The only thing scary about Halloween?

G’day fellow eVTOL fans. Welcome back to another edition of Go Above Traffic.

No spooky pun. You’ve seen enough of those. Let’s get right into it.

Onwards!

What you need to know in eVTOLs this week

Joby 

Having the biggest, fattest balance sheet on the block wasn’t enough.

Just a few weeks after the $500M Toyota investment, Joby launched a public offering to sell up to $200M of its shares of common stock.

They’ve now raised $2.6B billion altogether and currently have just under a billion in the war chest.

That a lot of cash, but they’ll need every cent to get through certification, stand up manufacturing and get to commercialization.

Lilium

In one final surge before death (aka Terminal Lucidity, it’s a real thing, look it up), Lilium is saying their insolvency issue is fake news.

The claim coming from Lilium Exec’s is that government-sponsored support remains a viable option.

“Lilium is to receive a fixed-rate loan of €100 million as a signal to our investors that Germany supports the entry into electric aviation. It’s not about saving a crisis-ridden company with grants,” stated Lilium CEO Klaus Roewe.

He went on to say the fully-repayable loan’s conditions are “very advantageous” and noted there has never been a successful aircraft program in the world that has not received state support.

X Peng

If you crawl around enough Chinese website you can find video of the first manned flight of XPENG AEROHT's eVTOL.

Not much info available on the flight itself, but we know the company has begun construction of a production facility in Guangzhou, China.

The site will produce the eVOTL portion of the “Land Aircraft Carrier” and is expected to have an annual capacity of 10,000 units.

We’ll see, said the blind man.

Archer Aviation

Depending on how you feel about Cathy Woods, I either have good or bad news for you.

ARK's ARKK ETF just purchased a substantial 830,130 shares of Archer Aviation coming in at a cool $2.83 million. Cathy loaded up earlier in the week as well and now has roughly $85M in Archer. No small potatoes.

This is either a sign to pile into this opportunity, or a huge red flag that the dumb money is here and get out while you still can.

I leave that decision with you.

The Markets

Or “The Casino” if you prefer the Wall Street Bets mentality…

Absolute blood bath this week.

Joby’s raise diluted existing investors and the stock price took a dive.

Arched is just happy to be bumbling along at 50% of their valuation a year ago.

If Lilium goes any lower they’ll be as poor as a church mouse.

Find shelter, hunker down, wait for this to pass.

The $100K Life Savings Bet

The secret to investing is to figure out the value of something - and then pay a lot less. 

- Joel Greenblatt

There is an investment firm called Pzena that has $58B assets under management.

The former Director there is Joel Greenblatt.

He’s an author, professor, finance exec and most importantly, a value investor.

It’s impossible to measure a pre revenue company like Joby with any traditional financial models.

All we can do is ask ourselves if the price of Joby now is a lot less than it’s value?

I’ve put my money where my mouth is and have my $100K life savings on that answer being yes. I believe that is a lot less than what it’s value is or will be in the future.

Time will tell, so it might take a while to see if this is correct.

So are we in the money?!

We are no longer in the money.

Down about $8K.

Just last week we we’re up $17K, so nothing like a $25K swing to the negative to make you feel alive.

But like the stoic philosophers taught, we shall show no emotion.

This is neither happy nor sad. It just is.

And we will persevere by doing nothing.

We wait.

*I am not entirely sure about the principals of Stoicism. But I think that was directionally correct.

Lighten Up

Final Question

What’s the worst season for travel and why?

— best reply gets a shoutout next week.

Best Answer From Last Week

I asked, “What’s the best season for travel and why?”

Best reply came from Julio in Mexico City:

“Summer in Europe, Fall in New York… Just kidding, I don’t have money for that but sounds nice.”

Thanks for reading and let us know what you want to see more of next week. We read every single reply.

Stay above.

— The Above Traffic Team