Joby’s Momentum Continues with “USD180 million New Investment” and Q1 Financial Results Showing “Strong Balance Sheet of USD978 Million Cash”

Joby Avi­a­tion can do no wrong at present. Yet, six months ago, Bleeck­er Street Research wrote a damn­ing piece head­ed “Uber Meets Tes­la In The Sky Is Set To Crash And Burn.” evtolinsights.com wrote sev­er­al crit­i­cal arti­cles about Bleecker’s seem­ing­ly bla­tant and despi­ca­ble attempt to encour­age investors to short the stock. We are delight­ed to see how Joby not only with­stood these slings and arrows, but is now soar­ing towards a very bright future.

Joby Avi­a­tion: “Actions Speak Loud­er Than Words”

This is high­light­ed by an announce­ment yes­ter­day that Bail­lie Gif­ford, a major Tes­la share­hold­er and a USD280 bil­lion insti­tu­tion­al stock hold­er, is invest­ing a fur­ther USD180 mil­lion with Joby, not for­get­ting the USD978 mil­lion cash (exclud­ing this new invest­ment) with­in the bal­ance sheet of the eVTOL com­pa­ny, shown by its Q1 finan­cial results this week.

The press release states, “Bail­lie Gifford’s finan­cial com­mit­ment is a tes­ta­ment to the growth and poten­tial of the eVTOL sec­tor and sets Joby fur­ther apart in its lead­er­ship in eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­ing, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and ser­vice devel­op­ment.”

A spokesper­son from the finan­cial insti­tu­tion com­ment­ed, “We wel­come the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing Joby as they move into a man­u­fac­tur­ing scale-up phase and deliv­ery of air­craft into ser­vice. It is impor­tant as long-term investors to main­tain our approach of back­ing trans­for­ma­tion­al com­pa­nies to build new growth indus­tries.” 

High­lights from Q1 Finan­cial Results include:-

: The Bail­lie Gif­ford invest­ment - Will accel­er­ate air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ing and enable Joby to cap­i­tal­ize on rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties with the Depart­ment of Defence, while com­plet­ing FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for com­mer­cial ser­vice (begin­ning in 2025).

: Air­craft momen­tum — The first com­pa­ny-con­firm­ing air­craft is near­ing com­ple­tion and is on track to roll out, as planned, in the first half of this year.

: FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion progress — Joby has com­plet­ed the major­i­ty of work required on the Joby side of stage three of FAA type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (out of five stages). 

: DOD con­tract — Joby’s USD55M con­tract exten­sion with DOD (bring­ing the total con­tract val­ue up to USD131M) includes the pro­vi­sion of up to nine air­craft, with the first two to be sta­tioned at Edwards Air Force Base in ear­ly 2024. This has the poten­tial to be the first rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing ser­vice in the eVTOL sec­tor.

JoeBen Bevirt

Com­ment­ing on the results, JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby, remarked, “Already in 2023 we’ve achieved sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones in pro­duc­tion, test­ing and fund­ing, and I’m incred­i­bly excit­ed about our progress as we move towards our goal of launch­ing com­mer­cial ser­vice in 2025.”

He added, “The deci­sion by Bail­lie Gif­ford to invest fur­ther in Joby is a tes­ta­ment to their long-term belief in the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of trans­porta­tion and their track record speaks for itself. We couldn’t be more proud to have their sup­port.”

Joby also made anoth­er announce­ment this week, but this may not please some of its share­hold­ers who may have bought the stock at USD5 a share or more.

Joby Announces Pric­ing of Pub­lic Offer­ing

To access even more mon­ey to help car­ry out, in par­tic­u­lar, the high­ly expen­sive, yet crit­i­cal stage of man­u­fac­tur­ing its eVTOLs, Joby has announced the pric­ing of a pub­lic offer­ing of 43,985,681 shares at USD4.10 each, there­fore, encour­ag­ing major insti­tu­tion­al investors like Bail­lie Gif­ford to invest. This only dilutes the num­ber of shares avail­able. The offer­ing is expect­ed to close on May 5th.

The gross pro­ceeds are expect­ed to be approx­i­mate­ly USD180 mil­lion before deduct­ing esti­mat­ed offer­ing expens­es, so this “pub­lic offer­ing” appears to be specif­i­cal­ly designed for Bail­lie Gif­ford.

The press release explains, “Joby intends to use the net pro­ceeds from this offer­ing, togeth­er with exist­ing cash, cash equiv­a­lents and mar­ketable secu­ri­ties, to fund its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing efforts, pre­pare for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions, and for gen­er­al work­ing cap­i­tal and oth­er gen­er­al cor­po­rate pur­pos­es.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jobyaviation.com/

(Top image: Joby Avi­a­tion)