BKSY - NYSE
BlackSky Technology Inc.
BKSY·NYSE
$37.48
-12%TechnologyHardware, Equipment & Parts
BlackSky Technology Inc. provides geospatial intelligence, imagery and related data analytic products and services, and mission systems that include the development, integration, and operations of satellite and ground systems to commercial and government customers worldwide. The company processes a range of observations from its constellation, as well as various space, internet-of-things, and terrestrial based sensors and data feeds. Its products are used in government defense and intelligence; commercial, construction, and industrial; and catastrophe, climate, and environment applications. The company was incorporated in 2014 and is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia.
At a Glance
Live SnapshotMarket Cap$1.39B
EPS-2.0900
P/E Ratio-17.93
Earnings Date08/06/2026
Earnings Call Transcript
BKSY • 2024 • Q1
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to BlackSky Technology's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Aly Bonilla, BlackSky's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] We'll go first to Greg Burns with Sidoti & Company.
Operator
We'll go now to Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank.
Henry Dubois
Edison, this is Henry. Yes. What that is, is we make progress against various milestones on a couple of these large international contracts we talked about. And because we recognize the revenue and the cost, they're already sitting there in our revenue and cost account. So we've got the margins already baked in. However, because we only can bill against actual milestone completion, they're sitting in our other contract assets at the moment. And we would expect as we hit those milestones, that we'd be able to bill and that would be cash directly to the balance sheet because we've already incurred the associated cost with that revenue.
Xin Yu
And would that be coming in 2Q? Or is that spread throughout the rest of the year? How [indiscernible] timing?
Henry Dubois
It's probably spread over the next -- it's going to be spread over the next 12 months.
Operator
Next, we'll hear from Jaeson Schmidt with Lake Street.
Jaeson Schmidt
And then just a last one for me, and I'll hop back in the queue. Henry, I think this first quarter where you sort of eclipsed that 70%-plus gross margin. Should we think about this sort of the new run rate throughout 2024?
Henry Dubois
Well, I mean, as you can see in this quarter, we did hit about 81% on the Imagery and Analytics, and we did -- we were able to deliver some pretty good performance on the professional services and engineering around the 44% or so gross margin mark. I mean as we go forward as long as we keep continuing our growth, I mean, we're feeling pretty good. We have stepped up from where we were last year from 65% for the first quarter of last year to 71% overall for the first quarter of this year.
Operator
Our next question comes from Josh Sullivan with The Benchmark Company.
Operator
We'll go next to Jeff Van Rhee with Craig-Hallum.
Jeff Van Rhee
A couple for me. Maybe, Henry, just to start on the $30 million in new renewals in terms of contracts signed. What's the ARR on the $30 million?
Henry Dubois
Well, $30 million, some of those -- for example, one of those is a contract that we're doing some work with the U.S. government on. That was the one day we announced it's starting off at about the 3.9% over about an 18-month period, and that was in a press release earlier this year and others are continuing to work forward. So they're all typically multi-year, and we work our way through them as we get the task orders.
Jeff Van Rhee
So any bounds you can put around that? I mean, generally speaking, should I take that number and divide it by 2, 3, 4, 5, like a typical duration just to get a swag at how much ARR was signed?
Henry Dubois
Well, I mean, you heard Brian talk about the 10 contracts that are in the 6 figures that are multi-years. I mean they kind of go all over the place. But given the fact that they are all multi-years, the typical range of those is probably in that 3-year sort of time period.
Jeff Van Rhee
How are you thinking about path to free cash flow and timing?
Henry Dubois
Well, as we said in the prepared remarks, we've got -- we feel like we've got a pretty good amount of liquidity on the books, including the commercial bank line we just put in place. We would have had about 55.8% at the end of the quarter. We did just talk earlier on the Q&A about the roughly $24 million of liquidity that will be coming in over time, from the major contracts that we've been progressing on the milestones. And we also, as you may recall, have our launches of vendor finance for the first couple of launches. So we feel like we're in pretty good shape to get our Gen-3s up and get to the next stage of our growth.
Operator
We'll go now to Caleb Henry with Quilty Space.
Caleb Henry
One or 2 more questions. It looked like D&A was a little bit higher this quarter. Can you give any color on why that was?
Henry Dubois
Depreciation and amortization, do you mean?
Caleb Henry
Yes, yes.
Henry Dubois
Well, depreciation and amortization went up because we had more satellites in the year as compared to a year ago at this time.
Operator
We'll go now to Scott Buck with H.C. Wainwright.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] We'll go now to Chris Quilty with Quilty Space.
Christopher Quilty
Henry, with the $20 million bank line, is that all the borrowings you will need between here and free cash flow positive? Or might we need another slug looking out into next year as things [indiscernible]?
Henry Dubois
Thanks, Chris. As we said, we're pretty excited about bringing that extra, that $20 million, I think, bringing in it as a commercial bank line. It's had very good cost of capital, if you will, relative to other forms. So it gives us a fair bit of liquidity there. As I mentioned earlier in the call, that plus the vendor financing plus some of these other unbilled receivables that we will be collecting over the next couple of years, I think they fully fund us on our path towards our next stage of growth.
Transcript from May 8, 2024
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