HawkEye 360 Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 13, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Q2 revenue rose 87% year over year to $49.8 million, including 33% organic growth excluding the ISA acquisition. International revenue grew 134% organically to $21 million, while backlog increased to approximately $292 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: The IPO generated approximately $437.5 million in net proceeds; after repaying $49.5 million of borrowings, HawkEye 360 ended the quarter with $503 million in cash and an undrawn $125 million revolver, supporting satellite investments and potential M&A.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management highlighted expanding customer demand, particularly internationally and in the Middle East, alongside planned launches of Clusters 15 and 16 and development of lower-cost Block 3 and lower-latency Block 4 satellites. A military exercise demonstrated more than 50% lower data latency and track quality suitable for fire-control applications.
  • Negative Sentiment: Despite higher revenue, Q2 net loss was $15.3 million and adjusted EBITDA declined to $7.0 million from $7.8 million a year earlier as the company increased spending on space, processing, analytics, and public-company costs. Full-year guidance calls for $215 million-$220 million of revenue and $30 million-$36 million of adjusted EBITDA, with results dependent on converting the pipeline and managing international sales cycles.
  • Negative Sentiment: The legacy U.S. business declined $3.2 million because government shutdowns and continuing resolutions delayed contracts, while Cluster 15 experienced a schedule push into the second half of 2026. Management also flagged potential uncertainty around launch availability beyond 2028, although launches through 2028 are currently secured.
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Earnings Conference Call
HawkEye 360 Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

There are 13 speakers on the call.

Operator

Please note this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Tom Cook, Managing Director of ICR. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to HawkEye 360's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With me on the call today is John Serafini, CEO, and Craig Searle, CFO. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that our remarks may include forward-looking statements about our expectations, plans, outlook, and future performance, which we make pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. Please refer to the forward-looking statements disclosure in our earnings release and our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We will also discuss certain financial measures that are not presented in accordance with GAAP. Our earnings release includes additional information about these non-GAAP measures, including definitions and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, as applicable.

Speaker 1

With that, I would now like to turn the call over to John Serafini. John?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Tom, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm John Serafini, founder, and CEO of HawkEye 360. First, I'd like to express a few words of sincere appreciation to the 433 wonderful employees of HawkEye 360. To our deeply valued HawkEye employees, on this call today, Craig and I will outline the many accomplishments of our company over the past quarter. They are numerous, and they are impressive, and all credit is due to you, our employees, and the professionalism, commitment, and mission execution ethos which each of you brings to our company. Most importantly, during this quarter, we honored our pledge to deliver highly valuable signals intelligence to the war fighter community, and we have done so consistently and with the highest level of care across two major wars and throughout many other areas of geopolitical tension and turmoil. We have not wavered.

Speaker 2

We have not faltered in our commitment to the governing principles of trustworthiness, humility, and enduring stability which define our company. We need no reminder that we serve those who serve our nation. Again, thank you. To the investment community, welcome to HawkEye 360's first earnings call. We appreciate you joining us today. I am exceptionally pleased with our second quarter results, which demonstrate continued execution across the business, strong customer demand for our signals intelligence capabilities, and further exemplify the excellent momentum we have built as we continue to scale our company now into the public markets. Our second quarter was a historical achievement for HawkEye 360 and resultantly for the bursting defense tech industry, of which we are a proud pioneering leader.

Speaker 2

We achieved many meaningful accomplishments during this quarter, not the least of which was the successful completion of a phenomenal IPO transaction representing the culmination of years of preparatory work. Yet, it is our support of our customer community, whether on the battlefield, in space, or in the dark corners of the world's oceans, where our successes can be best measured and appreciated. Across major wars in areas of persistent turmoil, HawkEye 360 delivered valuable, timely, and trusted products to our customers, enabling their operational success and continued belief in the power of commercial defense technologies. This quarter revenue increased 87% year-over-year to $49.8 million, driven by continued persistent demand across our U.S. government and international customer base and the acquisition of Innovative Signal Analysis or ISA. Adjusted EBITDA was $7.0 million, representing a margin of 14%.

Speaker 2

We ended the quarter with approximately $292 million of backlog, providing strong visibility into future revenue. Beyond our financial performance, we made excellent progress against strategic priorities that drive mission success and long-term shareholder value. We achieved record international revenue, advanced our next-generation signals intelligence platform, demonstrated new operational capabilities during a major military exercise, and made thoughtful investments to increase collection capacity, improve speed, and reduce the cost of delivering high-quality intelligence to our customers. Before getting into those details, I'd like to spend a few minutes introducing HawkEye 360 to investors who may be hearing our story for the first time and to explain why we occupy such a unique position within the rapidly evolving defense technology landscape. HawkEye 360 is a defense technology company and a trusted signals intelligence partner to the U.S. government and allied nations.

Speaker 2

We seek to be the best in the world in collecting, processing, and analyzing radio frequency or RF signals and converting that information into valuable intelligence and operational insights that make American and allied war fighters successful. We support the war fighter across the intelligence value chain from unique sensing functionality and signal processing to advanced analytics and mission-ready intelligence product delivery. We provide actionable radio frequency intelligence that's helped customers understand activity across increasingly complex and contested environments. Our capabilities combine purpose-built sensors, proprietary signal processing and geolocation technologies, advanced analytics, a growing RF emitter database, and more than seven years of historical data. We also deliver critical RF software, analytical capabilities, and payload systems directly into classified government environments, and have been doing so proudly for the nearly 30-year history of HawkEye ISA.

Speaker 2

The 30-plus satellites we operate are an important component of our collection infrastructure, but they do not, by themselves, solely define HawkEye 360. Our value is defined by our ability to collect difficult-to-access signals, process enormous volumes of RF data, geolocate and identify activity of interest, and rapidly deliver actionable intelligence into the systems and workflows our customers use. This distinction is fundamental to understanding both our business today and the opportunity ahead. We are not simply collecting or selling raw data. We are delivering a differentiated intelligence solution, integrated directly into our customer systems that helps the warfighter detect threats, monitor activity, and make better-informed decisions in challenging operating environments, such as detecting, identifying, tracking, and analyzing the location and activities of dark vessels operating in clandestine manners. The need for this capability continues to grow.

Speaker 2

Rising geopolitical tensions, increasingly contested operating environments, and the modernization of global defense systems are driving renewed investment in signals intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities. The electromagnetic spectrum has become an increasingly important and contested operational domain. The ability to detect, characterize, and respond to RF activity is now essential across modern defense operations, including maritime awareness, air defense, long-range fires, force protection, and critical infrastructure security. At the same time, customers are looking to augment traditional government systems with commercial defense technology that can be fielded quickly, shared across allied organizations, and delivered rapidly at a more attractive cost point. Customers increasingly want scalable, as-a-service intelligence solutions that complement existing capabilities without requiring years of development and substantial upfront investment. Historically, many of these RF collection capabilities and their associated processing architectures existed only within highly classified government systems developed by traditional defense prime contractors.

Speaker 2

HawkEye 360 has helped disrupt that model by delivering proven, actionable, and shareable RF intelligence as a service, while also integrating our trusted signal processing and analytical products directly into government systems. We believe these unique characteristics have created a hard-earned N-of-one position for the company, a differentiated combination of collection, processing, analytics, proprietary data, and mission delivery that is purpose-built for demanding defense, intelligence, and national security customers. Our competitive position is supported by three core advantages. First, we have built a highly differentiated data and processing platform through years of supporting real-world operational defense, intelligence, and national security missions. Our collection infrastructure has generated more than a billion RF observations, which power a growing proprietary archive, emitter database, and analytics engine. Each new collection strengthens our ability to detect, geolocate, identify, and characterize RF activity, and to recognize changes and patterns over time.

Speaker 2

This creates a compounding data advantage. As our archive grows and our algorithms improve, the speed, accuracy, and mission relevance of the intelligence we deliver increases exponentially. Second, our business model creates powerful operating leverage and attractive long-term economics. Much of the cost required to operate our collection and processing platform is fixed. Once RF data has been collected, the incremental cost of processing and delivering that intelligence to additional customers is low, and this same collection can then be used to support different customers, geographies, and mission requirements. This collect once, sell many model creates opportunities for high incremental margins, premium pricing, and recurring revenue as our customer base expands. It also gives HawkEye 360 the scalable economic characteristics of an integrated intelligence platform, substantially unique in the defense technology landscape.

Speaker 2

Third, we continue to invest in the technical advantages that reinforce our market leadership and expand the missions we can support. Our objective is straightforward. Increase collection capacity, improve revisit rates, accelerate processing and delivery, reduce latency, and lower the cost of deploying new capabilities. Each of these improvements increases the value of our platform to the war fighter while strengthening the economics of our business. A key component of this strategy is the continued evolution of our processing platform. In addition to the customer and TAM expansion rationale, one of the primary reasons we acquired ISA is the company's powerful real-time high-throughput signal processing engine. Since closing the acquisition, we have seen how HawkEye ISA complementary technology unlocks greater value from the growing volume of RF data collected across our network and expands the opportunities available to the combined company.

Speaker 2

For example, historically, identifying new forms of radar activity could require developing individual algorithms for each radar type. Now, we are able to leverage HawkEye ISA's more generalized algorithms to rapidly and automatically identify a broad range of emitters, including maritime and air defense radars, which improves the speed, scale, and flexibility of our processing platform. We are now delivering analytics to customers based on this new engine to address urgent customer requirements, and we expect to scale this offering greatly over time. Our investments are also materially reducing latency, which is increasingly critical as signals intelligence moves closer to real-time operational decision-making. A recent example was Valiant Shield 2026, the U.S. Pacific Command's premier joint training exercise.

Speaker 2

Again, this year, HawkEye 360 partnered with our investor, Lockheed Martin, to demonstrate an integrated operational workflow combining our HawkEye 360 RF intelligence and tactical direct downlink capabilities with processing technologies from both companies on a Lockheed Martin platform. The demonstration reduced data latency by more than 50% compared with the 2025 Talisman Sabre exercise. Additionally, this data received a high track quality rating, representing a measure of accuracy that is suitable for fire control systems. This data was integrated into the Aegis Weapon System and illustrates our ability to become relevant for track custody and long-range fires missions. While this was an early demonstration, it clearly highlights our path to materially increasing our addressable market as our platform progresses from supporting strategic intelligence applications to also enabling more time-sensitive, operational, and tactical missions.

Speaker 2

Accordingly, as we seek to dominate RF collection and analysis, our vision goes beyond delivering standalone intelligence products. It includes embedding our software, hardware, data, and analytics more deeply into the platforms, systems, and workflows our customers leverage today. As these integrations expand, HawkEye 360 will become an increasingly essential intelligence and operational layer within the broader defense ecosystem in respective targeting and decision-making chains. We have several insightful examples of this broader strategy from this past quarter. Specifically, we announced awards from the U.S. Space Rapid Capabilities Office, or Space RCO, as well as from NASA and NOAA. The Space RCO award highlights both the expansion of our RF capabilities for space domain awareness and the customer demand for procuring HawkEye 360 payloads for installation into the national security architecture.

Speaker 2

The recent awards from NOAA and NASA demonstrate customer interest in civil applications of our spectrum analysis and RF interference detection capabilities. These products have potential for commercial telecom enterprise and other new use cases while leveraging the same underlying technology, infrastructure, data, and processing platform. They expand our addressable market and diversify our customer base while reinforcing the scale advantages of our core business. We also continued strengthening the collection infrastructure that supports these capabilities. During the second quarter, we commissioned Block 2, Cluster 14, and brought it to full operational capacity in the shortest commissioning period in our history. Cluster 14 is already delivering essential data to defense, maritime, and national security customers, increasing our capacity and strengthening coverage in priority regions. The next phase of capacity expansion remains on track.

Speaker 2

Clusters 15 and 16 are entering final testing ahead of planned launches during the second half of this year. Once operational, these clusters are expected to increase revisit rate and enable us to serve a greater number of customers and mission requirements. We are also advancing our first Block 3 cluster toward a planned launch in the next six months. Block 3 is a completely in-house design that materially increases collection capacity while radically lowering satellite capital costs. This represents an important advancement in both the technical capability and capital efficiency of our platform. In addition, we initiated development of our Block 4 satellites and are planning the first demonstration of our angle of arrival payload prototype anticipated for launch in 2027. This initiative is intended to accelerate the introduction of innovative capabilities in new frequency bands and to support our longer-term objective of significantly reducing latency.

Speaker 2

Collectively, these investments are designed to improve revisit rates, collection capacity, latency, and capital efficiency. Turning to customer adoption, we continue to see robust demand across each of our major customer groups. Within the U.S. government, defense and intelligence organizations increasingly view commercial RF intelligence as critical to augment national collection systems, rapidly address emerging intelligence requirements, and share insights more easily across organizations and allied nations. Internationally, allied governments are accelerating investment in sovereign defense systems and capabilities and increasingly recognize the value of commercially available, shareable RF intelligence. We generated record international revenue during the second quarter, onboarded substantial new sovereign customers, and expanded our work across multiple agencies within existing countries. We are seeing unprecedented levels of demand, especially over certain priority geographic regions. This reinforces the need for our ongoing capacity investments and illustrates the critical importance of RF intelligence in areas of heightened geopolitical activity.

Speaker 2

We continue to increase our available capacity for customers, not just with more satellites, but also through technical innovations like onboard processing and evolving business models like broad theater collections that can be sold to several customers concurrently. As such, we have proactively pulled some spending forward to accelerate our technology development roadmap. Craig will provide details momentarily. Recent customer activity included the multi-year India Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness Award and continued expansion within existing customer relationships, including European and Asian ministries of defense. These examples demonstrate the land and expand dynamic we frequently see across our international business. To highlight this, we traditionally experience customers beginning with an evaluation, a defined geographic area, or a specific intelligence requirement. As our data becomes integrated into their operational workflows and demonstrates its value, our products become very sticky, and those relationships can expand across products, missions, agencies, and contract durations.

Speaker 2

One of the characteristics we value most about our business is the durability of these customer partnerships. Once customers incorporate HawkEye 360 into their workflows, we have opportunities to expand both the number of products they consume and the missions we support. This contributes to recurring revenue, growing backlog, and increasing revenue visibility over time. International business also provides an important source of revenue and contract diversification. Our U.S. government and international businesses serve complementary customers with many of the same security priorities that operate across different procurement cycles, budgets, and geographic requirements. This diversified model distinguishes HawkEye 360 from defense technology companies that depend almost entirely on a single U.S. government customer or program. It provides broader market access, reduces customer concentration, and allows the same collection and intelligence platform to support multiple allied customers while comparatively reducing company exposure to U.S. government-related budget, procurement, and policy risk factors.

Speaker 2

Looking ahead, we believe HawkEye 360 remains in the early stages of a much larger opportunity. We are focused on four strategic priorities. First, we are increasing collection capacity, reducing latency, and improving revisit rates to support greater demand, more relevance, and more persistent coverage. Second, we are enhancing our signals intelligence platform by adding new signals, processing capabilities, analytics, and mission applications that increase the value of our intelligence. Third, we are embedding our capabilities more deeply into customer platforms and workflows and enabling more operational and time-sensitive missions as we reduce latency and leverage AI-driven data science functionalities. Finally, we are leveraging our technology to design and field dedicated systems for the U.S. government and select international customers with unique sovereign mission requirements and operational environments.

Speaker 2

We are building these priorities organically and with partners, but we also continue to evaluate disciplined M&A opportunities, such as our acquisition of ISA from 8 months ago, where M&A can accelerate our signal processing and analytics roadmap, as well as further expand our mission set in total addressable markets. Our sales pipeline remains strong across the U.S. government, international defense organizations, and sovereign intelligence customers. We are encouraged by the number of meaningful opportunities progressing through the pipeline and continue to expect several significant award decisions across these customer groups before year-end and into 2027. While Craig Searle will discuss our financial outlook in greater detail, I'd like to highlight several operating priorities for the second half of the year. We expect to complete final testing and launch Clusters 15 and 16, which will materially increase capacity and improve revisit rates once commissioned.

Speaker 2

We also expect to continue advancing Block 3 toward launch and create additional milestones in the development of our Block 4 prototype. We expect HawkEye ISA to continue focusing on its core U.S. government customers while further integrating its high throughput processing technology into the HawkEye platform. Through this alignment, HawkEye ISA will accelerate development by leveraging HawkEye's investments and our frequent opportunities to fly payloads and software to space, as well as broaden the availability of next generation radar analytics, expand the HawkEye ISA backlog with new programs of record, and pursue additional joint opportunities across our shared customer base. Throughout the broader organization, we will remain focused on increasing platform utilization, improving data delivery efficiency, accelerating our sales pipeline, and translating our continued growth into attractive incremental margins and customer success. For the future, we believe we are exceptionally well-positioned for long-term success.

Speaker 2

We operate at the intersection of several powerful long-term trends, rising investment in defense and intelligence, and rapidly accelerating appreciation for commercial defense functionalities, the growing importance of the electromagnetic spectrum, increased allied customer demand for shareable intelligence, and the expanding role of software and analytics in transforming raw data into operational advantage. We take great pride in our hard-earned N-of-one position by combining differentiated collection infrastructure, high throughput signal processing, advanced analytics, proprietary RF data, and deep mission expertise within a single integrated platform optimized for war fighter success. Our strong second quarter performance, expanding international business, and continued technical progress demonstrate that this differentiation is translating into growth, profitability, and broader customer adoption. Most importantly, we are defined by the mission outcomes we deliver, helping the war fighter understand complex environments, identify emerging threats, and make faster, better-informed decisions.

Speaker 2

I'd like to thank our HawkEye 360 employees again for their exceptional dedication and care, our customers for their continued trust, and our shareholders for their support. With that, I'll turn the call over to Craig to review our financial results in more detail. Craig?

Speaker 3

Thanks, John, and welcome everyone to our second quarter 2026 earnings call. I will walk through our company's results for the second quarter, provide an update on the balance sheet and liquidity, and then discuss our outlook for 2026. As a reminder, I'll be discussing non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are included in our press release. Revenue in the second quarter increased 87% year-over-year to $49.8 million. This was primarily driven by the acquisition of ISA. International revenue was $21 million in Q2, reflecting 134% year-over-year growth, all of which was organic. U.S. revenue was $28.8 million in the quarter, reflecting 63% year-over-year growth.

Speaker 3

This was driven by a $14.4 million contribution from our acquisition of ISA, offset by a $3.2 million decline in our legacy U.S. business, stemming from U.S. government shutdown and continuing resolutions driving contract delays. On an organic basis, removing the impact of ISA, revenue grew 33% compared to the prior year period. Second quarter 2026 net loss was $15.3 million compared to prior year net income of $1.6 million. The change was driven by higher expenses, including non-cash expenses, one-time expenses, and spending around our transition from a private to a public company, partially offset by higher revenue. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $7 million, compared to $7.8 million in Q2 2025. The decrease was driven by higher operating expenses to position HawkEye for longer term growth as a public company, partially offset by higher revenue.

Speaker 3

In Q2, we generated $5.4 million of free cash flow, benefiting from favorable working capital dynamics compared to negative $1.3 million in Q2 2025. Turning to the balance sheet. In the second quarter, we completed our initial public offering, selling 18.4 million shares of common stock, raising approximately $437.5 million of net proceeds, including the exercise in full of the underwriter's options to purchase additional shares. Following the IPO, we repaid $49.5 million of outstanding borrowings and fees under our 2025 loan agreements and entered into a new five-year, $125 million senior secured revolving credit facility, which is currently undrawn. As of June 30, 2026, our cash and cash equivalents were $503 million.

Speaker 3

Together, our cash balance and undrawn debt capacity provide us with significant liquidity to execute our growth plans, which could include M&A. Our backlog as of June 30, 2026, was $292 million, up from $285 million as of March 31, 2026. Let's turn to a discussion of our outlook for 2026. At this point, we expect total company revenues for full year 2026 to land in the range of $215 million to $220 million, and we expect Adjusted EBITDA for the full year to be in the range of $30 million to $36 million. On the revenue side, we are continuing to see strong demand for our offerings, particularly with our international customers.

Speaker 3

On Adjusted EBITDA, we have pulled forward some spending on space, signal processing and analytics and believe that accelerating our capability road map and offerings will deepen our competitive advantage and better position the company to grow over the long term. Additionally, this also reflects an incremental mix shift within U.S. towards HawkEye ISA related revenue for 2026. Stepping back, HawkEye is executing against priorities across engineering, sales and other areas, and focusing every day on making our customers more successful. We believe this will drive shareholder value over the long term and are excited that you are involved in our story. Thank you to our employees, our customers, and our shareholders for their continued support. With that, operator, we are ready to open the line for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question will come from Kristine Liwag with Morgan Stanley.

Speaker 4

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. John, to start, given the escalation in Iran and the increased need for persistent RF intelligence and maritime domain awareness, I would have anticipated that you'd see strong demand, and you kind of touched on that on your prepared remarks. But I was wondering, can you talk more about how we should potentially size incremental orders that could materialize through the year, and what your expectations are for book-to-bill for the full year 2026?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Christine. Great to hear from you. We have been exceptionally busy in the Middle East supporting our customers there across a litany of different requirements. The maritime domain awareness functionality is significant in the Straits of Hormuz and the Arabian Gulf. Tracking dark vessels is an everyday occurrence for us. We are uniquely able to detect, geolocate, and process and track different types of navigational radar systems, such as X and S band radars. And we're particularly adept at doing so for those vessels that have gone "dark" and have turned off their AIS signals. That provides us a significant enduring advantage that allows us to detect these vessels and provide that as intelligence products on a subscription basis to our customers. We have seen a significant uptick in demand from this region.

Speaker 2

It is sustainable for the long term given the state of the relationships between Iran and the GCC countries. I anticipate seeing meaningful awards in the near future related to the GCC.

Speaker 4

John, your expectations for book-to-bill for the full year, is this something where we could see something like 2x for full year 2026? Is that a possibility?

Speaker 2

We anticipate a number of different meaningful awards over the course of the next few months related to this area of operations. I believe we have a very significant backlog in place today to support this area, and we anticipate being able to reach our full revenue goals for the year. Christine, I can jump in here. Currently, we have $82 million of backlog to be recognized in the second half of 2026. As a reminder, as you noted, we have a book-and-ship business and expect to book-and-burn down revenue through the rest of the year.

Speaker 4

Great. Super helpful. If I could sneak a third one in. John, in your prepared remarks, you've talked about how you're increasingly more mission relevant, especially as your latency decreases and you've got a very good product quality. With that, can you talk more about and size the addressable market that opens up to you if you're more plugged into those operational missions? How large of an opportunity is this and any sort of timing of when we could see some of these unlocks take place?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Christine. As you know, we define our addressable market as being approximately $25 billion associated with RF signal collection, processing, and analysis, inclusive of both U.S. government and international business opportunities. We anticipate that growing over the course of the next ten years, or excuse me, five years to approximately $35 billion. Of that $25 billion today, roughly $7 billion to $8 billion is really associated with space-based capabilities. Our goal is to be able to be relevant for every dollar of that $7 billion to $8 billion addressable market. One of our key focus areas, as you know, is decreasing our latency. Our goal is to get to ten minutes of revisit rate and ten minutes of data latency in the next, call it, two to two and a half, three years.

Speaker 2

When we're able to be there, I believe strongly that we'll be relevant for every piece of that $7 billion to $8 billion of market opportunity, and that will start to expand beyond the component for space-based collection into other domains, leveraging sensors in other locations, be it terrestrial or aerial. Over.

Speaker 4

Great. Well, thank you very much for the color.

Operator

Our next question will come from Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies.

Speaker 5

Hi, John, Craig, this is Kyle on behalf of Sheila. Congrats on both the IPO and a great quarter here. I just had a question about the incremental capacity that you will have coming online in the back half of this year and into 2027 with the additional clusters and satellites. Curious how much of that is already accounted for in terms of the demand set that exists for those products, and how the advanced capabilities of those platforms bridge you into that dynamic you were just talking about reducing the revisit rates and latency over the next couple of years.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Kyle. We are building the Block 2s right now. We just launched Cluster 13 and Cluster 14. We have Cluster 15 and Cluster 16 coming online shortly. Each of these Block 2 clusters is incrementally better than the one before. So we are very excited about the new functionality associated with Clusters 15 and 16, and then soon getting the first of the Block 3s up on orbit. Clearly, there is new capabilities that will be on orbit, but more importantly is the ability to have more capacity for collection.

Speaker 2

We need to be able to be overhead some of these geographic priority areas more often, but we also need to be able to make adjustments in the way in which we collect the data, such that we can perform more onboard processing and collect multiple different signals on each pass, which will enable us to be even more efficient with each of these different collections when we're overhead. It's a process of putting more satellites on orbit, as well as improving the processing and the data analysis to provide more value from each pass. In addition, we're working to decrease the amount of latency, and that's a function of being able to drop the data down to additional ground stations and densifying the number of ground stations in our network.

Speaker 2

As we bring additional ground stations online, it assists us in bringing the latency down, which improves the value to the customer. You'll see more of that in the back half of the year. Thank you, Kyle. Any other questions?

Speaker 5

Thanks for that. I guess just a second you guys mentioned on the roadmap in order to enable that. Obviously, pretty impressive second half kind of implied guidance here in terms of both the revenue growth but also on the margin side of things. Maybe if you can just color in the puts and takes from a margin perspective as you get out into the second half, Craig, and then into 2027. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Sure. Let me turn it over to Craig to address the margin.

Speaker 3

As we looked at Q3 and Q4 in terms of revenue and Adjusted EBITDA, we expect Q4 and Q3 will be higher than Q1 and Q2, as you noted. As it relates to Adjusted EBITDA, we did have some margin pull forward in Q2 versus Q3 due to revenue mix shift. We expect Q3 Adjusted EBITDA to be similar to Q2 with a ramp to Q4. We think that achieving our outlook today for revenue in the back half of the year is going to set us up extremely well for 2027 in terms of visibility. We will come back to you early next year with our outlook for that year.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Kyle.

Operator

We will go next to Ron Epstein with Bank of America.

Speaker 6

Hey, guys. This is Alex Preston on for Ron today. Thanks for taking the question. I was curious if you could talk about maybe the trajectory of international mix. First half 2026 ramping, I think north of 40%, even with ISA in the fold, similar to standalone HawkEye 360 performance in 2025. How do you guys see that trending given the demand dynamics you noted in Middle East and INDOPACOM? I guess, are there any incremental changes to long-run margin performance that could come from that?

Speaker 2

Okay. Well, thank you, Alex. Great question. I think the international growth story has been a particularly positive one for HawkEye. There is exceptional tailwinds behind our international business. My expectation is that long term, we're close to about 50/50 between U.S. government and international. What's great about international is the contract durations tend to be longer. We're able to secure premium pricing, although it's at the cost of longer sales cycles. Some of these places where we operate, it takes a longer time in which to get contracts done, and sometimes these contracting processes are fairly byzantine. But when they do, they are extremely sticky and long-term customers. In addition, we anticipate over time that the mix of revenue within the international engagements will expand to not only include data purchases, but also dedicated systems as well as on-site support to the customer.

Speaker 2

I anticipate longer term that the majority of our international engagements will have three legs to it. Leg one will be a meaningful acquisition of HawkEye data from our own constellation. Leg two would be a dedicated cluster or clusters that produce sovereign data that would flow through our processing platform for the customer. Leg three would be an on-site service support element to assist the customer in extracting the most value possible from the HawkEye capabilities. Thank you for the question.

Speaker 6

Thank you.

Operator

And we'll go next to Louie DiPalma with William Blair.

Speaker 7

John and Craig, congratulations on the IPO.

Speaker 2

Hey, thanks, Louie. Great to talk to you.

Speaker 7

Can you discuss more of the partnerships that you've been able to foster? You discussed the recent exercise in the Pacific with Lockheed Martin, and I believe you have

Speaker 7

A very strong integration of your data feed with Palantir's Maven Smart System. Can you discuss those partnerships and potentially other partnerships that can further drive the ecosystem adoption of your service? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Thanks for the thoughtful question, Louie. We have been truly blessed by a number of different strategic investors at HawkEye 360, even before the IPO. Lockheed certainly has been one, but Raytheon and Airbus, Leidos and Jacobs and Esri have all been investors in the company and long-term strategic partners to us, and each has different ways in which we work with them to create value. That being said, Europe is particularly interesting to us right now. Obviously, there's a rearmament across Central and Eastern Europe, but it's difficult to play that solely as an American company. We've been successful in selling data and data analytic products to certain governments, and will continue to do so.

Speaker 2

But I anticipate that for us to be able to engage more fruitfully throughout the entirety of the European theater and to do so in a variety of different mechanisms, not just data, but also dedicated systems, that partnerships are going to be important. We're working on a couple of very meaningful ones, and I look forward to being able to tell the investment community about them in the very near future. That all being said, I will express two thoughts. One is speed is more important than localization. It's essential in the given state of affairs with Ukraine and Russia that as Europe looks to add more functionality, that they do so as quickly as possible. And you do that through leveraging existing on-orbit capabilities, like from HawkEye 360, as opposed to waiting the years it will take to develop European dedicated systems themselves. That's thing one.

Speaker 2

Thing two is to call a distinction between sovereignty and control. We can provide control in our dedicated systems through tasking mechanisms and direct downlinks and certain ways that the data is being stored and processed, et cetera, that gives the customer great confidence that the data is protected and their own, as is the passes. As opposed to the need for localization and "sovereignty." I think we can achieve both ends through the way in which we're working with our customer groups. So thank you for the question, Louie.

Speaker 7

Thanks, John. That is it for me.

Operator

Our next question will come from Peter Arment with Baird.

Speaker 8

Yeah. Good afternoon, John and Craig, I will echo everyone's sentiments. Congrats on the first quarter and IPO. Hey, John, maybe just to click on Cluster 15, I think the expectations were that this would potentially launch in July. Just curious if there is an expectation of any issues with launch providers or schedule moves, and just wondering if you could get a little more color on that. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Peter, great to hear from you, and thank you for all of our support, during the IPO process. It is a great question. Certainly, space is hard, as you know, and oftentimes development cycles push out a little bit, and that was the case for Cluster 15. We now feel very comfortable knowing that that satellite is going up in the back half of this year. You ask a good question, which is, are we concerned about the availability of launch capacity in the near future? We are fortunate to have all of our launches locked in through 2028. So it is not a near-term emergency or a near-term concern, but there are open questions about availability of launch beyond into 2029, 2030 and beyond. Particularly given a feeling in the industry that SpaceX might be reducing or eliminating some of the Falcon 9 Transporter or Bandwagon missions.

Speaker 2

Fortunately, if this is 2 plus years out, that gives more time for other platforms to become viable, and we are looking at groups like Firefly and Stoke and of course, Rocket Lab, our partner, who has launched several of our clusters in the past. We anticipate that there will also be options through the launch brokerage services that we will be able to take advantage of. It is not something that is keeping us up at night right now. We have the benefit of being locked down for the next 2 years, but we are looking at and we are considering different options. Thank you for the question.

Speaker 8

I appreciate it. I will leave it at one. Thanks, John.

Operator

We will go next to Ken Herbert with RBC Capital Markets.

Speaker 9

Hey, John and Craig. Congratulations again as well on the IPO. Maybe if we just think about, Craig, the second half guidance, the range on the Adjusted EBITDA. Maybe if you could just walk through what gets you to the upper end of the range or the lower end and a couple of the moving pieces as we think about the full year Adjusted EBITDA outlook. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Sure. Let me turn it over to Craig. Craig?

Speaker 3

Ken, our outlook is dependent upon executing and delivering against the pipeline opportunity that's in front of us, which we feel very confident on. Hitting the high end of guidance means that we'll be more successful in converting pipeline. As we think about EBITDA in Q3 versus Q4, I spoke earlier, we do expect Q3 EBITDA to be similar to Q2, with a ramp into Q4.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Ken. Any other questions?

Speaker 9

No, John. Thanks. I'll stop there.

Speaker 2

All right. Thanks so much, Ken. See you soon.

Operator

Our next question comes from Chris Quilty with Quilty Space.

Speaker 10

Thanks, guys. Just one question on the dedicated systems. First, I wanted to clarify, you haven't had any of those sales to date. Second of all, maybe this is for Craig. Would those look like a normal CapEx cycle, or do you suspect it'll be a different way that they flow through the P&L and balance sheet?

Speaker 2

Hey, thanks, Chris. I'm always cognizant that you've been along for the ride for the past decade as my friend and advisor. So, thank you, and thank you for the good question. We actually have had our first sovereign transaction. It's one that we announced back in December for approximately $100 million. Where it's basically a dedicated capacity buy over a five-year period, leveraging two of our clusters. Let me turn it over to Craig to address the back half of your question, Craig.

Speaker 3

In terms of the CapEx impact there, as it relates to the sale last year, it is still treated as CapEx. It is still treated as a HawkEye-owned satellite system that is just a dedicated capacity component that every time the satellite is overhead for the customer, all of those collections are dedicated to that customer. To the extent that we do other sovereign asset transactions that have different dynamics, the accounting treatment could look different in terms of capital expenditures.

Speaker 10

Great. Thank you. If I can sneak in a second. I think, John, you had mentioned increased focus on onboard processing, but if I recall, the Gen 3 satellites are actually smaller, sort of 8U in size. Are there any swap constraints that you have got to deal with to add processing?

Speaker 2

Yeah. The way in which we are looking at the future development is the Block 2 is a generalist system. It collects from 30 megahertz up to 18 gigahertz. We have come to appreciate that customers really focus on very specific signals. Our idea, and what we are putting into practice here, is to split the Block 2 in the future into the Block 3 and the Block 4. The Block 3 will pull out 75% of the capital expenditures by making it smaller. We are able to shrink the software-defined radio. We are able to shrink the number of antennas on the platform, et cetera. All of which allow us to build at a much cheaper cost point focused on very specific signals.

Speaker 2

Then, in order to ensure that we have the continuity of a generalist system, we will be building the Block 4s, and that will cover from 30 megahertz all the way up beyond 18 gigahertz, and we are looking at different bands beyond 18 gigahertz. Having the larger bus with more power will certainly enable us to bring the onboard processing into play. We also anticipate elements of the onboard processing to be absolutely relevant for the Block 2s and for the Block 3s. Thank you for the questions, Chris.

Operator

Our next question will come from Jaeson Van Der Maarel with Craig-Hallum.

Speaker 11

Great, thanks. Thanks for taking my questions, I will add my congratulations. John, maybe if you would, talk a bit about ISA and the reaction, particularly amongst the international customers, to the pretty robust capabilities that brings. Just curious. Yeah, just the anecdotals in terms of how the prospect base reacted to that.

Speaker 2

Well, ISA has been a wonderful transaction for us. We acquired the company back in December. It was a landmark transaction. With the acquisition, we not only were able to expand our total addressable market and to bring in new U.S. government customers, but to the center point of your question, the processing is the crown jewel here that we are so concerned about. We are able to bring their processing into our own platform. With their generic radar processing algorithms, we can now identify many more signals in our own proprietary data than we were able to collect before. We have brought the two together, and we are now offering this processing to our customers all around the world. We are offering a significant more value on top of the existing data that we are already collecting.

Speaker 2

It has been a great win for us, and we think it is a great win for our customers, too.

Speaker 11

Yeah, I would think so. One last from me, if I could. If I look at the sovereigns that are not moving, the international prospects that are not moving as quickly as maybe you would either hope or have expected. If they are dragging their feet, why are they dragging their feet? What are their options? What are they considering? What are they pushing back on? I am just curious at the leading edge, what those discussions look like.

Speaker 2

Well, as I mentioned to you earlier, international sales for HawkEye 360 is both bottoms up and top down. We need to work the political engagement and get senior buy off, and we also need to work at the customer level and ensure we are meeting the requirements of the customer. These take time. They do not happen overnight, which is an interesting dynamic compared to our U.S. government business that tends to be very quick. The sales cycle is in days or a couple of weeks. On the international side, oftentimes we are working within procurement processes and systems that we have not engaged with before, and we are learning as we go. We are doing the best we can. Sometimes the region and the time of year matters, which we are also experiencing.

Speaker 2

But we do anticipate bringing a couple of major international deals to fruition in the very near future, and we look forward to announcing them. Thank you for the great question.

Operator

Moving next to Conor sculpting with Goldman Sachs.

Speaker 12

Hey, guys. You've got Conor on for now today. Thanks for taking my question. In the prepared remarks, you mentioned that you had initiated the development of the Block 4 satellites that you have in planning, and you have the first demonstration of your Angle of Arrival payload prototype anticipated for launch in 2027. So two questions related to that. Is it accurate to think of that demonstration as a full Block IV satellite that's in orbit sometime in 2027? Or is that just a small piece of what will eventually be on a Block IV that's going to be in orbit? Are you seeing customer demand in the market today that's prompting the acceleration of the Block IV development more broadly?

Speaker 2

Yeah, great question. Thank you for offering it. For us with the Block IV, what's most important is optionality. We need to be able to prove out the viability of our own hosted payload by developing a prototype in partnership with HawkEye ISA in order to get that on orbit and prove out the functionality. Once we've proven it out with its own dedicated bus, its own standalone satellite, then we have the optionality of either building our own satellites for launch or taking that hosted payload and putting it into another constellation of an existing company. We're working on a bunch of different options that we can leverage where we can do a hosted payload relationship and get more coverage around the world. The net-net is with the Block IV, we're looking for low latency.

Speaker 2

We want to be able to collect from lots of different data nodes, whether they're Angle of Arrival or the three-ball geolocation Time Difference of Arrival and Frequency Difference of Arrival geolocation algorithms, and get that data down to the ground as quickly as possible. That gets unlocked through onboard processing, but importantly through cross-links as well and by ground station densification. We're unlocking a bunch of these different opportunities, but the Block IV is critical to it.

Speaker 12

Okay, super helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

This now concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to John Serafini for closing comments.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Carrie. We are pleased with our continued progress and look forward to keeping you updated on our journey. We are honored and fortunate to have the opportunity to serve the war fighting community, U.S. and allied customers around the world who are tasked with missions of great operational significance and importance. This is a responsibility we at HawkEye 360 take exceptionally seriously. Mission execution is ingrained deeply into the DNA of this company. Simply put, we serve those who serve our nation. As always, please reach out with any questions, and thank you for your interest in HawkEye 360.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.

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