NextNav Inc. ($NN)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. My name is Kelvin, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to NextNav's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Jared Pollack. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to NextNav's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Participating on today's call are Mariam Sorond, NextNav's Chief Executive Officer; and Tim Gray, NextNav's Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call will include certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of the words may, anticipate, believe, expect, intend, should, could and similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements, which may relate to NextNav's forecast of future results, future prospects, developments and business strategies are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions, many of which are outside of NextNav's control and could cause actual results to differ. In particular, such forward-looking statements include the achievement of certain FCC-related milestones and SEC approvals, NextNav's projections, plans, objectives and expectations and NextNav's future business strategies and competitive position. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs as well as a number of assumptions concerning future events. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made, and NextNav undertakes no commitment to update or revise the forward-looking statements, except as required by law. For additional information regarding risks and uncertainties, please refer to the risk factors and other disclosures contained in the company's filings with the SEC. Following prepared remarks, the company will host an operator-led question-and-answer session. In addition, a replay of our discussion will be posted to the company's Investor Relations website. I'd now like to turn the call over to Ms. Sorond. Please go ahead, Mariam.

Thank you, Jared. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today. As we have discussed previously, the FCC moved forward to formally send a notice of proposed rulemaking or NPRM, focused on promoting the development of PNT technologies and solutions through a standard interagency review process. We believe this represents a critical step that underscores the FCC's focus on addressing the national security urgency of identifying resilient backups and complements to GPS. This positive milestone was achieved in rapid time and with extraordinary momentum under this administration. We know the draft NPRM continues to proceed through the interagency review processes, including review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs or OIRA. These processes are designed to incorporate perspectives from all stakeholders, and we are actively supporting that work. While OIRA reviews are relatively new for FCC rulemaking, review across executive branch agencies has been a long-standing process. Importantly, we continue to work constructively with the FCC and other government agencies to support these processes. The timing remains subject to these ongoing reviews. The FCC has a long history of evaluating technically complex and nationally important issues and finding pathways to successful resolution. Its process has worked for decades, time and time again, including in spectrum matters more complex than ours. What we believe has been particularly constructive about this proceeding is how the public comment process that followed the FCC's March 2025 Notice of Inquiry, or NOI, accelerated the discussion. The NOI generated a depth and volume of responses typically seen following an NPRM, surfacing various matters earlier than usual. As a result, NextNav has been addressing or are often post NPRM matters earlier on, which we believe has made this proceeding more advanced at this stage than comparable proceedings. This is in part why activities such as joint testing with the railroads are occurring today. We believe this approach is constructive as bringing later-stage considerations into the record earlier may improve the efficiency of a post-NPRM phase moving towards report and order. In addition to the ongoing interagency review of the draft NPRM, as we have discussed previously, the FCC has granted experimental authorizations to NextNav to support both our 5G PNT network testing in Santa Clara County, California and joint testing with railroads at their testing facility in Pueblo, Colorado. Our 5G PNT network testing marks an important step towards commercialization. I will reiterate that our ongoing network testing is moving in parallel to the NPRM process. And while railroad testing is relevant to the broader record with the FCC, neither of these efforts are a prerequisite to the FCC issuing an NPRM. In addition to our ongoing collaboration with railroad stakeholders, we continue to engage with the tolling industry. Last week, we attended the IBTTA Technology Summit in Orlando, Florida, where we spoke with tolling technology vendors, operators and IBTTA executives to express our interest in pursuing a collaborative approach to coexistence considerations and validation efforts based on our intention to work with the vendors and operators to ensure protection of tolling operations. With our progress, it is not surprising that we have recently seen a significant increase in opposition activity. This increased activity has included a recent attempt to stall the NPRM through the House Appropriations Committee. This attempt to circumvent the FCC has concerned government and industry as it is widely viewed as a dangerous precedent for U.S. spectrum policy. Former Energy and Commerce Committee Chair, Greg Walden, described the attempt as interfering with the SEC's process. As Walden specifically noted, it's really early in the process to drop a bunker buster bomb on the FCC technology review process. We agree and further view these attempts as simply underscoring the strength of the existing record in the NOI proceeding, a record that led the FCC to advance an NPRM. We fully trust the FCC and interagency processes and firmly believe concerns can be addressed during an NPRM process. Chairman Kara has shared at an event in April that one of the biggest priorities for us at the FCC is to help support alternatives to GPS. And further that, we want everyone that has a technology that could potentially be a complement to GPS to get a fair shot at any regulatory changes that they might need. So while we have seen increased opposition activity, we stand by our engineering and are proactively seeking to address concerns raised by stakeholders within industry and the Hill. In addition to our long history and continued constructive engagement with various federal agencies, we are continuing to build a highly targeted coalition of third-party supporters and actively engaging with both supporters and opponents on the Hill. We're also placing emphasis on sharing real-world evidence that supports our engineering analysis in the record. Just last week, we conducted a real-world coexistence demonstration using our 5G PNT network and a standard RFID reader with multiple RFID tags. This put recent claims about RFID interference to the test through a live demonstration at 20 feet between the 5G transmitter and the RFID reader, a setup that is far more extreme than seen in real-world circumstances. That test shows that RFID technologies are resilient by design and can continue to operate alongside 5G signals in the lower 900 megahertz band without operational impact. Outside of our regulatory development, NextNav continues to build momentum across the broader policy and industry ecosystem. We are actively participating in high-level dialogues, including at the Milken Global Conference last week and through my role on the CTIA Board of Directors, where discussions increasingly focused on AI and the critical need for additional spectrum to support AI in the immediate future. At NextNav, we understand that wireless networks and reliable PNT are the underlying invisible infrastructure powering successful expansion of the AI systems that will define the next decade of the autonomous economy. Further, NextNav filed comments in the SEC's proceeding in support of President Trump's National Strategy of American drone dominance. We're excited to move into the next phase of sensing technologies and have joined the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation. The Department of War's Future Generation Wireless Technology Office launched the OCUDU initiative and leads its ongoing development. Finally, as market dynamics evolve, we remain in active dialogue with potential partners across not only wireless carriers, but also satellite operators and big tech, among others, to help realize our strategic goal of enabling a 5G-based backup and complement to GPS. From our perspective, what was already a constructive commercial environment has only improved as interest continues to expand for access to low-band spectrum. Taken together, we believe these developments reflect steady, disciplined progress across regulatory, technical and strategic fronts. From our perspective, the engineering case for a viable GPS backup is well supported by our technical studies. We are equally confident in our position as a one of a one within a system of systems requiring capabilities that only NextNav can provide, a unique combination of wide-scale positioning, timing and 3D geolocation services, which are commercially viable and we believe can be made available during the current administration with swift action from the FCC. Moreover, our solution is future-proof and does not require taxpayer funding. Our conviction remains unchanged. We see a path to resolving technical and policy questions within the time-tested FCC and interagency decision-making process as we continue to engage constructively with both supporters and our opponents. Our confidence is based in part on the knowledge that the FCC is historically renowned for getting the process right. With that, I will turn things over to Tim for a review of our financials. Tim?

Thank you, Mariam, and good afternoon, everyone. NextNav continues to be in a position of financial strength with a strong cash position and low-band spectrum assets, with the potential to have a much more robust balance sheet in the near term. On liquidity, we finished the first quarter of 2026 with approximately $143 million in cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments. We are continuing to manage our use of capital and balance our approach to liquidity as we continue to move forward on our ambitious goals. It is important to note that we have a significant number of warrants expiring in October of this year that have the potential to deliver over $200 million in additional capital, depending on stock price performance. The redemption of these warrants will provide NextNav with significant additional resources and balance sheet strength going forward. For our first quarter, a financial item of note, as a reminder, the gains or losses related to our outstanding private warrants and derivative liability fluctuate based on movements in our stock price. In the first quarter, we recognized gains of approximately $12.6 million associated with the change in the fair value of the derivative and warrants liability. These noncash gains partially offset the company's net loss for the quarter, resulting in a net loss of approximately $10.6 million. These accounting adjustments are primarily related to the financing transactions completed earlier in 2025 which strengthened the company's balance sheet. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Mike Crawford of B. Riley Securities.

Would you mind just summarizing how much 900-megahertz spectrum NextNav currently owns and how this was acquired over time? And then what PNT precision gains would be enabled by a full 10/5 signal?

Mike, thanks for the question. NextNav currently has rights to about 4 billion megahertz POPs across the 900 to lower 900 megahertz band. And our PNT simulations currently, which will be tested through our field efforts over in Santa Clara show comparable 2 GPS performance, which is single-digit accuracy and timing synchronization to meet critical infrastructure needs.

Okay. And then my follow-up question just relates to how a drone or a physical AI instance would access the PRS reference signal embedded in 5G? Is there any other additional steps that would be required for these systems to access that signal?

Yes. I mean, first of all, let me say we're super excited about this new capability that we're stepping into, which is sensing of drones as it becomes a really important issue for our national security, and we really like the Department of Wars and the FutureG Office's efforts for making sure that we have a solid technology and solution to this. What's we basically are working with is the ability and what's really nice about it is that it's the PRS signal in a 5G setting, not only provides positioning and timing capability, we really don't have to do anything else with that signal to be able to then extract drone detection and sensing, which makes this a very attractive solution. And I just want to emphasize solution, not just the technology. And one of the strengths of NextNav is that we provide solutions. And that solution means that we not only are developing the tech, but we also have the spectrum and the licenses to be able to deploy that technology. That's a very powerful statement that working across federal agencies and our national security interest and equities, they find it extremely compelling, and therefore, we're excited to be joining OCUDU and start this journey.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Tim Horan of Oppenheimer.

On the sensing technology, is there something -- does that tie to the PNT or is that unique to what you guys are doing from a P&T and technology perspective? Does anyone else have that capability?

Thank you, Tim, for the question. So it is the same PRS signal that you extract positioning and timing from that actually gets used to sense drones and objects at a certain elevation. So the signal is the same, the underlying 5G is the same. And then what we extract is through a technology that is spearheaded by the OCUDU Department of War Office that's called ISAC, which is integrated sensing technologies that is also standards based. So what nice thing about having an underlying 5G that evolves the 6G and 7G network is that you use standards-based technologies to not only get positioning and timing, but you're also able to use that same signal within the same radio for being able to sense and detect drones.

And how you use that capability? Does anyone else have that to your knowledge?

So there's a lot of companies. One thing about ISAC is a standard space, and there's a lot of vendors, and we could read publicly about them that are developing the ISAC technology, which is 5G based. But what we provide is not just the tech and the underlying network, but we provide the solution because one of the problems is that you also need the spectrum to be able to deploy all of this on, which is a great sort of fit for us where we bring the spectrum and the tech to the table.

That's what I meant. I mean, so the spectrum and the PNT as long as the technology, that's fairly unique because anyone -- I mean, it doesn't sound like anyone else can replicate that type of sensing technology easily. But correct me if I'm wrong...

Exactly. That's a really good point, right? I mean you have -- I mean, Ericsson and among other RAN vendors are developing this technology. But at the end of the day, they need a partner, they need someone to bring the spectrum to the table. And we already have both. And we're working with a wide industry on this. It's a very, I would say, very interesting technology and very interesting development that's happening within the 5G network right now.

And are you working with the FAA is looking for -- they're massively upgrading the system and looking for ways to incorporate drones and other things. Are you working with that process at all?

So what we started out is filing in the drone dominance proceeding with the FCC, which we're super excited about. And what we've announced publicly is also separate in that our OCUDU membership. That is what we've stated publicly. But of course, we're talking to all the stakeholders on the vendor and also agency space about this.

There are no further questions at this time. And with that, I will now turn the call back over to Mariam Sorond, CEO for final closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you. In closing, we continue to engage constructively with key stakeholders. As anticipated, interagency review and FCC processes continue as it has in matters more complex than ours. At the same time, we're building momentum towards commercialization and seeing expanding interest across the broader ecosystem. We continue to focus on our strategy and execution to achieve our goals. We are very proud of the progress we are making to deliver a resilient future-proof terrestrial complement and backup to GPS, strengthening U.S. economic and national security at a critical moment in time. Thank you, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. We thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your line.