Blade goes public and looks to transition to eVTOL aircraft for its passenger-carrying services

Blade has become pub­licly list­ed on NASDAQ in order to help bol­ster the com­pa­ny’s growth with­in the urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket and accel­er­ate its tran­si­tion to eVTOL air­craft.

The deal — which was announced on Decem­ber 15th — was secured through a busi­ness com­bi­na­tion with Expe­ri­ence Invest­ment Corp, a pub­lic enti­ty spon­sored by an affil­i­ate of KSL Cap­i­tal Part­ners.

The trans­ac­tion will pro­vide $400 mil­lion in gross pro­ceeds — com­prised of Expe­ri­ence Invest­ment Corp. cash held in trust and $125 mil­lion ful­ly com­mit­ted PIPE (Pri­vate Invest­ment in Pub­lic Equi­ty) at $10.00 per share.

These funds will enable Blade to expand new urban air mobil­i­ty routes, its net­work of cap­tive pas­sen­ger infra­struc­ture, as well as its con­sumer-to-cock­pit tech­nol­o­gy stack. The trans­ac­tion is expect­ed to close in the first half of 2021 and val­ues Blade at an esti­mat­ed pro for­ma equi­ty val­ue of $825 mil­lion.

It will also see Blade merge into a sub­sidiary of Expe­ri­ence Invest­ment Corp., chang­ing its name to Blade Urban Air Mobil­i­ty.

Rob Wiesen­thal, Founder and Chief Exec­u­tive of Blade, said: “Ground mobil­i­ty has been rad­i­cal­ly trans­formed by soft­ware and bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy, as evi­denced by the rapid adop­tion of elec­tric vehi­cles. This trans­ac­tion pro­vides the cap­i­tal for Blade to prof­itably expand its urban air mobil­i­ty busi­ness using con­ven­tion­al rotor­craft today, while pro­vid­ing a seam­less tran­si­tion to eVTOL air­craft tomor­row.”

Blade pro­vides pas­sen­gers with a cost-effec­tive alter­na­tive to ground trans­porta­tion, offer­ing trav­el by heli­copter, sea­plane or jet to cities and pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions across the world. The com­pa­ny was specif­i­cal­ly designed to be scal­able using con­ven­tion­al heli­copters today, while poised to seam­less­ly tran­si­tion to eVTOL air­craft as soon as they are ready for pub­lic use.

It cur­rent­ly oper­ates in four key lines of busi­ness: short dis­tance between 60 and 100 miles and flights between all New York area air­ports and ded­i­cat­ed Blade lounges in Man­hat­tan heli­ports. Blade is also the largest trans­porter of human organs in north­east Unit­ed States, and this busi­ness is a crit­i­cal part of its growth strat­e­gy — espe­cial­ly as organ move­ments are expect­ed to be one of the first uses of eVTOL air­craft, before pas­sen­ger flights.

As part of its expan­sion strat­e­gy, Blade has formed joint ven­tures with local part­ners to pro­vide the tech­nol­o­gy, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, infra­struc­ture design and employ­ee train­ing. It’s first step launched heli­copter ser­vices in India in 2019, between Mum­bai, Pune and Shir­di.

Blade expects to use pro­ceeds from this trans­ac­tion to also fund expan­sion into new mar­kets, includ­ing the north­east cor­ri­dor and West Coast in the Unit­ed States, and inter­na­tion­al­ly in Asia. It will also pur­sue infra­struc­ture acqui­si­tions, to help improve unit eco­nom­ics for its cur­rent busi­ness, while enabling the com­pa­ny’s tran­si­tion to eVTOL air­craft.

Eric Affedlt, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer and Chair­man of Expe­ri­ence Invest­ment Corp., added: “We believe Blade has suc­cess­ful­ly lever­aged its first-mover advan­tage in urban air mobil­i­ty with pro­pri­etary cus­tomer-to-cock­pit tech­nol­o­gy, strate­gic and exclu­sive pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal infra­struc­ture as well as a loy­al cus­tomer base to catal­yse growth in the indus­try.

“They are well posi­tioned to for­ti­fy their busi­ness growth through expan­sion to new mar­kets glob­al­ly, as well as through invest­ment in infra­struc­ture to sup­port new foutes while accom­mo­dat­ing the future require­ments of eVTOL air­craft.”