Joby Aviation Stock Is Priced For An Aircraft That Has Yet To Fly A Passenger

The sales behind its multiple come from the passenger network it acquired, while the electric air taxi at the center of the story is still working through its final certification stage.

Joby Aviation (JOBY) stock is up about 14% over the past month, yet still down about 49% over the past year and roughly 55% below its 52-week high. At about $8.80 a share the market values it near $8.6 billion. Anyone weighing a buy should start with one fact: the revenue inside that price is not the business the price is about.

The Sales Behind That Multiple Come From Blade

The stock trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 73.5, against 3.3 for the S&P 500. Those sales come from Blade, the passenger network the company bought about a year ago, flying helicopter routes like its New York to Hamptons service. Revenue in Q2 2026 was $39 million, primarily from that passenger business, and that strength is why management raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $115 million to $125 million. Seats sold rose more than 50% year over year. That is a real business already selling seats, and it is not the electric air taxi.

The Air Taxi Has Not Carried A Passenger Yet

Joby is still targeting its first passengers before the end of 2026, and management intends to complete the first flights under the White House-backed eIPP program in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in September, beginning with a pilot only and reaching paying passengers later. What it costs to get there shows up as an operating margin deeply negative at -759.2%, against 18.5% for the S&P 500 and roughly $0.9 billion of operating loss over the trailing twelve months.

What makes that survivable is about $2.3 billion of cash and short-term investments at the end of Q2 2026. Balance-sheet strength of that kind is one of the things the Trefis High Quality Portfolio insists on in its holdings. Guided cash use of $385 million to $415 million for the second half of 2026 steps up from the first half, on what the company calls deliberate investment in commercial readiness.

Watch The Build Queue, Not The Guidance Raise

That money buys time, and what it has to buy is aircraft. Five aircraft are flying, including the first FAA conforming one, and 12 more are in production, at least two of them targeted for delivery in the second half of 2026. Certification itself is in its fifth and final stage. The company has cut its manufacturing nonconformance rate by nearly 40% over the first six months of 2026, while describing building conforming aircraft as a step change in complexity.

The two halves of this story are one problem: by management’s own account, the constraint on many Blade routes is now aircraft availability rather than passenger demand, and the quieter aircraft management hopes will ease that constraint is the one still in certification. The price gets easier to carry if deliveries land and the September flights hold, and harder if they slip while the loss stays this size. Downside history belongs in the same calculation: the stock fell 51% in the 2022 inflation shock while the broader index fell 24%. The five factors that decide a buy case are the place to test both readings.

A Long Runway Still Leaves You Holding One Certification Date

Cash buys time, but time is not a certification date, and one position carries that timing risk in full. Readers who would rather hold a rules-based basket than a single binary outcome can look at the Trefis High Quality Portfolio. That portfolio has a track record of outpacing the three major indices – the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap, and Russell 2000.