Joby Share Price “Relatively Unscathed During Stock Market Turmoil” 

eVTOL com­pa­ny share prices have been rel­a­tive­ly unscathed dur­ing the recent Stock Mar­ket Tur­moil. In the last month, for exam­ple, Joby has seen a drop of just 8.71 per­cent; Archer Avi­a­tion 14.32 per­cent; although EHang is the most affect­ed with a 39.73 per­cent drop. 

Of course, it doesn’t help if you are a Chi­nese com­pa­ny and why EHang gained the worst beat­ing, espe­cial­ly when Pres­i­dent Trump’s Trea­sury Sec­re­tary, Scott Bessent, has been doing the media rounds, telling the world that if the tar­iff war between Chi­na and Amer­i­ca con­tin­ues, the admin­is­tra­tion may con­sid­er delist­ing Chi­nese com­pa­nies from the U.S Stock Mar­kets. 

Joby has come out the least unscathed with Founder and CEO, JoeBen Bevirt, prob­a­bly as well-known now as any oth­er lead­ing Tech entre­pre­neur. With his vision of “sav­ing a bil­lion peo­ple an hour per day,” the com­pa­ny is the present West­ern leader in this space, although it still lags behind EHang. 

In a recent UK Dai­ly Tele­graph fea­ture, one of its major investors, Scot­tish Mort­gage Invest­ment Trust (SMIT), explains why it is sup­port­ing the elec­tric air taxi. While the amount invest­ed is undis­closed, they are known to have a sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence in the broad­er Joby Avi­a­tion ecosys­tem, con­tribut­ing to the com­pa­ny’s fund­ing rounds and over­all devel­op­ment. 

Tom Slater

Man­ag­er, Tom Slater, express­es his views on why SMIT is invest­ing.

He believes the Mid­dle East could be the busi­ness tip­ping point. Last Novem­ber, Bevirt and the city-state’s Crown Prince broke ground at Dubai Inter­na­tion­al Air­port on the first of four ver­ti­ports for Joby’s four-pas­sen­ger eVTOLs, known as S4s. The first pay­ing pas­sen­ger flights are slat­ed for lat­er this year. 

On a good day, a bumper-to-bumper jour­ney from the air­port to the lux­u­ry island of Palm Jumeirah cur­rent­ly takes 45 min­utes. If Joby is a suc­cess, that could be cut to 12 min­utes. Oth­er ver­ti­ports will be built at Dubai Mari­na and the Down­town shop­ping area.

In the U.S, Joby is await­ing approval from the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (FAA). Once the green light is giv­en, Bevirt can launch the first of its sky taxi ser­vices from Los Ange­les Air­port to down­town LA and from JFK Air­port to Man­hat­tan. The lat­ter jour­ney takes 50 min­utes by car, sev­en min­utes by air taxi.

Then there is the UK with recent news that the com­pa­ny will be part­ner­ing with Vir­gin Atlantic to fly major routes around the coun­try.

It was Tesla’s for­mer CFO, Deep­ak Ahu­ja, who intro­duced SMIT to Bevirt and Joby’s COO, Paul Scia­r­ra. The duo have assem­bled a lead­er­ship team that knows how to oper­ate at scale, can devel­op train­ing and safe­ty pro­grams, and ramp up man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Slater says that as with elec­tric cars, the swing fac­tor has been bat­ter­ies becom­ing lighter, cheap­er and more pow­er­ful. Joby’s engi­neers dis­trib­ute the pow­er between six pro­pellers. This removes the need for a heavy cen­tral engine and allows the air­craft to con­tin­ue fly­ing safe­ly if a pro­peller fails.

Anoth­er impor­tant unlock­ing fac­tor is noise. Skil­ful engi­neer­ing means that an S4 air­craft in flight sounds more like rush­ing wind than the ‘whump-whump’ of a heli­copter or ‘the whine’ of a drone. And with­out the dan­gers posed by giant swirling blades just above head height, urban oper­a­tions become fea­si­ble.

How­ev­er, the biggest inno­va­tion could be Joby’s pro­pri­etary Ele­va­teOS soft­ware, con­tin­ues Slater, to help pilots nav­i­gate and for pas­sen­gers to book. The firm intends to earn rev­enue from four sources: a rideshare taxi ser­vice; sell­ing air­craft to third par­ties; gov­ern­ment con­tracts; and main­te­nance ser­vices.   

Slater is also impressed by Joby’s “ear­ly focus on a cost-effec­tive and time-effi­cient man­u­fac­tur­ing process. It’s set­ting out to cre­ate a machine to make machines at Day­ton. Not just: how do we get an air­craft through FAA approval? More: how do we get approval for a set of process­es that will quick­ly let us run this oper­a­tion at a greater scale?” 

Ulti­mate­ly, SMIT’s major invest­ment rests on the prospect of share­hold­ers ben­e­fit­ting from the returns that come from the trans­porta­tion rev­o­lu­tion Joby hopes to bring about.

Fly­ing in New York City

The snag is this. If a longterm investor, no prob­lem for it will take a fair few years for the com­pa­ny to sus­tain an annu­al prof­it. And this may only occur after autonomous flights begin which could be at the ear­li­est from 2030, even 2035. Mean­while, any prof­its over the next 5 years will emerge from the Mid­dle East.

If a short to medi­um term investor, then Joby may not be the right fit as patience, in this case, is a virtue.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jobyaviation.com

News Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/

(Images: Joby Avi­a­tion)

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