Joby Aviation, Inc. Q4 FY2024 Earnings Call

Greetings and welcome to Joby Aviation's Fourth Quarter 2024 Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Teresa Thuruthiyil, Joby's Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon and evening everyone. Thank you for joining us for Joby Aviation's fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results conference call. I'm Teresa Thuruthiyil, Joby's Head of Investor Relations. Today we have remarks from JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Paul Sciarra, Executive Chairman. Didier Papadopoulos, our President of Aircraft OEM will join us for the Q&A portion of the call. Please note that our discussion today will include statements regarding future events and financial performance as well as statements of belief, expectations, and intent. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. For a more detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our filings with the SEC and the Safe Harbor disclaimer contained in today's shareholder letter. The forward-looking statements included in this call are made only as of the date of this call, and the company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them. Also, during the call, we'll refer both to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in our Q4 2024 shareholder letter, which you can find on our Investor Relations website, along with the replay of this call. And with all of that said, I'll now turn the call over to JoeBen.

Thank you, Teresa, and thanks everyone, for joining us today as we discuss our full year 2024 results. Over the last 12 months, we have delivered sector-leading progress, across each area that is core to our business certification, manufacturing, and commercialization. In the last quarter alone, we've made record progress on Stage 4 of type certification. We've delivered our second aircraft to Edwards Air Force Base. We've flown in Korea, our partners have broken ground on the first Vertiport in our Dubai network, and investors new and old have committed more than $1 billion of additional funding and commitments, including the recently announced $500 million from Toyota. Looking ahead, we see the coming year as an inflection point for Joby and our industry. We're moving from leadership in aircraft development and testing to leadership in the delivery of service. By the middle of this year, we plan to have an aircraft in Dubai, where it will be used to demonstrate our readiness to begin carrying our first passengers, which we target for later this year or early next year. This will mark one of the most important milestones in our sector's history, and I'm so proud that Joby continues to lead the way. We are also leading the way in scaled manufacturing. Joby is the only air taxi company that has delivered multiple eVTOL aircraft from a production line. With four aircraft delivered from our Marina facility to date, including one this past quarter. At the end of last year, we hit our target of delivering parts equivalent to one aircraft per month, and we continue to ramp up that capacity. That means we have the parts and the aircraft to complete unprecedented levels of component and subcomponent tests alongside an increasing cadence of flights. In a very significant moment for Joby, we used these parts to complete four credit testing on a major aerostructure for the first time this quarter and we completed our first ground-based TIA testing using a conforming flight deck. This was the first time that either of those achievements has been made in our sector, once again demonstrating Joby's leadership. In terms of aircraft, we now have five in our test fleet, with a second aircraft delivered to the DoD at Edwards Air Force Base this quarter. We also deployed one of our aircraft to Korea to become the first eVTOL to fly as part of their K-UAM Grand Challenge, building on our recent demonstration in Japan. The progress we have made with testing both on the ground and in the air means that we're now able to confirm that we expect to begin TIA flight testing in the U.S., the final step of the FAA certification process, within the next 12 months. We laid the groundwork for that effort by welcoming FAA pilots and technical staff assigned to our certification program to Marina this quarter. They flew a series of tests in our simulator that are exactly the same as those we intend to complete as part of our TIA flight testing. They also witnessed our pilots perform those same tests as part of our ongoing inhabited flight testing campaign. Turning to our work with the DoD, there has been a lot of talk in recent weeks from other companies about how much opportunity there is for eVTOL aircraft in the defense space. And I want to be clear that we share that view. But it's nothing new for Joby. We have been talking about defense technology for more than eight years, and not just talking about it, but actually delivering on it. We have already trained U.S. Air Force pilots to fly our aircraft. We've already trained DoD mechanics to maintain them, and we're the only electric air taxi company to have delivered an aircraft to a government customer on base, which we've now done twice. We also understand the opportunity presented by hybrid eVTOL aircraft, and as we demonstrated in 2024, our vertically integrated approach enables us to rapidly adapt our platform with a hybrid powertrain to suit an expanded mission set. In July last year, we flew a hybrid hydrogen-electric eVTOL aircraft 561 miles, and we remain the only air taxi company to have demonstrated that capability, completing multiple 500-plus mile full transition vertical takeoff and landing flights. The leading progress we have made on our core program continues to ensure that Joby is in the best possible position to capitalize on wider opportunities, and with the renewed interest in U.S. leadership in innovation, we're excited about the opportunities ahead. The next 12 months are going to be incredibly exciting for Joby, as we look to bring our service to life, and I'm pleased that our partners and our investors share that excitement. Over the last quarter, we've worked closely with Delta and Uber to showcase our product and we continue to make important inroads across key U.S. markets such as New York and L.A. We also continue to have one of the strongest balance sheets in the sector, and I believe it's a very significant signal that our existing investors and partners like Toyota and Baillie Gifford, those who know us best, keep deepening their investments and partnership in Joby. In the case of Toyota, their previous investments and the additional commitments made recently far exceed the amount invested by any other strategic investor in the industry. And we're excited to be working together to form a strategic manufacturing alliance as we look towards scaled production. Toyota is backed by stable management and a deep balance sheet, and they have a track record of long-term commitments to solving tough challenges, something that cannot be said for all auto manufacturers these days. We have an incredible 12 months ahead of us, with goals that will really bring our technology to life. We have the team to deliver on those goals, we have the balance sheet to support them, we have the best possible partners alongside us, and we have supportive ecosystems here in the U.S. and overseas. This is our moment as an industry, and I'm proud that Joby continues to lead the way. Paul, over to you.

Thanks, JoeBen. Turning to our results, you'll find detailed financials in our fourth quarter and full year 2024 shareholder letter on our website, but I'll briefly summarize and share additional comments here. For the period ending December 31, 2024, we had cash and short-term investments totaling $933 million. This includes net proceeds from an underwritten equity offering of $222 million in October, as well as $128 million in net proceeds from the at-the-market offering we announced in December. We are working through the final steps of our agreement with Toyota in order to access the first of two $250 million investment tranches expected this year, and I'm pleased to say all regulatory approvals are now in place for that first tranche. When added to the $933 million in cash and short-term investments on our balance sheet at year-end, that would exceed $1.4 billion. Looking back at the fourth quarter of 2024, we incurred a net loss of $246 million reflecting a loss from operations of about $150 million and other losses of $97 million. The other loss largely reflected the non-cash loss on the revaluation of derivative liabilities of $107 million related to our warrants and earn-out shares, partially offset by interest and other income of $10 million. Our net loss increased by approximately $102 million compared to the third quarter, with the difference primarily due to the non-cash loss we recorded on the revaluation of warrants and earn-out shares reflecting the increase in our share price over the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP metric that we reconcile to our net income in our shareholder letter, was a loss of $119 million in the recently completed fourth quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA loss was approximately $23 million higher compared to the same period last year, reflecting the growth in our organization and expenses necessary to support manufacturing and certification. Change in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments during 2024, excluding the net proceeds from public offerings, was $450 million coming in as expected at the lower end of our guidance of $440 million to $470 million. As we look to the year ahead, we continue to focus on advancing our testing and certification program as well as laying the groundwork for first passenger operations. We expect our 2025 use of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments to be between $500 million and $540 million. This reflects our assumptions for hiring in areas such as certification and manufacturing, higher R&D expenditures, which include building more parts to support certification and manufacturing, as well as higher capital expenditures. As a reminder, with the support of a Cal Competes grant, we are expanding our manufacturing facility in Marina, California, more than doubling our footprint there to support expanded manufacturing and flight training. This is expected to provide sufficient space for more than double our annual production capacity over time at this site. Additionally, we'll begin to have our Ohio facility start building aircraft components to support production and aircraft assembly in California. With these investments, you can expect our capital expenditure to increase from the $41 million we spent in 2024 as we build out our facilities in both Marina and Ohio. As JoeBen stated at the top of the call, the next 12 months will mark a pivotal year for Joby and our broader industry. We'll be delivering our first aircraft to Dubai in the middle of the year, and we have clear line of sight to beginning flight TIA testing and carrying our first passengers. We believe we continue to lead our sector in FAA certification, standing up scalable manufacturing, and preparing markets around the world for commercial operations. At Joby, we've always prioritized delivery and building long-term value over short-term hype. The coming year will be no different. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please begin the Q&A.

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Andres Sheppard with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question.

Hi everyone, good afternoon. Congratulations on the quarter, and thanks for taking our questions. JoeBen, I'm wondering if you could maybe flush out a bit further, the opportunities that you see with the military, maybe both in the near term and longer term. I know you alluded to it in your prepared remarks. Just wondering if you can maybe elaborate a bit further on what kind of opportunities you see expanding with your relationship with the military? Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Andres. I'll add a few comments there and then also invite Paul to share his thoughts. As I spoke about, we've been working with the DoD for eight years now, and those opportunities have really expanded significantly. And I think the DoD sees what we do, the incredible potential of the technology stack that we're building and the vertical integration that we've embraced. We think we can do a number of very important things as we look to the future, both with our current technology and our future technology. And with that, I'll also hand it over to Paul.

Yes, thanks, Andres. I mean, when it comes to our broader government strategy, it's really a sort of continuation of the work, as JoeBen mentioned, that we've been doing for eight years. We always knew that the work with Agility Prime would be an important stepping stone for broader opportunities across the DoD. We are really pleased to have delivered on important milestones with that customer set. That includes, as mentioned, the delivery of now a second aircraft to Edwards, and an opportunity to train pilots and to give them maintenance training. Really all of the building blocks that will set us up for success when we think about broadening the opportunity to other government customers over time. We've, as we've mentioned in prior calls, already brought other groups like the Marines into a lot of that testing. I think that sets us up well both to have good visibility across the different opportunities within government and now a demonstrated record of execution to capture those opportunities. One of the things that I think was mentioned was the hybrid work. Longer range is certainly a priority for government customers, and we're pleased to have shown that this is a platform that can be readily extensible to those longer range missions with the 550-mile flight of the hydrogen hybrid aircraft we demonstrated last summer.

Got it. That's super helpful. I appreciate all that color. Maybe just as a quick follow-up, switching to Dubai. So you mentioned your plan to deliver an aircraft there this year and to begin flights with passengers either later this year or early next year. I guess I'm curious if you can maybe share with us your vision in terms of what commercialization in Dubai might look like and kind of how quickly you see that market ramping up? Thank you.

Thank you, Andres. So Dubai is an incredible opportunity for us. We're so excited about taking our first aircraft there and beginning in-market testing. We are also very pleased. I was with the Crown Prince when we did the groundbreaking for the first Vertiport over there. To see the excitement and the involvement from all levels of the Dubai government in this new age of mobility is really fantastic. The momentum is building and as we get aircraft in market and begin testing, we think that's going to continue to be the case. And then as we look to scaling that, we're building out not just the Vertiports but also the app and all of the pieces of the ecosystem as we bring more aircraft to the market and progressively grow that and build a really valuable service for customers, not just in Dubai, but across the region.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Pierce with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon everyone. Just looking at the certification slide, the delta between the blue line and the gray line. Should we read anything into that, given headlines out of D.C. about staffing government agencies, and are you seeing anything on the FAA side that's maybe slowing things down on the certification front, or is it just normal kind of ebb and flow?

Thanks a lot, Chris. This is Paul. Contrary to what it might look like, we actually had record progress in terms of FAA certification documentation last quarter. So every indication we have at this point is that the FAA is fully engaged with our program and doing the work they need to do as we do the work we need to do. That was also demonstrated, as I think was mentioned in the sort of earlier prepared remarks. We had a large FAA delegation come down to see the very same flight testing that the FAA themselves will do for TIA. So both in terms of documentation and the level of engagement at the agency, we've seen accelerating support and progress in terms of the work that they have to do. So in the data, in the actions of the agency on a day-to-day basis, things seem great.