systems, the airframe is locked in already, and they are there, ready and willing to make a certification aircraft in 2028.
Super helpful. Thanks. I'll jump back in the queue.
Thanks, David.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the call back over to CEO Stuart Simpson for closing remarks.
Hi. I'd just like to thank everyone for listening in to this call and all of the analysts for the questions. Really appreciate it. We are on the cusp of great things at Vertical. David and Dómhnal said, we genuinely believe we have the industry-defining aircraft. The feedback we've had from everyone in this space has been outstanding, way above and beyond what we were expecting. We are going to bring the Valo to life. We will start building it the end of this year, and we'll be flying early next year. It's going to be an amazing 12 months. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.