Key Points
● Revenue Growth, Volume Pressure: AIR’s H1 2026 revenue rose 3.7% to $206.9 million, while Flavored Shisha Molasses shipments fell 9.0%, with price and mix doing most of the work to support growth.
● Shisha Remains the Core: Traditional shisha still accounts for nearly all of AIR’s revenue, while New Growth Categories represent only about 1% of group sales and have yet to become a second business of meaningful scale.
● Supply-Chain Risk Exposed: Disruption around the Strait of Hormuz drove a 38.6% decline in March shipments and prompted AIR to accelerate changes to its factory and logistics footprint.
● Transition Spending Accelerates: OOKA, Crown Switch, the Greentank investment and PMTA-related spending show AIR directing more capital toward closed systems, vaping technology and U.S. regulatory capabilities.
● The Post-Listing Test: AIR has shown that a hookah-centered company can enter public markets; the next question is whether its newer businesses can develop into a second source of meaningful revenue and profit.
2Firsts
Shenzhen, August 21, 2026
Three months after AIR Global PLC began trading on Nasdaq, the company has delivered its first half-year results as a public company, providing the clearest operating test yet of a transformation that 2Firsts has followed since before its listing.
In April, 2Firsts examined whether a company rooted in the culturally entrenched and fragmented hookah trade could evolve into a more scalable business built around brands, closed-system technology, regulatory capabilities and public capital. AIR’s May listing moved that thesis into the public markets. Its first earnings report now puts operating numbers behind it.
AIR reported first-half 2026 revenue of $206.9 million, up 3.7% from a year earlier. Yet shipment volumes of Flavored Shisha Molasses (FSM), still overwhelmingly its core business, fell 9.0%. A 14.0% increase in price and mix helped offset the decline, while adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Adjusted EBITDA) was broadly unchanged at $71.7 million.
The results sharpen the picture of AIR’s transition. Traditional shisha still generates almost all of its revenue and remains the group’s earnings base. At the same time, the company is committing more capital to vaping technology, closed systems and U.S. regulatory work. That strategy is becoming increasingly visible in its spending and partnerships, but it has not yet produced a second business of meaningful financial scale.
H1 2026 at a Glance
AIR’s first public half-year results show the resilience of its core business alongside the costs of listing, supply-chain disruption and diversification:
● Revenue: $206.9 million, up 3.7% year over year.
● FSM revenue: $204.7 million, up 3.4%.
● FSM shipment volume: down 9.0%; excluding Global Travel Retail (GTR), down 6.6%.
● GTR shipment volume: down 46.5%.
● Price/mix: up 14.0% globally, including 17.1% in the Middle East, Africa and Asia region.
● Gross profit: $116.8 million, up 2.4%.
● Adjusted EBITDA: $71.7 million, broadly flat from a year earlier.
● Net loss: $81.8 million, compared with a $31.9 million profit in H1 2025.
● New Growth Categories (NGC): $2.2 million in revenue, up 37.5% from a small base, with an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $7.9 million.
The reported net loss was heavily influenced by costs around the listing. AIR recorded $48.2 million of accounting expense mainly related to shares issued to the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) sponsor and $47.7 million of listing-related cash costs. Other items included $12.4 million of share-based compensation, $7.4 million of public-company readiness costs, $3.8 million of extraordinary supply-chain costs and about $2 million associated with accelerated U.S. regulatory filings.
But the first half was not only an accounting story. Cost of sales increased 5.5%, faster than revenue. Based on company figures, gross margin slipped to about 56.4% from 57.2% a year earlier. Net cash used in operating activities was approximately $0.1 million, compared with $9.0 million generated a year earlier, while cash and cash equivalents fell to $85.4 million from $119.5 million at the end of 2025.
For 2026 as a whole, AIR expects broadly stable shipment volumes, revenue growth of 4% to 6% and low- to mid-single-digit Adjusted EBITDA growth. The outlook therefore assumes a stronger second half following the shipment disruption seen earlier in the year.
Shisha Still Anchors the Business
The most important figure in AIR’s results may be the simplest one: $204.7 million of its $206.9 million in first-half revenue came from FSM.
For all the attention surrounding OOKA, Crown Switch and AIR’s broader inhalation ambitions, the company remains economically a shisha business.
What changed in the first half was the way that business produced growth. Shipment volume declined 9.0%, but AIR accelerated pricing to offset inflation and higher costs. Price and mix increased 14.0%, allowing FSM revenue to rise despite lower shipments.
The results suggest AIR retained meaningful pricing resilience in its established business, although the volume figures were also distorted by severe supply-chain disruption.
Pricing did not work equally well everywhere. In the Americas, revenue rose 3.4% and Adjusted EBITDA increased 17.2%, supported by price/mix and cost control. In the Middle East, Africa and Asia, revenue increased 4.0%, while Adjusted EBITDA declined 4.0% as supply-chain and public-company costs increased.
Europe provided the clearest counterexample. Revenue edged up 0.4%, but Adjusted EBITDA dropped from $1.8 million to just $0.1 million. AIR attributed the weakness to steep excise increases, declining volumes and insufficient enforcement against illicit products.
That performance illustrates the limits of pricing as a defense. Higher prices can protect revenue, but they cannot fully offset sustained volume pressure where taxation, illicit trade and regulation are reshaping the market.
AIR’s traditional shisha business therefore remains the financial foundation of its diversification, even as first-half cash generation weakened and the company increased spending elsewhere.
Hormuz Disruption Exposes Supply-Chain Concentration
The reporting period also exposed another characteristic of AIR’s business: geopolitical disruption in the Middle East can reach directly into global shipments, raw-material sourcing and manufacturing decisions.
The disruption came amid a sharp escalation in regional conflict from late February, which severely affected commercial shipping in and around the Strait of Hormuz. The International Maritime Organization said it had confirmed dozens of attacks on international shipping in the area in the months that followed.
AIR said approximately 70% of its historical shipment volumes had moved through the Strait of Hormuz. In March, shipment volumes fell 38.6% as its normal route became unavailable. The company said end-consumer demand remained resilient and purchase orders were preserved, with shipment growth resuming in June after alternative routes were established.
The disruption extended beyond delayed deliveries. AIR resorted to air freight for materials and finished goods and had to secure glycerin, a key ingredient, through short-term contracts at prices significantly above normal market conditions.
Those measures contributed to $3.8 million in costs classified as extraordinary. But not all conflict-related costs were excluded from Adjusted EBITDA. AIR said additional expenses from rerouting land and sea shipments, as well as other inflationary and situational increases, remained within normal operating costs.
The company is now accelerating a reorganization of its factory footprint to reduce long-term dependence on the Strait of Hormuz.
For shisha companies with geographically concentrated production and global distribution, AIR’s experience highlights a broader industrial question: how much supply-chain concentration can a global brand tolerate as geopolitical risk increasingly affects shipping, materials and manufacturing economics?
Beyond Hookah: Capital, Technology and Regulation Converge
AIR’s effort to diversify is becoming easier to see, but remains small against the traditional business.
New Growth Categories revenue rose 37.5%, albeit from a small base, to $2.2 million in the first half, driven by OOKA and the European launch of Crown Switch. The segment recorded an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $7.9 million as AIR continued investing in product development and commercialization.
NGC therefore represented only about 1% of group revenue. The strategy is becoming more concrete faster than its financial contribution.
The direction became clearer after the reporting period. On July 29, AIR invested $20 million in preferred shares of Canadian vaporization technology company Greentank Innovations at a pre-money valuation of approximately $170 million. AIR also obtained a warrant allowing it to increase its ownership by another 20% over the following 24 months at a $250 million valuation.
The transaction moved the AIR-Greentank relationship beyond product development. AIR gained a board nomination right, access to new technologies, enhanced commercial terms and long-term supply assurances. Greentank’s Quantum Vape platform powers Crown Switch, linking the equity investment directly to a product AIR is preparing for potential U.S. expansion.
AIR also recorded about $2 million in first-half costs associated with accelerating work on a U.S. Premarket Tobacco Product Application (PMTA), which the company said followed changes in U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) enforcement guidance relating to nicotine vapes and pouches.
The Greentank partnership ties hardware technology more closely to that regulatory strategy. AIR has cited pilot emissions testing on planned U.S. variants of Crown Switch which, based on comparisons with published data rather than a simultaneous head-to-head test, found lower levels of several selected harmful and potentially harmful constituents than certain FDA-authorized electronic cigarette products. AIR has also stressed that the pilot findings are preliminary and that further testing could differ materially.
Those findings form part of AIR’s regulatory evidence; they are not an FDA determination.
AIR says the timing and scale of future NGC revenue and Adjusted EBITDA contribution will depend on FDA acceptance of its PMTA applications. Under the FDA’s review process, however, acceptance is only an initial administrative step. It is followed by filing and substantive scientific review and does not constitute marketing authorization.
For AIR, this brings product design, atomization technology, scientific evidence, supply security and regulatory strategy into the same commercial framework.
It also extends a trend that 2Firsts highlighted in its July coverage of the Greentank transaction: relationships between vape brands and technology suppliers can move beyond procurement and joint development into equity ownership, governance and longer-term control of critical technology.
AIR has moved from customer and development partner to shareholder.
What AIR May Tell Us About Hookah and Vape
AIR remains one company, and its strategy cannot by itself establish a global industry trend. But as a publicly listed hookah business, it offers a rare view into a category that has historically operated with limited financial transparency.
Traditional hookah has long relied on an open ecosystem of shisha, charcoal, accessories, lounges and regional distribution. OOKA introduces proprietary hardware and consumables into that model; Crown Switch takes AIR into vaping; and the Greentank investment adds a direct link to upstream atomization technology and supply.
The boundary between a hookah company, a vape brand and an inhalation-technology business is becoming less clear.
Before AIR entered Nasdaq, 2Firsts asked whether a hookah-centered company could make the transition into public markets and a more institutionalized operating model. AIR has now crossed that threshold.
The question has changed.
The next test is whether AIR can turn its investments in vaping, closed systems and regulatory capabilities into a second business of meaningful scale and profitability beyond traditional shisha.
That will matter not only for AIR, but also for how the global hookah sector evolves as it comes into closer contact with technologies, regulation and business models long associated with the vape industry.
For more coverage of AIR and the development of the global hookah industry, continue to follow 2Firsts.
Cover image generated by AI.
