Key Points
If Joby can secure FAA type certification and scale its fleet, its air taxis could generate substantial revenue.
Investors will need patience, as the bull case for Joby could take years -- even a decade or more -- to materialize.
If you were in New York City between April 27 and May 1, 2026, and if you happened to be where the sky was in plain view, then you might have seen a bright spot hovering like a helicopter, but quietly like no helicopter can. That bright spot was an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, and the company behind this demonstration was Joby Aviation(NYSE: JOBY).
This flight -- the first of its kind in the Big Apple -- was a bright spot in another way: It showed, foremost, that Joby's aviation prowess is paying off, and that the next chapter of flight might come sooner than many people were expecting. It also gave Joby investors something new to hang their hats on, since commercialization of these electric air taxis is likely still a few years away.
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Joby Aviation stock has been in the gutter this year, with shares down about 35% since January. Yet if the NYC demonstration was the first of a new kind of flight, a tenfold gain over the next decade could be coming. Here's how.
What a mature Joby business could look like
Joby is trying to build flying taxis. That wording is less figurative than you might think: The company's long-term vision is to build a platform -- likely an app -- through which you can call one of its eVTOLs to give you a ride through the air -- hopefully above gridlocked traffic, so you can feel good about the $50 or so spent on the lift.
To be sure, nobody knows how much an eVTOL ride could cost (an airport transfer in Manhattan on Blade Air Mobility, which Joby acquired, costs about $200 a seat). That's part of the uncomfortable uncertainty around Joby stock, along with the question of whether an "Uber of the skies" will really take off at all.
Image source: Joby Aviation.
But if demand is strong, the economics could work extremely well in Joby's favor. Analysts from Morgan Stanley put it like this: Assuming Joby's eVTOLs can complete a trip within 12 minutes or so, a single aircraft could finish as many as 40 trips in an eight-hour day. At a $50 fare per ride, that works out to $2,000 in revenue per shift. That's close to $730,000 in annual revenue, if it flew every day. If these aircraft completed more shifts and worked more hours, annual revenue could approach $1.5 million per aircraft, Morgan Stanley estimates.
If you can imagine a world in which thousands of these aircraft operate in hundreds of cities, then you can also picture the multibillion-dollar opportunity Joby is looking at. That, in a nutshell, is how Joby could grow tenfold from here, with a fleet of eVTOLs flying nonstop at a price that stays competitive with ground transportation.
Joby is a long way from that vision (its current target is to produce four eVTOLs a year). But the encouraging news for investors is that this vision of Joby dominance isn't far-fetched or unrealistic. It has important hurdles to clear first -- like FAA type certification -- but for investors with the patience to hold Joby long-term, the reward could be worth the wait.
Should you buy stock in Joby Aviation right now?
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Steven Porrello has positions in Joby Aviation. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
