Intuitive Machines is making ready for its first lunar mission to the moon’s south pole within the third quarter of this yr, whereas additionally dealing with a protest to a significant NASA contract win, executives instructed buyers Thursday.
The corporate has made “important progress” on testing for the inaugural IM-1 mission, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus mentioned throughout a first-quarter earnings name. He added that he expects the lander to be on the launch pad in “mid-to-late Q3.” Throughout that mission, the corporate will try and land its spacecraft, Nova-C, on the lunar floor — and would be the first completely personal firm to take action. The corporate is at present assessing the touchdown spot on the moon for a follow-up mission.
Intuitive Machines went public by way of a merger with a special-purpose acquisition firm in February. The corporate reported first-quarter revenues of $18.2 million, with a money stability of $46.8 million as of the top of the quarter. Moreover, Intuitive Machines reported a backlog of $156.1 million, of which $107.7 million is anticipated to show into income earlier than the yr’s finish.
“We’ve got at all times been and can proceed to be a capital environment friendly firm,” CFO Erik Sallee mentioned. “We are going to allocate capital to the best risk-adjusted returns in a disciplined method. As a personal Firm, we have been largely self funded, so we all know the right way to reside inside our means.”
The corporate additionally disclosed that it was dealing with a protest to its win of a $719 million NASA contract, although Altemus instructed buyers that protests are a reasonably widespread prevalence inside the procurement course of.
“We all know from the statistics that lower than 10% of these protests are literally overturned, so we’ve got excessive confidence in our worth choices to the federal government,” Altemus mentioned. “We’re assured that when we get via this 100-day protest interval for the [Government Accountability Office] that the award will stand.”
Science Purposes Worldwide Company filed the protest towards the award on Could 8. The agency didn’t make a duplicate of the protest out there to view, nor does the Authorities Accountability Workplace — the federal workplace the place firms might protest contract awards — put up them on its web site.
NASA awarded the $719 million, five-year contract to a three way partnership of Intuitive Machines and KBR named House Networks Answer. The contract, Omnibus Multidiscipline Engineering Providers (OMES) III, is supposed to broadly fund engineering work associated to the Joint Polar Satellite tv for pc System and different NASA tasks. NASA introduced the profitable bidder on April 19.
Supplied that GAO adjudicates the protest in Intuitive Machines’ favor, the corporate mentioned it’s going to start work on the contract within the fourth quarter. With it, the lunar firm’s full-year income might are available in between $174 million and $268 million.
The corporate, which is listed beneath the ticker image $LUNR, was buying and selling at $8.25 by shut of markets Thursday.