WASHINGTON — Redwire reported record revenue in the first quarter as the space technology company gets closer to profitability.
Redwire reported after the markets closed May 9 revenue of $57.6 million in the first quarter, a record for the company. That is a 7.3% increase from the fourth quarter and a 75.3% improvement over the first quarter of 2022.
Part of that jump in year-over-year revenue came from the acquisition of Space NV, a Belgian developer of smallsats and related components, from Qinetiq in October. Even when the contribution from Space NV is removed, though, Redwire’s revenue increased by 37.9% from the same quarter a year ago.
The company reported a net loss of $7.3 million in the quarter, an improvement of $10 million from the first quarter of 2022. For the first time since going public in 2021, Redwire reported positive adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $4.3 million in the quarter, a $9 million improvement from the first quarter of 2022.
“Achieving positive adjusted EBITDA for the first time as a public company is an important milestone,” said Peter Cannito, chief executive of Redwire, in a May 10 earnings call.
“Redwire’s path to profitability continued successfully in this quarter,” Jonathan Baliff, chief financial officer, said on the call. He cited a “steady march” of financial improvement in the form of adjusted EBITDA that has improved each quarter since the beginning of 2022.
The revenue increase, he said came across all its major lines of business and among national security, civil and commercial customers. The biggest increase came from commercial customers, with revenue increasing nearly 130% from the first quarter of 2022.
Cannito did not point to any specific programs that contributed significantly to revenue growth, instead highlighting work that ranged from developing new solar panels for the International Space Station to sun sensors built by Redwire on a GPS satellite launched in January.
The company affirmed previous guidance of revenues of between $220 million and $250 million for all of 2023. That would be a 46% increase over 2022 at the midpoint of that range.
Redwire did not forecast adjusted EBITDA or profitability for the year in the call, but Cannito said that adjusted EBITDA might vary in later quarters depending on timing of internal research and development investments, known as IRAD.
“There’s a lot of demand out there in the marketplace that we don’t want to miss out on if it requires some sort IRAD investment,” he said, predicting that adjusted EBITDA will depend on “throttling up or down IRAD based on the opportunities that are presented throughout the year.”
