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By Al Root
There is a future in flying cars -- of a sort.
Morgan Stanley is bullish on eVTOL. That's electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. These are smaller, helicopter-like vehicles that many new startups want to use in ride-hailing applications. It's a little like an Uber ride in the sky.
Thursday, Kristine Liwag launched coverage of eVTOL maker Joby Aviation (ticker: JOBY) with a Buy rating. The "sky's the limit," wrote Liwag. She sees upside as high as $60 a share. But there are risks to any new disruptive technology, so on balance, she takes a more conservative approach. Her official target price is $16 a share.
Joby stock is up about 11% in early trading, at about $10.69 a share. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average are up about 0.8% and 1.2%, respectively.
It's Joby's first rating, according to Bloomberg. That's one reason for the big reaction. It's the first, and only, call on the stock. And it's bullish. Joby just completed its merger with a SPAC, making it a publicly traded company in August. It typically takes Wall Street a few weeks to ramp up coverage.
A stock the size of Joby -- its market cap is more than $7 billion based on its fully diluted share count -- will typically have eight to 10 analysts covering it.
A lack of coverage, plus a disruptive technology usually means stock market volatility. Joby stock was about $10 before the SPAC merger closed. It shot up to about $13 right after that before sliding all the way back to less than $10 before the new rating.
eVTOL -- as an industry or an investment -- is a little like commercial space flight. Helicopters have been around for ever, like rockets. But falling costs are enabling new applications. (Reusable rockets have led to SpaceX being valued at $74 billion in private markets.)
Liwag sees sales growing from zero today to about $390 million in 2026 and $3.4 billion by 2030. Between now and 2026, Joby has to receive FAA approvals for its new aircraft. That should come around 2022. By 2026, the company expects to operate its planes 12 hours of day, seven hours of which will generate sales, with the average length of flight being 24 miles.
The average flight should cost people about $50 and cost Joby about $20 to operate. All of those assumptions are just best guesses at this point. The eVTOL is new.
Joby isn't the only player though. Blade Air Mobility (BLDE), Archer Aviation (ACHR) and Lilium (LILM) are three other stocks in the eVTOL business. Blade stock is up 0.1% in Thursday trading. Lilium stock is down almost 2%. Archer shares have gained about 1.5%. Blade has three analysts covering its stock. All three rate the shares a Buy. Archer has one analyst covering its stock. Benchmark analyst Josh Sullivan rates shares Buy and has a $15 price target. Lilium has one analyst covering its stock, too. Piper Sandler analyst Alex Potter rates shares Buy. His price target is $17.
Overall, Wall Street sees gains ahead for eVTOL.