Should You Be Worried About Joby Stock?
Joby Aviation (JOBY) stock has lost 63% over the past twelve months, while the S&P 500 returned 16.0%. Sales are not the worry, because management raised its 2026 revenue forecast on the August 5, 2026 call. But revenue in fiscal Q2 2026 came primarily from Blade, the helicopter passenger business Joby acquired, and not from Joby’s own electric air taxi. So what does Joby still have to do before its air taxi enters commercial service?
Joby Has To Build Many More Air Taxis
Joby has to produce its air taxi in volume, and in our reading that is the biggest risk to the stock. On the August 5 call, management said manufacturing is hard, and that building aircraft to the FAA’s conforming standard is a big jump in complexity.
Joby has come some way. It had five electric air taxis flying as of that call, including its first FAA-conforming aircraft. Another 12 were in production, and management expected two of them to be delivered in 2026.
Joby is also flying real-world routes while it tries to build more aircraft. It began a week of flights across the Dallas-Fort Worth region of Texas on September 10, 2026, under a White House-backed pilot program. Management had called that program an opportunity, but also an additional burden on its team in the short term.
Is Joby Stock Priced For Its Air Taxi?
It appears to be. Joby reports a loss, so a P/E is not meaningful, and its stock is valued on its sales instead. The stock trades at 49.6 times its sales of the past twelve months, against 3.0 for the S&P 500. But revenue was $39 million in fiscal Q2 2026, primarily from Blade. Management now expects $115 million to $125 million of revenue for 2026, up from an earlier forecast of $105 million to $115 million.
So the price appears to assume that the air taxi becomes a business of its own, and nobody yet knows what it will earn. Asked on the August 5 call what revenue the pilot program could bring, management said it was premature to forecast it. Yet some of the doubt may already be in the price, since the stock is 69.5% below its 52-week high.
Can Joby Afford A Delay To Its Air Taxi?
Joby can afford one for now. It ended fiscal Q2 2026 with about $2.3 billion in cash and short-term investments. Management expects to use $385 million to $415 million of that in the second half of 2026. So Joby holds more than five times the cash it plans to use in that half-year, and more is due. Management expects Toyota’s $250 million investment to close in late 2026 or early 2027.
The stock itself has fallen hard in past market shocks. Joby fell 51% during the 2022 inflation shock, when the S&P 500 fell 24%. In the 2023 yield shock, Joby fell 38% against 9.5% for the index.
So the risk is real, but it is slow: Joby has the cash to get through a production delay. On the August 5 call, management was still targeting its first passengers in 2026. Two aircraft delivered by the end of 2026 would show that Joby’s production line is keeping to the schedule management set.
How To Act On JOBY?
Now you know JOBY better. And that’s our purpose: to make you informed before you invest your money. However, making a bet on a single stock carries its own risks.
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