York Space Systems Inc. Jefferies Global Industrials Conference 2026

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Adam Samuelson, Senior Vice President on the Aerospace and Defense Equity Research team here at Jefferies. Thank you again for everyone attending our annual Jefferies Global Industrials Conference here in New York. Today, we're lucky enough to have Dirk Wallinger, CEO of York Space Systems, joining us. Just as a quick bio, Dirk is the founder, President, Chief Executive Officer of York Space Systems. Since founding the company in 2012, he's led the company's growth from a new space entrant into a public aerospace and defense company with more than 55 satellites placed into orbit, three constellations in operation, and an active mission experience across proliferated low Earth orbit, Space Data Network, tactical communications, custody, fire control, remote proximity operations, and classified national security programs. With that, Dirk, thank you for being here.

Maybe just to start, for investors who are newer to the story, can you just give a quick overview of York Space Systems, what the company builds, and where you sit today with the broader national security space ecosystem?

Sure. Thanks, Adam. I appreciate it. Thank you to Jefferies as well for this conference and opportunity to give people a better picture of what we're doing. I'm Dirk Wallinger, founder and CEO of York Space Systems. What we do is essentially we are a prime integrator of spacecraft systems. We execute as a prime contractor, building spacecraft systems, typically for the United States government, but also for commercial customers as well. We execute the full ecosystem. We're building the satellite platforms, we're integrating the payloads, we're procuring the launch vehicles, we're integrating the launch vehicles, we're launching them, putting them into orbit, and then operating them in orbit. We have three different mission operations centers, both unclassified, classified, and top secret. We have close to 50 ground stations throughout the world.

We own really all the key pieces needed in that vertical, so flight software, attitude control capabilities and software, ground software, mission operations capabilities as well. The core flight computers, and most of the key critical pieces that are needed to do really any kind of mission. One unique thing about us is we execute only under firm fixed price contracts, and only as the prime. We don't currently sell software to any customers. We don't sell pieces of what we do to any customers. We execute turnkey directly to the customer, either government or commercial. We've since expanded a little bit to adjacent markets, where I alluded to we have 50 ground stations throughout the world. So things that connect to satellites, things that satellites need to control, we're starting to move and take bigger markets in those areas as well.

We recently acquired a company called ALL.SPACE, who makes the terminals on the ground, which is a key enabler to enable York to leverage the significant growth we're going to see on unmanned systems. Terminals on the ground, particularly ALL.SPACE terminals, do not get jammed as far as communications go and GPS. That's really a key to enabling the unmanned systems. Whereas unmanned capabilities today we're seeing are jammed in theater. That's a key differentiator where York fits. Long way of saying we're the spacecraft integrator. We're a turnkey solution to our customers. We execute firm fixed price contracts as the prime.

Great. That's very helpful. Maybe I just love to just dig into this upfront. Stock's had a meaningful move in the last few months, and I think investors are still trying to recalibrate kind of the story after the first few quarters as a public company. Can you just help bridge us what was assumed at the time of the IPO? What's changed since then around the kind of core satellite capabilities and the way that your government customer is contracting for those capabilities?

Yeah, sure. Since IPO, York's capabilities and what we deliver to the customer base remains exactly the same. We're a prime provider. We're a leader. We beat competitors for the exact same capability, not similar capability, literally the exact same capability, at half the cost. We deliver before them. On some of our contracts where we're head-to-head with other competitors like say Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, they're the exact same contract. We've delivered two full Falcon 9s stuffed with York spacecraft platforms to orbit on those contracts. Meanwhile, our two closest competitors combined have delivered half of that capability to date. We're delivering before them. All of that hasn't changed.

I think one of the areas where there's been a little bit of divergence on how the stock's performing and people's perception of where York fits is that the government really moved to a completely different acquisition kind of process earlier part of this year. They have moved to more IDIQs, and they also restructured acquisition authorities to be under what are called PAEs. What they've done is they've appointed a PAE for each kind of core mission set. That might be communications. Things like communications would be acquired by some of it would be Space Systems Command for GEO systems, some of it would be a classified customer for what used to be called MILNET, and some of it would be Space Data Agency acquiring the transport system.

Those are all communication capabilities, and what the government realized was it's pretty inefficient to be acquiring what are communication systems for the government under three different acquisition authorities. We are going to combine those, and they are going to be called PAOs, and they are going to acquire communication systems for all the branches. That was a pretty major restructuring, and what that meant was that a lot of the acquisitions that were moving along pretty quickly under rapid RFPs got moved to an IDIQ process. The main difference here between these acquisitions is if you want to move and award contracts pretty quickly on a one-year timeframe, RFPs are a good way to do that. You can move them pretty quickly on one to two year time frames, but you have to continuously repeat that competition cycle.

What it means is it's harder to do larger amounts of money over, say, three or four years. What they did was they shifted to the PAE structure and IDIQs because what happens is IDIQs, they will run the competition process once, they will meet the requirements of the FAR, and then once they have selected their winners, they actually never have to repeat that competition. If you are looking to unload, quite frankly, a very large amount of dollars over a three-year timeframe, an IDIQ is a very efficient way to do that. You run the competition once, and then you can just order task orders without needing to repeat that structure. That was really the major shift.

Now, look, unfortunate for us that that acquisition strategy meant a delay in getting those IDIQs in place by probably about six months, which meant that some of our revenues kind of moved to the right on a line on a calendar. But looking at it from an 18 to 24-month period of time, there is no difference in where York fits in the ecosystem and our ability to win, except that now our addressable market is significantly larger. Whereas contracts that we were competing on before were $500 million type opportunities, now one of the opportunities is a $4 billion opportunity for that one IDIQ win. So a long way of saying that York has not changed significantly in what we are doing, where we fit, or our ability to win.

We have actually won 88% of the contracts that we have bid on, which is an amazing capability to win. It is just the government shifted their strategy, and so now revenues are expected to fall in the 2027 timeframe instead of the latter 2026 timeframe. So that is the main kind of divergence of what happened between IPO and now with regard to how the government was acquiring things and where we expected dollars to hit.

Got it. Maybe just to put a bow on that, where the guidance for FY 2026 was lowered last month with earnings, about $170 million-$580 million at the midpoint. How much of that is just the timing of new awards and the conversion of existing backlog or the absence of new awards versus supply chain timing? There are also some acquisitions that rolled in there, but just help us think about how much of it was timing related, tied to that procurement change, versus other things that would be a little bit more under your control.

Yeah. The vast majority of it is going to be pretty much directly tied to the acquisition process and the change from RFPs to IDIQs. All that said, looking at 2027, when I get asked the question of what does York Space Systems need to do and how do they need to position themselves to succeed in 2027 to gain a lot of those revenues that we have been talking about that are significantly larger now. When you look down that scope of how does York Space Systems need to be positioned, we are in extremely strong position, and that is why we feel very confident about the 2027 projections that we will talk about later this year.