Should You Buy Joby Stock For The Flights It Already Sells?
Joby Aviation (JOBY) stock has lost about 54% over the past twelve months, and trades about 68% below its 52-week high. Its electric air taxi is still in the final stage of type certification. But the part of the company that could re-rate the stock first is already carrying paying passengers.
Who Is Paying Joby To Fly Today?
Blade, the flight business Joby bought about a year ago, carries paying passengers now: New York airport runs and expanded Hamptons routes. Seats sold in the second quarter of 2026 were up over 50% from a year earlier, helped by the summer ramp and major events, the best Q2 Blade has recorded on that measure. After Blade’s first-half revenue grew 32% year over year, the company raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to between $115 million and $125 million.
Aircraft availability caps many of those routes, by the company’s own account, rather than any shortage of passengers. Blade sells time saved, and it is short of the machines that save it. Joby’s own aircraft are meant to fix that, and it has found a way to fly them before certification is done.
How Will Joby Fly Passengers Before Certification?
Through the eIPP, the White House-backed pilot program the FAA is running with individual states. Joby began a week-long campaign of flights across the Dallas-Fort Worth region in September 2026, including flights into the airport itself. The program moves in stages: pilots only, then passengers who do not pay, then passengers who do.
Management has stated an objective to explore monetization pathways under the eIPP framework as the company works toward broader commercial certification.
Joby is targeting launch operations in high-density corridors across Texas, Florida, and New York, which management views as large initial addressable markets.
The company calls a revenue number premature, and the chief executive calls the program an extra near-term load on his team. So this is a flight business today and an aircraft manufacturer later.
Can Joby Build Enough Aircraft To Matter?
Growth in the flight and aircraft businesses depends on one production line, and it is still small. Joby has five electric air taxis in the air, including its first FAA conforming aircraft, and 12 more at various stages of production. It is targeting at least two aircraft off the line in the second half of 2026. That gap between demand and output is the bear case, and it is a fair one.
The line is getting better: the nonconformance rate in its manufacturing processes fell by nearly 40% over the first six months of 2026. That is the work that comes before volume.
Joby ended the second quarter of 2026 with about $2.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, and expects to use $385 million to $415 million of it in the second half of 2026, more than three times a full year of guided revenue.
The upside case is real and narrow: it is a bet on output rather than on demand. The stock has gained more than 30% inside two months on eight separate occasions, the earliest of them in 2021 and the most recent in 2025, every one before a certified aircraft. The move is there if the aircraft arrive. Whether a fall this deep is an entry or a warning is what our dip-buying screen is built to score.
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