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Earnings Call: Q3 2022

Mar 17, 2022

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Red Cat Holdings Fiscal Third Quarter 2022 Financial Re sults and Corporate Update conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Participants of this call are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcast live over the Internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. A webcast replay of the call will be available approximately one hour after the end of the call through June 17th, 2022 .

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Scott Gordon, President of CORE IR, the company's investor relations firm. Please go ahead, sir.

Scott Gordon
President, CORE IR

Thank you, Vaishnavi, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Red Cat Holdings Fiscal Third Quarter 2022 Financial Results and Corporate Update conference call. Joining us today from Red Cat Holdings are Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer of Red Cat Holdings, and Joseph Hernon, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, management will be making forward-looking statements, including statements that address Red Cat's expectations for future performance or operational results. Particularly, forward-looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, please refer to the risk factors described in Red Cat's most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and Red Cat's press release that accompanies this call, particularly the cautionary statements in it.

The content of this call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, March 17th, 2022 . Except as required by law, Red Cat disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Jeff Thompson, Chief Executive Officer. Jeff, please go ahead.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Thanks, Scott, and thanks for joining our third quarter 2022 earnings call. First, I would like to thank all the employees at Fat Shark, Rotor Riot, Skypersonic, and Teal Drones. They have all worked hard to get their businesses on a path to scale and grow. We expect different contributions at different timelines to grow revenues over the next three or four quarters. Again, good work team. Fat Shark has new products coming. Skypersonic will be playing a key role in the infrastructure inspection space. Rotor Riot continues to grow and build an audience, and their annual event, Rampage, which hopefully I get to this year, is sold out. Next, let's talk about Teal Drones, and I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of activity around this from the recent weeks. Let me start with some housekeeping.

The number one question we get is supply chain. We have just under 4,000 ship sets to build just under 4,000 Golden Eagle, which would equate to over $50 million in revenue. I wanna start by talking about Ukraine demand for drones before we dive into SRR Tranche 2 contract award that we received this week. Since last Thursday, we have been slammed with inbound inquiries from many countries looking for thousands of drones not made by the Chinese to deliver to Ukraine. We have been working through all hours of the night, all weekends, every hour to respond to these proposals, and we hope to have something soon in the near future to report on this as it just started development last week. From various sources, we expect large and continued demand for drones in the Teal category, basically that Teal style drone in Ukraine.

For obvious reasons, they're not looking for Chinese drones. This is already creating a giant demand vacuum, not just in Ukraine, but across all segments like police and first responders. Because everything from every manufacturer that exists today or is being built is now being sold. Regardless if the drones are sold to Ukraine or sold to the police, we expect this massive demand spike to outstrip the potential supply from all non-Chinese alternatives for at least the next 12 months. We are working as aggressively as possible to scale up production because of this. Let's move on to Teal Drones SRR contract. Teal Drones was awarded a prototype contract for SRR, which is Short Range Reconnaissance Tranche 2. This contract award was for $1.5 million. Teal was one of two who received a Tranche 2 contract. Let's get some details on the SRR program.

I get a lot of questions about it. Tranche 1 had five contracts awarded for prototypes. Teal was one of those five contracts. This was two years ago. There was one Tranche 1 production award for $100 million. There's been some confusion about that because it just came out in February, even though it was awarded two years ago, mostly because of COVID. Tranche 2 has two prototype contracts, and we will be competing for the Tranche 2 production contract, very similar to what happened in Tranche 1. Each tranche has a production contract. We are pretty happy about this. We're very proud to be one of two chosen, and this is pretty exciting news. This is gonna be a long-term relationship with the Army. With those statistics, I think we have at least a 50/50 chance for the production contract.

I'm looking forward to your questions, and I'm sure there'll be a bunch. There's a lot going on in the world right now. With that, I'm gonna hand it over to Joseph Hernon.

Joseph Hernon
CFO, Red Cat

Thanks, Jeff, and to everyone for joining the call today. I will now provide a review of our financial results for our fiscal third quarter, which ended on January 31st, 2022. Revenues during the quarter totaled almost $2 million, which were flat with the second quarter, the previous quarter, and down approximately 13% compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2021. During the 2021 period, we had just closed the Fat Shark acquisition, and we benefited from a new product launch by Fat Shark, which drove revenues at that time unusually high. However, year to date, our revenues for the nine months ended in fiscal 2022 increased 64% compared to the nine months ended January 31st, 2021, reflecting contributions from all of our acquired subsidiaries.

I think our year-to-date revenue growth is a much better measure of how we're gaining traction across all of our subsidiaries, as drone technology becomes more and more pervasive and more visible in our lives. During the quarter, much of our focus, as Jeff touched upon, was on building out the Teal organization and preparing Teal for the multitude of revenue opportunities that are emerging. During the quarter, we doubled the size of the Teal facilities, both to increase its manufacturing output capabilities as well as to house its workforce, which has doubled in size since we acquired Teal. While this strategy adversely impacted short-term revenues, we strongly believe that it better positions us to take advantage of much larger and more durable long-term sales opportunities.

Operating expenses totaled $3.5 million in the third quarter compared to $1.7 million in the third quarter of last year. This represents an effective doubling of our operating expenses and can be attributed to the closing of both the Skypersonic and Teal acquisitions, as well as the significant investments that was made in Teal since we acquired them back at the end of August. During this past quarter, we also continued to build out our own internal sales and marketing team, which is, as Jeff touched upon, already starting to gain some impressive traction. Our net loss for the three and nine months ended in the fiscal quarter, January 31st, totaled $2.6 million and $6.9 million, respectively.

As both Jeff and I have noted, we've been making a lot of capital investments in Teal, both in its facilities and its people, to take advantage of what we see as significant commercial opportunities for the Golden Eagle. Despite this increased spending, we remain in a very strong financial position. We closed the quarter with almost $56 million in cash and marketable securities. As I just mentioned, our loss in the most recent quarter, excluding stock-based comp, which is a non-cash charge, was less than $2.5 million. If you compare the $56 million in the bank to the $2.5 million in the most recent basic cash burn, you can very quickly see that we're in a great position to execute on our growth initiatives.

We're really excited about finishing strong in 2022 and our outlook for fiscal 2023, which begins on May 1st. I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Ashok Kumar with ThinkEquity. Please go ahead.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Good afternoon and thank you. Just some operational questions. In terms of the revenue contributions, for the January quarter, could you please highlight the Fat Shark and Teal contribution? Then as it applies to gross margins and as you continue to see operational improvements and supply chain improvements, and at what timeframe do you see gross margins hit normalized levels and during what timeframe? The last operational question would be, you know, cash burn about $4 million a quarter. Do you see that sustained at current levels? Then, looking forward, Jeff, could you also highlight, you know, congratulations on the T2 prototype contract. What is the timeline for the production award? The same question would apply to the T1 program as well. Thank you.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Sure. Ooh, there's a lot of questions there, but let me do my best to, as I was trying to write them down as you were saying them. The last two, to be very frank, we had a lot less Fat Shark revenue in the quarter, mostly because they're at the end of one product cycle going into a new product cycle. When that happens, it's very similar to the iPhone. No one likes to buy iPhones in August when the new iPhone's coming out in September. We expect the revenue to come back up in that phase. For the Teal contribution, it basically was not that significant in because there's only four weeks available for them to be in that.

What's interesting is we knew about ourselves being down selected in, I think it was even November. As we started looking at how to scale once we were, I think it was reconfirmed in December. We knew we were down selected. We were glad that it never got out until we were able to release it this week. We knew that we were gonna have to start scaling. We did a lot of extra work to the production line to get the production capabilities capable of meeting all the things that we're seeing on the demand cycle. We're pretty lucky that we did that because now with the Ukraine situation, we're gonna be able to fulfill drones that almost no other companies can fulfill.

The Teal drone margins are about 40% as they start to ramp and scale. We can get a couple of points here and there as we're getting some better pricing on our supply chain, but we are very happy where we think their margins will be. The cash burn with, I mean, with the. Let me back up a little bit. Our burn before we acquired Teal was about $1.4 million for the last 12 months. Most of the burn has been coming because we get a fully loaded company with a product that's just about to launch but has not launched yet.

We will see once these orders start coming in and now they're producing drones, I don't think you'll see that burn level go on much longer. It'll come down. As Joe mentioned, we have many, many quarters of money in the bank. I don't know if you wanna add anything to that, Joseph.

Joseph Hernon
CFO, Red Cat

I would say that we don't have a full quarter of all the employees we've hired for Teal and a full quarter of all the additional overhead expenses associated with, you know, doubling, you know, the facilities for Teal. The additional incremental cost of a full quarter is not gonna be a lot. This quarter largely reflects it. It is a little bit of a step back because, you know, any time that you double manufacturing capacity and, you know, that comes with a commensurate increase in fixed overhead costs, and that makes the hurdle a little bit higher. We gave it a lot of thought and, you know, we see the opportunities. We see drones finally becoming, you know, mainstream.

You know, it's amazing to watch on CNBC in the morning, and you'll hear a couple times across the conversations, whether it's a CEO of a business or just you know the panelists, Cramer or whoever it might be mentioning drones. I think we made a very thoughtful additional increase in you know our spending for Teal and you know that might have some short-term margin impact, but certainly over the long term, it's gonna increase our margin capability and our margin dollars just through increase.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Right. Well, just to clarify, you know, Jeff and Joe, the T2, is that gonna be all or nothing? Or you'd mentioned, you know, the odds of winning are 50/50, right? So I was wondering, could you just clarify, you know, the outcome there, please?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Yeah. All we have to go by is the, our previous experience from Tranche 1. One of there was five awards for Tranche 1 prototypes, and then the production award, Teal didn't have production yet. The production award went to another company for $100 million, and that was over two years ago. It confused a lot of people because it didn't come out until February because they never got the deal signed once COVID hit. They did get a $100 million production contract. To be frank, before that, no one thought that Tranche 1 was gonna be that significant. The SRR program is a pretty large program.

Tranche 2, we would expect, you know, the same type of numbers to be in the production award. There's two companies that were put into Tranche 2. We think we have a pretty good chance, now that we have one of the, you know, premier world-class drone facilities being made right here in the U.S. We think we have a relatively great chance. The timeframe on, with government entities, I'm not gonna put a timeframe. On Tranche 1, they did their demonstration, and they got the award within six to eight weeks. We did Tranche 2 September 14th, and didn't hear anything until November into December for Tranche 2 award.

The good news is this environment has accelerated everybody's desire to get drones in everyone's hands, whether it's the program for SRRs to put a drone in every rucksack for every soldier. I think you'll see this accelerate, but I can't put a timeframe on a government contract award for production contract two.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Also, given your success, you know, with the domestic, you know, defense supply chain, I was wondering, would you be able to translate that into any of the NATO members as well? Or what are the options there?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Yeah. You know, the team, our guys, Geoff Hitchcock and his team have been doing a great job. They were over in meeting with all these NATO countries right before the war broke out. They actually extended their stay once the war did break out. There's a lot of activity with the NATO countries. Some of the countries that we're talking to right now that wanna get drones to Ukraine are from those meetings, and we've been filling out proposals all weekend to get contracts signed for these folks to buy our drones. We're dealing with Ukraine, and almost every country in that region wants drones right away. We're dealing with the U.S.

It's a pretty high pressure, go fast, for government at least, situation for us to be selling these drones. We're literally just had meetings on how we can double, triple, and quadruple our production if it's possible. It always comes down to chipset. We have almost 4,000 drones worth of chips to get through right away while we ramp our scale to meet this additional new demand.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Got it. Again, thank you very much, and congratulations.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Priyanka Mahajan with ThinkEquity . Please go ahead.

Priyanka Mahajan
Managing Director of Investment Banking, ThinkEquity

That's Priyanka Mahajan from ThinkEquity . How is Skypersonic and NASA collaboration going? Is there a way to quantify its impact on Red Cat's top line in the short to medium timeframe?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Yeah. The good news is, they just started work on the Mars simulation. We are not only supplying them with aerial drones for the Mars simulation with remote piloting, but we're also doing the rovers for them, and we've supplied them a Skypersonic rover that has the remote piloting software from Skypersonic. We think that capabilities and some of the other things that they're doing in Italy right now for inspections is starting to progress. But the Skypersonic team, their drone systems are a little bit behind Teal in maturity, but ramping up nicely. They also are well suited for any inspections from the infrastructure build. There's almost $280 billion earmarked for all of that. They are...

It won't be for nine to 12 months, but they are well positioned to be able to capture some of the infrastructure spending for sewers, bridges, all the things that need to be inspected before they can be fixed.

Priyanka Mahajan
Managing Director of Investment Banking, ThinkEquity

Great. Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star then one to be joined into the queue. Our next question comes from Kevin Dede with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Hey, Jeff, Joe. Thanks. Thanks for having me on the call.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Oh, thanks for joining us.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Joe, you kind of brushed over the sequential comparison from October. Could you just sort of dig in on that at sort of flattish?

Joseph Hernon
CFO, Red Cat

I guess.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Yeah, sorry. Go ahead. I'll give you another aspect of it.

Joseph Hernon
CFO, Red Cat

Yeah. Let me start with this, Kevin. You know, Teal could have been better, but you know, we decided that it made more sense long term to focus on expanding. You know, we basically doubled the amount of space we had for Teal. I don't wanna say we took our eye off. We made a thoughtful decision that we wanted to ramp up our manufacturing capacity at the expense of short-term sales. As Jeff noted, you know, Fat Shark is unfortunately, you know, in a sense, I mean, of course, we're gonna come out with better technology, but they're kind of caught on the downside of their most popular product's life cycle. Skypersonic is, you know, getting there, but really isn't generating a lot of revenue at this point.

Actually, Rotor Riot had its best quarter since we acquired the company and almost reached break-even this quarter. Rotor Riot was a real surprise for us. You know, we don't look at that subsidiary as, you know, really capturing the market's attention, but it's a really good marketing and visibility platform for us. That's kinda what happened this quarter compared to last quarter.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay. I guess sort of the, maybe the 20,000 ft sort of strategic question is a balance between consumer focus and enterprise/military. Jeff, could you just sort of take a step back and sort of walk us through how you're

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Yeah.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

addressing those markets?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Absolutely. So we've actually, as we've announced previously, we broke the company into those two different departments. One is our consumer division, the other is the commercial enterprise. You know, now defense seems to be ramping up most dramatically for us. On the consumer side, you have Fat Shark and you have Rotor Riot. As Joseph mentioned, Rotor Riot's been doing great. They're growing. They've got some great things that they've been doing, but even them just at break even is a great asset for us because people launch all their products. They go to Rotor Riot to sponsor episodes to launch any new drone product. Our biggest competitor in the Chinese drone market is DJI, and they sponsored many episodes on Rotor Riot to launch their product.

We think it's a very valuable company because of its marketing power to the early adopters in the drone industry, which are typically working in the drone industry as commercial operators. Fat Shark is the leader in the goggle space for FPV. If anyone saw Drone Racing League recently on TV, all those pilots are using Fat Shark goggles. As Joseph mentioned, we're right at the end of their last product cycle going into this brand new product cycle, which you'll be hearing more about soon, but some really exciting stuff's coming. Those two companies are grouped together on the consumer side. On the commercial and enterprise side, we have Skypersonic and Teal. Skypersonic is really focused on the inspection space.

We've done some great preliminary trials in Italy. We actually work with Leonardo, the defense contractor there. We're hoping to start seeing some, you know, contracts that actually contribute, and will start making a difference in our queues, very soon. Their big focus is the infrastructure bill that went through. They have an expertise, it's not a sexy business or a sexy word, but we are really good at inspecting sewers, which are very difficult to inspect, and there's over 3 million mi of sewer that need to be fixed in the infrastructure bill. That's kind of where the commercial side and the inspection side that Skypersonic is solving for us and solving for the entire industry.

There's only one other, you know, real competitor in that space, and they actually use a Chinese drone. So even on people like General Motors, who we've worked with in the past, they do not wanna use Chinese-made drones in their factories. So again, made in USA continues to be something that's very important, even if it's not military or DoD. Obviously we have Teal Drones, which we are investing a lot. We have, you know, you can see it on our balance sheet, all the chipsets that we bought. We are basically now, we are poised to grow like crazy. The plant's ready to go. We've got a great plan in place. We're now thinking of how do we accelerate construction? Do we add a second, third shift?

Do we simultaneously start building another production line right next to it because we have the room? Our focus right now, which has been for quite some time, is keeping our heads down and getting our manufacturing capability to be able to put out thousands of drones a month. We gotta get from where we are now to thousands of drones per month, and that's our focus, and everyone's doing a great job on it.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Regarding, you know, the Short Range Reconnaissance Tranche 2, granted you're in there. Is Tranche 1 sealed, signed, and done?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Yes. Actually, Tranche 1, it was over two years ago. Teal was awarded $3.1 million for the first prototype, which is basically going from no bird, no drone to making a brand new bird. The original prototype was higher. Again, there were five prototypes awarded. That was basically to all the Blue UAS folks. Then one Tranche 1 production contract was awarded. That's typically, there's only gonna be one Tranche 2 production award. Yeah, Tranche 1 is gone, signed, sealed, and delivered, and a competitor got that deal.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Right. Okay. Can you share a little insight on, I guess, the military demand that you're seeing vis-a-vis international events of late?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Yeah. I mean, we have been getting inquiries from direct phone calls into our biz dev team that resulted from our, you know, almost three-week tour in the NATO countries that we visited. I've had people find my number on LinkedIn to call me from different departments of state, ex-ambassadors. We've had over almost 15 inbound inquiries from not all different countries, some three or four, sometimes from the same country. The demand is just kinda overwhelming that everyone's realizing that no one wants to use Chinese drones to help over in Ukraine.

I think what happened was, at first people thought they could use these consumer drones from the Chinese manufacturer, and then they found out that your position could be known because China let it be known. Everyone just stopped using the Chinese consumer drones. We've heard demand of, you know, the demand could be thousands and thousands of drones that need to be built immediately.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Is that to the spec that you've met sort of through your Tranche 1 development?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

The Golden Eagle One is actually the bird that we demonstrated on September 14th for Tranche 2, but it's accepted by the DoD.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

We're accepted in Blue UAS one, and we were accepted. It didn't make news, but we also have the Blue UAS 2.0 Blue UAS credentials also. A lot of the NATO countries accept our DoD approval to not have to run their own process to go through their approval, and they'll just buy our drones.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

The big question is just sort of timing and revenue rec. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

I think, I mean, we don't have anything to announce yet. As soon as we get some signed POs, you know, we're not giving these birds away, we're selling them. As soon as we have POs, almost everyone's the ones that we're talking about are all material contracts if we can get them signed. You'll probably be hearing about that soon. The DoD stuff is steady throughout the year, so it's not gonna be a huge spike for Teal. You know, I pretty much think every drone that we can make will be sold over the next 12 months and going forward. The demand is there.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate the insight.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for joining the call.

Operator

The next question comes from Scott Michael, a private investor. Please go ahead.

Scott Michael
Shareholder, Private Investor

Thank you for taking my call. A quick question just for clarity purposes. I'm trying to understand how the Tranche system works. I know that we've been accepted for Tranche 2. That's for development. Are we marketing for a contract within Tranche 2, or does that lead us to the third Tranche? If so, is there a demonstration of a developed product, and when would that be?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

You have to go and demonstrate your drone for Tranche 1, and that was two years ago, actually, and five prototype deals were awarded and one production deal. That's kind of how it is through each Tranche. There's only gonna be three Tranches. There's prototype and production awards. Tranche 2, there was almost 36 people at, in September 14th, last September, and two people were awarded prototype contracts after demonstrating their drone, their small reconnaissance drone. It's us and one other player. Now, we're competing for the Tranche 2 production contract, which, just like Tranche 1's contract, was a $100 million contract, $20 million in the first year. And that's already awarded.

Tranche 2, we are looking to compete in now that we have one manufacturing facility that we think is one of the best in the country. We're competing for Tranche 2 production right now. In the meantime, there's all sorts of milestones for this new prototype to get the drone to do all the things that the SRR contract wants. New features, different things that they want the drone to be capable of. It actually has more capability than the original prototypes from Tranche 1 and Tranche 2. As we hit these milestones throughout the year, that gets us to the Tranche 3 award, which is kind of the probably the biggest award of the three tranches, where you are now the drone for every rucksack in the army.

Scott Michael
Shareholder, Private Investor

Is there an amount? Is there an amount for the Tranche 2 production that we are aware of? Is there a timeframe for the Tranche 3 presentation?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

They do not have the Tranche 3 presentation announced yet. Tranche 2, we do not know the numbers. We actually didn't even know what the number for Tranche 1 is. We can only go by some of the rumors. You know, the entire program is about a $500 million program. We don't know if that number is accurate. They don't let us have those details. When Tranche 1 came out at $100 million, we were all, even though we didn't win it, everybody in the industry was pleased knowing that it's actually a real contract. It has some real dollars behind it. We expect, but we have no idea, the Tranche 2 production contract will be at least $100 million, if not larger.

We expect it to be at least $100 million. That's just us guessing from what we saw happen in Tranche 1.

Scott Michael
Shareholder, Private Investor

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Thank you. Thanks for joining.

Operator

The next question is a follow-up from Ashok Kumar with ThinkEquity. Please go ahead.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Oh, thank you. Just a follow-up question, Jeff and Joe. To clarify on the production side, you've indicated you have current capacity of 2,000 a month and with the potential to double that capacity at the same facility. A related question, it indicated you have a good solid source for chips. To clarify, are these off-the-shelf chips or are they a bespoke, you know, product, and what functionality does this chip provide?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Yeah. On the chipset right now, we have just a little bit under 4,000 chipsets to produce almost 4,000 Golden Eagle. We are, you know, that's pretty good stock for us right now. If we start to get some of these contracts, then we're gonna have to adjust. We're waiting for some of the things that are happening over the next week or two to figure out if we have to get another order in for chipsets and really start to go after the numbers.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Are these catalog products? Are they specific? You know, are they-

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

There's 550 items that go into the Golden Eagle. I don't know exactly how many chips that go into it, but you know, I mean, our main chip comes from Qualcomm.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Okay.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

The other item that we really I wouldn't say we have concern, we just wanna make sure that we're getting ahead of it is the FLIR thermal camera. I mean, one of the other reasons that we are getting so much inquiries on the Golden Eagle is its capability to do thermal. It's not just a consumer drone.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Uh-huh.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

We can actually do thermal, which everyone, I mean, police and first responders love that, but specifically over in Ukraine, they would love to have thousands of Teal Golden Eagle with thermal right now. It would really help what they're doing.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Are these all fab, the TSMC, you know, through Qualcomm or?

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

I don't have the exact, you know, if we had Allan Evans on with us, he could give you every detail of that or George Matus. I don't wanna misspeak and quote the wrong piece of equipment.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

One last question is, in terms of timeline for this, Tranche 2, from start of the program to being one of two finalists, was that a two-year process or, I just wanna clarify the timelines for that.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

The timeframe, like I said, they don't put on a website, here's Tranche 1, here's Tranche 2, here's Tranche 3. They have you go through the process of each tranche and then tell you when the next tranche begins, is what we've seen. I mean, there was significant delay. The award for the $100 million production contract didn't get awarded till February of this year. It was awarded. It was well known that they received that two years ago. That was mostly COVID-related, and now we don't see the delays from COVID anymore, and Tranche 2 demonstration was September 14. We expect things to start to accelerate, just also because COVID's not getting in the middle of this process anymore.

The fact of the existing environment seems to be accelerating. Everyone's budget that we've talked to has gone up for drones. Everyone's accelerating their request for drones. We're just trying to scale as quickly as we can.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Got it. Again, thank you very much and all the best. On your cloud program, right? That continues in parallel, right? The cloud software development.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

What program?

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Yeah, the cloud software development.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Yes.

Ashok Kumar
Head of Equity Research, ThinkEquity

Okay. Thank you.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Absolutely. Yep.

Operator

This concludes the question and answer session of the call. I will now return the call to Mr. Jeff Thompson for closing remarks.

Jeff Thompson
CEO, Red Cat

Thanks, folks. Thanks for hanging out on this call. I'm glad we got a lot of questions. There's a lot of confusion out there between the different tran ches and how it works. We're really working hard right now to scale our production. We believe that not just us, but every drone that's made in the U.S. right now is gonna be sold. We are just ramping and focusing on production. We thank you for your support and you stay tuned. You're sure to be hearing from us soon. Thanks.

Operator

We'd like to thank everyone for taking the time today to join the call and for your ongoing support. You may now disconnect.

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