Joby Aviation Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 7, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Certification Progress: Achieved 37% completion on the Joby side of Stage 4 FAA certification with multiple test plan acceptances and FAA technical visits, speeding path to Type Certificate.
  • Manufacturing Ramp-Up: Second production prototype is flying, the third rolled off assembly, a fourth is in final assembly, and production yields are improving toward the goal of one aircraft per month by year-end.
  • Commercialization Expansion: Applied for certification in Australia, signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Aramco’s Makamala for direct aircraft sales, and plan first commercial launch in Dubai next year under bilateral validation.
  • Future Technology Investments: Converted a battery-electric prototype to complete a 561-mile hydrogen-electric demonstration flight in weeks and acquired Xwing’s autonomy division to support block upgrades and new market applications.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Joby Aviation Q2 2024
00:00 / 00:00

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to Joby Aviation's Second Quarter 2024 Conference Call and Webcast. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Teresa Turitio, Joby's Head of Investor Relations.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Good afternoon and evening, everyone. Welcome to the Joby Aviation conference call to discuss the company's financial results for the Q2 of 2024. We announced our results earlier today, Both our Q2 2024 shareholder letter and a webcast of this call are available online at the Investor Relations page of our website atir.jobayaviation.com. Our discussion today will include statements regarding future events and financial performance as well as statements of belief, expectation, and intent.

Speaker 1

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. Please note that today's call will include results reported on a non GAAP basis. Our Q2 2024 shareholder letter provides a reconciliation between GAAP and non GAAP measures.

Speaker 1

On the call today, we have Joe Ben Babert, Founder and Chief Executive Officer Didier Papadopoulos, President of Aircraft OEM Matt Field, Chief Financial Officer and joining us for Q and A, we also have Paul Sciarra, Executive Chairman. After management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. And with all of that said, I'll turn the call over to Joe Ben.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Theresa, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'm pleased to report that we've had another great quarter, making important progress across all three of our core focus areas, certification, manufacturing and commercialization, while investing in Joby's long term success. Didier is going to speak to the detail of this in a few moments, but I'd like to call out some of the headlines. On certification, we saw significant momentum during the quarter and we're now at 37% complete on the Joby side of Stage 4. On manufacturing, our 2nd production prototype aircraft began flying during the quarter.

Speaker 2

Our 3rd rolled off the pilot assembly line. Our 4th is in final assembly and the fuselage and tail for our 5th are already connected and undergoing proof load testing. That means we will soon be flying 4 aircraft as part of our test program. On commercialization, we applied for certification in Australia and signed a memorandum of understanding with Makamala, a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, an operator of the world's largest fleet of corporate aircraft. Together, we'll be working to introduce Joby to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through the direct purchase of our aircraft.

Speaker 2

As a reminder, the sale of aircraft to customers like McComala or the U. S. Government forms just one pillar of our commercialization strategy, alongside the direct operation of our aircraft in core markets and partnered operations in other markets. We expect sales to be an important pillar of our commercialization strategy, offering the opportunity to generate recurring revenue through the provision of training and maintenance services. Each of these achievements demonstrates Joby's leadership in our sector, and I'm incredibly proud of the team that continues to deliver quarter over quarter.

Speaker 2

Before I hand it over to Didier, I would like to focus on 2 other areas that are critical to Joby's long term success. Our preparation for commercial operations and our investment in future technologies. On operations, we hosted a virtual briefing during the quarter where we introduced our pre flight checklist, a list of the operational items required to successfully deliver an air taxi service, whether you are operating aircraft yourself or selling them to customers. If you haven't seen the briefing, I'd encourage you to watch it on our YouTube channel. And what I hope you'll take away is that certifying an aircraft is just one piece of the puzzle.

Speaker 2

To commercialize successfully, you also need simulators, pilot training, maintenance, safety management systems and much more. With our Part 135 and Part 145 certifications in place, we are making sector leading progress towards being ready to start commercial operations. And during the quarter, we announced that we have also received FAA authorization to use our Elevate OS operating system. Elevate OS is an airline operating system developed in house that is designed to enable high tempo on demand air taxi operations. It includes pilot tools, schedule management software, a mobile first rider app and an intelligent matching engine.

Speaker 2

It's built on a software foundation developed by Uber that we brought across as part of our Uber Elevate acquisition in 2021. Uber is the undisputed leader in ride sharing technology. But the team that joined Joby from Uber also brought direct experience of deploying a multimodal ride sharing product through Ubercopter. We knew early on in our journey that to deliver the sort of efficient even magical experiences our customers would expect, we would need to fundamentally rethink the aviation software stack. And that's exactly what we've done.

Speaker 2

We've built a remarkable set of tools that goes far beyond anything available today and is designed to connect seamlessly into the services of our partners like Uber and Delta. And we're already testing it in real life, so that we'll be ready for day 1 of operations. Looking beyond our initial service launch, the second area I'd like to focus on is our investment in future technologies. Our goal has always been to broaden access to flight as widely as possible, while reducing the environmental impact of travel. Our battery electric aircraft is going to help us take the first step on that journey.

Speaker 2

But it is also going to act as a platform for us to take the next steps on that journey. Because the vast majority of the design, testing and certification work we've completed on the aircraft will carry over into future aircraft or future integrations of the same aircraft. In other words, we can build on the investments we've already made to open up new and adjacent markets. We're able to do that because of the vertically integrated way in which we've built our company and our record breaking 561 mile hydrogen electric flight is a great example of that. This range would make it possible to connect Baltimore to Boston or San Francisco to San Diego, changing how people think about transportation between cities.

Speaker 2

We converted our own battery electric aircraft to complete a hydrogen electric flight in a matter of weeks with only a small team. Our X Wing acquisition tells the same story of small but important investments that leverage our existing technology to make a big difference. We believe autonomy has the potential to widen access to flight on the consumer side and enable a larger set of applications on the government side. And in X Wing, we've been able to bring on a team that has demonstrated true leadership in the field. At the Farnborough Air Show back in July, the excitement around our work in automation and hydrogen took me back to 2017, the year we first flew our full size battery electric prototype aircraft and demonstrated what eVTOL could be.

Speaker 2

Those flights played an incredibly important role in bringing this sector to life and catalyzing the regulatory work required to commercialize battery electric technology. My hope is that our hydrogen and autonomy work will do the same thing and help lay the groundwork for those technologies to enjoy the broad bipartisan and global support we're seeing for our battery electric aircraft today. It's an honor to be able to share our progress with you each quarter. And I'd like to hand it over to Didier to look in more detail at our future technology and our core work on certifying and manufacturing our battery electric aircraft. Didier, over to you.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Jo Ben. It was exhilarating to witness our team complete multiple 500 plus mile eVTOL flights using our hydrogen electric demonstrator aircraft. This was truly a landmark achievement, and I want to take a moment to explain how we were able to quickly and efficiently demonstrate a next generation technology and why we did it. Our battery electric preproduction prototype completed its mission as a test asset on May 2. And less than 2 months later, it demonstrated that regional emission free flight is possible.

Speaker 3

Looking at the aircraft from the outside, you can tell that the vast majority of it is fundamentally the same aircraft as the battery electric prototype. It has the same 6 propellers, driven by the same 6 electric propulsion units and the same airframe structure. The wiring and electronics inside the aircraft are nearly identical as well. A small team at Joby worked with H2fly, a wholly owned subsidiary we acquired in 2021 for pioneers in hydrogen powered flight to develop a hydrogen electric powertrain that we were able to integrate into the aircraft and fly in a matter of weeks. This is the power of the vertical integration at Joby that we've been describing for the past 3 years.

Speaker 3

From composites to metallics, electronics to mechanical systems, hardware to software, the design, manufacturing and testing of all of these as well as the integrated systems testing that brings each of these elements together. We have all of this under one roof. In more than 20 years I spent at CAE and Garmin, I saw many products through the life cycle of development, from drawings to technology demonstrators, through prototyping and then finally into formal certification programs. As we move through the cycle on future products and future upgrades, our vertically integrated approach allows us to invest efficiently in staying ahead of the competition. That in house engine of technological development is what enables us to do incredible things on relatively short timelines, while leveraging existing resources for minimal incremental expense.

Speaker 3

The investments we've made in people, technology, test assets and certification of novel aircraft systems allows us to not only bring our revolutionary battery electric aircraft to market, but to make improvements to our core aircraft or develop entirely new products. These investments are the pillars of the future. With a team that has already progressed through the development lifecycle on novel flight control systems, propulsion, wiring and energy storage, we know what types of challenges to expect and we can use that knowledge to be even more efficient developing new technologies. As we continue to explore opportunities, including new manufacturing methods like thermoplastics, we believe that this will lead to products with a lower bill of material that are cheaper and easier to build and operate and have additional capabilities that open up new markets. Over the next year, as we move further into the final stages of certification, members of our core design and technology prototyping teams will be freed up to focus on future technologies, much like we did this quarter with our hydrogen electric demonstrator supported by our contract with Agility Prime.

Speaker 3

We plan to take similar steps on work with flight automation, supported by our acquisition of X Wings' autonomy division. Like H2Fly, the X Wings team has pushed the boundaries of what is possible in aviation, completing more than 250 fully automated gate to gate flights using their SuperPilot technology and a Cessna Caravan fitted with a suite of sensing and autonomy solutions that can be applied to a variety of aircraft types. We see the potential for this technology to both expand our government contracts and bring new safety capabilities to our civil products through block upgrades in an amended type certificate. Turning now to the core focus of our business. The team continues to make great progress towards bringing our battery electric aircraft to market.

Speaker 3

Last week, we rolled our 3rd production prototype of the manufacturing line in Marina, where it has already begun ground testing in preparation for flight later this month. By the time we speak next quarter, we expect to have 4 aircraft in active flight test, with additional aircraft being assembled behind them. With each completed build cycle, we learned a tremendous amount that enables us to increase production speed, reduce cost and move closer to receiving our production certificate shortly after TC. We remain on track to reach our previously stated goal of a production capacity equivalent to 1 aircraft per month by the end of this year and to ramp beyond that through our expansions in Marina and Ohio. The team is continuing to increase the rate of production and at the same time, the amount of conforming hardware being built.

Speaker 3

Turning to Certification. I have never been more confident than I am today about our program. As Jo Ben mentioned, we first flew and transitioned a full scale eVTOL aircraft in 2017. And we did it again with our preproduction prototype beginning in 2020, with those aircraft completing more than 33,000 miles of flight over 4 years. During the proof of concept and prototyping stages of development, flying as much as possible is critical to demonstrating the viability of the overall program and to fully characterize the design.

Speaker 3

Now that we are deep in the certification process, the vast majority of the necessary work we have to do to get to the market is the less visible behind the scene work to develop conforming software and hardware as well as building conforming test assets that will support the bulk of our certification activities in Stages 45. This is our primary area of focus, combined with our work on submitting Stage 4 test plans. This quarter, we made more progress on both sides of Stage 4 of certification than any previous quarter, moving from 9% to 14% complete on the FAA side. Included in this were FAA acceptances for numerous test plans related to onboard equipment and structural materials and processes as well as our integrated flight and propulsion control system operational test plan, a key system level test. We also submitted a number of test plans for FAA review, covering system area and structures across the aircraft program.

Speaker 3

But I want to draw your attention to 2 in particular that demonstrate our leadership on certification. The first is a system level test plan covering the endurance of our propulsion system. To step back for a moment, there are multibillion dollar aerospace companies dedicated to developing, certifying and manufacturing propulsion systems alone. Electric motors are a core technology that will drive the next era of aviation and we are trailblazers here, working closely with the FAA to develop certification standards that allow us to demonstrate the safety and performance of electric motors. The second is our first human factors evaluation plan, which will see the FAA carry out certification tests in Adobe Engineering Simulator that conforms to our TC intent aircraft.

Speaker 3

These are huge steps forward and we expect the pace of this progress to increase over the balance of the year. Key to the progress we're making in Stage 4 are the regular technical discussions taking place between Joby and FAA staff. During the quarter, we hosted 3 teams from the FAA at our site across California. Staff from the FAA Electrical and Propulsion Engineering team witnessed a battery safety thermal runaway test in our newly built battery test facility that was representative of the test we intend to conduct for FAA credit. The FAA Flight Test and Human Factors division completed a 2 week visit that include an initial round of FAA pilot training as well as human factors development testing and flight test techniques development using our simulator.

Speaker 3

This visit marked an important step towards FAA pilots later carrying out for credit flight testing on our aircraft and working to certify our pilot training program in advance of a commercial operation. We also hosted a group from the FAA Aircraft Evaluation Division, which is charged with ensuring the operational safety and readiness of our aircraft before it enters commercial service. These sessions included careful review of operational aspects that are required as part of our type certification, such as instructions for continued airworthiness and our planned maintenance program for the aircraft. These technical engagements with the FAA are my favorite part of the certification process, where we work together to hammer out all of the final details for the key tests that will bring our aircraft safely into commercial service. These conversations are progressing very well and we expect to conduct for credit testing in many of our test assets, including the Worley track, our battery test facility and our integrated test lab.

Speaker 3

As Joban said, we're now more than 1 third complete with Stage 4 on the Joby side and expect progress to continue to accelerate in the back half of the year. As we take these strides forward, we believe the environment around us is the most supportive it has ever been for bringing our revolutionary technology to market. In May, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Bill, highlighting the desire of U. S. Lawmakers to make sure America is a global leader in advanced air mobility.

Speaker 3

The bill specifically calls on the FAA to prioritize work on the type certification of air taxis and to publish necessary rulemaking to enable commercial operations. With the FAA on track to finalize the Powered Lift SFAR, which outlines the operational rules for our aircraft, we're extremely pleased with the support for our mission at the federal level. The momentum we're seeing on our FAA certification work puts us in a great position for our international expansion plans. During the quarter, we were pleased to add Australia to the list of countries where we are pursuing bilateral validation, where the U. S.-Australian Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement already considers Powered Lift Aircraft.

Speaker 3

Under these agreements, international regulators can leverage the work conducted under the FAA type certification effort, expediting our path to market in those countries. Validation is already underway in Japan and the U. K. During the Farm Bureau International Air Show 2 weeks ago, we had very productive conversations with the U. K.

Speaker 3

Civil Aviation Authority as well as a range of other policymakers, business partners, airport operators and the public. I'm excited about what lies ahead including our first overseas demonstrations later this year and continued progress in Dubai to deliver on our exclusive access to that market. With groundbreaking on the first VertiPort expected this year and in region flight testing to begin in 2025. Matt, over to you. Thanks,

Speaker 4

Didier, and good afternoon, everybody. In addition to the progress highlighted by Jo Ben and Didier, I'd like to share our recent accomplishments in 2 adjacent areas. First, in July, we published our 2023 impact report, which highlights our actions to make the world a better place for our communities, employees and shareholders. It addresses enterprise level safety management systems, expanded climate impact and waste reporting, workforce development and more. This report represents our 2nd year sharing information on these subjects and it's another area where we lead the industry with reporting that embodies good governance and showcases our progress in matters core to Joby since our founding in 2,009.

Speaker 4

Another area of progress relates to our activities to reduce our capital needs for the business. In this case, training programs, tax incentives and loan opportunities. We are grateful to the FAA for a recently awarded grant to support the development of maintenance training programs. The application process was highly competitive and it's a testament to the team and our commitment to our employees that Joby was awarded this grant. We also were granted another round of California tax incentives for manufacturing equipment, which builds on our first grant received in 2019.

Speaker 4

Lastly, we submitted our Part 2 application for a Department of Energy Title 17 loan. This loan application represents significant effort across multiple teams and represents an opportunity to support a large portion of our capital needs through scaling. Substantial work remains ahead to evaluate our application, but getting this far is a sizable accomplishment. This application highlights our commitment to fund and build a business for the long term, not just the next quarter. Shifting to our quarterly financial results, we ended the Q2 of 2024 with cash and short term investments totaling $825,000,000 Our use of cash totaled $99,000,000 lower than last quarter as we had 1 fewer pay period in the quarter as well as higher contract deliverables.

Speaker 4

This spending also included about $8,000,000 on property and equipment. We remain on track with our full year 2024 cash spending outlook of $440,000,000 to $470,000,000 We incurred a Q2 net loss of $123,000,000 reflecting a loss from operations of about $144,000,000 partly offset by interest and other income of $21,000,000 Our net loss was $29,000,000 higher compared to the prior quarter, reflecting a lower favorable revaluation of our warrants and earn out shares. Total operating expenses for the quarter were nearly $2,000,000 lower than the Q1 as our increased staffing and spending was more than offset by increased government contract deliverables, which are recorded as a reduction of our expenses. These deliverables, which included our hydrogen powered flight, reflect our ongoing prioritization of government contract resources across 3 elements: work directly supporting our certification effort, R and D work that supports mutual areas of interest to Joby and our DoD partners and on base revenue generating activities. In the first half of this year, we prioritized the first two of these areas through things like HEERF and wind tunnel testing in Q1 and R and D projects like the hydrogen powered demonstrator, which was important to our customer in Q2.

Speaker 4

As a reminder, these payments show up as a reduction of R and D expenses. We will continue to manage our engagements across these three elements of our government contracts, and we expect an increase in on base government directed operations late this year and next year. We expect to deliver our 2nd aircraft to Edwards Air Force Base late this year and 2 additional aircraft to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa next year. Adjusted EBITDA, a non GAAP metric that we reconcile to our net income in our shareholder letter, was a loss of $107,000,000 in the 2nd quarter. This was about $3,000,000 lower than the prior quarter, reflecting the increased contract deliverables mentioned earlier.

Speaker 4

Our adjusted EBITDA loss was $24,000,000 higher than the same period last year reflecting the growth in our organization. As you heard from Joe Ban at the top of the call, we continue to make sector leading progress across all elements of our business, And I'm pleased to say that we do that with the strongest balance sheet in the sector. We have real momentum behind our certification work stream, reaching 37% on the Joby side of Stage 4. We're about to have 4 aircraft in test flight. We're on track to reach our goal of having production capacity equivalent to 1 aircraft per month by the end of this year.

Speaker 4

We're on track to deliver demonstration flights overseas this year. And we continue to ensure we're well positioned to deliver long term growth by capitalizing on new technologies through disciplined investments. With that, I'd like to ask the operator to please instruct participants on how to ask questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. And our first question comes from the line of Andres Sheppard with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 5

Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking our question and congratulations on the quarter. Jobin, Didier and Theresa, it was also great seeing you at Farmbor a few weeks ago. Jobin, question for you. I'm wondering if you could maybe help share with us your vision regarding commercialization.

Speaker 5

Wondering kind of how you envision that commercialization process taking place in the near term? Just curious to get your thoughts there. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Andres. I think you did a fantastic job of summing it up with beginning next year, we're targeting the commercial launch in Dubai. We've seen fantastic lean in there from multiple dimensions of the government including the RTA

Operator

and the

Speaker 2

GCAA and as well as momentum on building out infrastructure. So you can expect us to announce the groundbreaking on the first infrastructure there later this year as well as first flights in the first half of next year and commercialization towards the back half of the year. And then you rightly pointed out the fantastic progress we're making in Japan, Korea, U. K. And the recent announcement of progress in Australia and leveraging in all of those markets the bilateral relationships that the FAA has with the local regulators where we're able to leverage all of the incredible work that the team is doing on certification with the FAA across the world.

Speaker 2

So we do see tremendous international opportunities. And then the other element of course is our operations here at home and our partnerships with Uber and Delta on the demand gen and the infrastructure side of the airports with Delta, we're really excited about the momentum we're seeing in New York and LA.

Speaker 5

Got it. That's super helpful. I appreciate all that detail. And maybe just a quick follow-up, maybe a question more for Matt or Paul or Didier potentially, but just with the rollout of the 3rd prototype aircraft and now the 4th one being in final assembly, I'm wondering what lessons have been learned that will help with the more significant ramp up in production once you are operating these or selling these in those international markets. I'm just curious what lessons have been learned and maybe more specifically on kind of from a cost perspective in the process, what are some things that maybe you've identified that you can automate or accelerate?

Speaker 5

Just curious kind of what that process has shown. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Andres, it's Matt. I'll take part of that and then hand off to Didier to talk a bit about the manufacturing. So in terms of cost, we're really pleased with the progress. I know we've talked on a past call about seeing reductions kind of plane over plane, as I like to think of it. And we continue to see those.

Speaker 4

We continue to incorporate lessons in our manufacturing plant operations kind of across the board because our vertical integration allows us to look at every part of the plane and not just limit ourselves to, let's say, final assembly. Our partnership with Toyota continues to pay dividends there. And so really pleased with the progress on that. Lessons in terms of go to market, too early to say, but really pleased with how we bring up planes. So we're learning as we have the plane roll off and bring that into operations.

Speaker 4

So incorporating that with each successive plane as well and seeing an increase in the pace and cadence there. I'll hand it off to Didier to talk a little bit about the manufacturing shop floor as well.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Andre. Good to see you at Farnborough, by the way. Very exciting show there. The past few months have been really exciting on the manufacturing.

Speaker 3

It gave us the opportunity through those 3 airplanes to truly fine tune the value stream of manufacturing of the airplane, right, from receiving of the raw materials all the way to the work instructions leading to the integration at the end. And that helped us on multiple fronts, optimizing the workflows, building some automation that we hadn't started with at the beginning because we really wanted to understand the process. And then on top of that, in terms of yields, we were from month to month, we're seeing 2 double digit yield improvements on multiple side of the vertical integration on the manufacturing side. As we've mentioned also earlier, those yields and those efficiencies are helping us get closer and closer to our target of producing 1 aircraft a month. In fact, on multiple fronts, we've exceeded that already here and barely passed this year the middle of this year.

Speaker 3

All of these translate into cost reductions and also quality improvements, which most importantly for me right now helps us support a mature quality management system, which is a direct correlation to getting a production certificate right after TC.

Speaker 5

Wonderful. Super helpful. Appreciate all that color. Congrats again on the quarter, and I'll pass it on.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Peterson with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 6

Yes. Hi. Good afternoon and thanks for all the details thus far in the talk. But I want to elaborate see if you can elaborate more on the mid to longer term vision for the hydrogen aircraft. So I guess do you intend to develop hydrogen version of the current 4 seat model or would this be envisioned for other models down the line?

Speaker 6

Can you elaborate a bit on what kind of modifications you need to do to accommodate payload as well as the hydrogen fuel system? And then I guess you alluded to it, but what is the current spend in terms of R and D that you have internally, I guess, better proceeds? And how do you see that evolving in 2025 and beyond?

Speaker 2

Emil, thanks. This is Joe Biden. I'll take the first piece of that and then hand it to Matt on the spending side. So we do see our hydro and electric program as being a game changer from a technology standpoint that has the potential to dramatically improve not just the sustainability, but the performance of aircraft writ large. When we began pulling the thread on this 5 years ago, it was much more nascent.

Speaker 2

But the more we pull on it, the more confident we've become that this is a massively disruptive technology that can really change the future of aviation writ large. In terms of the specific demonstration that we did, it was just a demonstration. We took our battery electric aircraft and we retrofitted it with the hydrogen electric system and as you saw delivered substantially more range with it. But the purpose of this was really to begin to get regulators both here in the U. S.

Speaker 2

And around the world to lean in and to work with us on putting the processes and the regulatory steps in place for us to be able to certify a production version. As we mentioned in our prepared remarks, the amount of spend on this was extremely small. The number of people we have working on this is quite small, but the potential upside impact is incredibly exciting in that we can take a small amount of spend and a small incremental amount of work on modifying a contained number of systems on the aircraft and give it outsized new capabilities that allow us to address adjacent large and adjacent TAMs where instead of just being able to provide services across town, we're now able to provide regional service from the same Vertiport investments, the same software operating Elevate OS operating system, the same pilot training, etcetera. Now all of a sudden we've massively increased the value that we can provide to our customers. And then I'll hand the financial piece over to Paul.

Speaker 2

Sorry, over to Matt.

Speaker 4

That's all right.

Speaker 3

That's all

Speaker 4

right. Hi, Bill. Thanks for the question. So as you think about the R and D cost and you think about this program specifically, I think of R and D right now in kind of 3 buckets. First of all, is the engineering factory, if you will, or the certification factory, which is a real muscle.

Speaker 4

And as Didier likes to call it, it's the machine that makes the machine. And that we'll expect that to taper off at this point in the going years. But what that really means is that as we get this plane closer and closer to certification, there'll be resources that roll off on other projects, block upgrades and so forth. And so that's really the beauty of what's being built here around vertical integration is you're creating an engineering base that can do amazing things time and time again. And so some of those will be block upgrades, some of those eventually would be things like hydrogen or autonomous roadmaps or so forth.

Speaker 4

So that's the first part of the factory. The second piece you see in our cost today is the cost of building in the plant and the material we use to build prototypes or to build test articles. What you'll see there is you'll see continued growth as we build more units. And so we would expect that cost to increase, but it will shift into a traditional kind of manufacturing cost of goods or a different form factor, if you will, to support our ongoing operations. So you'll see a growth there over time, but really a migration into supporting commercialization and the growth of our production.

Speaker 4

And then the last piece is government contracts. That's going to be something we will always evaluate and pursue where there's opportunities and mutual benefit. But that will probably ebb and flow depending on how we see those evolve. But the bigger two pieces, which is the engineering factory and kind of the manufacturing piece of it, will stabilize on the factory and continue to grow on the manufacturing piece, but in support of production and commercialization.

Speaker 6

Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Joe Venner here. Pivoting to certification and something we've discussed, I think, maybe around a year ago. But in light of the statement published by the FAA around harmonizing certification standards with the EASA, what is your latest thinking around EASA validating FAA type certification despite the former's higher safety standards? I guess, how does this impact your outlook entering maybe the European market down the line?

Speaker 6

I mean, you obviously have a lot of opportunities in U. S, U. A, Japan, U. K. And Australia, but obviously, Europe is a big market as well.

Speaker 3

Yes. Thanks for the question, Bill. So we continue to work directly with the EASA, but also with the FAA in order to be aligned on the path towards certification with EASA. Our focus is has been and continues to be the FAA and working with the FAA to see how we can closer get closer and closer. And we've seen steps in the past few months where there's more and more alignment on some of the key points on that front.

Speaker 3

We'll continue working through that. We'll continue expanding with UK CAA as well. Once we get those complete, we expect to have a much closer path to EASA certification after that.

Speaker 6

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Austin Weller with Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 7

Hi, good evening and great to see everyone at Farnborough. Just my first question was as a follow-up on Bill's question. If you want to submit a hydrogen variant of your VTOL aircraft to the FAA for certification, presumably this would require a new SFAR and certification basis to be established for a hydrogen propulsion system, correct? And so that was kind of the objective of doing this flight testing?

Speaker 3

Yes, great question. So maybe upfront on the question. This doesn't necessarily require a new S. FAR. As far as much more focus on the operational aspects in general and less so on the technologies that go into the certification of the aircraft, though there are some byproducts and implications.

Speaker 3

So we expect to be able or at least the desire is to be able to leverage the path on that front. In terms of the type certificate, I think one of the most exciting things about where we are today and introducing technologies like hydrogen is that two fronts. 1, we've built a platform, which I'll call the aircraft right now, where a lot of the certification basis on that aircraft is reusable. And that's why we talk about introducing new technologies through amended TCs after this initial TC. So the foundation of the aircraft platform is here and the introduction of the new technologies will be focused on those changes only.

Speaker 3

The other big element that's really critical here in what Matt was talking about making the machine that makes the machine, We've built the infrastructure at Joby to where we're able to develop and certify software. We're able to develop and certify hardware component systems in airplanes. That whole machine that sort of develops the plans and leads them to certification is really what's really important for us. And we'll be able to reuse all of this as we introduce new technologies. What we did today, like Jo Ben said, is a demonstrator, and that's really important to think about that and understand what that means.

Speaker 3

In order to be able to certify something novel with the FAA, 1st and foremost, we have to demonstrate that we understand the technology and that we understand what the technology is capable of doing and not capable of doing. That's step 1, and it was a success. We're really excited about that. Past that is where we start working with the FAA on the rules applicable to this technology only that may affect the certification basis, but that would be at a smaller scale focused on those changes relating to hydrogen.

Speaker 7

Great. That's helpful. And just my second question, given Stage 4 is of the FAA process is 37% complete, can you go into detail on what you will be doing with the aircraft in the show and verify stage? What does the timeline look like on that given you're aiming to have a type certificate by late 2025? Yes.

Speaker 3

So I think thanks for highlighting that. We're really excited about the progress we've had on Stage 4 having more than a third complete at this point. It's been more progress this quarter than any other previous quarter. And we expect to be able to continue to accelerate in the latter part of this year. In addition to the percentage, I think one thing that's really unique and trying to highlight in the prepared remarks also is the fact that we're now touching on multiple fronts of the FAA certification branches and as well as on multiple systems.

Speaker 3

You want to see that breadth of exposure whereas a year ago, we were working, for example, on materials or then moved on and made progress towards equipment qualifications. Now we're talking about more complex systems like flight control, propulsion, endurance testing, human factors and so on. So we're very excited to have a broader exposure on that front. Now if you think about the aircraft pyramid where you start with components, systems and move all the way to the aircraft, you can naturally expect us to start moving into the aircraft progressing from there. So that's the direction you should expect us to progress into here in the near future.

Speaker 7

Excellent. Thanks for the color.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Savi Syth with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 8

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. I was kind of curious if you could share what type of flying you've done with the production conforming aircraft? I know what you're doing is extremely challenging, but I was kind of curious if you've kind of gone through the Thrustbourne and transition flights yet or where that where you are in that flight test process?

Speaker 3

Yes. Thank you for the question. So with respect to flying, I think it's really important to step back and remember, we started flying a full scale aircraft in 2017 and then in 2020, again, a full scale preproduction prototype aircraft. And over the past few years, we've consistently continued flying that airplane. In fact, we've been flying it even as recently as a few days ago here.

Speaker 3

What's really important about that is during the early stages of a program, you want to fly as much as possible in order to gain confidence and mature your design as it relates to the, aerostructures, the flight controls, the propulsion units, all of those elements you really need to properly understand. You need to lock in the design and you also need to build a proper model around these so you can evolve the design as need might be with high confidence. All of this is behind us at this point. And so for us, spending a lot of time flying is not necessarily the highest priority, though it is something that is part of our plan. Most of the focus right now is where it should be, which is making progress in Stage 4 across all of the pyramids.

Speaker 3

So the equipment, the systems leading into the aircraft. Particularly, three things we've been spending time on the past quarter and we'll continue to do so here moving forward. 1, continuing to make progress on building certified software and hardware, so that's what builds sort of the equipment. Number 2, converting the development test assets into conforming test assets because you need these to actually take credit for FAA. And then number 3, continuing to make progress on test plans, submitting these to the FAA and getting acceptance on these.

Speaker 3

So this is our strategy here, making sure we're continuing to be on pace and making progress on that and obviously excited about having gotten to 37% submitted on that front. You should expect us to continue in that direction and continue to make progress on those airplanes. And as we said earlier, we should start seeing all of the airplanes flying here in the next quarter and in the not too distant future.

Speaker 8

Just to clarify that on D. B. H. So I think I know these are full scale, but I think there are differences with this production version. So is there any kind of reason you haven't kind of gone through that or you just want to kind of have a lot more flying to have more productivity or some reason around how you do those test flights?

Speaker 3

Yes, there's no reason of we're really confident about the design here and this is part of sort of the evolution of going through the flight testing. Want to make sure that most importantly, Savi, what we're working on is getting towards a conformity because we want to make sure that every aspect, every energy we're spending here is something that goes directly towards FAA conformity and then FAA points as soon as the FAA is available. That's why you see engagement from the FAA here on a regular basis. We want to see them with us seeing some of those test executions so that we can get high confidence that when we submit these and invite them next time, it's for credit.

Speaker 8

And actually that ties in well with my kind of second question, which is I imagine building these aircraft are really expensive. So curious why kind of continue to build kind of production conforming aircraft versus kind of switching to certification conforming aircraft? It seems like the rule of thumb is to build 6 or 7 of the conforming aircraft so that you have enough kind of testing and flight hours and everything. So curious of what the strategy there is?

Speaker 9

[SPEAKER MARTIN PEREZ

Speaker 3

DE SOLAY:] Yes. I'll start with this and pass it a bit on, Tim. I think it's important to remember that the airplanes we're building today have multiple purposes. It's kind of a 2 axis. The first axis is really maturing our quality management system.

Speaker 3

We have to nail this down in terms of product quality and getting a path towards PC so that when it's time to scale, we're able to scale costs effectively and we're able to scale quickly. So you can learn on paper, but you can the best way to learn is to build airplanes, right? And this is how we're learning right now. On the other side of the axis, we're fortunate in that every one of these airplanes has a purpose, right. So some of these airplanes are used directly for the program in order to mature and do verification activities for engineering and TC purposes.

Speaker 3

Others of these airplanes are intended like we mentioned earlier for DoD applications and then the 3rd group of these is intended for international demonstrations. So every one of these airplanes has dual purpose, and we're fortunate that way. It has an end goal utilization and then also it has a short term use for us that's extremely important for TC and PC.

Speaker 4

Yes, Javier, Didier just covered kind of what I would have said on that. But I just want to add, in a traditional aviation program, I think you're absolutely right. You'd probably only just build your conforming aircraft because you don't need to show what these aircraft are capable of. With a new and novel aircraft, we have so much demand, whether that's engagements with the DoD or international areas where people want to explore what the art of the possible is or how they might want these to operate in aerospace that's traditionally been restricted to helicopters and had very limited helicopter use that we're in a fortunate position where people are asking us to bring the aircraft. And so unlike I think a traditional kind of routine aviation program where you might only have 4 or 5 conforming aircraft.

Speaker 4

We're building more, 1, for that manufacturing muscle that Didier talked about 2, to refine our processes so that we know they're scalable. And then 3, because there's a great opportunity to bring those into service, get paid in many cases for doing so and to kind of educate the public, which is going to be really important for us to be welcomed into communities.

Speaker 8

Helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And our last question comes from the line of David Zasula with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 9

Hey, thanks for squeezing me in. For Joe Ben or Paul maybe even, I think you guys have had a number of great opportunities to kind of expand the scope of Joby, thinking internationally, thinking hydrogen, thinking autonomy. I guess when we started covering you guys a couple of years ago, what struck me was an intense focus, singular focus on certifying the best possible aircraft with the FAA. So I'd just be interested in your assessment of the risk that you're straying from that focus. And to the extent you assess any risk or have considered that, what mitigation efforts you've put in kind of from a high level companywide?

Speaker 2

Yes. Thank you. I think we are very, as we said before, extremely focused on the certification of the battery electric aircraft and making fantastic progress there. We do see incredible opportunities to build on the platform of the battery electric aircraft as we layer on these incremental technologies as Didier spoke about and really substantially expand the opportunity before us. And so we are extremely optimistic about our progression as we expand into a next generation aviation company.

Speaker 9

Okay, thanks. And then if I could just have one more. You used in a couple of releases recently the term core markets. I Wonder if you could kind of define what you mean by core versus non core markets? And potentially even is there a possibility that a market within the U.

Speaker 9

S. Be defined as a non core market?

Speaker 10

I'm not sure which press releases and sorry, this is Paul, David, you might be referring to. But I mean, at this point, all of the markets that we've talked about are potentially core. So you shouldn't read anything into that particular phrasing. JB mentioned on his prior answer that we are sort of in full lean in mode across Dubai and the opportunity for commercialization there. But we are also actively working on potential service here in the U.

Speaker 10

S. In conjunction with Delta, in conjunction with Uber. And some of the work that we highlighted both this quarter and on previous calls about activating the bilateral arrangements between U. S. FAA and other regulatory bodies around the world, whether that's UK, Australia, J Cab and Japan, that should allow us to continually expand from some of these early markets to a broader set of markets over time.

Speaker 10

But long and short, I don't think there's any magic to core or not core. All of these markets are markets that we are very excited about.

Speaker 9

Great. Thanks very much. Appreciate the time.

Operator

Thank you. And we have reached the end of the question and answer session. And this also concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your line at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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