Thanks everyone, and I think we had a similar issue last year for those that were here. I do not know, maybe it is just this Arcadian building. Anyway, thanks for joining us. For those that were here last year, and I do see a couple familiar faces, Brandon Robinson was here. He is our CEO. I am the CFO, and here at New Horizon Aircraft, we are building the future. How are we doing that? I will start by saying I was on a Waymo earlier this week for the first time, and tremendously skeptical of what this machine was going to do for people and society. I could not believe not only how safe I felt in the machine, but how it did not compromise efficiency for that safety. It was a tremendous experience. Of course, we are doing it in a different way.
We are doing it in the air, but it is following the same path. It is meant to move people and things around a lot more efficiently than they are today. Where we came from, we were founded about 13 years ago by Brandon Robinson. He is a former fighter jet pilot, 20 years in the Canadian Air Force. Him and his father, who was also an established pilot and engineer, built and certified his own aircraft, saw this revolution in aerospace coming. What they saw was, and maybe you have heard about the likes of Joby and Archer and BETA. These are our peers who are building a similar type of aircraft. They saw what they were doing, trying to move people and things around more efficiently. What they did not love was the design of the aircraft.
What they had designed was similar to a helicopter, things that can take off vertically, fly like a plane, and then land vertically as well. You gain all that flexibility of not having to go to an airport when you are taking off and landing. What they did was they designed it very much like a traditional helicopter. You have blades and rotors that are spinning on the aircraft, and most of them, not all of them, but most of them have this tilting mechanism where they spin like a helicopter, and then they tilt in flight so that you then fly forward like a plane would do. What we have built is a machine that looks like this. It is designed more like a plane. In fact, it is designed exactly like a plane with one exception.
The wings open, and that is how we gain our vertical lift capability. These powerful fans inside the wings provide that vertical lift, and this is our key patented technology that differentiates us from everyone else in this space. As you can imagine, what this design results in is significantly improved performance. That is speed, range, and payload. The other key differentiator, so the first one is this fan-in-wing design. The other key decision we made early on as we watched our peers was not going all electric from an energy propulsion perspective. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when many of our peers were designing their machines, they expected batteries to evolve a little quicker than they actually have. They are still extremely limited in terms of performance in aerospace. We went with a hybrid design.
We have a turbine engine on board that powers the propeller in the rear. We also have batteries that power just the fans for the vertical elements of flight. One of the key benefits of that outside of performance is that we do not need to recharge the machine every time we land, which can result in some fairly significant inefficiencies from an operational standpoint. The machine takes off with the use of the battery power. It transitions into forward flight with the rear propeller. Then the turbine recharges the batteries while in flight. It is a key operational advantage there. Five fans in each wing, two in the front canards, and the rear propeller in the back, as I said. Then once you reach certain altitude and speed, as I said before, the wings close and it looks like this.
The other thing I would say is we expect this to be the composition of the machine as it flies the vast majority of its missions. 98%+ it will look just like this, like a traditional plane. It also takes off and lands conventionally if that is what you prefer to do. If you are near a regional airport, you can certainly do that. It is also a safety redundancy measure, so you do not always have to use the fans inside the wings. Performance. The three key elements here, speed, range, and payload. Those two factors I mentioned earlier, the fan-in-wing design and the hybrid-electric propulsion mean that we can go 250 mph with a range of 500 mi and a useful load of 1,500 pounds. I apologize. A lot of the presentations are south of the border, where we are not on the metric system there.
How that compares to our peers, they are usually flying between 100 and 200 mph . They have a range of between 500 mi and 100 mi, and useful load of somewhere between 500 pounds and 1,000 pounds. So materially different performance. Of course, what that means, and if you have noticed, I am not actually calling them our competitors because they are not. Most of them are targeting an urban air taxi service. So getting you from here to wherever you are staying tonight or wherever you live, as opposed to from here to, in my case, I have a cottage 150 km from here. Takes me three or four hours to get there on a Friday afternoon. This is a machine that will get you there in 20 minutes. That is more of a regional benefit as opposed to urban air taxi service.
We are not actually planning to run an urban air taxi service. We are not planning for our customers to run an urban air taxi service. We are actually targeting industries like defense, medevac, logistics and cargo, as well as executive transport. This picture here is our aircraft with the wings folded in inside a C-17. There was an interesting "60 Minutes" piece last month with this extraction of a fighter jet pilot in Iran. I do not know if you guys are "60 Minutes" people, but it was fascinating to watch. There was two attack helicopters, a jet escort, and all in close to 100 people supporting this mission to extract one person that had parachuted out of their fighter jet, which was shot down. This is a machine that would eliminate a lot of that redundancy. You certainly would not need the two helicopters. You would still need people involved, but not 100.
That's where if you are watching that piece and you see an aircraft like this, what it can do, you can visualize the benefit. Medevac, I will use Ontario because that is where we are. Ontario's medevac air ambulance is run by a group called Ornge. They run a fleet of AW139s, notoriously unreliable and very expensive to operate. This is an aircraft that wins not only in safety and reliability, but certainly speed as well. I think, over time, the government would be remiss if they are not at least contemplating machines like this to replace these archaic helicopters that we use today. Executive transport, as I mentioned, not only for a trip to the cottage, but if you are going to New York, if you are going to Lindsay, for example, which is where we are based out of, Lindsay, Ontario, this is a far easier mechanism to get to those places.
More comfortable, too. Disaster relief, this is where that sort of hybrid-electric propulsion really helps. Many of all-electric aircraft are not going to find any charging infrastructure. So fires, there are a lot of fires in Canada. You need to move people and equipment around efficiently. If you are frequently stopping to recharge your batteries, that becomes an operational challenge. Of course, helicopters can perform a lot of that work today and do, but they are, as I mentioned earlier, rather slow and expensive. I talked about the performance from a costing perspective to give you an example of how much it is going to cost to operate this aircraft. I have had the benefit of working in the helicopter space for a length of time. Legacy helicopters cost about $5 per passenger seat mile. This aircraft costs just less than $1. These are material margin wins for operators.
Margins in the helicopter space hover usually between 5% and 10% for the better operators. Margins are tight. This has the opportunity to provide tremendous financial benefit for many of those folks. If it was not clear, we are not planning to actually operate this machine ourself. We are going to be selling to the operators that are already using helicopters today, and we think that is the right approach to this business. On the financial side, we have one of the strongest balance sheets in the space. We have carefully raised money over the last three years. We have the Canso Group, which is just north of the city here, who owns 20% of the stock, and they put about CAD 20 million in over the last three years. We have also had an operational ATM, which has been a cost-efficient way to raise capital over the last 18 months.
Government grants. Of course, we raised quite a bit of money back in the spring, if you have been following us, in and around $2.50, that is U.S., per share. We are very capital efficient. Our peers are spending in the order of magnitude of half a billion dollars per quarter. Quarter to a half. We are spending, at this point, $6 million- $7 million a quarter. One, we are not operating the aircraft, so we are not setting up all the related infrastructure, pilots, training programs, hangars. But we also do not need to set up all the vertiports that they require to charge their aircraft everywhere they go. So it is significantly more capital efficient than our peers following this business model of only manufacturing and then selling to existing operators. Our stock has continued to appreciate, although admittedly, the whole sector has ebbed and flowed quite a bit in the last year.
Tailwinds and then headwinds, and that's where we're at today. Everyone in this space is down about 50% over the last two months. But as I said, healthiest balance sheet in the space, from a cash versus spend perspective. A lot of folks might have 6- 12 months of runway in terms of liquidity. We have two to three years. That has the potential to bridge us to customer deposits on machines, and I'll get to the timing in a minute. That's a fairly relevant point when you start evaluating companies in this advanced air mobility space. The timeline. I mentioned 2021 is when the idea was formed. 2022, prototypes built and commenced flying.
If you were following us at all, you'd know we went public three years ago, finished flight testing on our large-scale prototypes in May of 2025, and over the last year, we are building our full-scale aircraft, what we call our demonstrator aircraft, that will commence flight testing next year. Then over the next two to three years is when we engage with the regulators, and achieve certification by 2030. We're certifying here in Canada with Transport Canada, and there are effective reciprocity amongst all of the developed nations. Once you have certification here in Canada, it's a fairly, I won't say easy process, but understood process to get certification in other jurisdictions. We have a number of important partners. We have engaged with the most prominent suppliers, whether that's BETA, RAMPF. I mentioned Canso, Mitsubishi. These are our people that are helping us on our path.
Management team, I talked about Brandon, the CEO. Everyone here not only has deep aerospace experience but is established in their own respective areas as well. Really, that's it. If I were to leave you just with two things, this revolution in aviation is happening. It's coming, just like the Waymo thing. It's a question of when. Is that next year? Is it three years from now? Is it 10 years from now? Hard to say, but it's coming, and we have a significantly differentiated product. There are 10 other people in this space. They all look the same. This one's different because it's both hybrid, and it has this fan-in-wing technology that provides the performance enhancements. I'll stop there. I think we have a few minutes for questions. Yeah. Must've been a great presentation. Yeah, go ahead.
Is the biggest competitive advantage for your aircraft versus your competition is the power wing, how you power it? Is what you think is your secret sauce?
That coupled with this patented fan-in-wing design. I did not mention this, our peers actually started all electric. They have recognized the performance limitations, and now they are trying to build a separate hybrid machine as well. But what they can never do is build this fan-in-wing technology because that is a patented element that we own.
When do you see commercial success? Sales, orders, when would we see them in the air?
2030 is when you will see them in the air. That is from a certification perspective. We will be flying next year. But we will not be certified for commercial revenue, or our customers will not be, until 2030. However, there is a more near-term revenue opportunity that we are actively pursuing, and that is to license the tech in certain regions for different styles of machines. That could be an unmanned machine, it could be a military defense kind of aircraft, drones or otherwise. There has been a lot of interest in the tech just because of its performance capabilities. So that could be a lot nearer term than what we are building specifically. Go ahead.
Any other jurisdictions where you can get certification in other geographies?
There are, and some of our peers are doing that in the Middle East. China's already flying. They're already doing this in China. Their regulatory system's a lot more tolerant there.
They're not flying your planes, they're flying-
Yes. What we wanted to achieve certification at the higher bar first, before we went into other regions. Part of that's just because we're based here, but we also believe it's a stronger pathway, as opposed to flying in regions that don't make as much sense for us.
Hence the reason you have enough cash to reach 2030 based on what you've showed.
Yeah. Our spend is going to scale, so we are going to need to continue doing what we are doing. But yes. Yeah.
Certification is expensive.
Yes.
How are you going to raise funds for that?
In the same mechanism we have. Priority one, government grants. We have had some success. There is a lot of money coming in defense, as I am sure everyone in this room has heard, as well as in aerospace. We have an ATM program, and when there is healthy liquidity in the market and tailwinds, as I mentioned, we will use it. There are, of course, down the road, partnerships that result in money coming in. Not urgent, but it is possible.
How much is one of these going to cost?
How much do you think it's going to cost?
$5 million.
Very close. $6 million. Going to be about $6 million. So the helicopter I compared it to, same price point, same number of passengers, about $6 million.
How does that compare versus your competitors? [inaudible]
Almost identical. Many of them are just operating it themselves, but the ones that are selling it have a similar price point.
Retail, not operational.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly, yeah.
If it's hybrid, how efficient is that fuel?
It's far more efficient than a legacy helicopter, albeit you do lose some of that efficiency versus the all-electric peers. They have all the batteries that they have to carry on board, and they're constantly recharging. The biggest issue they have is actually the weight of the batteries. They use a lot of energy to do that. We kind of beat them both because we don't use nearly as much fuel as our legacy helicopter peers, but we don't have the battery costs of our all-electric peers.