Down Nearly 60% From Its Peak, Is It Finally Time to Buy Joby Aviation?

Joby Aviation has fallen from its $20.39 all-time high to below $9, as investors focus on two unresolved regulatory hurdles: FAA Type Certification and the timing of its first commercial flights in Dubai. The article notes deep losses, share dilution of more than 60% since its 2021 SPAC merger, and a valuation of 18x 2028 sales versus Archer’s 8x, even as analysts still model revenue rising from $53 million in 2025 to $459 million in 2028. The tone is cautious: the business has strong technology and partnerships, but near-term execution and regulatory risk remain the key catalysts.

Analysis

The key market mistake is treating JOBY as a pure technology story when it is still a binary certification-and-timing trade. The business is likely to be valued more on regulatory milestones than on engineering progress for the next 6-12 months, which makes the equity behave like a long-duration option with high theta: every month of delay forces multiple compression because the market keeps discounting the same distant TAM with less near-term proof. That dynamic also explains why the stock can fall sharply even if the long-term thesis is intact.

Second-order winners are the incumbents and adjacent mobility platforms, not just the direct eVTOL peers. DAL and UBER can monetize optionality without bearing the full certification burn; if the category matures, they become distribution and demand aggregators rather than manufacturing-risk owners. In contrast, ACHR and other pre-revenue peers remain stuck in a funding arms race where even modest delays can reprice future dilution, making relative valuation more important than headline TAM.

The contrarian miss is that the current selloff may still understate dilution and timeline risk. If commercial service slips by 6-12 months, equity funding needs likely rise just as the market is less willing to finance speculative growth, so downside can come from both lower revenue and a higher share count. The flip side is that a clean certification update would have asymmetric impact: it would de-risk revenue timing, tighten the range of terminal forecasts, and likely trigger a sharp multiple reset higher because the equity is priced for execution uncertainty rather than just weak fundamentals.

From a trading perspective, this is better expressed as relative value than outright conviction on the name. The spread between JOBY and ACHR is too wide to ignore, but both are vulnerable to regulatory slippage; the cleaner long is the platform that benefits from eVTOL adoption without direct manufacturing exposure.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Avoid outright long JOBY here; the next 1-2 quarters are dominated by regulatory timing risk, and any slip could drive another 30-50% drawdown before fundamentals matter.
• If initiating exposure, use a small starter long in JOBY only after a concrete FAA milestone; target a 6-12 month horizon with upside tied to multiple expansion, not revenue realization.
• Pair trade: long UBER / short JOBY into the next 3-6 months. UBER captures eVTOL optionality through distribution with materially lower execution risk; risk is that a surprise certification win lifts JOBY faster than expected.
• Relative value: long DAL / short ACHR or JOBY on any rally driven by sector enthusiasm. DAL monetizes premium airport-transfer demand without capital intensity; watch for downside if airlines pause partnership messaging.
• For aggressive accounts, use JOBY call spreads only around certification catalysts, with defined premium at risk. The trade works best as a binary event bet, not a buy-and-hold equity position.