Archer Aviation Extends Boeing-Deal Rally as Earnings Call Fills In the Details
Archer Aviation was Tuesday's standout mover for a second straight session, climbing 11 percent to $6.93 and extending Monday's 12 percent surge, according to 24/7 Wall St. The catalyst was a one-two punch: a transformative deal with Boeing announced to start the week, followed by a second-quarter earnings call that gave investors the fine print they wanted.
Under the agreement, Archer will acquire three Boeing subsidiaries — autonomous air-taxi developer Wisk Aero, military drone maker Insitu and airspace-management software firm SkyGrid — while Boeing takes an equity stake of roughly 16 percent in Archer and enters a technology-sharing collaboration, per Boeing's announcement and 24/7 Wall St. For Boeing, the deal offloads noncore ventures; for Archer, it is a wholesale identity change, grafting an established defense business onto a pre-revenue air-taxi story.
The earnings call quantified what that graft is worth. Chief financial officer Priya Gupta told analysts the Insitu business generates 'more than $200 million of revenue a year' with positive free cash flow expected, positioning Archer to operate on what she described as a self-funding basis, per 24/7 Wall St. Chief executive Adam Goldstein framed the defense and drone assets as directly reducing the cash burn and shareholder dilution risk that have long shadowed the eVTOL sector.
Archer's own quarter, while small in absolute terms, beat expectations. Revenue of $5 million topped the roughly $1.96 million consensus and rose 213 percent from the prior quarter, while the adjusted EBITDA loss came in at $177.1 million. The company guided to a third-quarter adjusted EBITDA loss of $170 million to $200 million and reported liquidity of about $1.6 billion, per 24/7 Wall St.
The certification and product pipeline added fuel. Archer says its Midnight aircraft has completed piloted city-to-city flights and claims an exclusive position in the final phase of FAA certification among its peers. The company's Halo-Thunder autonomous aircraft program with defense-technology firm Anduril targets what executives called a market opportunity above $100 billion, with a first flight expected next year and deliveries planned for 2029.
The rally did not lift the whole sector — if anything, it sharpened the contrast. Joby Aviation slipped about 2 percent to $8.59 despite announcing its own $500 million acquisition of Resonant Sciences the same day, per Investrade, while China's EHang was flat at $5.68, according to 24/7 Wall St. Investors appear to be treating Archer's defense pivot as company-specific rather than a rising tide for air-taxi stocks broadly.
Perspective is still warranted. Even after back-to-back double-digit gains, Archer shares remain down about 10 percent year to date, per 24/7 Wall St, and the company continues to burn well over $150 million a quarter against a business that is only beginning to generate revenue. What changed this week is the shape of the story: Archer now has a revenue-producing defense franchise, a stake from the country's largest aerospace company, and a clearer bridge between today's losses and tomorrow's certification milestones. Whether that bridge holds is the question the next several quarters will answer.
