As I look at the 12 months since I rejoined the management team at FLYHT I cannot help but be proud of what we have accomplished in the most challenging of environments. Throughout the year, we have completely transformed how we approach the business, our customers, our development, and our relationships with other companies in this industry. I am extremely thankful to the team at FLYHT that makes this a great place to work, a leader in customer satisfaction and an innovator in the aviation space we work in.
The July private placement was an important development for our company as it has strengthened our balance sheet to ensure our plans for non organic growth can move forward quickly, our development efforts can proceed as rapidly as possible, and our debt is restricted to long term, low coupon government paper which gives FLYHT a much more sustainable capital structure. The support our shareholders have shown in stepping up to purchase our private placement reflects the confidence they and our board of directors have in the strategic focus we are delivering on, as well as the team we have assembled to make this vision a reality. I am also very pleased that approximately 10% of the total offering of $6,621,615 was invested by directors, officers and management of the company.
We believe the move from a Satcom provider to a SaaS provider is expected to deliver higher returns to our shareholders as our sales team delivers new customers on the strength of the products our development teams have completed during the COVID lull.
We have a strong sales team that has expanded over the past year to include representation in SE Asia, and in June we hired Mr. Willie Cecil, a very well known industry professional in the wQAR space, who has already been adding tremendous value to our development team, sales team, and marketing group to secure our place in the wQAR space as the world moves from 2G/3G to 4G or 5G and beyond. The announcement of the AFIRS Edge, with the Certus path for our customers, opens whole new markets to us and our sales team is ready and trained to take advantage of the new communications protocols, both terrestrial and airborne, whether satellite or IFE based.
COVID continues to be an issue around the globe, with governmental reactions influencing how and when we will return to some form of normal, which has created uncertainty for our clients in their recovery. New activities in Cuba, South Africa, and other parts of the world, in part influenced by the uncertainties of COVID, will keep some areas of the globe from recovering as quickly as others. Although we are confident that the recovery will come in due time, forecasting when that will be remains challenging as we are dealing with global forces greater than any of us could have expected until recently.
Our financial results are beginning to reflect a recovery in customer confidence and give us increased confidence that airlines are coming back to life: the number of flights contributing to our SaaS revenues is recovering, albeit slowly; shipments of hardware kits has increased; and license revenues are starting to return reflective of an order from a long-time OEM customer. It will be interesting to see how the change in fleet configurations to meet the new traffic patterns will affect both used and new aircraft orders, but we feel confident that we have the approvals in place to capitalize on this shift. We are hopeful that the worst of the pandemic is behind us and that vaccinations continue to outpace new variants. We are ready and able to provide tools, products, services and certifications for our clients to help rebuild their businesses as they emerge from the pandemic.
As always, we thank our loyal customers, shareholders and board for their support and I thank the FLYHT team for their adaptability to be very productive during extremely unusual times, as we all can’t wait for normal to return.
Yours Truly,
William T. Tempany
Interim Chief Executive Officer