Joby Aviation, Inc. (JOBY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the Joby Aviation Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Teresa Thuruthiyil, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon and evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Joby Aviation's Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. My name is Teresa Thuruthiyil, and I'm Joby's Head of Investor Relations. We will begin today with prepared comments from JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and Chief Executive Officer; and Rodrigo Brumana, Chief Financial Officer. For the Q&A portion of today's call, we will also be joined by our Executive Chairman, Paul Sciarra. Please note that our discussion today will include statements regarding future events and financial performance as well as statements of belief, expectation and intent. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. For a more detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our filings with the SEC and the safe harbor disclaimer contained in today's shareholder letter. The forward-looking statements included in this call are made only as of the date of this call, and the company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them. Also during the call, we'll refer both to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in our Q2 2026 shareholder letter, which you can find on our Investor Relations website, along with a replay of this call. With all of that said, I'll turn the call over to JoeBen.

Thank you, Teresa, and thank you everyone for joining us today. It's an incredibly exciting time to be part of our industry. After many years of hard work designing, building, testing and flying our aircraft across thousands of flights and tens of thousands of miles, we're now at the point where we're preparing for commercial service. I'm pleased to confirm that next month, we intend to complete our first eIPP flights in Texas. The White House-backed eIPP program has the potential to significantly accelerate our path to commercial service, and we're grateful to the FAA for their continued partnership as we look ahead to these flights. The flights in Texas will be the first of many that bring Joby together with state and local bodies as well as the FAA to prove out the value and operational maturity of our technology. Over the course of a week, we'll be flying routes across the Dallas-Fort Worth area that lay the groundwork for future commercial operations. These Vertical Takeoff and Landing flights will demonstrate how our aircraft can transform travel across a major metropolitan area. Over time, and with extensive involvement and oversight from the FAA, we expect flights under the eIPP program to progress from those with only a pilot on board to those carrying nonpaying passengers and eventually paying passengers. And in preparation for those flights, I'm pleased to confirm that we continue to target carrying our first passengers this year. As we look ahead to commercializing our service, I've never been more excited about the potential for vertical lift. We see that potential demonstrated every day through our Blade business as customers choose to pay for journeys that give them meaningful time back. We acquired Blade just about a year ago with strong conviction in their team, their product and the opportunity presented by the network they've developed across the U.S. and the South of France. Over the past year, that conviction has only strengthened. The business continues to grow quarter-on-quarter, so much so that the core constraint we're facing on many routes is now aircraft availability rather than passenger demand. The number of seats sold in Q2 was up over 50% from the same time last year, marking Blade's best-performing Q2 on record in that respect. This quarter also saw the highest number of new flyers going to and from New York City airports since 2023, while route expansions contributed to more than 40% year-on-year growth in Hamptons revenue. We also saw positive impact from a number of key events around the world, including the World Cup and the U.S. Open here in the U.S. as well as the Monaco Grand Prix, where we sold roughly 4,500 seats to or from the race. The last quarter was so strong, in fact, that today, I'm pleased to confirm that we are raising our full year revenue guidance after Blade's revenue grew 32% year-on-year in the first half. Looking ahead, we're drawing on Joby's existing relationship with Uber to drive increased demand. This is in addition to a new partnership between Blade and Visa signed during the quarter, which gives Visa Infinite consumer and business cardholders access to a premium suite of benefits on Blade's Signature Airport service in New York. Vertical Takeoff and Landing has been our North Star at Joby since day 1, and our experience integrating Blade over the past year has only reinforced how central it is to the customer experience. Flying between airports is something aviation has done successfully for a long time. The real opportunity comes from taking customers from where they begin their journeys to where they want to go, saving them the time and friction of traveling to an airport. Blade's experience with the New York to Hamptons service brings this point to life. Customers can book a conventional fixed wing aircraft from Teterboro to Montauk today for roughly 1/3 of the price of a helicopter flight from Manhattan, and yet utilization of the helicopter service remains significantly higher. That tells us just how much customers value the time savings and convenience of beginning their journey in the city and avoiding the airport altogether. Being able to take off vertically is a fundamental part of what drives Blade's success today, and we believe the opportunity becomes even greater with the introduction of the Joby aircraft, which is quieter, less expensive to operate and designed specifically for journeys like these. In July, I had the opportunity to experience this convenience for myself, flying to and from the Farnborough Air Show. Despite being one of the world's largest air shows, everyone still arrives by road or rail, on journeys that can take up to 2 hours. We ran our Blade service there for the first time, connecting Central London to Farnborough Airport in just 18 minutes, selling out seats on several days and underscoring the value of vertical lift in the U.K. market. While we were at Farnborough, we signed a multi-year definitive agreement with Virgin Atlantic that builds on that opportunity and sets out a path for us to launch service across the U.K. with a particular focus on London and Manchester. We also held more than 150 meetings with regulators and stakeholders from markets around the globe, including a veritable alphabet soup of regulators that included the DfT and the CAA from the U.K., EASA from Europe, GACA and the GCAA from the Middle East, the U.S. DOT and the FAA as well as ANAC from Brazil, to name just a few. And there was one common thread amongst all these meetings. They are just as excited about vertical lift as we are and are watching Joby's progress closely. They're seeing the positive ripple effects of the eIPP program, and they're asking how they can unlock the same level of momentum we're seeing in markets like the U.S. and the UAE. As well as seeing great support on the regulatory side in those markets, we're also making incredible progress with infrastructure. Earlier this week, we announced a strategic partnership with Atoms, the industrial AI infrastructure company founded by Travis Kalanick. Travis co-founded Uber in 2009, the same year that I founded Joby. And since our first jam session in 2015, the one that seeded Uber Elevate, he's been all in on electric flight. He's one of the most dynamic founders of this generation with a rare ability to see the whole system and turn ambitious ideas into real industries. Together, we're working on doing just that again with a joint understanding that the next revolution in transportation requires not only new vehicles, but also new infrastructure. Our shared vision goes beyond air taxis. With the rollout of autonomous vehicles gaining significant momentum, we see an opportunity to create a new class of mobility hub designed from the outset to support both technologies. These hubs will combine takeoff and landing and charging for electric aircraft with charging and depot services for autonomous vehicles, sharing fixed costs, creating stronger operating economics, delivering seamless journeys for our customers and even greater value for the communities in which we'll operate. The Atoms team is world-class with deep expertise across acquisition, financing, development, electrification and permitting. And after 8 years of working in stealth, recently raised $1.7 billion with lead investment from a16z to support their growth. Our own aviation experts will now work alongside the Atoms team to identify and develop the best sites for our network. We'll be focusing initially on Florida, New York and Texas, the same markets where we're preparing to launch early operations under the eIPP program, as well as here in California. In addition to our own progress on infrastructure, we continue to see accelerating momentum and investment by states and airports here in the U.S., infrastructure partners across the industry and countries around the world. Florida enacted legislation, allowing the state to fund certain vertiport projects at up to 100%, committing millions of dollars to activate new sites all over the state. We're excited that Orlando is already moving forward with developing a vertiport in the central terminal area of one of the country's busiest commercial airports. In Dubai, at the Marina, the second of 4 vertiports being built by our partners, is nearly complete. And we continue to see meaningful progress on infrastructure in markets like Japan, the wider UAE, Korea and Australia. To make the most of this momentum, we still have to deliver our part, the aircraft and the service, and I'm pleased to report excellent progress there, too. We now have 5 of our electric air taxis in the air, including our first FAA conforming aircraft. And we have 12 more aircraft in various stages of the production process, including 2 set for delivery this year. As we've said before, manufacturing is hard. Anyone who has tried to do it at scale will tell you that, and building conforming aircraft represents a step change in complexity. We are putting in the hard miles now so that we're ready to make the most of all of the opportunities I've just described. Over the last quarter, we've worked tirelessly to remove bottlenecks and improve processes. And during the first 6 months of this year, as just one example, we reduced the nonconformance rate in our manufacturing processes by nearly 40%. This represents excellent progress as we move from R&D builds to low rate production. During the quarter, we also took a significant step forward in our relationship with Toyota, forming a joint venture that lays the groundwork for high-volume commercial production, helping to significantly reduce the risk of one of the greatest challenges ahead of us. We're incredibly grateful to have had Toyota, the world's largest automaker, at our side for more than 7 years, leaning into that challenge and working with us to bring the best of automotive manufacturing to aviation. We'll share more about our plans for the strategic alliance in due course, but I'm pleased to say that a senior Toyota manufacturing leader is set to join our Marina team shortly as we continue to work ever more closely together. By investing together in the people, facilities and systems required for production, we will create a more capital-efficient path to scale and a manufacturing system designed from the outset to deliver exceptional quality and consistency at volume. I'd like to end where I started, with the eIPP program. As I've said, the program promises to be an important opportunity to accelerate commercialization and a critical part of that will be the safe and effective integration of our aircraft into the national airspace. In April, we announced a partnership with ASI focused on this work. And I'd like to congratulate ASI on being recently selected by the FAA to provide the central software infrastructure for managing traffic across the U.S. national airspace system. ASI is effectively building an operating system for airspace, the invisible infrastructure that will allow us to scale access to our skies. It's an honor to be partnered with them, and we look forward to collaborating on airspace integration as part of our eIPP work. It's incredibly exciting to see all of these pieces coming together, and I hope everything we've shared today gives you a real sense of just how close we are and how ready we are for commercialization. We're building the infrastructure, we're building the aircraft, we're building the customer base and we're building our operational experience. And on top of it all, we just had our strongest quarter yet in terms of progress on the fifth and final stage of type certification. Taken together, everything I've described today is how we will unlock the third dimension of mobility and turn electric vertical flight from an extraordinary technology into an everyday reality, giving people their time back and fundamentally changing the way we move. And with that, I'll hand it over to Rodrigo.

Thank you, JoeBen, and good evening everyone. As JoeBen said in the beginning of the call, the revenue raise is a big part of today's story and Blade is a big part of the reason. The way Blade delivered is exactly what's giving us the confidence to increase guidance. On a more personal note, it was great to see many of you at Farnborough last month. What struck me there was the energy in the room wasn't just talk. It was a response to real execution, progress on certification, on manufacturing and on building the commercial foundation for the eIPP. What I would like to do now is put numbers to that progress and walk you through how we're deploying capital against it with the usual discipline. Let me start with the second quarter financial results. We ended the second quarter with approximately $2.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. Our Q2 use of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled approximately $202 million compared to $195 million in the first quarter, which included the net cash impact of our Ohio facility purchase. Excluding that onetime Ohio investment, our first half 2026 use of cash was $365 million, which is within our guidance range of $340 million to $370 million. Additional detail is available in our Q2 shareholder letter. Total property and equipment investment in the quarter was approximately $29 million compared to $78 million last quarter. With the Ohio purchase behind us, CapEx declined sequentially, though it remains elevated versus prior years as we build out manufacturing capacity. Revenue for Q2 was $39 million, primarily from Blade passenger business and up $14 million from the prior quarter. Blade delivered a standout quarter, supported by the seasonal summer ramp, favorable weather and elevated demand around major events. We are pleased with that momentum. It exceeded our expectations, and it's reflected in the raised guidance we'll walk you through shortly. Total operating expenses for Q2 were $300 million compared to $258 million in Q1. The $42 million increase was primarily driven by $23 million of continued investment to support certification, manufacturing ramp and commercial readiness, $11 million in costs related to increasing revenue and $8 million in other expenses. On a GAAP basis, we reported a Q2 net loss of $245 million compared to $110 million in the prior quarter. Most of that increase was related to a $108 million noncash unfavorable change in the fair value of warrants and earn-out shares. The rest was a $27 million increase in loss from operations. Keep in mind that fair value revaluation is driven primarily by changes in our share price and can introduce meaningful noncash volatility from quarter-to-quarter. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP metric that we reconcile to net income in our shareholder letter was a loss of $197 million in Q2 compared to a loss of $179 million in Q1. The $19 million change quarter-over-quarter reflects the revenue and expense dynamics I just described. Stepping back for a moment, the mix of our spending is shifting to preparation for commercial operations as well as aircraft production. In the first half, capital expenditures were $107 million, including $62 million for Ohio and $15 million for Hollister, where we have invested in expanded flight test capabilities. We expect capital spending to run below the first half pace in the back half, though still elevated relative to prior years as we keep investing in manufacturing and commercial infrastructure. And we will continue to size that spend to respective milestones. As we advance our U.S. go-to-market through eIPP, we are investing in the foundation required to carry passengers: Part 135 operations, maintenance and training and the systems that turn an aircraft into a running service. It is an exciting time. We see the eIPP as complementary to certification, a parallel path to build, improve the commercial side of the business, while certification continues on its own track. We are expanding as we hit milestones, not before. On manufacturing, our joint venture with Toyota lets our teams work side by side to scale production. It also let us share the investment required to build that capability, leveraging Toyota's decades of production expertise. As we finalize the remaining supply agreements, we continue to expect Toyota's $250 million direct investment in Joby to close later this year or early next. Now on to our guidance. Our approach to capital remains disciplined and milestone driven. As we move through the back half of the year, we are managing spend to optimize for certification progress, production ramp and increasingly commercial readiness through the eIPP. For the second half of 2026, we expect to use $385 million to $415 million in cash, primarily to support certification, manufacturing, eIPP and commercialization. This step-up from the first half reflects deliberate investment in commercial readiness as we scale into operations. And as always, we can stage a portion of that spend to match our progress, keeping our usual capital discipline. On revenue, given Blade's continued strength and healthy demand for air mobility, we are raising our full year guidance to a range of $115 million to $125 million from a prior $105 million to $115 million range, with $63 million in revenue already recognized in the first half and Blade typically peaking in the third quarter, we feel good about delivering on this increased range. Thank you for your continued support. And operator, please open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Andres Sheppard with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Congratulations on the quarter and all the great progress, and it was great to see everyone at the Farnborough Air Show a few weeks ago. First question, I guess I have is just coming back to the eIPP. So again, a lot of great progress here and initial flights in September and first passengers in 2026, very exciting. I guess my question here, maybe for you, JoeBen, is how are you thinking about utilizing your current fleet across these projects and including maybe your aircraft in production? Like how do you expect, I guess, to deploy these across the different projects? And then maybe secondly, and I realize this might be a bit early, but do we have a sense of revenue-generating opportunities that may come from the eIPP?

Thank you, Andres. It was wonderful to see you in Farnborough. I'll take the first part of that and then pass it to Rodrigo. The eIPP is really a spectacular opportunity that's been provided to us, and we're really excited about it, really excited about beginning that in Texas with our existing fleet and expanding that over the months to come and out into 2027 as we bring more and more aircraft online. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we have our first conforming aircraft flying, and we have 12 more that are in production. That's an increase of 4 additional aircraft this quarter into our production queue. And the reason we're leaning so hard into manufacturing is the incredible opportunity that we see in front of us, both with eIPP and, as Rodrigo spoke about, with the incredible performance of the Blade division. With that, I'll hand it to Rodrigo.

Yes. Thanks, JoeBen, and good to see you, Andres, in Farnborough. Look, it's premature to provide forward guidance on the numbers today. But the reason we're so excited about this program is because it's giving us the opportunity to monetize every single aircraft that comes off our production for the foreseeable future. So think about the eIPP markets alone. So we're talking about Texas, Florida, New York, that alone could absorb the whole production for quite some time. And let's not forget about California, our backyard here. So #1, we want to maximize that opportunity, and that's why we're so focused on production growth. And we started that not yesterday. We started much earlier than that. And don't forget, we intended to start passenger operations in Dubai as well, that will be on top. And I think Blade is showing us that vertical lift, what it can do. We saw a record quarter, and you were actually to experience that benefit while you're there in the U.K.

Wonderful. That's very helpful. Really appreciate that color. Maybe just as a quick follow-up, JoeBen, maybe a bit of an unconventional question. But at the Farnborough Air Show, you highlighted hydrogen as an exciting kind of new propulsion system. And so I guess my question there is maybe can you elaborate on that? How material is that to the story? I know it's maybe not talked about enough, but that was a bit differentiated. So just curious on how you're thinking about that and maybe some potential opportunities there that you're considering.

Thank you so much, Andres. So hydrogen has been something we began pulling the thread on back 6-plus years ago. Just to set the context, hydrogen has 3x the specific energy of jet fuel. And with our fuel cell systems, we can convert that chemical energy into propulsion about twice as efficiently as a small turbine converts jet fuel into propulsion. And as a result, you can do really game-changing things with aircraft design. If you think about this in the context of a long-haul aircraft, take an A320 versus an A350. So the A350 flies twice as far with twice as many passengers, it weighs 4x as much. It takes off with more weight in jet fuel than weight in passengers. And that aircraft also costs 4x as much. So it costs twice as much per passenger, weighs twice as much per passenger. And that's all down to the fuel being very, very heavy. And so if you have a lighter weight fuel, you can do really game-changing things with aircraft design. We think this is the biggest disruption in aviation since the invention of the turbine engine back in the 1930s. And we think that by being one of the world leaders, if not the world leader, we're going to see really significant upside over the years to come.

Our next question comes from the line of Savi Syth with Raymond James.

Just on Blade perhaps, I was kind of curious what you're seeing given the kind of the fuel increase here and still relying on fuel. Just what you're seeing in terms of kind of pass-through and kind of the ability for demand to kind of absorb that? And any high-level thoughts on margins this year versus maybe the potential there as kind of if you might pull back?

Savi, I think your question, and this is Rodrigo here, about the demand. Look, #1, if I look at Blade itself, the acquisition has been a home run. You saw that in the quarters here. We just did -- had the highest number of seats sold in Q2 in our history. And most importantly, the highest numbers of new flyers from NYC in New York since 2023. What that's telling you is the demand for vertical lift is very high. So Blade has been a home run acquisition for us. We are lapping the first year pretty soon, and they have reaccelerated their growth. That's coming from the focus from the management in the high demand that we have for the service. And it's been a very valuable infrastructure that we acquired. So if you think about what we did here, we acquired an already built infrastructure, a loyal and growing customer base that loves the benefits of vertical lift, and a decade of know-how. So we put this all together, this is a very growing demand for us. Look, now in terms of the -- I guess, your question is more like for the operating costs, I would say flight margin has improved, and you're not seeing a direct impact that will be flowing through the bottom line. Right now, we are running a business that is not consuming cash and in fact, it is contributing on the growth. And also, I think the team is doing a pretty good job in terms of selling the capacity that is available to the demand that's quite high.

That's helpful. I appreciate that. And maybe if I could briefly follow up on Andres' question on the eIPP side. Just on the aircraft that you plan to use, is that the certification conforming aircraft that you plan to use in those flight tests? Or are you able to kind of use some of the prior generation aircraft as well as you kind of progress through that flying?

Thank you so much, Savi. We're going to use a mix of different aircraft, both aircraft from our existing fleet as well as producing as many aircraft as we possibly can off of our company conforming production line.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of James Kirby with JPMorgan.

I just wanted to ask on the scale and ramp, JoeBen. And I appreciate the color you answered in the previous question on the 4 incremental in development aircraft quarter-over-quarter. Is that the right cadence to think of for the back half of the year? I think you mentioned 2 are expected to be delivered later this year. So is the right way to think about that, that you expect to end the year with 7 aircrafts flying?

Yes. Thank you so much. We are, as I mentioned, ramping our manufacturing as aggressively as we can. We've been making really phenomenal progress on the nonconformance rate, which translates directly into improvements in efficiency and improvements in output. And so we are going to continue to add new aircraft into the build -- the front end of the build queue because there is a lag between when we start a build and when the aircraft comes out the back end. As I mentioned, we're targeting at least 2 aircraft to come off the line over the back half of the year and hoping to over deliver.

Got it. That's really helpful. And then for my second question, just in light of recent industry announcements on the defense side, maybe just want to give you a chance to really just clarify, and I know you've been asked on almost every call on the end markets for defense. But maybe just where the defense fits into the Joby ecosystem and particularly where you prioritize it with the eIPP obviously ramping in the coming months?

Yes. Thanks a lot for the question. This is Paul. Obviously, there's been a lot of conversation across the industry around hybrid VTOL for defense. And we have been working on this category for going on 2 years and not just working on it, but actually demonstrating improved range, improved capability in conjunction with moving to a hybrid platform on real aircraft that are flying. And we think that puts us in a really strong position to take advantage of the opportunities that we see before us across multiple different customers across the DoW. Now look, the mission types for vertical lift vehicles for those customer sets are really wide. There are areas in strike, areas in ISR, areas in infil and exfil, particularly for passenger carrying versions that I think are all super exciting for the core capabilities that we're demonstrating. And I think one of the things that you're seeing more broadly in defense is that it used to be that spec sort of delivered on capabilities. But actually, the reverse is largely true now, or at least there's an interplay between the 2. And it's demonstrating capabilities that allow you to shape the specifications that the customer wants. So that's why we've been doing the work and why we think we're going to be well positioned to take full opportunity of all of those defense customer use cases.

Our next question comes from the line of Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright.

With respect to the eIPP program that's about to start for you guys, are there any aspects of running the eIPP program that could give you certification credits? Or should we think of these as separate efforts with no overlap?

Yes. Thank you so much. We do see the potential for there being -- the potential to accelerate our overall certification program on the back of a lot of the flight testing and experience that we gained through the eIPP program. Just as a recap, we're working very closely with the FAA as well as local municipalities as we conduct our flights and operations under the eIPP program. And that close coordination, we think, has the potential to pay dividends.