Joby Aviation: “Actions Speak Louder Than Words”

“Actions speak loud­er than words and are more to be regard­ed” is a famous phrase that has rung loud and true since 1736 when the say­ing first appeared in an Amer­i­can doc­u­ment enti­tled Melan­choly State of Province. The author is apt­ly called ‘A Gen­tle­man from Boston’ who is writ­ing to a friend about the Mass­a­chu­setts bank­ing sys­tem.

Joby Avi­a­tion and Founder/CEO, JoeBen Bevirt, know this say­ing well. Not only has the com­pa­ny employed it to its best effect dur­ing the last week, but has shown their eVTOL com­pa­tri­ots that actions and not words are the best form of retal­i­a­tion against stock mar­ket short­ers, deter­mined to mali­cious­ly destroy the cred­i­bil­i­ty of a com­pa­ny.

Stock Mar­ket: Knives Are Out For Joby

The above sto­ry first broke 12 days ago when research com­pa­ny, Bleek­er Street, pub­lished an arti­cle charm­ing­ly enti­tled ‘Joby Aviation…is Set To Crash and Burn’.

The pri­ma­ry thrust being that Joby has over­stat­ed the num­ber of air­craft it is capa­ble of con­struct­ing. Then throw in the crash in Feb­ru­ary; uncer­tain­ty around FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion approval; ques­tion the start of com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in 2024; along­side the past record of start­up fail­ures in the gen­er­al avi­a­tion mar­ket… this siz­zling caul­dron of con­jec­ture, fear and doubt, is suf­fi­cient to sound the mega-buck bells for every mar­ket short­er around the globe, to jump onboard and in uni­son, dri­ve a company’s share price down.

So what do you do when faced with such a bar­rage of stock mar­ket hos­til­i­ty?

Pre­vi­ous eVTOL vic­tims like Lil­i­um remained silent. EHang, on the oth­er hand, went all out attack with Founder and CEO, Huazhi Hu, vocif­er­ous­ly rail­ing at the short­er, Wolf­pack Research. And Joby? You do what the Gen­tle­man from Boston sug­gests.

With­in days of the Bleek­er Street report, Joby calm­ly used Twit­ter for its response. Ini­tial­ly, two tweets were post­ed on Octo­ber 10th.

We’re excit­ed to be wel­com­ing more than 100 peo­ple to Mari­na, Cal­i­for­nia to take a look at our pilot air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties. [1/2]

We’ll be post­ing con­tent from the event from Thurs­day onwards, so stay tuned for the inside scoop from the event and a behind the scenes look at our air­craft. #eVTOL #Sus­tain­ableAv­i­a­tion [2/2]

Three days lat­er more com­ments were tweet­ed along­side a video and a series of pho­tos.

Today, we’re excit­ed to open the doors of our pilot pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties in Mari­na, CA, at our inau­gur­al Field Trip, to share our progress on man­u­fac­tur­ing and test­ing of our eVTOL air­craft.

Guests at Joby’s inau­gur­al Field Trip event last week were able to wit­ness our pre-pro­duc­tion pro­to­type air­craft com­plet­ing a flight test in real life. Here’s a lit­tle bit of what they expe­ri­enced!

Watch Video:

Guests at Joby’s inau­gur­al Field Trip event last week were able to wit­ness our pre-pro­duc­tion pro­to­type air­craft com­plet­ing a flight test in real life. Here’s a lit­tle bit of what they expe­ri­enced! pic.twitter.com/kxaz9kVgtl

— Joby Avi­a­tion (@jobyaviation) Octo­ber 16, 2022

100+ guests joined us for Joby’s inau­gur­al Field Trip last week. Here are some of the high­lights from the day! pic.twitter.com/sOvilKtrIA

— Joby Avi­a­tion (@jobyaviation) Octo­ber 17, 2022

And then the piece de resis­tance.

Ear­li­er this week, we announced our exclu­sive part­ner­ship and invest­ment from Delta Air Lines that is set to “rev­o­lu­tionise how peo­ple trav­el” in both the U.S and UK mar­kets.

This is Delta, one of the largest air­lines in the world.

: USD60 mil­lion ini­tial invest­ment with the poten­tial of USD200 mil­lion.

: An oper­a­tional part­ner­ship “to deliv­er sus­tain­able home-to-air­port trans­porta­tion to its cus­tomers, begin­ning in New York and Los Ange­les.”

: Com­pa­nies to inte­grate a Joby-oper­at­ed ser­vice into Delta’s cus­tomer-fac­ing chan­nels, pro­vid­ing cus­tomers who trav­el with Delta through New York and Los Ange­les the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reserve a seat for short-range jour­neys to and from city air­ports.

: The col­lab­o­ra­tion will be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive across the U.S and UK for five years fol­low­ing com­mer­cial launch, with the poten­tial to extend that peri­od.

Delta Air Lines part­ners with Joby Avi­a­tion to deliv­er home-to-air­port trans­porta­tion to cus­tomers

Joby fol­lowed this news up a day lat­er by tweet­ing:

It’s been a blast open­ing the doors to our pilot man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty. Thank you to every­one who joined our inau­gur­al Field Trip today in Mari­na, CA! Stay tuned for more con­tent over the next week!

We’ve come a long way from the sub­scale air­craft, built in 2015.

On the back of this news flow, the Joby share price has risen from its recent low of USD3.85 and yes­ter­day stands at USD4.48 (Mon­day).

Yet, momen­tum is impor­tant to keep a share price ris­ing, so, with all eVTOL eyes on the Osa­ka Expo in 2025, Joby has announced an appli­ca­tion to Japan’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB) for the val­i­da­tion of an FAA type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, believed to be the first of its type, along­side anoth­er announce­ment that Q3 2022 finan­cial results will be released on Novem­ber 2nd.

When a com­pa­ny coun­ter­acts neg­a­tive press with pos­i­tive news and actions, that not only shows care and under­stand­ing for the pain and finan­cial wor­ries of its investors, but offers a shared expe­ri­ence of fac­ing the slings and arrows, lead­ing to a greater sense of ‘togeth­er­ness’ and loy­al­ty. Remain­ing silent or hot­ly refut­ing the short­ing per­pe­tra­tors’ claims, per­haps, lacks a cer­tain integri­ty and even sin­cer­i­ty.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jobyaviation.com

(Images: Joby Avi­a­tion)