Air T's Revenue Rose $44.6 Million. One Segment That Did Not Exist A Year Ago Contributed $55.9 Million.

by Adam Kowalczyk · August 17, 2026

Filings & Deals Reporter, The MicroCap Herald

Air T, Inc. (Nasdaq: AIRT) reported fiscal 2027 first-quarter revenue of $115.5 million on Friday, August 14, up 63% year over year. The company's own release puts the increase at $44.6 million, and credits the regional airline segment built around Rex, the Australian carrier, with $55.9 million of revenue. That single segment is larger than the whole increase.

That arithmetic only works one way, because Rex was not in the year-ago quarter at all. Air T's Form 10-Q for the three months ended June 30, 2025 reports total operating revenues of $70.9 million across five lines — overnight air cargo $30.6 million, commercial aircraft, engines and parts $22.0 million, ground support equipment $15.1 million, digital solutions $2.1 million and corporate and other $1.2 million — and no regional airline segment of any kind. The 10-Q for the quarter ended December 31, 2025 dates the start of consolidation to December 18, 2025, the day the Rex acquisition closed. The documents agree on the base: $70.9 million plus the stated $44.6 million increase is Friday's $115.5 million.

Air T did publish the breakdown, though not in the press release. The investor presentation filed alongside it, as an exhibit to the same August 14 Form 8-K, carries a segment revenue table running each business from the prior-year quarter to this one. Two lines on it are new: regional airline at $55.9 million and aviation leasing and asset management — the Crestone business — at $1.4 million. Of the four pre-existing lines, three are lower and one is higher: overnight air cargo $31.5 million to $31.2 million, commercial aircraft, engines and parts $22.4 million to $20.8 million, ground support equipment $15.1 million to $3.7 million, and digital solutions $2.1 million to $2.6 million. Summed, the businesses Air T already owned are down about $12.8 million. Subtracting from the release text alone lands in the same place: $115.5 million less Rex's $55.9 million and Crestone's $1.4 million is $58.2 million, against $70.9 million a year ago — a calculation by this desk, not one the company presents. Two of the presentation's prior-year segment lines run slightly above the 10-Q's, and a "Corporate, Other, and Intersegment Eliminations" line brings the table to the same $70.9 million consolidated total.

Almost all of the decline sits in one segment. Ground support equipment fell from $15.1 million to $3.7 million, a 76% drop that is $11.4 million of the $12.8 million. The company gives a reason in the same presentation, attributing it to "the lower sales from timing of an annual U.S. military order and a large one-time deicing truck order in the prior year that did not recur." Those presentation figures were read here in StockTitan's reproduction of the company's exhibit rather than in the exhibit itself; the press release text carries no segment table.

The profitability lines moved the other way. Air T reported a $12.8 million operating loss for the quarter, against $0.8 million of operating income a year earlier, while adjusted EBITDA was $0.8 million, down 45% from $1.5 million. That prior-year comparative does not match the $446 thousand of operating income the June 30, 2025 10-Q reported for the same three months. This desk looked for a bridge — a reconciliation slide, a restatement or reclassification note, a discontinued-operations disclosure — in Friday's release, in the accompanying presentation and in both 10-Qs on file, and found none. The $0.4 million difference is unexplained in the documents read here; it does not change the direction of the year-over-year swing.

Rex accounts for much of the distance between the operating and EBITDA measures: on $55.9 million of revenue it produced $1.9 million of adjusted EBITDA and a $7.7 million operating loss. The release explains that in its own words, saying the operating loss "is primarily attributable to $8.8 million of Depreciation & Amortization driven by the revaluation of the fleet at acquisition for purchase accounting." That is a non-cash charge created by the accounting for the deal, and it recurs while the stepped-up aircraft values are amortised.

The second number worth taking apart is the asset-management headline. In mid-June the company issued a release titled "Crestone Air Partners, an Air T Business, Completes Acquisition of Arena Aviation Capital, Surpassing $3.6 Billion in Assets Under Management." Inside, it wrote: "Assets under management (AUM) as of December 31, 2025, were $800 million; as of March 31, 2026, AUM had grown to $1.2 billion; and post-transaction, the combined platform now comprises $3.6 billion of AUM." Chief executive Nick Swenson was quoted in the same release saying Crestone "has grown from zero to over $3.5 billion dollars in assets under management in five years." Friday's release describes the platform in different terms: "The combined platform includes $3.0 billion of assets actively under management and $0.6 billion of assets committed under LOI: 124 aircraft and 17 engines."

Those two components add to the $3.6 billion the June headline carried. What no document read here does is connect them. The June release states its $3.6 billion as a single figure and does not break it into parts: read in full in three separate renderings, it contains no reference to letters of intent, to committed or contracted assets, to a pipeline, or to the aircraft and engine counts Friday's release supplies. Neither release contains a roll-forward, table or footnote reconciling the June figure to the August split, and no 10-Q covering the period between the two dates has been filed. Air T has not said that the June figure included assets under letter of intent, and it has not reported any decline in assets it manages. On the documents available, the composition of the June number is not stated either way, and Friday's release is the first to separate actively managed assets from committed ones.

Arena itself cost $33.9 million, split between $21.7 million of cash and $12.2 million of contingent consideration, and Blue Owl funded $10.0 million of that purchase for Class B preferred units representing 10.25% of the platform, leaving Air T with 83.9% of Crestone. The June release had put the same investment in different terms, at "an $80 million valuation post-merger for up to 12.5% of Crestone Air Partners, dependent upon Crestone performance" — a performance-dependent ceiling, against the fixed 10.25% Friday's release names. Both releases put Air T at roughly 83.9% of the business afterwards. Friday's release also gives Air T's quarter-end cash and restricted cash as $21.7 million, with $42.4 million available under lines of credit — a separate quantity that happens to round to the same number as the Arena cash payment.

The release repeats a long-running capital-allocation line: since current management arrived in October 2013 the company has "repurchased 840,855 shares, net of issuances, representing 31% of shares outstanding." Air T's 2026 proxy lists 2,691,664 shares outstanding as of the June 26, 2026 record date, and 840,855 divided into that count is 31.2%, matching the release's figure — the percentage tracks the shares that remain rather than the count the company began with. Measured against a base that still included the repurchased shares, the same 840,855 is closer to 24%. Both are defensible; they are not the same statement.

The risks are the ordinary micro-cap ones, sharpened by scale. Stockanalysis.com listed Air T's market capitalisation at $72.67 million as of August 13, 2026 — the day before these results, and before Friday's trading session, which no figure here reflects. Fewer than 2.7 million shares are outstanding, on the proxy's count, making the stock thin. The investor presentation, in StockTitan's rendering, puts gross debt at $248.8 million at quarter end against $210.6 million at the March 2026 fiscal year end, and debt net of cash at $231.6 million against $190.2 million, set against $21.7 million of cash and restricted cash and $42.4 million of undrawn credit lines. Air T's own 10-Qs show a total deficit, including non-controlling interests, of $2.9 million at June 30, 2025 and $2.1 million at December 31, 2025; neither 10-Q carries a going-concern qualification or any statement of substantial doubt, and the fiscal 2027 first-quarter 10-Q has not yet been filed. The $12.2 million of contingent consideration is marked to fair value each period rather than paid in fixed instalments, so it moves with Crestone's results both ways. And Air T's stake in the asset-management platform has been diluted in the course of building it: it held 90% of the common interests in Crestone Asset Management immediately before the June reorganisation and roughly 83.9% of the equity after it, with Blue Owl holding preferred units alongside.

Nothing in Friday's release contradicts the filings checked here, and nothing in those filings alleges a misstatement. What the quarter does is fold the first weeks of two acquisitions into a single growth rate while three of four legacy lines shrank, and describe an asset-management platform in terms the June announcement did not use. The fiscal 2027 first-quarter 10-Q, with its segment note and the Arena purchase-price allocation, is where both get tested.