Use the Chapters list below to select the part of the video you want to watch.
Welcome to CubCrafters' informative recorded webinar. In this session, Pat Horgan, President and CEO and Brad Damn, Vice President, will provide detailed answers to your questions regarding CubCrafters' newest airplanes, trends in General Aviation, and our vision for the future.
Chapters:
- Webinar introduction by Rod Turner
- Patrick Horgan - Introduction
- Brad Damm - Introduction
- Overview of CubCrafters and its mission
- About the adventure aircraft market
- How does CubCrafters decide which new developments to work on?
- How will you be reinvesting funds from the capital raise?
- Is there currently a waiting list for your aircraft, and if so, how long is the wait?
- What made you decide to offer your shares to the public?
- Interesting missions that CubCrafters’ airplanes have been used for
- Where do you expect growth in sales and profits to come from in the next 10 years?
- What is CubCrafters plan to adjust its use of fossil fuels in the light of potential electric propulsion?
- What are other challenges and opportunities that CubCrafters sees in the Adventure Aircraft and General Aviation industry?
- How are the CubCrafters – RedBull and other collaborations and partnerships came about?
- What is CubCrafters vision for the future of General Aviation and Adventure Aviation, and how do you see Cub Crafters contributing?
- Closing thoughts from Patrick and Brad
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Disclaimer:
ROD TURNER, CEO OF MANHATTAN STREET CAPITAL, DOES NOT MAKE ANY INVESTMENT RECOMMENDATIONS OR PROVIDE INVESTMENT ADVICE IN THIS WEBINAR. HIS ROLE IS TO FACILITATE THE EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION. DO NOT CONSIDER ANYTHING THAT ROD TURNER SAYS OR DOES IN THIS VIDEO TO BE AN INVESTMENT SOLICITATION OR ENDORSEMENT OF CUBCRAFTERS INC.
THE OFFERING MATERIALS MAY CONTAIN FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND INFORMATION RELATING TO, AMONG OTHER THINGS, THE COMPANY, ITS BUSINESS PLAN AND STRATEGY, AND ITS INDUSTRY. THESE FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS ARE BASED ON THE BELIEFS OF, ASSUMPTIONS MADE BY, AND INFORMATION CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TO THE COMPANY’S MANAGEMENT. WHEN USED IN THE OFFERING MATERIALS, THE WORDS “ESTIMATE,” “PROJECT,” “BELIEVE,” “ANTICIPATE,” “INTEND,” “EXPECT” AND SIMILAR EXPRESSIONS ARE INTENDED TO IDENTIFY FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS, WHICH CONSTITUTE FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS. THESE STATEMENTS REFLECT MANAGEMENT’S CURRENT VIEWS WITH RESPECT TO FUTURE EVENTS AND ARE SUBJECT TO RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES THAT COULD CAUSE THE COMPANY’S ACTUAL RESULTS TO DIFFER MATERIALLY FROM THOSE CONTAINED IN THE FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS. INVESTORS ARE CAUTIONED NOT TO PLACE UNDUE RELIANCE ON THESE FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS, WHICH SPEAK ONLY AS OF THE DATE ON WHICH THEY ARE MADE. THE COMPANY DOES NOT UNDERTAKE ANY OBLIGATION TO REVISE OR UPDATE THESE FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS TO REFLECT EVENTS OR CIRCUMSTANCES AFTER SUCH DATE OR TO REFLECT THE OCCURRENCE OF UNANTICIPATED EVENTS.
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Rod Turner
Rod Turner is the founder and CEO of Manhattan Street Capital, the #1 Growth Capital service for mature startups and mid-sized companies to raise capital using Regulation A+. Turner has played a key role in building successful companies including Symantec/Norton (SYMC), Ashton Tate, MicroPort, Knowledge Adventure, and more. He is an experienced investor who has built a Venture Capital business (Irvine Ventures) and has made angel and mezzanine investments in companies such as Bloom, Amyris (AMRS), Ask Jeeves, and eASIC.
www.ManhattanStreetCapital.com
Manhattan Street Capital, 5694 Mission Center Rd, Suite 602-468, San Diego, CA 92108.
THIS TEXT TRANSCRIPT HAS ERRORS IN IT THAT WERE CAUSED BY THE SPEECH TO TEXT CONVERSION SOFTWARE WE USED. DO NOT DEPEND ON THE TEXT TO BE ACCURATE. WATCH THE RELEVANT PARTS OF THE VIDEO TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE PROPERLY INFORMED. DO NOT DEPEND ON THIS TEXT TRANSCRIPTION TO BE ACCURATE OR REFLECTIVE OF THE STATEMENTS OR INTENT OF THE PRESENTERS.
Rod Turner:
Hello and welcome. My name is Rod Turner. I'm the president and CEO of Manhattan Street Capital, and we're delighted to be hosting the Regulation A+ offering for CubCrafters. And in today's webinar I'm pleased to introduce Patrick Horgan, who is the president and CEO of CubCrafters. Please introduce yourself, Pat.
Patrick Horgan:
I'm Pat. I'm the president of Cub Crafters. Been a aviator since I was 15 years old and built an experimental airplane in the garage as a high schooler and been following aviation all my life. I started my career as a aircraft designer with an aeronautical engineering background on fighter jets and commercial aircraft. And I've been the president I've been with Crafters almost 10 years. I've been the president since 2018. Really excited about our company, our people, and our mission and and the outpouring of questions that came in for this webinar. So appreciative of the opportunity to to spend some time today.
Rod Turner:
I'd like to also introduce Brad Damm, who is the Vice President of CubCrafters. Welcome, Brad.
Brad Damm:
Hi, I'm Brad Damm. I've been with CubCrafters just over 10 years. Started my flying career at 19 when I bought my, my first airplane, a J three Cub. Been involved in back country aviation ever since. And here at Cub Crafters, I handle a lot of the customer facing side of the business, sales, marketing those sorts of things. Happy to be here. Happy to answer these questions. Thanks, rod.
Rod Turner:
Thank you, Brad. So I have a question for you, pat. Could you provide a brief overview of CubCrafters and its mission in the aviation industry?
Patrick Horgan:
Cubcrafters is a permanent builder of backcountry adventure aircraft. We have our carbon cub wine, as well as our ex cub wine. So we're the only factory that we're aware of that's building FA certified A S T M White Sport, as well as experimental builder assist and kits. So we are about meeting customer expectations with aircraft that access our world in, in very unique ways and building the best airplanes in in our class. Thank
Rod Turner:
You, pat. So I've got a question for you, Brad, Paul in California asks, how do you define the adventure aircraft market and how are you positioned in this market?
Brad Damm:
Hi, Paul, the adventure aircraft, market adventure airplanes themselves are airplanes that allow pilots that allow the public to access the back country access places where normal airplanes can't go. So behind me, I've got a, one of our float planes that's a X cub on floats. So that's an airplane that's capable on landing both on a runway or landing on a lake or another body of water. And that's a great example of an adventure airplane. You can go do things with that type of airplane. You can't do with your run of the mill Cessna or business jet, or a more transportation oriented airplane. So we build adventure airplanes here at Cup Crafters. Typically, there are two place tandem airplanes, which means that you've got a pilot in a passenger, oftentimes you'll be taking camping gear, that sort of thing. But our airplanes are also used by the government for Fish and Wildlife Survey. They're used for search and rescue operations. They're used for law enforcement. So there's a wide range of application for these types of airplanes. The market itself is probably three to 400 airplanes a year in the United States, and Cub Crafters has about half of that market share right now.
Rod Turner:
So a question for you, pat Bill in Montana and Jonathan in Florida ask a similar question. How does Cub Crafters decide which new developments to work on?
Patrick Horgan:
Thanks, bill and Jonathan. Yeah, that's an exciting part of what we, what we are able to do here. Cub Crafters is an innovation company, and we're always looking to use current day technology and advanced technology to improve our products, to meet our customer's demands. We have a process by which we use market surveys whenever we're developing something new where the customer is a part of that process where they get to see some of the developments we're doing and give input to how to make it better, how to change it, and we have a phase by which we're improving our product before we even bring it to market. So the innovation side of our business we, we have an a turnkey internal capability where we're conceptualizing, we're designing, we're testing, and in our area X, which is an annex where we're developing and innovating new products all the time, we have a series of flight test aircraft. Right now, I think we have three or four in different projects that are dedicated. And the way we go about that is to prioritize our product roadmap based on what we are trying to achieve now in our certified airplane, as well as our experimental and our light sport. And as we go forward those get adjusted based on, based on the opportunities and, and more, most importantly, meeting our customers desires for advancements and new aircraft. Thank
Rod Turner:
You, pat. I have another question here. This is from Tom Thomas in Florida. How will you be reinvesting funds from the capital raise? I like the slats development and the skis company you bought. They look like interesting moves to me. He says,
Patrick Horgan:
Well, thanks for that. Yeah. The use of the the funds is being used in a variety of ways to accelerate our, our production, meet our demands. We, again, we've had a typically a two year backlog. So our demand has outweighed our supply, and that has, that is one use to expand our infrastructure. We've we're modernizing our production. We've added some robotics and some, some other growth efforts, also expanding our infrastructure and our customer services and our aftermarket services. Since we pro we're producing more aircraft now and need to have good customer service back backing that the, the use of funds allows us to expand into international markets. It allows us to expand our production, and it allows us to move at a pace that's a little bit, little bit quicker than if we were just to do it organically.
Rod Turner:
So a question for you, Brad. Tim asks, is there currently a waiting list for your aircraft, and if so, how long is the Wait,
Brad Damm:
I tip? Yeah, we've been blessed with great sales the last several years. The waiting list for our airplane typically is one to two years long. We've been recently, like Pat said, we've got a backlog in excess of two years. Our production improvements, the faster pace of building airplanes have bought that, brought that down a little bit. Right now our backlog is 18 months. I'm sitting here in our delivery hangar airplanes in our delivery hangar. We've got a delivery, an airplane every three days. We typically sell an airplane every three days, and the backlog's pretty stable right now in about 18 months. When a customer gives us a new deposit they can expect a an airplane delivery in the spring of 2025. Right. Now
Rod Turner:
I have another question for Pat. This question is from Frank in Illinois. What made you decide to offer your shares to the public after more than 40 years as a private company at co crafts?
Patrick Horgan:
Thanks, Frank. That's a great question. As a, as an established 40 year company, we have or always organically funded our, the developments and our operation. Our company was funded by Jim Richmond. It's a very kind of a typical classic success story when it comes to an American business that started out with just him in his garage and, and has expanded to what we've become today as a leader in the general aviation market. And we've always organically funded, meaning the X Cub would be a good example. It was developed over six years quietly. And our area X at our, which is our skunkworks, if you would we didn't take cus customer deposits in advance. Jim didn't believe in that. We actually developed it on our own accord over six years and did all of the design certification and offered it to the public when it actually existed and was in production. And we could continue to operate that way. We could continue to organically fund what we do, but the offering to availability of offering shares to our customers was actually an idea coined by Jim so that we could accelerate our growth. We could, we could expand our, our operations in terms of accelerating our production. We can expand our international markets in terms of product that are, that are specified for those markets, and it really allows us to meet the customer demands.
Rod Turner:
The question for you, Brad, Stan in New York would like to hear about some of the more interesting missions that cob craft as airplanes have been used for.
Brad Damm:
Hi, Stan. Our airplanes are used for a lot of interesting missions. There are missions in Africa where NGOs, non-governmental organizations are using the airplanes to control wildlife poaching, elephant poaching in particular the airplanes are used all over Alaska for wildlife survey search and rescue law enforcement. So the National Park Service uses our airplanes for law enforcement US and Fish and Wildlife Service uses them for a lot of wildlife surveys in Alaska that ultimately are how Canada and the United States sent hunting limits for things like migratory birds. All that starts with a wildlife survey being done out of one of our airplanes. Consumers use our airplanes worldwide, back country adventure flying. We've got airplanes in Africa where customers are going out and flying over Angel Falls or camping on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. We've got customers here in the United States that use the airplanes to tour the Grand Canyon tour, the Mojave Desert those sorts of things. There's great backcountry flying opportunities in Idaho. There's great I was just down in Arkansas a couple weeks ago and there's a great backcountry flying down there. It's a hugely popular sport down in the southeast United States. Also flying patients out to places where they can get more advanced medical care. So if you're in a, in a remote area in Mexico and the patient needs to go in for a procedure at a hospital or at a clinic that's not available out in those remote areas, they'll use the airplane to fly that, that patient in to get that procedure done or to get that test done. So there's a lot of interesting missions that go on. Everything from the government side, the commercial side, and the, the recreational side of these airplanes. They're widely used.
Rod Turner:
So a question for you, pat. Where do you expect growth in sales and profits to come from in the next 10 years?
Patrick Horgan:
Well, the next 10 years will be hopefully similar to our prior, in that we're gonna continue to innovate our products for our customers' desires. And we're continuing to grow our infrastructure in terms of our aftermarket support and services. We produce so many more aircraft now we're producing at a much higher rate. So growing that side of our business and those profit centers as well is a priority for us in, in the next 10 years. It'll be important.
Brad Damm:
I really see two areas that we'll see growth in sales and growth in profits. One is international sales. Eight to 10% of our sales currently going to the international market, whereas we believe about half the demand globally for these types of airplanes is international. We've got opportunities there and we've designed a new airplane to take care of those opportunities. The Carbon Cub ul, it's a ax powered airplane. It is a multi fuel technology airplane, so it can run aviation gasoline, it can run auto gasoline. And Tex has a really robust international service center network that we'll be able to take advantage of with their power plant on our airframe. The other place that I really see sales growth starting is with our ex cub in government and fleet sales. We've got a contract for U S D A to provide new airplanes for their Wildlife services division. They recently doubled the size of the contract, doubled the number of airplanes they're gonna purchase under that, and they're looking at adding again, another, another third of that contract going forward is the discussion right now here. We've supplied airplanes to the United States Department of the Interior for many years, and they use our Top Cub airplane. And they're looking at buying the X Cub and upgrading their fleet of top Cubs to X Cubs over the next 10 years. We've got the US Air Force Academy, again, they use our top cub or our older technology airplane for Glider tow for their cadet airmanship program. And they've got some Cessna airplanes that they use for their Precision flying club. They're looking at upgrading those airplanes all to the nose wheel variant of our certified exco. So there's a ton of growth potential for us in the government market as well.
And we'll, we expect to realize that over the next decade, glider towing, glider flying is popular glider towing, you need an airplane to do that. And there is not anywhere in the world that we're aware of a new production airplane that can be used for Glider tow certified airplane that's applicable to Europe. That's applicable to the United States. United States, that's applicable to South America. Right here is our nose wheel X cub. That's our airplane that has the most powerful engine. It has the best cooling. And there's some reasons from a safety perspective why a nose wheel airplane makes a better tow airplane than a tail wheel airplane does. It's also a two place tandem airplane, so you can train new glider tow pilots. So we're going through a market survey effort right now where we have on one of our demo airplanes a tow hook. We're gonna be out there towing gliders shortly. We're gonna listening to the feedback from the customers, the glider clubs, the glider enthusiasts on how they like our airplane for towing lighters, what we could do to make it better for towing GLIs, and if they would consider buying a new nose wheel X Cub for that glider tow mission. It's another area that we see growth for. Cub Crafters is servicing that Glider tow market going forward. It's an active project we have right now. There's a lot of projects like that out there. Our our idea queue is deep. And so going forward, those are the types of things Cub Crafters will continue to do to expand our market share, expand the missions that our airplanes are capable of, and really be a major player in general aviation in the future.
Rod Turner:
So, question for you, pat Peter in Alaska. Ask, what is the crafters plan to adjust? Its its use of fossil fuels in the light of potential electric propulsion?
Patrick Horgan:
Thanks, Peter. Yeah, absolutely. New fuels and clean fuel technology and electrification is certainly an ever present in in the media when it comes to aviation. Right now, we're on the forefront of those things. I actually serve on the eagle Committee work, which is industry working with the f a A for clean fuel technology to be released. And we're absolutely making sure that our products are, are compatible and with the new fuels that are coming down. So fossil fuels will continue. The FAA is focusing on improved clean fuels and, and we're a part of that on the electric side. There's a lot of electric aircraft being developed that require next generation batteries that are not available and probably won't be for some time. We've been, we've been monitoring this on the electric and the hybrid side. We actually have a program, an r d program where we use electric motors to enhance lift to shorten takeoff and landing with a patent, a new patented device that NASA has funded two rounds. We're, we're working with NASA right now on a flight test program. That's proving out that technology, that's true r and d stuff where it's, it scales beyond our current product line. So we're an innovator and we're staying absolutely on the forefront of, of new fuels and clean fuels as well as electric technology. And it's a part of our future and and being prepared for what, what is the next generation of aircraft. We're, we're gonna be there and make sure we have our products that meet those.
Rod Turner:
Pat another question here. What, what are some of the other significant challenges and opportunities that co crafters sees in the adventure aircraft and general aviation industry? Well,
Patrick Horgan:
Challenges and opportunities are, are many. As a company that now is producing new aircraft at a greater rate, we're putting more and more airplanes in the fleet. That fleet exceeds about 2000 airplanes and about a hundred airplanes plus added each year. So the aftermarket services and the customer support is an important priority for us to challenge to grow that nation and worldwide. And it's a priority for us and, but it's also an opportunity that's an important part of our business, our legacy business and a profit center for us. So that's an example of a challenge and an opportunity generally nationwide inflationary period that the world is in. Supply chain continues to resounding supply chain challenges that have hit continue to be something that we have to traverse in our business. We're fortunate, and that's an opportunity as well in that we're still an in-source business. A lot of aerospace businesses have gone to outsource where a lot of their substructures are made somewhere else. And while we don't build engines and tires and avionics, we build everything else in-house. And that gives us a little bit of an advantage to traverse the challenges of inflation as well as the supply chain challenges that are ever present in, in the aviation industry. So those are some of the things that we and others are dealing with.
Rod Turner:
Brad, a question for you, Allison in Pennsylvania is curious about how the Red Bull Hub Crafters partnership came about and other, other collaborations on the cars.
Brad Damm:
Hi, Allison. The Red Bull Cub Crafters partnership, it started with a Red Bull air race pilot from Poland who owns a carbon cub as his personal, fun, pleasure airplane. He's in the back country flying, and he proposed the, the project a little over two years ago. Ultimately, we were able to go do it. We were able to go to Dubai. There were three partners on the project, red Bull, Cub Crafters and Dubai Tourism. And the project turned out great for all of the partners on it for Cub Crafters. It really put us on the international stage in a way we had never been before. It showcased our airplane's ability to land short. It showcased our airplane's ability to take off short and it really set the stage for the launch of the Carbon Cub ul, our new airplane designed for international markets. We couldn't have reached the audience that, that we did with that event without Red Bull being on board for Red Bull. It was a great project for them because they wanted to go do this type of project and they needed a partner that had the technical expertise to be able to do a project like that and do it safely and do it successfully. I don't know what the exact number is, but it surpassed a billion content views back in June, and it's still continuing to climb as of right now. It's our understanding that this is the largest single project Red Bull has ever done in terms of content views. And so yeah, that does lead to collaboration and talks and ideas about doing stuff in the future. So I imagine that you'll see more Red Bull Cub Crafters collaboration going forward.
Rod Turner:
Question for you, pat, looking, looking ahead, what is Cub Crafters vision for the future of general aviation and adventure aviation, and how do you see Cub Crafters contributing to that vision?
Patrick Horgan:
Thanks. Well, our vision is to humbly remain the best of class adventure aircraft in the market, and to expand that into international markets. Our, our new carbon CV UL with the Tex nine 16 that we just launched, it's obviously a priority and it brings brings our vision for international markets to, to life. We're excited about the stock offering and the, and what that does for expanding our efficiencies, modernizing our factory being the continue to develop at a, at a, at a greater pace and respectfully being the best in our market that our customers, meeting our customers demands. We, we involve our customers in the development of our products. We'll continue to do that as we innovate and our, we believe our future is bright. Expanding our aftermarket services, our legacy products is a big priority for us as we produce more and more aircraft. So we have a bright future when we tend to, to go after that in satisfying our customers and the values that they, they consider important to the aircraft that meet their dreams and desires. I
Brad Damm:
Think Cub Crafters has a really bright future in general aviation. There was a time when general aviation in the United States was shrinking seventies, eighties. It's gone through a rebound, a resurgence the last 20 years or so. And the fastest growing segment of general aviation in that rebound is the adventure aircraft market is the recreational aircraft market. We've seen that at Cub Crafters, other OEMs that are in the same space have seen that as well. And so within general aviation, overall, the most exciting place to be is right where Cub Crafters is in this market segment of personal adventure aviation. How do I see that growing for us or how do I see that manifesting itself for Cub Crafters? We're gonna continue to be the best of class airplanes. Pat's committed to that. I'm committed to that. That's where we've always done the best, is dedicating this company to having best of class products, best of class airplanes, best of class service, best of class support. And that goes all the way back to Jim Richmond, the founder's visions. That's what made this company successful in its first 43 years. And that's gonna, what's going to keep it being successful going forward.
Rod Turner:
Pat and Brad, if you have any comments you would like to make in closing, I'd appreciate that. Thank you. And thank you very much Pat and Brad for hosting and speaking.
Patrick Horgan:
We're grateful to all of our investors and potential investors and those enthusiasts that are just fans of our company. Folks are flying our aircraft all over the world on Microsoft flight simulator and radio control models, and the carbon cub and the ex CV have become iconic aircraft in the back country. And we're just humbly grateful to be a part of that. The questions were great and I wish we could answer every one of 'em, but we appreciate the enthusiasm and the opportunity today to chat with everybody. We're excited about our future and excited that folks that wanna be a part of that future. So thank you for the time today.
Rod Turner:
Brad, do you have any comments that you'd like to add?
Brad Damm:
For those of you thinking about investing at Go Grafters, there's some time left. We're a great company here in Yakima, Washington. We build best in class personal adventure aviation aircraft. There's a dedicated team of over 200 people here that work hard every day to get that done. We'd love you to join our team. You can do that by investing in our company. We'd love to have you be part of our journey.
Rod Turner:
Hello and welcome. My name is Rod Turner. I'm the president and CEO of Manhattan Street Capital, and we're delighted to be hosting the Regulation A Plus offering for CubCrafters. And in today's webinar I'm pleased to introduce Patrick Horgan, who is the president and CEO of CubCrafters. Please introduce yourself, Pat.
Patrick Horgan:
I'm Pat. I'm the president of Cub Crafters. Been a aviator since I was 15 years old and built an experimental airplane in the garage as a high schooler and been following aviation all my life. I started my career as a aircraft designer with an aeronautical engineering background on fighter jets and commercial aircraft. And I've been the president I've been with Crafters almost 10 years. I've been the president since 2018. Really excited about our company, our people, and our mission and and the outpouring of questions that came in for this webinar. So appreciative of the opportunity to to spend some time today.
Rod Turner:
I'd like to also introduce Brad Damm, who is the Vice President of CubCrafters. Welcome, Brad.
Brad Damm:
Hi, I'm Brad Damm. I've been with CubCrafters just over 10 years. Started my flying career at 19 when I bought my, my first airplane, a J three Cub. Been involved in back country aviation ever since. And here at Cub Crafters, I handle a lot of the customer facing side of the business, sales, marketing those sorts of things. Happy to be here. Happy to answer these questions. Thanks, rod.
Rod Turner:
Thank you, Brad. So I have a question for you, pat. Could you provide a brief overview of CubCrafters and its mission in the aviation industry?
Patrick Horgan:
Cubcrafters is a permanent builder of backcountry adventure aircraft. We have our carbon cub wine, as well as our ex cub wine. So we're the only factory that we're aware of that's building FA certified A S T M White Sport, as well as experimental builder assist and kits. So we are about meeting customer expectations with aircraft that access our world in, in very unique ways and building the best airplanes in in our class. Thank
Rod Turner:
You, pat. So I've got a question for you, Brad, Paul in California asks, how do you define the adventure aircraft market and how are you positioned in this market?
Brad Damm:
Hi, Paul, the adventure aircraft, market adventure airplanes themselves are airplanes that allow pilots that allow the public to access the back country access places where normal airplanes can't go. So behind me, I've got a, one of our float planes that's a X cub on floats. So that's an airplane that's capable on landing both on a runway or landing on a lake or another body of water. And that's a great example of an adventure airplane. You can go do things with that type of airplane. You can't do with your run of the mill Cessna or business jet, or a more transportation oriented airplane. So we build adventure airplanes here at Cup Crafters. Typically, there are two place tandem airplanes, which means that you've got a pilot in a passenger, oftentimes you'll be taking camping gear, that sort of thing. But our airplanes are also used by the government for Fish and Wildlife Survey. They're used for search and rescue operations. They're used for law enforcement. So there's a wide range of application for these types of airplanes. The market itself is probably three to 400 airplanes a year in the United States, and Cub Crafters has about half of that market share right now.
Rod Turner:
So a question for you, pat Bill in Montana and Jonathan in Florida ask a similar question. How does Cub Crafters decide which new developments to work on?
Patrick Horgan:
Thanks, bill and Jonathan. Yeah, that's an exciting part of what we, what we are able to do here. Cub Crafters is an innovation company, and we're always looking to use current day technology and advanced technology to improve our products, to meet our customer's demands. We have a process by which we use market surveys whenever we're developing something new where the customer is a part of that process where they get to see some of the developments we're doing and give input to how to make it better, how to change it, and we have a phase by which we're improving our product before we even bring it to market. So the innovation side of our business we, we have an a turnkey internal capability where we're conceptualizing, we're designing, we're testing, and in our area X, which is an annex where we're developing and innovating new products all the time, we have a series of flight test aircraft. Right now, I think we have three or four in different projects that are dedicated. And the way we go about that is to prioritize our product roadmap based on what we are trying to achieve now in our certified airplane, as well as our experimental and our light sport. And as we go forward those get adjusted based on, based on the opportunities and, and more, most importantly, meeting our customers desires for advancements and new aircraft. Thank
Rod Turner:
You, pat. I have another question here. This is from Tom Thomas in Florida. How will you be reinvesting funds from the capital raise? I like the slats development and the skis company you bought. They look like interesting moves to me. He says,
Patrick Horgan:
Well, thanks for that. Yeah. The use of the the funds is being used in a variety of ways to accelerate our, our production, meet our demands. We, again, we've had a typically a two year backlog. So our demand has outweighed our supply, and that has, that is one use to expand our infrastructure. We've we're modernizing our production. We've added some robotics and some, some other growth efforts, also expanding our infrastructure and our customer services and our aftermarket services. Since we pro we're producing more aircraft now and need to have good customer service back backing that the, the use of funds allows us to expand into international markets. It allows us to expand our production, and it allows us to move at a pace that's a little bit, little bit quicker than if we were just to do it organically.
Rod Turner:
So a question for you, Brad. Tim asks, is there currently a waiting list for your aircraft, and if so, how long is the Wait,
Brad Damm:
I tip? Yeah, we've been blessed with great sales the last several years. The waiting list for our airplane typically is one to two years long. We've been recently, like Pat said, we've got a backlog in excess of two years. Our production improvements, the faster pace of building airplanes have bought that, brought that down a little bit. Right now our backlog is 18 months. I'm sitting here in our delivery hangar airplanes in our delivery hangar. We've got a delivery, an airplane every three days. We typically sell an airplane every three days, and the backlog's pretty stable right now in about 18 months. When a customer gives us a new deposit they can expect a an airplane delivery in the spring of 2025. Right. Now
Rod Turner:
I have another question for Pat. This question is from Frank in Illinois. What made you decide to offer your shares to the public after more than 40 years as a private company at co crafts?
Patrick Horgan:
Thanks, Frank. That's a great question. As a, as an established 40 year company, we have or always organically funded our, the developments and our operation. Our company was funded by Jim Richmond. It's a very kind of a typical classic success story when it comes to an American business that started out with just him in his garage and, and has expanded to what we've become today as a leader in the general aviation market. And we've always organically funded, meaning the X Cub would be a good example. It was developed over six years quietly. And our area X at our, which is our skunkworks, if you would we didn't take cus customer deposits in advance. Jim didn't believe in that. We actually developed it on our own accord over six years and did all of the design certification and offered it to the public when it actually existed and was in production. And we could continue to operate that way. We could continue to organically fund what we do, but the the offering to availability of offering shares to our customers was actually an idea coined by Jim so that we could accelerate our growth. We could, we could expand our, our operations in terms of accelerating our production. We can expand our international markets in terms of product that are, that are specified for those markets, and it really allows us to meet the customer demands.
Rod Turner:
The question for you, Brad, Stan in New York would like to hear about some of the more interesting missions that cob craft as airplanes have been used for.
Brad Damm:
Hi, Stan. Our airplanes are used for a lot of interesting missions. There are missions in Africa where NGOs, non-governmental organizations are using the airplanes to control wildlife poaching, elephant poaching in particular the airplanes are used all over Alaska for wildlife survey search and rescue law enforcement. So the National Park Service uses our airplanes for law enforcement US and Fish and Wildlife Service uses them for a lot of wildlife surveys in Alaska that ultimately are how Canada and the United States sent hunting limits for things like migratory birds. All that starts with a wildlife survey being done out of one of our airplanes. Consumers use our airplanes worldwide, back country adventure flying. We've got airplanes in Africa where customers are going out and flying over Angel Falls or camping on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. We've got customers here in the United States that use the airplanes to tour the Grand Canyon tour, the Mojave Desert those sorts of things. There's great backcountry flying opportunities in Idaho. There's great I was just down in Arkansas a couple weeks ago and there's a great backcountry flying down there. It's a hugely popular sport down in the southeast United States. Also flying patients out to places where they can get more advanced medical care. So if you're in a, in a remote area in Mexico and the patient needs to go in for a procedure at a hospital or at a clinic that's not available out in those remote areas, they'll use the airplane to fly that, that patient in to get that procedure done or to get that test done. So there's a lot of interesting missions that go on. Everything from the government side, the commercial side, and the, the recreational side of these airplanes. They're widely used.
Rod Turner:
So a question for you, pat. Where do you expect growth in sales and profits to come from in the next 10 years?
Patrick Horgan:
Well, the next 10 years will be hopefully similar to our prior, in that we're gonna continue to innovate our products for our customers' desires. And we're continuing to grow our infrastructure in terms of our aftermarket support and services. We produce so many more aircraft now we're producing at a much higher rate. So growing that side of our business and those profit centers as well is a priority for us in, in the next 10 years. It'll be important.
Brad Damm:
I really see two areas that we'll see growth in sales and growth in profits. One is international sales. Eight to 10% of our sales currently going to the international market, whereas we believe about half the demand globally for these types of airplanes is international. We've got opportunities there and we've designed a new airplane to take care of those opportunities. The Carbon Cub ul, it's a ax powered airplane. It is a multi fuel technology airplane, so it can run aviation gasoline, it can run auto gasoline. And Tex has a really robust international service center network that we'll be able to take advantage of with their power plant on our airframe. The other place that I really see sales growth starting is with our ex cub in government and fleet sales. We've got a contract for U S D A to provide new airplanes for their Wildlife services division.
They recently doubled the size of the contract, doubled the number of airplanes they're gonna purchase under that, and they're looking at adding again, another, another third of that contract going forward is the discussion right now here. We've supplied airplanes to the United States Department of the Interior for many years, and they use our Top Cub airplane. And they're looking at buying the X Cub and upgrading their fleet of top Cubs to X Cubs over the next 10 years. We've got the US Air Force Academy, again, they use our top cub or our older technology airplane for Glider tow for their cadet airmanship program. And they've got some Cessna airplanes that they use for their Precision flying club. They're looking at upgrading those airplanes all to the nose wheel variant of our certified exco. So there's a ton of growth potential for us in the government market as well.
And we'll, we expect to realize that over the next decade, glider towing, glider flying is popular glider towing, you need an airplane to do that. And there is not anywhere in the world that we're aware of a new production airplane that can be used for Glider tow certified airplane that's applicable to Europe. That's applicable to the United States. United States, that's applicable to South America. Right here is our nose wheel X cub. That's our airplane that has the most powerful engine. It has the best cooling. And there's some reasons from a safety perspective why a nose wheel airplane makes a better tow airplane than a tail wheel airplane does. It's also a two place tandem airplane, so you can train new glider tow pilots. So we're going through a market survey effort right now where we have on one of our demo airplanes a tow hook.
We're gonna be out there towing gliders shortly. We're gonna listening to the feedback from the customers, the glider clubs, the glider enthusiasts on how they like our airplane for towing lighters, what we could do to make it better for towing GLIs, and if they would consider buying a new nose wheel X Cub for that glider tow mission. It's another area that we see growth for. Cub Crafters is servicing that Glider tow market going forward. It's an active project we have right now. There's a lot of projects like that out there. Our our idea queue is deep. And so going forward, those are the types of things Cub Crafters will continue to do to expand our market share, expand the missions that our airplanes are capable of, and really be a major player in general aviation in the future.
Rod Turner:
So, question for you, pat Peter in Alaska. Ask, what is the crafters plan to adjust? Its its use of fossil fuels in the light of potential electric propulsion?
Patrick Horgan:
Thanks, Peter. Yeah, absolutely. New fuels and clean fuel technology and electrification is certainly an ever present in in the media when it comes to aviation. Right now, we're on the forefront of those things. I actually serve on the eagle Committee work, which is industry working with the f a A for clean fuel technology to be released. And we're absolutely making sure that our products are, are compatible and with the new fuels that are coming down. So fossil fuels will continue. The FAA is focusing on improved clean fuels and, and we're a part of that on the electric side. There's a lot of electric aircraft being developed that require next generation batteries that are not available and probably won't be for some time. We've been, we've been monitoring this on the electric and the hybrid side. We actually have a program, an r d program where we use electric motors to enhance lift to shorten takeoff and landing with a patent, a new patented device that NASA has funded two rounds. We're, we're working with NASA right now on a flight test program. That's proving out that technology, that's true r and d stuff where it's, it scales beyond our current product line. So we're an innovator and we're staying absolutely on the forefront of, of new fuels and clean fuels as well as electric technology. And it's a part of our future and and being prepared for what, what is the next generation of aircraft. We're, we're gonna be there and make sure we have our products that meet those.
Rod Turner:
Pat another question here. What, what are some of the other significant challenges and opportunities that co crafters sees in the adventure aircraft and general aviation industry? Well,
Patrick Horgan:
Challenges and opportunities are, are many. As a company that now is producing new aircraft at a greater rate, we're putting more and more airplanes in the fleet. That fleet exceeds about 2000 airplanes and about a hundred airplanes plus added each year. So the aftermarket services and the customer support is an important priority for us to challenge to grow that nation and worldwide. And it's a priority for us and, but it's also an opportunity that's an important part of our business, our legacy business and a profit center for us. So that's an example of a challenge and an opportunity generally nationwide inflationary period that the world is in. Supply chain continues to resounding supply chain challenges that have hit continue to be something that we have to traverse in our business. We're fortunate, and that's an opportunity as well in that we're still an in-source business. A lot of aerospace businesses have gone to outsource where a lot of their substructures are made somewhere else. And while we don't build engines and tires and avionics, we build everything else in-house. And that gives us a little bit of an advantage to traverse the challenges of inflation as well as the supply chain challenges that are ever present in, in the aviation industry. So those are some of the things that we and others are dealing with.
Rod Turner:
Brad, a question for you, Allison in Pennsylvania is curious about how the Red Bull Hub Crafters partnership came about and other, other collaborations on the cars.
Brad Damm:
Hi, Allison. The Red Bull Cub Crafters partnership, it started with a Red Bull air race pilot from Poland who owns a carbon cub as his personal, fun, pleasure airplane. He's in the back country flying, and he proposed the, the project a little over two years ago. Ultimately, we were able to go do it. We were able to go to Dubai. There were three partners on the project, red Bull, Cub Crafters and Dubai Tourism. And the project turned out great for all of the partners on it for Cub Crafters. It really put us on the international stage in a way we had never been before. It showcased our airplane's ability to land short. It showcased our airplane's ability to take off short and it really set the stage for the launch of the Carbon Cub ul, our new airplane designed for international markets.
We couldn't have reached the audience that, that we did with that event without Red Bull being on board for Red Bull. It was a great project for them because they wanted to go do this type of project and they needed a partner that had the technical expertise to be able to do a project like that and do it safely and do it successfully. I don't know what the exact number is, but it surpassed a billion content views back in June, and it's still continuing to climb as of right now. It's our understanding that this is the largest single project Red Bull has ever done in terms of content views. And so yeah, that does lead to collaboration and talks and ideas about doing stuff in the future. So I imagine that you'll see more Red Bull Cub Crafters collaboration going forward.
Rod Turner:
Question for you, pat, looking, looking ahead, what is Cub Crafters vision for the future of general aviation and adventure aviation, and how do you see Cub Crafters contributing to that vision?
Patrick Horgan:
Thanks. Well, our vision is to humbly remain the best of class adventure aircraft in the market, and to expand that into international markets. Our, our new carbon CV UL with the Tex nine 16 that we just launched, it's obviously a priority and it brings brings our vision for international markets to, to life. We're excited about the stock offering and the, and what that does for expanding our efficiencies, modernizing our factory being the continue to develop at a, at a, at a greater pace and respectfully being the best in our market that our customers, meeting our customers demands. We, we involve our customers in the development of our products. We'll continue to do that as we innovate and our, we believe our future is bright. Expanding our aftermarket services, our legacy products is a big priority for us as we produce more and more aircraft. So we have a bright future when we tend to, to go after that in satisfying our customers and the values that they, they consider important to the aircraft that meet their dreams and desires. I
Brad Damm:
Think Cub Crafters has a really bright future in general aviation. There was a time when general aviation in the United States was shrinking seventies, eighties. It's gone through a rebound, a resurgence the last 20 years or so. And the fastest growing segment of general aviation in that rebound is the adventure aircraft market is the recreational aircraft market. We've seen that at Cub Crafters, other OEMs that are in the same space have seen that as well. And so within general aviation, overall, the most exciting place to be is right where Cub Crafters is in this market segment of personal adventure aviation. How do I see that growing for us or how do I see that manifesting itself for Cub Crafters? We're gonna continue to be the best of class airplanes. Pat's committed to that. I'm committed to that. That's where we've always done the best, is dedicating this company to having best of class products, best of class airplanes, best of class service, best of class support. And that goes all the way back to Jim Richmond, the founder's visions. That's what made this company successful in its first 43 years. And that's gonna, what's going to keep it being successful going forward.
Rod Turner:
Pat and Brad, if you have any comments you would like to make in closing, I'd appreciate that. Thank you. And thank you very much Pat and Brad for hosting and speaking.
Patrick Horgan:
We're grateful to all of our investors and potential investors and those enthusiasts that are just fans of our company. Folks are flying our aircraft all over the world on Microsoft flight simulator and radio control models, and the carbon cub and the ex CV have become iconic aircraft in the back country. And we're just humbly grateful to be a part of that. The questions were great and I wish we could answer every one of 'em, but we appreciate the enthusiasm and the opportunity today to chat with everybody. We're excited about our future and excited that folks that wanna be a part of that future. So thank you for the time today.
Rod Turner:
Brad, do you have any comments that you'd like to add?
Brad Damm:
For those of you thinking about investing at Go Grafters, there's some time left. We're a great company here in Yakima, Washington. We build best in class personal adventure aviation aircraft. There's a dedicated team of over 200 people here that work hard every day to get that done. We'd love you to join our team. You can do that by investing in our company. We'd love to have you be part of our journey.
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