Joby Aviation Set a Fresh 52-Week Low in the Month It Expects to Start Flying in Texas. I'm Still Not Buying the Stock.

Shares of Joby Aviation (NYSE:JOBY) dipped to $6.25 in morning trading on Thursday -- a fresh 52-week low for the electric air taxi company. The stock recovered some ground within hours and closed Thursday at $6.31. Still, the new low caps a long slide: the stock's 52-week range now stretches from Thursday's $6.25 print to $19.98.

The timing is hard to ignore. September is the month Joby said its electric air taxi would begin flying routes across the Dallas-Fort Worth area under a White House-backed federal pilot program. The company called the flights "one of our most important steps yet toward commercial service" in its second-quarter shareholder letter.

Is the fresh low a chance to buy the stock on the cheap right before the company's biggest moment -- or is the market trying to tell investors something?

Image source: Joby Aviation.

A milestone month

To the company's credit, Joby is closer to carrying paying passengers than it has ever been. The company is in the fifth and final stage of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) type certification, and its August update called the quarter's progress there its strongest yet. And five electric air taxis are already flying, including the company's first FAA-conforming aircraft, with 12 more in production.

This month's Texas flights are meant to prove the concept in public. The plan calls for a week of flying across the Dallas-Fort Worth area from Sept. 10 through Sept. 15, mapping out the routes and procedures a commercial service would use. And management still aims to put its first paying passengers in the air before 2026 ends, a timeline that likely leaves little room for delay.

Blade generates nearly all the revenue

What none of these milestones has delivered yet is air taxi revenue.

Second-quarter revenue totaled $38.6 million. Blade, the passenger air travel business Joby acquired about a year ago, accounted for $36.2 million of it. Blade is performing well. Seats flown across its passenger services rose more than 50% year over year. And on many routes, management said, aircraft availability rather than passenger demand is now the main constraint on growth. That strength (Blade's first-half revenue grew 32% from a year earlier) is behind management's raised full-year forecast. Joby now expects 2026 revenue between $115 million and $125 million. The electric aircraft itself, though, still hasn't produced any sales.

The cost of changing that keeps climbing, too. Joby's second-quarter operating loss widened to about $261 million, up from about $234 million in the previous quarter and about $168 million in the year-ago quarter. Spending, in other words, is accelerating as the company pushes toward launch.

I don't fault management for that. But it puts a lot of weight on the balance sheet.

Can the cash outlast the wait?

A company can absorb a widening loss with enough cash on hand, and Joby has plenty. It held $2.3 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of June.

However, that money already has claims on it. Management's own guidance puts second-half cash use in the $385 million to $415 million range. The pace is a step up from the first six months, when the company used about $365 million, excluding a $32 million investment in its Ohio facility.

Joby also agreed last month to buy defense technology company Resonant Sciences for about $500 million, around $450 million of it in cash, in a deal expected to close by mid-2027.

Run the numbers on the guided pace, and the cash covers a little more than two years of spending once the acquisition's cash payment goes out. That's a decent cushion, I think, but not an indefinite one for a company with a valuation near $6.3 billion. At that size, the market is paying nearly three times the value of Joby's cash for an aircraft business that isn't certified yet and a revenue base built almost entirely on Blade.

What would I do with the stock? I'd keep waiting on the sidelines, even at a fresh 52-week low.

The Texas flights and the final stage of certification are meaningful progress, but a milestone isn't the same thing as revenue. Until the aircraft starts producing revenue of its own, the growth stock remains a bet on execution, one the market could reprice lower on any delay.

Of course, if commercial service starts on time, today's price may end up looking cheap. But that day isn't here yet.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.