“Blade Air Mobility Sells Passenger Division to Joby For USD125 Million” 

This is a huge sto­ry for the AAM Indus­try.

Blade Air Mobil­i­ty announced this week, an agree­ment to sell its pas­sen­ger divi­sion to Joby Avi­a­tion for up to USD125 mil­lion, reports a press release. This includes oper­a­tions in the U.S and Europe, lounges and ter­mi­nals in key hubs, as well as the Blade brand. Oper­a­tions will con­tin­ue with the busi­ness func­tion­ing as a stand­alone enti­ty with­in Joby.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, both company’s share price soared on the announce­ment (August 4th). Joby’s went up close to 20 per­cent (clos­ing at USD20.39) and Blade’s over 14 per­cent (end of trad­ing day USD4.43). Oth­er AAM-relat­ed share prices were also pos­i­tive­ly affect­ed.

Blade flew more than 50,000 pas­sen­gers last year from a net­work of 12 urban ter­mi­nals sit­u­at­ed in some of the most impor­tant urban air mobil­i­ty mar­kets in the world. This includes ded­i­cat­ed lounge and ter­mi­nal bases at John F. Kennedy Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and Newark Lib­er­ty Air­port, as well as the West Side of Man­hat­tan, the East Side of Man­hat­tan and Wall Street. 

The company’s pas­sen­ger oper­a­tions are expect­ed to con­tin­ue as nor­mal, with the busi­ness con­tin­u­ing to be led by Blade founder and CEO Rob Wiesen­thal as a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of Joby.

Rob Wiesen­thal

The release explains, “By util­is­ing Blade’s exist­ing infra­struc­ture and grad­u­al­ly tran­si­tion­ing a large loy­al base of pas­sen­gers from con­ven­tion­al heli­copters to next-gen­er­a­tion eVTOL air­craft, Joby expects to be able to accel­er­ate its com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion while reduc­ing infra­struc­ture invest­ment require­ments and cus­tomer acqui­si­tion costs.” 

JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion, remarked, “This is a strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant acqui­si­tion that will sup­port the suc­cess­ful launch of Joby’s com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in Dubai as well as our sub­se­quent glob­al roll­out and con­tin­ued lead­er­ship in the sec­tor.”

He con­tin­ued, “Over the last decade, Rob and the team at Blade have built a world-class pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence that demon­strates the val­ue of ver­ti­cal lift. With access to the infra­struc­ture they have secured and the loy­al cus­tomer base devel­oped, we will be in the best pos­si­ble posi­tion to launch our qui­et, elec­tric air­craft as soon as cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is secured.”

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After the trans­ac­tion, Blade’s Med­ical divi­sion will remain pub­lic and re-brand as Stra­ta Crit­i­cal Med­ical. The release con­tin­ues, “This will focus on lever­ag­ing its asset-light plat­form to pro­vide mis­sion crit­i­cal logis­tics and med­ical ser­vices to hos­pi­tals and health­care providers through­out the coun­try, while strength­en­ing and grow­ing its busi­ness port­fo­lio both organ­i­cal­ly and through acqui­si­tions.”

Stra­ta will then gain access to Joby air­craft for med­ical use as part of a long-term eVTOL part­ner­ship between the two par­ties. It is expect­ed that the qui­et capa­bil­i­ties of Joby’s S‑4, cou­pled with its poten­tial to oper­ate at low­er costs than tra­di­tion­al heli­copters and oth­er short­er-range air­craft, will pro­vide val­ue to Stra­ta cus­tomers and an advan­tage over com­peti­tors.

Trin­i­ty Med­ical Solu­tions, the company’s oper­at­ing busi­ness in this health seg­ment and one of the largest air trans­porters of human organs for trans­plant in the U.S, will remain Strata’s whol­ly owned sub­sidiary.

Wiesen­thal com­ment­ed, “Blade’s mis­sion since incep­tion has been to accel­er­ate the tran­si­tion from tra­di­tion­al rotor­craft to elec­tric air­craft. There is no stronger com­pa­ny than Joby to help make this mis­sion a real­i­ty.”

He con­tin­ued, “Over the past eight years, we have suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ed one of the largest air trans­porters of human organs in the U.S. This trans­ac­tion enables us to become laser-focused on broad­en­ing our offer­ings across the med­ical logis­tics and solu­tions val­ue chain with a sin­gu­lar strat­e­gy and sig­nif­i­cant deploy­able cap­i­tal for acqui­si­tions and organ­ic expan­sion.”

One of Blade’s Man­hat­tan Heli­ports

The pur­chase price paid will either be in cash or Joby stock, sub­ject to cus­tom­ary indem­ni­fi­ca­tion hold­backs and includes up to USD35 mil­lion of earn-outs based on per­for­mance and reten­tion met­rics.

Will Hey­burn, Blade’s Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer, added, “This divesti­ture allows us to focus entire­ly on Trin­i­ty Med­ical, our fastest grow­ing and most prof­itable busi­ness line, which rep­re­sent­ed a major part of our 2024 earn­ings.”

Mean­while, Wiesen­thal will join Joby as CEO of Blade Air Mobil­i­ty and will also serve as Chair­man of the Board at Stra­ta. The trans­ac­tion is expect­ed to close in the com­ing weeks. A new tick­er trad­ing sym­bol for Stra­ta will be announced at a lat­er date.

Hey­burn and Melis­sa Tomkiel, Blade’s Pres­i­dent and Gen­er­al Coun­sel, will suc­ceed Wiesen­thal, serv­ing as Co-CEOs of Stra­ta while retain­ing their CFO and Gen­er­al Coun­sel roles, respec­tive­ly. Blade’s cur­rent Chair­man, Eric Affeldt, will be named Lead Inde­pen­dent Direc­tor.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.blade.com

https://www.jobyaviation.com

(Images: Blade Air Mobility/Joby Avi­a­tion)

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