“BETA Technologies Gambles on Top End USD34 a Share For NYSE Stock Market Flotation” 

What a hoo-ha it has been lead­ing up to the Beta Tech­nolo­gies flota­tion on the NYSE Stock Mar­ket. Kudos to theaircurrent.com for first break­ing the sto­ry back in Sep­tem­ber and since spec­u­la­tion has been rife.

Ini­tial­ly, the com­pa­ny was look­ing to price each share between USD27 and USD33, but once the open­ing date of Novem­ber 4th had been secured with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), BETA (also the tick­er sym­bol) and its finan­cial advi­sors con­tro­ver­sial­ly chose the high­er top end of USD34.

The BIG day was Tues­day Novem­ber 4th. Lead­ing up to the 2pm bell, the com­pa­ny released a press release stat­ing, “The price cho­sen for the pub­lic is USD34.00 per share and rep­re­sents an upsized pub­lic offer­ing of 29,852,941 shares of its Class A com­mon stock. In addi­tion, BETA has grant­ed the under­writ­ers a 30-day option to pur­chase up to an addi­tion­al 4,477,941 shares of Class A com­mon stock at the ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing price, less under­writ­ing dis­counts and com­mis­sions.”

The elec­tric air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er has raised over USD1 bil­lion via the IPO. The com­pa­ny is now val­ued at approx­i­mate­ly USD7.4 bil­lion after its mar­ket debut. 

Key investors include Ama­zon’s Cli­mate Pledge Fund; GE Aero­space; Black­Rock; and the Qatar Invest­ment Author­i­ty.

The funds raised from the flota­tion are intend­ed to sup­port BETA’s “indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion” efforts, specif­i­cal­ly to scale up man­u­fac­tur­ing and dri­ve down unit costs for their elec­tric air­craft. The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion, where its man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in South Burling­ton, Ver­mont, is capa­ble of con­struct­ing up to 300 air­craft a year.

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The open­ing day for its share price was a damp squib or as finance.yahoo wrote, “flat.” The price began at USD34, hit a low of USD32, then briefly peaked at USD38 before clos­ing on USD35. The fire­works often expect­ed with a new flota­tion nev­er hap­pened. Put sim­ply, the pub­lic investor is, per­haps, wait­ing for the stock to fall to a more sen­si­ble val­u­a­tion.

For some crit­ics sug­gest that BETA has got greedy. 

What did not help is that fly­ing taxi shares fell quite dra­mat­i­cal­ly on Mon­day and Tues­day and again on Thurs­day. Both Joby and Archer Avi­a­tion, for exam­ple, saw drops respec­tive­ly of well over 20 per­cent due to their Q3 results. 

Three BETA ALIA CTOLs in for­ma­tion

Mean­while, on Wednes­day the BETA share price ten­ta­tive­ly rose a fur­ther USD1.80 or to USD36.80 mir­ror­ing small ris­es in oth­er fly­ing taxi stocks on that par­tic­u­lar day.

It appears that many investors may well be wait­ing for bet­ter val­ue before enter­ing the fray. Giv­en the volatil­i­ty of such shares, the oppor­tu­ni­ty up-the-road to pur­chase below USD30 is high­ly like­ly.

Although, what the IPO has done is estab­lish BETA, along­side Joby, as the two U.S lead­ers and the most like­li­est to suc­ceed with Archer Avi­a­tion trail­ing in third place. Yet, giv­en the Mid­dle East will be a key mar­ket in the near term, it is impor­tant for BETA to secure sales, deals and col­lab­o­ra­tions in the region. Present­ly, both its rivals are well advanced in this area.

edit: The BETA share price dropped 3.51 per­cent on Thurs­day to USD35.51 or just USD1.51 rise per share since its Tues­day open­ing.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://beta.team

(Top image: Kyle Clark, Founder and CEO of BETA thumps the air in cel­e­bra­tion as the NYSE open­ing bell rings — Cred­it: BETA/Brian Jenk­ins)

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