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Firefly files for initial public offering
The eight-year-old maker of launch vehicles and other spacecraft gives a deeper look at its business for the first time, as is required before the listing completes.
Firefly Aerospace, the space transportation startup that successfully landed on the Moon in the spring, has filed for an initial public offering that it plans to achieve sometime later this year.
Firefly’s S-1 registration to the Securities and Exchange Commission was made available Friday for all to see, including information on the company’s financials and post-IPO strategy. More details on the numbers of shares to be made available, their price range and goals for this capital raise will be released at a later date.
Shares in the maker of launch vehicles and other spacecraft will trade on the NASDAQ market under the ticker symbol “FLY.”
The eight-year-old company’s decision to list on the NASDAQ will allow AE Industrial Partners, the private equity firm that acquired its majority ownership of Firefly in 2023, to continue to control Firefly through the stake it will hold post-IPO.
NASDAQ’s rules allow for certain “controlled company exemptions,” where firms can be publicly traded but still have one individual or group holding more than 50% of the voting power.
Firefly’s decision to go public by traditional means, as in not through a “blank check” SPAC or other alternative mechanisms, follows its $175 million Series D capital raise that wrapped up in the fall. Fellow space company Voyager Technologies also went down the traditional path for its IPO that fetched $383 million from investors in June.
In both instances, the companies are looking to tap into heightened investor interest in space amid heightened growth expectations for the sector.
Austin, Texas-headquartered Firefly also is undertaking the IPO following the landing of its Blue Ghost vehicle on the Moon in March, which is the first time a commercial lunar lander carried out a successful touchdown there.
Of Firefly’s $60.8 million in revenue for 2024, roughly $38.1 million of that (62%) was derived from spacecraft solutions work that includes Blue Ghost. Spacecraft solutions appears to be where the bulk of Firefly’s growth is coming from, given first quarter revenue totaled $55.8 million and that segment’s sales hit $50.7 million (91% of the top line).
The company also reported a $1.1 billion total backlog as of March 31, a figure that includes several multi-launch agreements, and a workforce of approximately 780 full-time employees.
Unlike other GovCon S-1 filings, Firefly’s registration does not provide a clear breakdown of specific customer sets by agency name and their contribution to the overall top line.
In 2024, Firefly’s largest customer is identified only as “Customer 1” and it represented 58.6% of total sales and the other two customers made up 34.4% combined. The top five customers, again not named, accounted for substantially all of Firefly’s first quarter revenue and 92% of the backlog.
But Firefly does list examples of its federal government customers, including Space Force and that service branch’s Space Development Agency, NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and Defense Innovation Unit. Space Force finalized a contract with Firefly in February for rapid response launch services.
Firefly also is a partner to other defense and space companies such as Blue Origin, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and SpaceX. Late in the spring, Northrop invested $50 million into Firefly for further work on their co-developed medium launch vehicle called Eclipse.
The S-1 reveals Firefly posted net losses of $231.1 million for the full 2024 calendar year and $60.1 million for the first quarter of this year, while total debt was $173.6 million as of March 31. Cash and cash equivalents on hand totaled $176.9 million, also as of March 31.
Much of the IPO’s proceeds will go toward paying down that debt. Firefly also states its post-IPO intentions include pursuits of more national security contracts and greater vertical integration, plus acquisitions of other companies including in software.
Firefly is led by chief executive Jason Kim, who joined the company in the fall after a four-year run as CEO of Boeing’s Millennium Space Systems subsidiary.
Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Jefferies and Wells Fargo Securities are acting as lead bookrunning managers for the IPO. Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities and Cantor are working as joint bookrunners. Roth Capital Partners and Academy Securities have been designated the co-managers.