As he campaigns in one of the nation’s most competitive U.S. Senate races, Montana Republican Tim Sheehy recounts how he started an aerial firefighting business in his barn and built it into a publicly traded company on the front lines of increasingly dangerous wildfires. “That’s a success story,” he said in a June television interview.
Reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in recent months tell a different story about Bridger Aerospace, known for its “Super Scooper” planes that can remove up to 1,400 gallons at a time from a body of water to dump on a nearby wildfire.
Bridger is facing a cash crunch so dire that there is “substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue,” according to public filings that show the company lost $77.4 million last year and $20.1 million in the first three months of 2024. Several directors have left, including one who flagged concerns about internal auditing, as an unusually slow wildfire season in 2023 put the company at risk of defaulting on its debt.
And then last month, Sheehy said he couldn’t devote enough time to running the company and resigned — a move that Bridger, which had promoted his key role in “every facet” of the business, previously said would happen if he was elected to the Senate.
“The business has disappointed,” said Vince Martin, a North Carolina-based investment analyst and blogger who has examined the SEC filings. “As a result, they don’t have a ton of room for error.”
In response to questions about the company’s finances, the Sheehy campaign released a statement saying, “Tim is proud of the successful company he created, the jobs he created, and he is proud to be an active firefighting pilot protecting our communities and our public lands.”
Bridger, in a statement, noted steady revenue growth at the “fast-growing, ambitious company” over the past five years, adding that it “has materially enhanced the composition and capabilities of its board of directors to lead the company in its next stage of growth.”
The company’s struggles have received little national attention even as Sheehy competes in a closely watched contest that could determine which party controls the Senate. Voters in the deep-red state of Montana heavily back former president Donald Trump — who endorsed Sheehy earlier this year — but have elected Democratic incumbent Jon Tester three times.
“He better win,” Trump said Friday night at a rally with Sheehy just 11 miles from Bridger’s headquarters at the Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport.
Sheehy, 38, has attracted national support largely on the strength of his biography as a war hero and entrepreneur, but his first campaign for public office has exposed some potential vulnerabilities.
Sheehy, an ex-Navy Seal who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, has faced scrutiny over an incident involving a firearm in Montana’s Glacier National Park in 2015. Documents show Sheehy told a park ranger at the time that he accidentally shot himself in his right arm and the wound was treated at a hospital. Sheehy told The Washington Post he did not shoot himself but had lied to the ranger, a federal law enforcement officer, to protect him and his platoon-mates from a potential military investigation into an older bullet wound he said he got in Afghanistan in 2012. He has talked about being shot in the arm in combat while campaigning.
He has also emphasized his business experience, telling voters that he has signed “the front of the paycheck, not just the back” while condemning Congress for the ballooning national debt.
“I’m a business owner,” Sheehy said during a March campaign event. “If my business isn’t doing well, I don’t get paid.”
Yet amid Bridger’s significant losses, Sheehy has received millions of dollars in compensation. He received a $2.3 million bonus on top of a $149,000 base salary in 2023, according to SEC filings, and a bonus of $4.4 million and a $450,000 base salary in 2022, as the company lost $42.1 million. Sheehy received additional income leasing two planes to Bridger and co-owning a business that provides flight training, SEC filings show. Sheehy also sold a plane to the company for $3.9 million; the filings don’t detail if he turned a profit or loss.
“That itself is not wrong, but it doesn’t look great,” said Dhierin-Perkash Bechai, an analyst at AeroAnalysis International, which covers the aerospace and defense industries, referring to Sheehy’s bonuses and additional income from Bridger. “While the company is bleeding cash, Sheehy is still making money.”
Other experts who track the company are more optimistic. Austin Moeller, a New York-based analyst with Canaccord Genuity who said he has met with Sheehy and other executives while researching Bridger, noted the forecast for a busier fire season in 2024. Bridger is cutting costs and expanding operations into Canada and Europe, he said, while lenders have been willing to work with the fledgling public company. Bridger also has multiyear contracts with federal agencies totaling $226 million.
“Tim did a good job as CEO running the early-stage public company, and the current management has the right experience,” Moeller said. “If they need more capital, they have an agreement in place to raise that, so I don’t think there’s any risk of the company going bankrupt.”
At the Friday rally with Trump, Sheehy said he had created hundreds of jobs and called Bridger “a Montana success story.” He described how he personally flies planes, saying “Just last week I was out water bombing, protecting your land.”
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Sheehy founded Bridger Aerospace in late 2014, after a celebrated Naval career in which he was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He and his wife were starting a new life on 60 acres they purchased near Bozeman, Mont. Sheehy had $300,000 in savings and $100,000 from his parents to settle in Montana and start a new business with a handful of fellow veterans, according to his memoir, “Mudslingers.”
“I can honestly say that the goal was not to become multimillionaires,” he wrote. “The goal was to create a viable business in a region of the country where we wanted to live and to provide jobs that would support the people of that region while doing work that mattered in some way.”
Aerial firefighting seemed promising at a time when wildfires were ravaging the West. Private equity giant Blackstone became a crucial investor as Bridger sought to expand, and by 2022, the company had bought six Super Scoopers, which Sheehy has called “the AK-47 of aerial firefighting planes.”
Sheehy and his business partners also launched a drone company, Ascent Vision Technologies. A defense contractor bought Ascent for about $350 million in 2020, an “incredible” boost to its stakeholders, Sheehy wrote in his book. He personally netted about $75 million, Bloomberg reported.
Sheehy and his executive team started making aggressive moves to grow Bridger. In 2022, the company reached an agreement with Gallatin County, Mont., where it is based, to get access to the municipal bond market. The $160 million raised was slated to pay for two new airplane hangars and to expand the company’s fleet of Super Scoopers, which cost about $30 million each. The deal also came with an 11.5 percent interest rate and a requirement that the company have at least $8 million in cash on hand, public records show.
The company took another chance by merging with an investment corporation in early 2023 to go public. The merger could have added another $323 million to the balance sheet, according to a presentation to investors.
Instead, the merger was an early signal of the challenges ahead, costing the company nearly $17 million, public filings show.
Sheehy downplayed the result in a podcast interview, saying, “We didn’t have an acute need for any of the capital. We don’t need it to run the business. We don’t need it to grow organically.”
Six months later, director Debra Coleman quit the board, effective immediately — “a result of the functioning of the Board’s Audit Committee,” she wrote in a brief resignation letter in September, referring to a panel that typically reviews financial disclosures for accuracy.
Bridger responded that board members “continue to have full confidence in the governance and effective functioning of the Audit Committee Company,” filings show. Coleman, who had retired as a managing director in investment banking at Bank of America Securities, Inc., declined to speak publicly about her decision to leave.
One month after Coleman’s departure, the company canceled a public offering and plans to buy an aircraft company after a sharp decline in its stock price. Those setbacks punctuated the slowest fire season in more than two decades, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center. Bridger’s annual report for 2023 reflected significant challenges: more than $211 million in debt, the possibility of default on the $160 million bond deal and a violation of the terms of a $12.9 million bank loan.
“Our liquidity position raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern,” the report said. “We have incurred significant losses since inception, and we may not be able to achieve, maintain or increase profitability or positive cash flow.”
In another potentially troubling sign, the company said it had “identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting.” In other words, the company could not guarantee that its books were accurate, though Moeller said this disclaimer is not unusual among small, newly public companies getting their accounting up to speed.
In a March call with investors, Sheehy touted the company’s record-setting revenue of $67 million in 2023 despite an unusually slow fire season. “While each fire season has its own seasonal and regional fluctuations and complexions, the overall trend of larger wildfires and longer fire seasons continues,” he said.
When Montana-based media outlets covered Bridger’s poor financial performance, the company pushed back at what it called “politically motivated attacks.” Bridger said the media was taking corporate statements out of context and exaggerating the risks and disclaimers it is legally required to put in SEC filings.
“By highlighting these losses and emphasizing risk factors in Bridger’s public filings, these reports do not paint an accurate picture of the future of Bridger Aerospace,” the company said in May. “The fact is that Bridger has been a Montana success story.”
But in another indicator of the company’s hunger for cash, Bridger raised $9.2 million in April by selling common stock to directors and executive officers — a quicker and less expensive way to raise money than selling to the public, analysts following the company said.
Two directors, Todd Hirsch, a Blackstone senior managing director, and McAndrew Rudisill, Bridger’s chief investment officer, resigned on May 31 from Bridger’s board. The departures were “not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matters relating to the Company’s operations policies or practices,” according to an SEC filing.
A Blackstone spokesperson said of Hirsch’s departure: “It is ordinary course for Blackstone to wind down its board representation when it only has an older, small, minority stake remaining in a company.” Rudisill did not respond to requests from The Post for comment.
Sheehy stepped down from the company on July 1, saying, “This exceptional team deserves a fully focused CEO during its busy fire season.” The new executive chairman said the board “has been preparing his possible departure,” though company filings had previously said Sheehy “will resign as Chief Executive Officer if he is elected to U.S. Senate.”
Sheehy, who is now campaigning full time, has a net worth spanning $102 million to $297 million, according to an analysis of his financial disclosure filed in June. He owns a home in Bozeman that property records show is valued at about $2.5 million, a 20,000-acre cattle ranch, rental property in Big Sky, Mont., and cabins in Polson, Mont.
The company’s July 1 report to the SEC notes the continued pressure to raise cash and the purchase of another aerospace company for $17.5 million. It also addresses the “material weaknesses” noted in the annual report, saying Bridger did not misstate its overall financial position.
Moeller says early reports of this year’s wildfire season show a dramatic increase over 2023. The company has also secured an “ATM agreement” with an investment banking firm that allows it to issue up to $100 million in stock.
Bridger, though, has less than $8 million in unrestricted cash as of the end of March — in violation of the requirements of the bond deal — and has reported that it might not be able to meet the minimum cash threshold over the next 12 months. Stock sold 18 months ago at $10 per share closed Friday at $3.27.
Paying down debt, buying four additional Super Scoopers and expanding operations outside the United States are key to the company’s survival, Martin said.
“They’ve simply got to start generating cash,” Martin said. “That’s going to be tough — but it’s possible, particularly if they get a strong fire season … It’s a very narrow path right now.”
Liz Goodwin and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
