Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Lytham Partners Fall 2026 Investor Conference. My name is Joe Dorame, Managing Partner at Lytham Partners. I would like to welcome NextNav Inc., which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker NN. Today, I will be moderating a fireside chat with Tim Gray, Chief Financial Officer. Let's get started. Welcome, Tim.
Thanks, Joe. I really appreciate Lytham having me today, and being able to participate in the conference, and being able to spend time with you. This is going to be great.
Great. Well, we appreciate you being part of it. To begin, please provide an overview of NextNav for investors that are new to the story, and what problem are you solving?
Great question, Joe. NextNav is working to provide a terrestrial backup and complement to GPS here in the U.S. It is a significant security and commercial risk that there is no terrestrial backup, and recent examples around the globe have shown some of the vulnerabilities of satellite-based GPS. We are doing that by bringing a combined solution with our unique PNT, or position, navigation, and timing technology, along with our spectrum position at 900 MHz to provide a solution to this problem.
That's helpful. Can you explain at a high level why NextNav spectrum assets are valuable, and what differentiates your PNT technology?
Yeah. So we've got 14 MHz of low-band spectrum. Low-band spectrum under 1 GHz is the foundation of any wireless networks because of its propagation and penetration characteristics. It goes through walls, goes into basements, all of those sorts of things. And there's not a lot of low-band spectrum that's left in the U.S. And so, we feel like we're in a very, very unique position. And when you combine that with our PNT technology, which is differentiated because it measures Z-axis or height. So standard GPS service can tell you what crossroads you're at, but it can't tell you what floor of the building that you're in. Our technology can measure that you're on the fifth floor of the building that you're in.
That's impressive. Can you provide an overview of your petition with the FCC? What are the key steps that are remaining, and what are you seeking to accomplish?
Yeah. So let me start with what we're seeking to accomplish. So we are seeking a rule change, an adjustment of the rules from the FCC that will allow the spectrum band to be repurposed, so it will allow for today's and tomorrow's technologies instead of being set up for rules that were put in place 40, 50 years ago. The current band plan, we have 14 megahertz of licensed multilateration, Location and Monitoring Service. Basically, that allows for small pings of data to go through, not all of the advanced technology that you could do with today's cellphone. Our proposed optimized band plan would pair five by 10 MHz blocks suitable for PNT and 5G. And 5G operations will coexist with preexisting licensed and unlicensed operations across the band.
As of today, the NPRM has been written, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which is the next regulatory hurdle by the FCC. That NPRM is being reviewed through an interagency review process across the federal government being led by OIRA, which is an office in the Office of Management and Budget. That process allows for each of those agencies to review and look at the NPRM, give comments back to the FCC. That is ongoing, and we feel like we have made a significant amount of progress working through that process with both OIRA and the multiple federal agencies. We are very confident we are going to get an NPRM done. It is just a question of when, not if.
Okay. SpaceX recently became involved with the FCC docket. What does that mean for NextNav and the broader process?
Yeah. We are excited to have a company with the size and scope of SpaceX actually go onto the docket and provide commentary, very positive for things to move forward, and we hope that that will help move the needle. SpaceX was asking for two things in what they put on the docket. One was more broadly a change that the FCC will put in place whenever they are changing and repurposing spectrum bands like ours, where they allow for dual use, either terrestrial-based build-out or a space-based build-out, so that it is easier for them if they get bands of spectrum to move forward rather quickly. Because, as they have talked about, they have got some pretty significant plans to provide multiple services to, I think, both enterprise and consumers that may eventually compete with the carriers. They are going to need spectrum, and so that is why they have asked for those rules.
I think second, and even more positive, was they very specifically called out NextNav and asked for the FCC to move forward with our repositioning as we have asked for.
That's helpful. Can you discuss some of the recent testing efforts and what they've demonstrated about the technology?
Yeah. We've been testing under short-term authorizations from the FCC for two different things, and we're very excited about the results coming out of both of those sets of work. First, in Northern California, we've been testing for almost the entire calendar year on rules that the FCC would put in place if they were to grant our petition, our 5G PNT technology. Even over the past few weeks, we've had a press release come out that our positioning is down to a meter of difference or accuracy. This success helps our conviction that our solution will complement GPS and make indoor and GPS-challenged location accuracy possible for a wide range of applications, including for public safety. Second, we've been doing testing in Colorado under the same short-term authorization with the railroads who are a licensee in the band.
That work has shown positive results. With the railroads, we're moving on to some next steps that we think will be very positive. Again, the technology on the PNT side, the coexistence work that we've done in Colorado has been great. We're very, very pleased with those results and excited to continue moving those forward.
Impressive. What can you highlight regarding early commercial efforts, and how does a recent Safran partnership, what does that tell us about the potential commercial applications for NextNav's technology?
Yeah. So we've been very active over the past couple of months, announcing several partnerships recently to test our technology across a variety of different use cases. Specifically for a company like Safran, with the size and worldwide scope that they have, to be working to test and develop products, incorporating our capabilities is a good development, and one that we're excited about because it will provide further validation of what we've built. Safran is a leader across areas such as defense and aeronautics, so there's a wide variety of potential use cases for them to be adding to their product sets, as I've said, and using our technology. That's a very, very good development, because for companies like that with those types of use cases, our technology and particularly the height capabilities or Z-axis, will be very important.
Yeah, those are important points. You've indicated that NextNav plans to leverage strategic partners for the network build-out. What would a successful structure look like? Partnership, lease agreement, or a sale?
Joe, it could be any of those things right now, and so that's all going to play out as we work through those conversations as we move further along the regulatory process. The intent has always been, from the NextNav side, not to have to raise capital to go out and put up a network that's going to be $10+ billion to do that, and leverage existing build-outs or companies that are going to be building out, whether it's terrestrially or space-based, moving forward so that they can put this spectrum to use. What a partnership agreement would look like could take on many different flavors, and there'll be more to come on that as we continue to get through the FCC process.
Great. Last question. You've made substantial progress strengthening the balance sheet. How does that improve your financial position to enhance your ability to execute against the company's strategic objectives?
Yeah. First let me talk about what we have done, and then I will talk about how that helps us moving forward. There are two things that we were able to do earlier this summer. One was convert all our debt into equity. We took $190 million off the balance sheet, and again, converted that to equity. That frees us up from that standpoint. We were also able to exercise the public $11.50 SPAC warrants, which ended up providing $170 million of liquidity to the company. At the end of our June quarter, we had roughly $300 million in liquidity. What that does for us, that gives us significant extra runway as we move forward without having that debt burden hanging over our heads.
It really does transform the company and provide a significant position of strength moving forward so that whatever hurdles come in our way, we are able to jump over.
Congrats on that. Before we wrap up, Tim, do you have any final comments you would like to touch on?
No, Joe. Again, we are very excited about where we are positioned. We are confident in where we are with the FCC process. We are even more excited about the test results that we are seeing on our technology. It is a great time to be at NextNav, and I look forward to all the investor discussions that we will be having as a part of the conference.
Great. Thank you, Tim Gray. We appreciate your time. This has been a helpful discussion, and thanks to everyone for watching. If you have any questions or would like to schedule a meeting with NextNav, send me an email at dorame@lythampartners.com. Thank you, and have a great day.