flyExclusive Q2 2026 Zusammenfassung des Earnings Calls

flyExclusive (FLYX) berichtete für das zweite Quartal 2026 über ein stärkeres Umsatzwachstum, eine höhere Bruttomarge und das dritte Quartal in Folge mit einem positiven bereinigten EBITDA. Das Management erklärte, das Unternehmen bewege sich weg von der betrieblichen Umstrukturierung hin zu Wachstum durch Flottenerweiterungen, Teileigentumsprogramme und den Ausbau des MRO-Geschäfts.

Wichtigste Erkenntnisse

• Der konsolidierte Umsatz stieg im Jahresvergleich um 22 % auf 111,1 Millionen US-Dollar, während der Bruttogewinn um etwa 65 % auf 22,7 Millionen US-Dollar zulegte.
• Die Bruttomarge verbesserte sich um rund 539 Basispunkte auf 20,4 %, unterstützt durch eine höhere Flugzeugauslastung, einen verbesserten Flottenmix und geringere Wartungskosten.
• Das bereinigte EBITDA erreichte 4,2 Millionen US-Dollar, verglichen mit einem Verlust von 5,2 Millionen US-Dollar im zweiten Quartal 2025. Dies war für flyExclusive das dritte Quartal in Folge mit einem positiven bereinigten EBITDA.
• Das Unternehmen absolvierte 20.040 Flugstunden, was einem Plus von 8 % entspricht, obwohl 6 % weniger ertragsgenerierende Flugzeuge eingesetzt wurden. Die Auslastung der Kernflotte stieg um 14 % auf 81 Stunden pro Flugzeug und Monat.
• Die Einsatzbereitschaft verbesserte sich von 48 % auf 58 %. Das Management schätzte, dass jeder zusätzliche Prozentpunkt einen monatlichen Deckungsbeitrag von mehr als 200.000 US-Dollar oder etwa 2,5 Millionen US-Dollar jährlich generieren könnte.
• Für das dritte Quartal 2026 erwartet das Management ein bereinigtes EBITDA von etwa 5 bis 7 Millionen US-Dollar, was ein viertes profitables Quartal in Folge auf dieser Basis bedeuten würde.

Wichtigste Finanzdaten

Geschäfts- und operative Entwicklung

Die Produktivität der Flugzeuge verbesserte sich weiter. flyExclusive erwirtschaftete einen Quartalsumsatz von mehr als 111 Millionen US-Dollar mit 81 umsatzgenerierenden Flugzeugen, verglichen mit rund 91 Millionen US-Dollar mit 86 Flugzeugen im zweiten Quartal 2025 und rund 79 Millionen US-Dollar mit 96 Flugzeugen im zweiten Quartal 2024.

Zum Quartalsende verfügte das Unternehmen noch über drei unrentable Flugzeuge, für die bereits Kaufverträge vorlagen. Nach Angaben des Managements sanken die monatlichen operativen Verluste im Zusammenhang mit den ursprünglichen 37 unrentablen Flugzeugen von mehr als 3 Millionen US-Dollar Anfang 2024 auf unter 300.000 US-Dollar.

Die Modernisierung der Flotte blieb ein wesentlicher Ertragstreiber. Zum Quartalsende betrieb das Unternehmen 10 Challenger-Flugzeuge, die im Jahresvergleich zu einem Umsatzplus von 9 Millionen US-Dollar beitrugen. Leichte Jet-Flugzeuge vom Typ CJ3 erzielten einen Umsatz von 32 Millionen US-Dollar, was einer Steigerung von 36 % entspricht.

Der Umsatz im Großkundenbereich (Wholesale) stieg um 35 % auf etwa 63,1 Millionen US-Dollar. Das Management beschrieb den Wholesale-Bereich als Yield-Management-Instrument zur Monetarisierung von Kapazitäten rund um vertraglich zugesicherte Nachfrage im Privatkundenbereich.

Die Verkäufe von Miteigentumsanteilen (Fractional Shares) und Flugguthaben beliefen sich auf insgesamt 14,6 Millionen US-Dollar, ein Plus von 34 %. Die Umsatzerlöse aus Miteigentumsverkäufen nach GAAP stiegen um etwa 51 % auf 2,8 Millionen US-Dollar. Die Privatkundenumsätze im Jet Club stiegen um 13 % auf rund 30 Millionen US-Dollar, während die Zahl der beitragenden Mitglieder um 5 % auf 997 wuchs.

Der externe MRO-Umsatz stieg um 52 % auf etwa 4,4 Millionen US-Dollar. Die Wartungskosten sanken von 876 US-Dollar pro Flugstunde im ersten Halbjahr 2025 auf 723 US-Dollar im ersten Halbjahr 2026. Das Unternehmen betreibt außerdem 14 mobile Serviceeinheiten und gab in Partnerschaft mit dem US-Bundesstaat North Carolina einen Zuschuss in Höhe von 30 Millionen US-Dollar bekannt, um mehr als 100.000 Quadratfuß Hangar-Kapazität aufzubauen.

Etwa die Hälfte des Umsatzes von flyExclusive ist mittlerweile vertraglich zugesichert. Das langfristige Ziel des Managements liegt bei etwa 70 %.

Die Übernahme von Jet.AI wurde am 13. Juli abgeschlossen. Sie brachte drei Light-Jets ein, die ab dem vierten Quartal 2026 ein positives Ergebnis liefern sollen, und beinhaltete Anzahlungen in Höhe von 4,1 Millionen US-Dollar für drei neue CJ3+-Flugzeuge, deren Auslieferung im ersten Quartal 2027 erwartet wird. Zu den übernommenen Vermögenswerten gehörten außerdem flüssige Mittel von etwa 5,3 Millionen US-Dollar sowie eine Beteiligung an SpaceX im Wert von rund 5,8 Millionen US-Dollar, die flyExclusive veräußern möchte, um Wachstumsinitiativen zu finanzieren.

Prognose des Managements

Das Management erwartet für das dritte Quartal 2026 ein bereinigtes EBITDA von etwa 5 bis 7 Millionen US-Dollar. Das Unternehmen geht zudem davon aus, dass sich im zweiten Halbjahr 2026 der Trend der Verbesserungen gegenüber dem Vorjahr fortsetzen wird, machte jedoch keine konkreten Angaben zum vierten Quartal.

Im Laufe der Zeit könnten laut Management weitere Zuwächse bei Einsatzbereitschaft, Auslastung, SG&A-Skaleneffekten, Teileigentum, Jet Club und MRO den Weg für eine zweistellige bereinigte EBITDA-Marge ebnen. Das Unternehmen glaubt zudem, dass die Einsatzbereitschaft letztlich auf über 70 % steigen kann.

Das Management erklärte, es lägen mehrere Absichtserklärungen (Term Sheets) vor, die bis zu 50 Millionen US-Dollar an zusätzlicher Liquidität bereitstellen könnten, und geht davon aus, über ausreichend Kapazitäten zur Finanzierung des geplanten Wachstums zu verfügen. Die Kapitalallokation wird sich weiterhin auf Flugzeuge mit wertsteigernden Stückdeckungsbeiträgen konzentrieren, unter Berücksichtigung von Verwässerung, Finanzierungskosten, Profitabilität und freiem Cashflow.

Risiken und Beobachtungspunkte

Der Preis für Kerosin (Jet A) erreichte im Quartal einen Höchststand von 7,33 US-Dollar pro Gallone, verglichen mit einem Durchschnitt von etwa 5 US-Dollar im ersten Quartal 2026. Das Management gab an, dass das Unternehmen die höheren Kosten an Wholesale- und Retail-Kunden weitergereicht habe. Der Anstieg belastete die ausgewiesene Bruttomarge, seine Auswirkungen auf die Profitabilität wurden jedoch als unwesentlich beschrieben, ohne spürbare Folgen für die Nachfrage.

Die flüssigen Mittel gingen im Quartalsvergleich zum 30. Juni auf 14,3 Millionen US-Dollar zurück. Dies spiegelt Schuldentilgungen, Ausgaben für die Flottenmodernisierung sowie den Zeitpunkt des Abschlusses der Jet.AI-Transaktion wider. Das Management gab an, dass sich die Liquidität nach dem Quartalsende durch diese Transaktion verbessert habe.

Die Ergebnisse nach GAAP beinhalten quartalsweise Abschreibungen in Höhe von etwa 5,5 Millionen US-Dollar, die sich in erster Linie auf Flugzeuge beziehen. Das Management betonte, dass dieser buchhalterische Aufwand die historische Anschaffungskostenverteilung widerspiegelt und nicht die quartalsweisen Veränderungen des Marktwerts der Flugzeuge.

Vollständiges Transkript des Earnings Calls

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Ausführungen des Managements

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to flyExclusive Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded.

I will now hand the conference over to Hannah Rose. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Hannah Rose

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining flyExclusive's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call.

Joining me on the call today is Jim Segrave, flyExclusive's Founder and Chief Executive Officer; and Brad Garner, our Chief Financial Officer. We announced second quarter financial results this morning before market open, along with the filing of our Form 10-Q for the 3 and 6 months ended June 30, 2026.

We'll be providing certain non-GAAP information during today's discussion. Important disclosures about this information and a reconciliation of the non-GAAP information to comparable GAAP information is included in our Form 10-Q filed with the SEC and is available on our Investor Relations website.

In addition, this discussion might include forward-looking statements. Actual results might differ materially for any number of reasons, including risk factors described in our annual report on Form 10-K, in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and in the press release covering forward-looking statements. Rather than rereading this information, we're going to incorporate it by reference in our prepared remarks.

And with that, let me turn the call over to Jim.

Thomas Segrave

Thank you, Hannah, and thank you to everyone joining us this afternoon.

The second quarter represents another important milestone for flyExclusive and, I believe, provides clear evidence of how fundamentally this business has changed over the last 2 years. We generated approximately $111 million of revenue during the quarter, an increase of 22% year-over-year. Gross profit increased 65% to approximately $23 million, with gross margin expanding more than 500 basis points to approximately 20%. And more importantly -- most importantly, we generated $4.2 million of positive adjusted EBITDA. That represents a $9.4 million improvement from the second quarter of last year and marks our third consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA.

For the last 2 years, we have been very clear about what needed to change at flyExclusive. We needed to remove unproductive aircraft, modernize the fleet, dramatically improve dispatch availability and aircraft utilization, reduce our corporate cost structure and create operating leverage. Quarter-by-quarter, we have executed against that plan, and I believe the results now demonstrate that flyExclusive is no longer a turnaround story.

One of the clearest ways to see that transformation is to compare the number of aircraft we operate with the revenue we generate. In the second quarter of 2024, we generated approximately $79 million of revenue with 96 revenue-producing aircraft. In the second quarter of 2025, revenue increased to approximately $91 million, while the number of aircraft declined to 86. And this quarter, we generated more than $111 million with only 81 revenue-producing aircraft. In 2 years, we have increased second quarter revenue by more than 40% while reducing the number of aircraft required to produce that revenue by approximately 15%. That is what the transformation of flyExclusive looks like in numbers.

The first half comparison is equally compelling. Revenue increased from approximately $159 million in the first half of 2024 to more than $207 million this year. Over that same period, revenue-producing aircraft declined from 96 to 81 and total flight hours increased from 33,000 to more than 38,000. We are simply getting significantly more productivity from every aircraft in the fleet. A major driver has been the transformation of the fleet itself. At the beginning of 2024, we had 37 nonperforming aircraft. These aircraft consumed maintenance resources, pilot resources and working capital while producing unacceptable financial returns. Today, only 3 nonperforming aircraft remain and all 3 of these are now under contract to be sold. The operating losses associated with these 37 nonperforming aircraft have declined from more than $3 million per month at the beginning of 2024 to less than $300,000 per month today. We are very close to completing one of the largest and most difficult pieces of the transformation we began 2 years ago.

At the same time, we have substantially upgraded the productive portion of the fleet. We entered this transformation with no Challenger aircraft. Today, we operate 10 Challengers, and we expect that number to continue growing. These aircraft are significantly more reliable, generate substantially more revenue and produce better economics than any of the legacy aircraft they replace. That transformation is showing up clearly in dispatch availability. Dispatch availability improved by more than 1,000 basis points year-over-year, increasing from 48% to 58%. And we believe that through continued fleet modernization and the efficiencies of our vertically integrated platform, we can ultimately produce dispatch availability well above 70%.

The economics of that improvement are significant. At our current fleet size, every 1 percentage point of additional dispatch availability represents over $200,000 of monthly contribution or approximately $2.5 million annually. Utilization is improving as well. Despite operating 6% fewer revenue-producing aircraft than a year ago, flight hours topped 20,000, an increase of 8%. Core fleet utilization increased approximately 14%. Again, we are producing more with less. The scale of our operation is also increasingly significant. According to Argus, during the second quarter, flyExclusive was the largest North American Part 135 charter operator by both number of flights and flight hours. That the same transformation is occurring in our corporate infrastructure.

Revenue per SG&A employee increased from approximately $668,000 during the first half of 2024 to more than $1 million during the first half of this year, a 50% improvement. At the same time, SG&A declined from approximately 29% of revenue down to approximately 18% today. So we are not simply cutting costs to create profitability. We are growing revenue while becoming significantly more productive across both the fleet and our corporate infrastructure. That operating leverage is showing up directly in our financial performance.

Gross profit increased from approximately $12 million in the first half of 2024 to almost $42 million so far this year. The EBITDA progression is even more significant. First half adjusted EBITDA improved from a loss of approximately $35 million in 2024 to a loss of approximately $12 million in 2025 to a positive $4.4 million in the first half of this year. That is nearly $40 million of first half EBITDA improvement in 2 years.

Since the first quarter of 2024, we have increased our adjusted EBITDA by an average of approximately $2.5 million per quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we delivered positive adjusted EBITDA and remained positive during the first quarter of 2026 despite that quarter historically being our most difficult seasonal quarter, and we generated another $4.2 million this quarter. That gives us 3 consecutive quarters of positive adjusted EBITDA. This is no longer the occasional good quarter. We are demonstrating sustained performance and profitability.

I also think it's important to put our GAAP results in the context of the underlying economics of our aircraft assets. We currently record approximately $5.5 million of depreciation each quarter, most of it associated with aircraft assets. That is a legitimate GAAP expense, but GAAP depreciation is an allocation of historical costs over an estimated useful life. It is not a mark-to-market adjustment reflecting the actual value of our aircraft each quarter.

Over the last several years, the market values of the aircraft we operate have generally remained stable and in many cases, have actually increased. So while approximately $5.5 million of depreciation reduces our reported GAAP earnings each quarter, the actual economic depreciation we have experienced on our aircraft has been substantially less. I think that distinction is important when evaluating both our reported results and the underlying economics of the business.

Based on the operating trends we are seeing today, we expect our positive EBITDA progression to continue. For the third quarter, we expect adjusted EBITDA of approximately $5 million to $7 million. If we achieve that result as expected, Q3 would represent our fourth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. We are now approximately 45 days away from potentially completing a full year of sustained quarterly adjusted EBITDA profitability. And immediately following Q3, we enter what historically has always been our strongest quarter of the year.

We're not providing fourth quarter guidance, but based on the direction of the business, we fully expect the second half of 2026 to continue the consistent trend of year-over-year improvement we have demonstrated every quarter over the last 2 years. That brings me to what I believe is the most important change in the flyExclusive story. Investors should no longer view flyExclusive as a company in transition. By the fourth quarter, we expect to have removed all of the nonperforming aircraft. We have materially improved the dispatch availability and utilization. We have dramatically increased the productivity of our corporate infrastructure, and we are now producing sustained positive adjusted EBITDA.

The question is no longer whether flyExclusive can become profitable. The question is how much earnings power this platform can generate as we continue growing it. One of our largest opportunities is fractional ownership. Fractional retail sales increased approximately 34% year-over-year during the second quarter and approximately 29% during the first half. More importantly, fractional aircraft generate substantially better economics to flyExclusive than comparable leased aircraft. As fractional becomes a larger percentage of our fleet, we can grow revenue while simultaneously improving the economic profile of the fleet. We are seeing strong demand for the product, and we now have additional aircraft inventory coming into the business to support that growth.

There is an important distinction between what we have done over the last 2 years and what comes next. For 2 years, we have been removing aircraft while growing revenue. Now we have the opportunity to begin adding aircraft back into a dramatically more efficient operating platform. And we are not adding the same aircraft we removed. We are adding highly productive CJ3, XLS and Challenger aircraft with significantly higher dispatch reliability, utilization and revenue expectations. The CJ3 and XLS class aircraft will generate approximately $5 million of annual revenue each. A Challenger can generate approximately $10 million annually.

The economics of fleet growth today are, therefore, fundamentally different than they were several years ago. We already have the pilots, maintenance infrastructure, sales organization, technology and corporate platform required to operate at scale. Incremental aircraft can generate significant contribution without requiring a corresponding increase in corporate infrastructure. This is where the operating leverage we have spent the last 2 years creating becomes particularly powerful. Our recently completed Jet.AI transaction is a good example. We closed the transaction on July 13. It immediately added 3 light jet aircraft to our platform that will start contributing to our bottom line in the fourth quarter and included deposits for 3 additional new CJ3+ aircraft expected to deliver in early 2027. These aircraft will add little to no incremental corporate infrastructure or overhead.

The transaction also resources to support the continued expansion of our fractional program. We view Jet.AI as an opportunity to accelerate growth at precisely the point when the underlying flyExclusive platform has become significantly more efficient, scalable and profitable. Our core retail product, Jet Club, also continues to perform well. Second quarter Jet Club sales increased approximately 13% year-over-year, and the number of retail members increased approximately 5%. More broadly, approximately half of our revenue is now contractually committed and long-term objective is -- and our long-term objective is approximately 70%. That creates greater visibility, customer retention and predictability as we grow.

Speaking of growth and retention, according to private Jet Card comparisons 2026 annual survey, we now rank #2 in first-time customers and #1 in terms of subscribers who said they had renewed with their current provider. Our share of active users with private Jet Card comparisons has also increased to 16.2% across the entire space. These stats are a testament to the level of service we are providing. Our maintenance organization is another increasingly important part of both the operating and growth story.

External MRO revenue increased approximately 52% year-over-year during the second quarter and 38% during the first half of 2026. And we continue to see meaningful opportunity to grow external MRO revenue using infrastructure originally built to support our own fleet, but its strategic value extends well beyond external revenue. Controlling maintenance internally is a major reason we have been able to improve dispatcher availability, reduce aircraft downtime, reduce maintenance costs and operate a fleet of our scale efficiently. Our maintenance cost was $876 per flight hour in the first half of 2025 and is down to $723 per flight hour in the first half of 2026. This represents more than $150 per flight hour of savings and translates to nearly $3 million of quarterly bottom line improvement based on the approximately 20,000 flight hours per quarter we are flying, and we are confident there is significantly more opportunity to continue reducing our maintenance costs going forward.

We now operate 14 mobile service units, strategically positioned around the country, allowing us to perform more maintenance where our aircraft are located rather than repositioning them to Kinston. That directly increases uptime and dispatch availability. We have also made significant progress strengthening the balance sheet. Long-term notes payable declined from approximately $232 million at the end of the first half of 2024 to approximately $150 million a year ago and down to approximately $138 million today. That represents approximately $94 million and 40% of debt reduction in just 2 years.

The Jet.AI transaction that closed early in the third quarter also improved our balance sheet, providing approximately $12 million in liquidity. Additionally, we have multiple term sheets in hand that could provide up to $50 million of additional liquidity. That financing would provide substantially more capital than our currently forecasted growth capital requires.

Since the end of the second quarter, our cash position has improved materially, and we believe we have the capacity to fund our planned growth. So while transforming the fleet and investing in the business, we have also been aggressively deleveraging the balance sheet. As we enter the next phase of growth, we will remain extremely disciplined about our capital allocation and how we finance aircraft.

I want to close with one thought. 2 years ago, our challenge was to fix the operating model. We have spent that time removing unproductive capacity, modernizing the fleet, improving dispatch availability and utilization, increasing the productivity of our people and infrastructure and dramatically improving our financial performance. The results are now measurable, more revenue, fewer aircraft, higher utilization, lower SG&A, expanding margins and sustained positive adjusted EBITDA. The next phase is different. It is about taking this much more productive platform and growing it intelligently, adding the right aircraft, growing fractional ownership, increasing contractually committed revenue, continuing to improve dispatch and utilization and allowing incremental revenue to flow through a significantly more efficient cost structure.

The question for flyExclusive is no longer simply can we achieve profitability. We are now delivering sustained positive adjusted EBITDA. The opportunity now is demonstrating how much earnings power this platform can produce as we scale. I'm extremely proud of what our team has accomplished, and I believe we are still in the early stages of realizing the value of the business we have built.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Brad.

Bradley Garner

Thank you.

As Jim emphasized, the second quarter of 2026 was the result of a platform that's been rebuilt end-to-end and is now beginning to realize efficiency and scale that are driving measurable results on a consistent basis. This is a platform story now, not a turnaround story. And everything I'll walk you through is the financial evidence of that. I'll add some detail behind the structural improvements and the operating leverage we're seeing across our revenue lines, margins, balance sheet and capital allocation.

flyExclusive generated consolidated revenue of $111.1 million for the second quarter, representing a 22% increase from $91.3 million in the second quarter of 2025. The top line growth was broad-based with each of our revenue lines materially contributing to that growth. Our core business, charter or flight revenue, which includes our wholesale, Jet Club, partner and fractional flying totaled approximately $103.9 million, up 20% year-over-year. This growth was supported by not only stronger utilization, as Jim highlighted, but a healthier fleet mix and increasing demand across the board in our customer base.

Flight hours for the second quarter were up 8% compared to Q2 2025, totaling 20,040 flight hours. This volume represented the second highest quarter's flight activity in company history, narrowing trailing Q4 of 2025. We achieved that volume on a fleet that was 6% smaller than a year ago. Our core fleet utilization, defined as flight hours per aircraft per month increased to 81 hours, a 14% increase compared to prior year. The continued increase in our utilization underscores the operating leverage in our vertically integrated platform.

The second quarter continued to see an improvement in our fleet mix. The Challenger fleet totaling 10 aircraft at quarter end drove a $9 million increase in revenue compared to Q2 of '25 and continued delivering accretive unit economics and reinforcing our thesis for our fleet modernization efforts focusing on the Challenger aircraft. Our light jets, the CJ3s, generated revenue during the quarter of $32 million, an increase of 36% compared to prior year. The demand for our light category underscores the strategic value of the assets we acquired in the Jet.AI transaction, namely the $4.1 million in deposits, which secures the delivery of 3 new CJ3 aircraft in the first quarter of 2027.

On revenue mix, our contractually committed demand from our fractional, Jet Club and partner programs remain strong. We strategically are focused on continuing shifting to a higher contractually committed revenue, which increases visibility into demand, enhances deployment and allocation of maintenance resources to positively impact dispatch availability and improves visibility into profitability.

Our wholesale business continues to be a critical lever and growth driver. Wholesale is not, however, a substitute for our contractually committed retail demand. It is an important yield management tool that allows us to monetize available aircraft capacity around that demand. During the second quarter, wholesale revenue increased 35% compared to Q2 2025 to roughly $63.1 million.

Fractional sales revenue on a GAAP basis grew approximately 51% year-over-year to $2.8 million during the quarter. As we've said previously, GAAP fractional revenue reflects the amortized benefit of activity over a contract period and does not reflect the activity in a given quarter. Retail fractional sales and flight fund deployments represent a clear picture into the activity during a given quarter. Fractional share sales and flight funds totaled $14.6 million for the quarter, an increase of 34% year-over-year, driven by increased demand and velocity of the Challenger fractional offerings. We believe that the second half of 2026 will continue to outpace 2025, just as we delivered in the first half of this year.

In the second quarter, we launched a new Jet Club program, JC26, which is a simplified all-in pricing program that more closely aligns with how customers actually use private aviation. This new offer has driven both an increased demand and pipeline for our cornerstone membership program. Jet Club retail sales in the second quarter totaled approximately $30 million, representing an increase of 13% compared to Q2 of 2025. Jet Club members contributing to revenue during the second quarter totaled 997, up approximately 5% year-over-year.

Finally, external MRO revenue, which Jim highlighted, was approximately $4.4 million on a GAAP basis, an increase year-over-year of 52%. We recently announced a $30 million grant in partnership with the State of North Carolina to expand our MRO footprint by adding over 100,000 square feet of hangar space, which will significantly expand the capacity of the MRO business. This significant investment and the resulting capacity expansion, coupled with our growing backlog in our Starlink dealership, state-of-the-art paint shop and interior operations positions the MRO as a significant growth channel with high margins and low CapEx.

Turning to profitability. Gross profit for the quarter was approximately $22.7 million, up approximately 65% year-over-year, and gross margin expanded to 20.4% in the second quarter, an improvement of roughly 539 basis points compared to Q2 of '25 and 1,250 basis point improvement over Q2 of '24. That expansion reflects the compounding benefit of the same structural improvements Jim described a few moments ago.

First, continued gains in dispatch availability, which, as we mentioned, each 1% improvement represents $2.5 million of incremental annual contribution that falls directly to the bottom line. Second, our improving fleet mix, newer CJ3s, XLS and Challenger aircraft carry meaningfully lower unscheduled maintenance costs than the legacy aircraft they replaced. Third, the ongoing benefit of our vertically integrated MRO and MSU network, which continues to reduce third-party maintenance reliance and lowers our maintenance cost per flight hour. And last, improved core fleet utilization. We're spreading a meaningfully larger revenue over a fixed cost base.

I'd also like to address the fuel cost environment directly and its impact to our business, particularly given the elevated pricing tied to the conflict in the Middle East. During the quarter, we saw the price of Jet A fuel peak at $7.33 a gallon, up from an average of around $5 a gallon in Q1 of 2026. We were able to effectively pass those fuel cost increases to both our wholesale and retail channels. While higher fuel prices created some pressure on reported gross margin during the quarter, our ability to pass those costs through meant the impact on profitability was immaterial. Importantly, we saw no discernible impact on customer demand. As fuel costs normalize, we would expect that dynamic to become a modest tailwind to gross margin rather than a headwind.

As Jim mentioned, for the third consecutive quarter, we've produced positive adjusted EBITDA. In the second quarter, adjusted EBITDA was approximately $4.2 million compared to a loss of approximately $5.2 million in the second quarter of 2025, marking an improvement of over $9.4 million year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was approximately 3.8%, an improvement of roughly 954 basis points year-over-year. Three consecutive quarters of positive adjusted EBITDA is evidence that flyExclusive is no longer a story about reaching positive adjusted EBITDA. It's a story about the earnings power this platform can generate.

SG&A expense for the quarter was approximately $22.3 million or 21.1% of revenue, an improvement of 217 basis points compared to Q2 of 2025. Revenue per SG&A headcount, a measure of effectiveness and efficiency for the quarter was approximately $529,000, up approximately 12% relative to the second quarter of last year. We have a leaner overhead, which we believe will continue to produce further operational leverage as we continue to grow.

Turning to the balance sheet and liquidity. We ended the second quarter with cash and cash equivalents of approximately $14.3 million compared to $18.7 million at the end of first quarter and $15.8 million a year ago, a modest year-over-year decline that I want to address directly. The marginal decline in our cash balance reflects 3 factors: continued debt paydowns, ongoing fleet capital expenditures tied to our modernization initiative and the timing of the Jet.AI transaction, which closed just after quarter end. For those reasons, we don't believe the June 30 cash balance by itself provides a complete picture of our current liquidity position.

We closed the merger transaction with Jet.AI shortly after quarter end, which resulted in roughly $15 million of acquired assets, approximately $5.3 million in cash, approximately $5.8 million of an equity position in SpaceX and $4.1 million in deposits securing future CJ3+ deliveries. Our intention is to liquidate the SpaceX shares to continue to provide capital for our growth initiatives. The deposits will provide benefit in the first quarter of 2027 when the CJ3+ aircraft are delivered.

With the additional post quarter end liquidity generated from the Jet.AI closing, combined with the additional capital options Jim referenced, we believe we are positioned to fund our planned growth while remaining disciplined about dilution and our overall cost of capital. More broadly, our capital allocation approach remains disciplined. We prioritize aircraft acquisitions with accretive unit economics that expand free cash flow generation over time, consistent with the returns-focused approach Jim described rather than holding cash for its own sake. We evaluate all financing and capital alternatives against their impact on shareholder dilution, our overall cost of capital and the impact to profitability and free cash flow generation, and we intend to act only when terms are accretive.

On the liability side of the balance sheet, since 2024, we've reduced long-term notes payable by approximately $94 million, including $12.4 million, an approximate 8% reduction during the first half of this year alone, down to approximately $137.9 million in total. We are focused intently on continuing to delever the balance sheet while balancing continued investment in expanding our fleet.

On the forward outlook, Jim covered our expectations for the third quarter a moment ago, and we're confident in our near-term continued growth in the back half of this year. As to the longer-term opportunity, I want to be precise about our posture. Our investor presentation includes a framework laying out the primary levers we believe drive adjusted EBITDA margin from here, continued SG&A leverage, further gains in fleet utilization and dispatch availability as we continue to modernize the fleet with additional CJ3+ and Challenger acquisitions, growth in our fractional and Jet Club programs and continued expansion of the MRO capitalizing on our Starlink authorized dealership and $30 million grant from the state of North Carolina. That framework points to an adjusted EBITDA margin opportunity in the double digits as those levers play out over time. As evidenced from our financial results, we've built the foundation to continue creating additional scale and profitability and realize this longer-term opportunity.

To close, the financial evidence is increasingly clear. Revenue is growing, margins are expanding, overhead is becoming more efficient, the balance sheet is deleveraging and adjusted EBITDA continues to improve. Importantly, the operating levers driving those results still have substantial runway. We believe that combination positions flyExclusive to continue expanding profitability as we scale.

But none of this happens without our people, to our pilots, maintenance technicians and operations professionals who deliver reliability every single day, to our sales teams converting that reliability into growth, into our MRO and mobile service unit teams turning what used to be a cost into a profit center and to our finance, technology and corporate teams who build the infrastructure to scale all of it. Thank you. What you built together is now speaking for itself in the numbers.

Thank you all again. And now I'll turn it back to the operator.

Operator

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this event. Thank you for attending, and you may now disconnect your lines.