Archer Aviation Inc (ACHR) — Company Research

Last Updated: 13 August 2026

Archer Aviation is a pre-commercial aerospace company building Midnight, a four-passenger electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, alongside an autonomous hybrid-electric VTOL platform developed with Anduril Industries. Five years after listing via a SPAC merger it remains, financially, a very large research and development programme: FY2025 revenue was $0.3m against a net loss of $618.2m, and the accumulated deficit reached $2,784.7m by 30 June 2026. What changed in August 2026 is the shape of the company. On 9 August Archer signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wisk Aero, Insitu and SkyGrid from Boeing in exchange for Class A shares equal to 19.75% of its pre-closing share count plus two $100m warrants — a transaction that would hand Archer its first material operating business (Insitu, described as profitable with over $200m of annual revenue across 35 countries), make Boeing a strategic shareholder, and settle the awkward history of the trade-secret suit Wisk itself brought against Archer in 2021. The following day Archer reported Q2 2026 revenue of $5.0m, almost all of it from an airport services business, and guided Q3 adjusted EBITDA to a loss of $170m to $200m. This report sets out what the filings actually say.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Company	Archer Aviation Inc.
Listing	New York Stock Exchange, ticker ACHR (Class A common stock, $0.0001 par value); warrants trade as ACHR WS. Commission file 001-39668
Sector / industry	Aerospace & Defence — Aircraft (SEC SIC 3721)
CEO / Leadership	Adam Goldstein, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, also a director. Priya Gupta is Acting Chief Financial Officer — Archer has no permanent CFO. Tom Muniz is Chief Technology Officer and Eric Lentell Chief Legal & Strategy Officer
Headquarters	190 West Tasman Drive, San Jose, California, USA
Founded	Incorporated October 2018; listed 16 September 2021 via merger with Atlas Crest Investment Corp.
Employees	1,660 total workforce as of 31 December 2025 — 1,160 full-time employees plus 500 contingent workers. No union or collective bargaining agreement (FY2025 Form 10-K)
Market cap	$4.84bn (770,026,800 shares at the $6.29 close of 12 August 2026)
Revenue (FY2025)	$0.3m, Archer's first-ever revenue, from hangar leasing at Hawthorne Airport. Trailing-twelve-month revenue to 30 June 2026 is $6.9m
Net loss (FY2025)	$618.2m GAAP; GAAP diluted loss per share $(0.99). Adjusted EBITDA loss $481.8m
Share structure	770,023,800 Class A shares as of 5 August 2026, single class — all Class B converted 1:1 into Class A on 31 December 2024 and none will be reissued
Dividend	Nil. The FY2025 10-K states no dividends have ever been declared and none are expected in the foreseeable future
Cash position	$1,560.6m of cash and short-term investments at 30 June 2026, plus $7.3m restricted cash

2. Bull Case & Bear Case

Bull Case

• The Boeing transaction buys revenue, autonomy IP and a strategic partner at once: the 9 August 2026 agreement to acquire Wisk Aero, Insitu and SkyGrid brings a business Archer describes as profitable with more than $200m of annual revenue and operations in 35 countries, plus nearly two million combined autonomous flight hours. The consideration is shares rather than cash, so Archer's balance sheet is not drawn down, and Boeing becomes a strategic shareholder and technology partner rather than a litigation counterparty.
• Certification has moved from theory to documentation: Midnight's Means of Compliance was fully accepted by the FAA in January 2026, closing phase 3 of the four-phase type-certification process defined in FAA Order 8110.4C. Archer states it has received approximately 15% of the compliance verification documents in phase 4. In parallel, the UAE's GCAA moved Midnight onto a Restricted Type Certificate track on 7 May 2026 — the first eVTOL on an RTC path with that regulator — opening a commercial route that does not wait on the FAA.
• A funded balance sheet with no near-term maturity wall: $1,560.6m of cash and short-term investments at 30 June 2026 against total borrowings of $80.1m. The largest facility, a $65.0m Synovus loan funding the Covington plant, runs to October 2033 and is interest-only until November 2026. Management states cash is sufficient to fund the current operating plan for at least the next twelve months, and there is no going-concern qualification in the filings.
• Two distinct routes to first operations, both in 2026: Archer says it was selected as a partner in multiple winning applications under the White House-backed eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, with the opportunity to begin early operations in Florida, Texas and New York in parallel with FAA type certification. Separately it is preparing initial passenger operations in Abu Dhabi with Abu Dhabi Aviation, having completed hot-weather full-envelope testing and identified ten vertiport sites. On 30 July 2026 Midnight completed a piloted round-trip city-to-city flight between Salinas and Monterey, roughly nine minutes per leg.
• The defence platform is a genuine second product line, not a slide: Archer and Anduril unveiled a jointly developed series hybrid-electric autonomous VTOL platform at Farnborough on 20 July 2026, with the Group 5 attack variant Thunder and, two days later, the commercial variant Halo with Marubeni Aerospace as launch partner. Multiple test flights with full-scale surrogate aircraft are already complete. Archer's electric powertrain had already been selected by Anduril and EDGE Group for their Omen air vehicle in November 2025 — its first third-party technology adoption.

Bear Case

• The revenue that exists is not the revenue the thesis needs: of Q2 2026's $5.0m, $3.0m was fixed-base operator revenue — aviation fuelling and ground handling at Hawthorne Airport, acquired on 1 April 2026 — with $1.0m of lease income and $1.0m of other revenue. There has been no aircraft-sale revenue whatsoever, and the FY2025 10-K confirms that no revenue was recognised on the United Airlines pre-delivery payment in 2023, 2024 or 2025.
• Losses are widening, not narrowing: adjusted EBITDA loss went from $118.7m in Q2 2025 to $172.5m in Q1 2026 to $177.1m in Q2 2026, with Q3 guided to a $170m to $200m loss. R&D rose 52% year on year in the quarter to $186.0m. Cash and short-term investments fell $215.3m in a single quarter, and the accumulated deficit stands at $2,784.7m.
• Dilution is structural, and the Boeing deal adds a large increment: shares outstanding went from 503.8m at the end of 2024 to 744.0m at the end of 2025 on $1.8bn of registered direct offerings, and to 770.0m by 5 August 2026 partly through vendor share issuances settling $70.6m of supplier obligations in the first half of 2026 alone. The Boeing consideration is a further roughly 19.75% of pre-closing Class A shares plus $200m of warrants at $13.00 and $17.88 strikes, and the associated Forward Equity Purchase Agreement is explicitly structured around a future third-party offering expected to raise at least $400m gross.
• On the key technical proof point Archer is behind its listed peers: Archer has not publicly completed a piloted transition flight from hover to wingborne cruise, and had guided to doing so in the second half of 2026. Vertical Aerospace completed a two-way piloted transition on 14 April 2026 and described itself as only the second company globally to do so. Joby ended Q2 2026 with $2,263.8m of liquidity — roughly 45% more than Archer — on Q2 revenue of $38.6m against Archer's $5.0m, and has raised its 2026 revenue outlook to $115m to $125m.
• The order book is conditional, and the manufacturing partnership is still only a memorandum: the United purchase agreement covers up to $1.0bn of aircraft with a $500m option, but Archer discloses that United's obligations "will arise only after all such material terms are agreed by the parties," including specifications, warranties, performance guarantees and delivery periods. Only $10.0m has been received. Meanwhile the FY2025 10-K states of Stellantis, Archer's stated route to high-volume production, that "we have not yet executed the final agreement and there is no assurance that we will execute the agreement in the near term or at all."

3. Revenue Segments

Archer reports one operating segment and one reportable segment. The FY2025 10-K states that the chief operating decision maker, the Chief Executive Officer, reviews financial information on a consolidated basis and uses net loss for operating decisions, and that "given the Company's pre-commercialization operating stage, it currently has no concentration exposure to products, services or customers." The table below therefore shows the disclosed revenue categories from the Q2 2026 Form 10-Q rather than segments.

Segment / category	% of revenue	What it is
FBO-related revenue — $3.0m in Q2 2026	60%	Fixed-base operator services at Hawthorne Airport near Los Angeles: aviation fuelling, ground handling and related services. Began on the acquisition of Hawthorne FBO LLC for $25.0m on 1 April 2026. This is currently Archer's largest revenue line.
Lease-related revenue — $1.0m in Q2 2026	20%	Leasing of hangar and other space at Hawthorne Airport, where Archer acquired airport control in FY2025 as part of a $152.1m outlay that also covered Lilium and Overair intellectual property. This line began in Q4 2025 and was Archer's first-ever revenue.
Other revenue — $1.0m in Q2 2026	20%	Not further disaggregated in the Form 10-Q.

Archer describes two planned lines of business that today generate no significant revenue. Commercial "primarily consist of the sale of our piloted, commercial aircraft, physical AI solutions and related technologies and services, as well as providing direct-to-consumer air taxi services." Defense "primarily consist of the sale of next-generation UAS, physical AI solutions and related technologies and services for defense applications." The Q2 2026 10-Q reframes the business around three pillars: air taxis (Midnight), uncrewed systems (Halo and Thunder), and AI (the ZEE foundation model and autonomy). Contract liabilities at 30 June 2026 were $11.3m, of which $10.0m is the United Airlines pre-delivery payment.

4. Business Model & Moat

How it intends to make money. Five routes, in descending order of stated ambition: selling aircraft, both Midnight to airlines and operators and the Halo and Thunder hybrid VTOL platform; operating a direct-to-consumer air taxi service itself, for which it acquired control of Hawthorne Municipal Airport as the operational hub of a Los Angeles network; defence contracts for uncrewed systems and related technology; licensing autonomy and AI, via the ZEE foundation model; and airport and FBO services, which is the only line generating revenue today. Archer discloses no aircraft price, no unit cost, no gross-margin target and no revenue-per-flight-hour figure in any of its 2025 or 2026 SEC filings, so unit economics remain undisclosed.

Where the intended moat sits. Archer's stated strategy is to build in-house only what differentiates — electric and hybrid propulsion, flight-control software and composites — and to source everything else from the existing certified aerospace supply base "with the goal of reducing certification risk, development time and cost." It has been assembling a patent estate aggressively, acquiring Overair's portfolio and a licence to Karem Aircraft's tiltrotor and rotor technology in 2025, and is now using it offensively: it sued Vertical Aerospace in February 2026 and filed an ITC complaint against Joby in March 2026. Completion of the Boeing transaction would add Wisk, SkyGrid and Insitu autonomy assets carrying nearly two million combined autonomous flight hours.

Certification status, which gates everything else. The FAA type-certification process has four phases. Phases 1 and 2 closed with the final airworthiness criteria rule in May 2024 and the G-1 certification basis in June 2024. Phase 3 closed in January 2026 when the Means of Compliance was fully FAA accepted. Archer is now in phase 4, implementation, where it states it has received "approximately 15% of the compliance verification documents." Formal Type Inspection Authorization testing has not yet begun — the 10-K says Archer is "preparing for" it — and a Production Certificate is a separate, later hurdle targeted shortly after type certification.

Order book, such as it is. The word "backlog" does not appear in the FY2025 10-K and Archer reports no backlog figure. Disclosed commitments are the conditional United Airlines agreement for up to $1.0bn of aircraft plus a $500m option, against which $10.0m has been received; USAF contracts for design, development and ground test of Midnight, where instalment receipts were $0.0m in FY2025 against $1.8m in FY2024; and announced non-binding or conditional orders of up to 100 aircraft each from Korean Air, Air Chateau and Soracle (the Japan Airlines and Sumitomo joint venture), and up to 50 from KakaoMobility. The Launch Edition programme names Abu Dhabi Aviation, Ethiopian Airlines and PT IKN of Indonesia as initial fleet operators.

Manufacturing. The Covington, Georgia plant is roughly 400,000 sq ft adjacent to Covington Municipal Airport, construction complete and occupied, leased through the Newton County Industrial Development Authority. The announced capacity path is a further 550,000 sq ft of expansion supporting up to around 2,300 aircraft a year, with a near-term public target of roughly 650 aircraft a year by 2030. Archer discloses no current production rate. Early Midnight builds are being assembled on a "golden manufacturing line" at a Silicon Valley facility, with lessons applied to the Georgia ramp.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are from Archer's Form 10-K and 10-Q filings, quarterly earnings press releases and SEC XBRL company facts. Archer's fiscal year is the calendar year.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021 (ended 31 Dec 2021)	0.0	n/a	$(3.14)	$(3.14)†	Nil	$9.3m
FY2022 (ended 31 Dec 2022)	0.0	n/a	$(1.32)	$(1.32)†	Nil	$0m‡
FY2023 (ended 31 Dec 2023)	0.0	n/a	$(1.69)	$(1.69)†	Nil	$7.2m
FY2024 (ended 31 Dec 2024)	0.0	n/a	$(1.42)	$(1.42)†	Nil	$64.0m
FY2025 (ended 31 Dec 2025)	0.3	n/m	$(0.99)	$(0.99)†	Nil	$79.5m

† Archer does not report an adjusted earnings per share figure in any period, so the GAAP figure is repeated in that column. The non-GAAP measure Archer does publish is adjusted EBITDA: a loss of $224.4m in FY2022, $305.3m in FY2023, $368.9m in FY2024 and $481.8m in FY2025. Archer did not report adjusted EBITDA for FY2021. ‡ At 31 December 2022 the entire $9.3m of debt was classified as current, so the non-current balance was zero rather than absent. Long-term debt is the non-current balance; total borrowings including current maturities were $18.8m at FY2021 year end, $9.3m at FY2022, $7.2m at FY2023, $64.0m at FY2024 and $80.3m at FY2025. Revenue was nil in FY2021 to FY2024, with FY2025's $0.3m the first revenue Archer has ever recognised, so a year-on-year percentage is not meaningful.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026 (ended 30 Jun 2026)	$5.0m	$(0.34)†	$(0.34)
Q1 2026 (ended 31 Mar 2026)	$1.6m	$(0.28)†	$(0.28)
Q4 2025 (ended 31 Dec 2025)	$0.3m	$(0.26)†	$(0.26)
Q3 2025 (ended 30 Sep 2025)	Nil	$(0.20)†	$(0.20)
Q2 2025 (ended 30 Jun 2025)	Nil	$(0.36)†	$(0.36)
FY2025 full year	$0.3m	$(0.99)†	$(0.99)

Cash flow and balance sheet. FY2025 operating cash outflow was $432.9m against capital expenditure of $78.8m, a free cash outflow of $511.7m. For the first half of 2026 the operating outflow was $305.5m with $69.7m of capital expenditure and $28.7m for the Hawthorne FBO acquisition net of cash. On a trailing-twelve-month basis to 30 June 2026 the operating outflow was $540.4m and capital expenditure $119.6m, a free cash outflow of approximately $660m. Depreciation and amortisation was $20.0m in FY2025, so EBITDA is effectively the operating loss: FY2025 operating loss was $729.3m. At 30 June 2026 Archer held $852.7m of cash and equivalents plus $707.9m of short-term investments, $1,560.6m in total, against total borrowings of $80.1m ($78.0m non-current and $2.1m current). Total assets were $2,214.3m, total liabilities $298.7m and stockholders' equity $1,892.3m. Debt comprises the $65.0m Synovus facility at SOFR plus 2.0%, interest-only until October 2026 then 84 monthly principal instalments to a 5 October 2033 maturity, plus a $16.1m Banc of California loan at 6.3% fixed assumed with Hawthorne Airport. Financing activities provided nothing in the first half of 2026, against $1,151.8m in the same period of 2025.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Share price	$6.29 at the close of 12 August 2026, down 7.4% from $6.79 on 11 August 2026 after the Boeing-deal spike faded
Market cap	$4.84bn (770,026,800 shares at $6.29). Single share class since 31 December 2024, so there is no dual-class share-count complication.
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	n/m — Archer is loss-making. Trailing-twelve-month GAAP diluted loss per share to 30 June 2026 is $(1.00), and the company reports no adjusted earnings per share on which an alternative multiple could be struck.
P/E (forward)	n/m — the forward earnings estimate is a loss of $(0.81) per share, so no meaningful positive multiple exists.
P/S (TTM)	702x (market cap $4.84bn / trailing-twelve-month revenue of $6.9m to 30 June 2026). Note that essentially all of that revenue is airport fuelling, ground handling and hangar leasing, not aircraft.
Enterprise value	$3.36bn (market cap $4.84bn + total borrowings $80.1m − cash and short-term investments $1,560.6m per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet). Including finance-lease liabilities in the debt figure, as some data providers do at $125.6m, raises this to approximately $3.41bn.
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	n/m — trailing-twelve-month EBITDA is a loss of approximately $914m. On Archer's own adjusted EBITDA basis the trailing loss is roughly $618m. A negative denominator makes the ratio meaningless rather than merely expensive.
P/FCF	n/m — trailing-twelve-month free cash flow is an outflow of approximately $660m (operating outflow $540.4m plus capital expenditure $119.6m). At that rate the $1,560.6m cash and investments balance represents roughly nine quarters of runway before any Boeing-related costs.
52-week high	$14.62 intraday on 15 October 2025; closing-basis high $13.64 on 6 October 2025. The current price is 53.9% below that close.
52-week low	$4.30 intraday on 17 July 2026; closing-basis low $4.44 the same day. The current price is 41.7% above that close.
Short interest (% of float)	13.4% — 89,919,543 shares short at the 31 July 2026 settlement date, against a free float of approximately 656.4m shares. That is down about 5% from the prior period's 95.1m shares.
Days to cover	2.7 (short interest ratio at the 31 July 2026 settlement date). Heavy short interest but a short cover period, because average daily volume is very high.

You can chart ACHR against the rest of the eVTOL group on our Live Charts page, and keep track of scheduled macro events on the Economic Calendar.

7. What Are They Building

Midnight, the air taxi. A 12-tilt-6 distributed electric propulsion aircraft carrying four passengers plus a pilot, with range and payload optimised for high-frequency trips of around 20 miles with minimal charging in between. Piloted test flying began in June 2025. Archer completed an uncrewed transition flight in 2024, but as of 13 August 2026 it has not publicly flown a piloted transition from thrustborne hover to wingborne cruise, and had guided to doing so in the second half of 2026. The most recent flight milestone came on 30 July 2026, announced 3 August: a piloted round trip between Salinas Municipal Airport and Monterey Regional Airport, roughly nine minutes each way against 35 minutes or more by car, flown in close coordination with the FAA.

The Anduril platform — Thunder and Halo. Archer and Anduril Industries have jointly developed a series hybrid-electric autonomous VTOL platform, one airframe with two variants. Thunder, the defence variant, was unveiled at the Farnborough International Airshow on 20 July 2026 as a Group 5 autonomous attack rotorcraft; Archer says multiple test flights with full-scale surrogate aircraft are already complete and Thunder's first flight is planned for 2027. The shares closed 19.59% higher on the day of the unveiling. Halo, the commercial variant, followed on 22 July 2026 with dual optimum-speed tiltrotors, global self-deployment and containerisable transport, aimed at cargo, offshore energy, freight, humanitarian, medical and maritime work, with Marubeni Aerospace Corporation as strategic launch partner.

ZEE, the aviation AI model. Announced 15 July 2026, ZEE is an aviation-specific AI foundation model built on ADS-B data, air traffic control communications, maps and charts, aircraft state, terrain and weather, trained on data from more than 6,000 ADS-B receivers and able to run offline on-device or server-hosted. On 5 August 2026 Archer said ZEE had achieved what it called a frontier breakthrough — accurately predicting real-time aircraft trajectories on the airport surface minutes ahead, using conditional flow matching plus a vision transformer applied to high-resolution satellite imagery — and is being tested at Hawthorne Airport.

Charging infrastructure. On 16 July 2026 Archer launched ACES, America's Consortium for Electric Skyways, with BETA Technologies and Macquarie Capital, to deploy interoperable CCS-standard electric-aviation charging at up to 250 aviation sites across the United States by around 2030.

Routes to first operations. In the United States, Archer says it was selected as a partner in multiple winning applications under the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, with the opportunity to begin early operations in Florida, Texas and New York in parallel with FAA type certification. In the UAE, the GCAA moved Midnight onto its Restricted Type Certificate programme on 7 May 2026 and began Design and Production approvals; Archer has completed desert full-envelope testing and the first Midnight flight in Abu Dhabi, and names GCAA, the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, Abu Dhabi Airports, Abu Dhabi Aviation and Etihad Aviation Training as partners, with ten initial vertiport sites identified including Zayed International and Al Bateen Executive airports. Archer is also the exclusive Official Air Taxi Provider of the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games and Team USA, announced 15 May 2025, with a planned vertiport network around SoFi Stadium, the LA Memorial Coliseum, Hollywood, Orange County and Santa Monica plus operations from LAX.

R&D spend. $493.9m in FY2025, up 38.1% on FY2024's $357.7m. Q2 2026 R&D was $186.0m, up 52.0% year on year, of which $41.2m was stock-based compensation; first-half 2026 R&D was $357.7m, up 58.2%.

8. Peer Comparison

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Joby Aviation (NYSE: JOBY)	$7.87bn, checked 13 August 2026	Ended 30 June 2026 with $2,263.8m of cash and short-term investments, up from $1,407.9m at 31 December 2025; Q2 2026 revenue $38.6m; 2026 revenue outlook raised to $115m–$125m; five aircraft flying with 12 more in production
Eve Holding (NYSE: EVEX), Embraer's eVTOL affiliate	$0.95bn, checked 13 August 2026	Q2 2026 ended with $403m cash and $531m total liquidity, expected to fund operations through 2028 without new funding; pre-order book of around 2,700 aircraft worth roughly $13.5bn; first crewed conforming prototype flight planned for the second half of 2027
EHang Holdings (NASDAQ: EH)	$0.43bn, checked 13 August 2026	Q1 2026 revenue of RMB 25.7m (about US$3.7m) at a 62.5% gross margin, on just four EH216-series deliveries against 11 in Q1 2025 and 61 in Q4 2025; RMB 600m full-year outlook and a $30m buyback
Vertical Aerospace (NYSE: EVTL)	$0.105bn, checked 13 August 2026	Completed a two-way piloted transition flight in a full-scale tiltrotor eVTOL on 14 April 2026, the second company globally to do so; ended Q1 2026 with roughly $96m of cash and secured a financing package of up to $850m
Lilium N.V. (OTC Pink: LILMF)	Approximately $0.06m, checked 13 August 2026	Effectively wound down, trading at $0.0001 with a 52-week range of $0.0001 to $0.16. Archer itself acquired Lilium intellectual property as part of a $152.1m FY2025 outlay that also covered Hawthorne Airport and Overair IP

Archer's $4.84bn market capitalisation is second in the listed eVTOL group behind Joby, which carries roughly 45% more liquidity and produced almost eight times Archer's Q2 revenue. Eve, uniquely, claims funding through 2028 and a substantially larger stated pre-order book, though from an aircraft that has yet to fly in crewed conforming form. Note that all five of these companies remain pre-commercial in the sense that matters — none has a certified, type-approved passenger eVTOL in revenue service.

9. Insider Activity

Founder and Chief Executive Officer Adam Goldstein has neither bought nor sold Archer stock on the open market in 2026; his only 2026 Form 4 is a grant of 788,552 deferred restricted stock units on 15 May 2026 that vest in twelve quarterly tranches and settle in shares during calendar 2031. Across all 39 Form 4 filings for ACHR in 2026 there were zero open-market purchases — no filing carries transaction code "P". Every disposition is either a Rule 10b5-1 planned sale or an automatic sell-to-cover for tax withholding on vesting restricted stock units, and every acquisition is an equity-award grant or vesting at $0.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Eric Lentell	11 Jun 2026	Sale	3,754	$4.9984 weighted average	~$18,800	Sell-to-cover for RSU tax withholding
Thomas Paul Muniz	18 May 2026	Sale	91,839	$5.9527 weighted average	~$546,700	Sell-to-cover for RSU tax withholding
Eric Lentell	18 May 2026	Sale	48,169	$5.9527 weighted average	~$286,700	Sell-to-cover for RSU tax withholding
Priya Gupta	18 May 2026	Sale	9,860	$5.9527 weighted average	~$58,700	Sell-to-cover for RSU tax withholding
Adam Goldstein	15 May 2026	Grant of deferred RSUs	788,552	$0.00	Nil	Equity award, vests over 12 quarters, settles in 2031
Thomas Paul Muniz	15 May 2026	Sale	44,740	$6.0611 weighted average	~$271,200	Sell-to-cover on performance-RSU vesting
Eric Lentell	26–27 Mar 2026	Sale, two tranches	100,000	$5.36 and $5.30	~$533,000	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 3 Sep 2025, amended 23 Dec 2025
Thomas Paul Muniz	05 Mar 2026	Sale	94,725	$6.4610	~$612,000	Sell-to-cover for tax withholding
Tosha Perkins	05 Mar 2026	Sale	54,786	$6.4610	~$354,000	Sell-to-cover for tax withholding
Harsh Rungta	05 Mar 2026	Sale	22,826	$6.4610	~$147,500	Sell-to-cover for tax withholding
Thomas Paul Muniz	02 Jan 2026	Sale	125,000	$8.00	$1,000,000	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 28 Aug 2025, amended 29 Sep 2025

One further item falls in the last week: on 11 August 2026 Michael Spellacy, described in the filing as a former board director, filed a Form 144 giving notice of a proposed sale of 100,000 public warrants (not shares) with an aggregate market value of $6,306.41, acquired in November 2021 as a pro-rata distribution from Atlas Crest Investment LLC. The description also establishes that Spellacy has left the board since his 26 June 2026 Form 4.

10. Key Risks

• Liquidity and dilution: Archer states it "incurred a net loss of $618.2 million" in FY2025 and "a net loss of approximately $2.3 billion since inception," with the accumulated deficit now $2,784.7m. Adjusted EBITDA losses are still widening — $177.1m in Q2 2026 with Q3 guided to $170m to $200m — against $1,560.6m of cash and short-term investments, roughly nine quarters of runway at the current burn. Archer's own language is that "our future capital needs may require us to issue additional equity or debt securities that may dilute our stockholders." The Boeing consideration adds roughly 19.75% of pre-closing Class A shares plus $200m of warrants, and the Forward Equity Purchase Agreement is explicitly built around a future offering expected to raise at least $400m gross. There is no going-concern qualification in the filings, and management asserts sufficiency for at least twelve months.
• Certification delay — the single binary risk: Archer is in the fourth and final phase of FAA type certification with approximately 15% of phase-4 compliance verification documents received, and has not yet begun formal Type Inspection Authorization testing. It also has not publicly completed a piloted transition flight, which both Joby and Vertical Aerospace have. The 10-K warns that "delays, interruptions, or unwillingness by regulatory agencies to engage with us could postpone or prevent certification." A separate Production Certificate is required before volume manufacture. All commercial revenue, the United order and LA28 depend on this sequence completing.
• Customer orders are conditional and cancellable, including United's: Archer discloses that its purchase agreements "contain conditions with respect to the purchase of our aircraft" and that if those conditions are not met "our prospects, results of operations, liquidity and cash flow will be harmed." On United specifically, obligations are "conditioned upon, among other things, us receiving certification of our aircraft by the FAA and further negotiation and reaching mutual agreement on certain material terms," and "will arise only after all such material terms are agreed by the parties." Only $10.0m has been received, with no revenue recognised on it in 2023, 2024 or 2025, and USAF instalment receipts fell to $0.0m in FY2025.
• Active litigation on several fronts: Joby Aero sued Archer and an Archer employee in November 2025 for trade-secret misappropriation over the hiring of a former Joby employee; Archer counterclaimed for unfair competition and Lanham Act violation, and a hearing on Joby's motion to dismiss those amended counterclaims is set for 8 September 2026. Archer filed an ITC complaint against Joby in March 2026 seeking to bar imports of certain eVTOL aircraft and components, instituted as Inv. No. 337-TA-1499 with a target final determination of 14 September 2027. Archer separately sued Vertical Aerospace in the Eastern District of Texas in February 2026 over its Valo aircraft, with briefing completed on 7 August 2026. The Delaware de-SPAC class action is settling, with a stipulation filed 10 August 2026 for an amount immaterial net of insurance — the source of the $6.0m one-time accrual in Q2 2026 — and a new shareholder derivative action over director compensation was filed on 24 June 2026. The original Wisk trade-secret matter was fully resolved in 2023 and Archer has now agreed to buy Wisk outright.
• Boeing deal execution risk: Archer's own forward-looking statements flag that closing conditions and regulatory approvals may not be satisfied, that the transaction may not complete on the expected terms or at all, unexpected costs and charges, stockholder litigation in connection with the transaction, and management distraction. Two asymmetries are specific: Boeing may terminate if Archer's enterprise value falls below a minimum level for a specified period, and the consideration share count adjusts at closing based on the target companies' cash position. Archer would also be integrating its first material operating business with no prior track record of doing so.
• Supply chain, tariffs and an unsigned manufacturing partner: the 10-K warns Archer and its partners "may not be able to obtain necessary production certificates, ramp up manufacturing, or develop supply chains capable of meeting quality, price, engineering, design, target aircraft specifications, and production standards," and lists "trade restrictions, tariffs, sanctions" among causes of production delay that could hit the certification timeline. Aluminium and composites are named as key materials. Compounding this, the Stellantis relationship remains only a Memorandum of Understanding dated 1 November 2024 with FCA US LLC, of which Archer says "we have not yet executed the final agreement and there is no assurance that we will execute the agreement in the near term or at all."
• Competition, with Archer currently behind on the key milestone: the 10-K cites "many strong U.S. and international competitors... long development cycles, rapid technological change, and intense competition," plus substitution from cars, ride-hailing and existing helicopter charter. Concretely, Joby holds around 45% more liquidity and produced almost eight times Archer's Q2 revenue; Vertical Aerospace has completed the piloted transition Archer has not; Eve claims funding through 2028 and a far larger stated order book. In defence, Archer is bidding against entrenched primes with an airframe that has not yet flown.
• Battery, safety and insurance exposure: Archer discloses that "the battery packs that we use in our aircraft and sell to third parties, use battery (including lithium-ion) cells, which on rare occasions, can rapidly release the energy by venting smoke and flames," and that failures "could result in lawsuits, recalls, or costly redesigns." On insurance it states plainly that "it is too early to predict the impact of commercial eVTOL operations on insurance costs."
• Key-person and hiring risk, currently live: the 10-K notes dependence on management under at-will arrangements, intense Bay Area competition for skilled staff, and "industry-wide shortages of pilots and certified aircraft mechanics." Archer has no permanent Chief Financial Officer, lost its Chief Administrative Officer in April 2026, has had a board departure, and is defending a trade-secret suit that arose specifically from hiring a competitor's employee. Relatedly, Hawthorne Airport's master ground lease is subject to the City of Hawthorne's FAA grant agreements, and the FAA could require amendments that "could materially limit our use of the master ground lease" — the site of Archer's only revenue-generating business and its planned Los Angeles hub.

11. Recent Developments

• 07 May 2026 — UAE regulator moves Midnight onto a Restricted Type Certificate track. The GCAA made Midnight the first eVTOL on an RTC path with that regulator, enabling limited commercial air-taxi operations and starting GCAA Design and Production approvals, with Abu Dhabi Aviation named operating partner and eight commercial-readiness workstreams progressing.
• 11 May 2026 — Q1 2026 results. Revenue $1.6m, net loss $217.7m, cash and short-term investments $1.78bn. Phase 3 of FAA type certification closed. Q2 adjusted EBITDA guided to a $170m to $200m loss. AI partnerships with NVIDIA, Palantir and Starlink cited, and Hawthorne Airport operations taken over.
• 24 Jun 2026 — New shareholder derivative action filed. A putative stockholder sued current and one former board member in the Delaware Court of Chancery alleging excessive non-employee director compensation, breach of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment, seeking disgorgement and governance reforms.
• 26 Jun 2026 — 2026 annual meeting of stockholders held. Results reported on Form 8-K; annual director restricted stock unit awards were granted the same day.
• 15 Jul 2026 — ZEE aviation AI foundation model announced. Trained on data from more than 6,000 ADS-B receivers, able to run offline on-device or server-hosted, with pilot deployments under discussion with governments, airlines and regulators.
• 16 Jul 2026 — ACES charging consortium launched. Formed with BETA Technologies and Macquarie Capital to bring interoperable CCS charging to up to 250 aviation sites across the United States by around 2030.
• 20 Jul 2026 — Thunder unveiled with Anduril at Farnborough. The jointly developed series hybrid-electric autonomous VTOL platform debuted in its defence configuration as a Group 5 autonomous attack rotorcraft, with multiple full-scale surrogate test flights already complete and first flight planned for 2027. The shares closed 19.59% higher.
• 22 Jul 2026 — Halo introduced with Marubeni Aerospace as launch partner. The commercial variant of the same platform, aimed at cargo, offshore energy, freight, humanitarian, medical and maritime applications.
• 03 Aug 2026 — Midnight completes piloted city-to-city flights in California. The flights took place on 30 July 2026 between Salinas Municipal and Monterey Regional airports, roughly nine minutes per leg, coordinated with the FAA and framed as a step toward eIPP operations later in 2026.
• 05 Aug 2026 — ZEE reports a frontier breakthrough. Real-time prediction of aircraft trajectories on the airport surface minutes ahead, using conditional flow matching and a vision transformer applied to satellite imagery, currently being tested at Hawthorne Airport.
• 10 Aug 2026 — Archer agrees to acquire Wisk Aero, Insitu and SkyGrid from Boeing. The definitive Equity Purchase Agreement was signed 9 August. Consideration is Class A shares equal to 19.75% of pre-closing Class A shares plus two $100m warrants struck at $13.00 and $17.88. Boeing takes a strategic stake, becomes a strategic partner and enters a technology-sharing arrangement retaining access to Wisk's core autonomous flight technology. Insitu is described as profitable with over $200m of annual revenue and operations in 35 countries; the three businesses together carry nearly two million autonomous flight hours. Subject to HSR and national-security clearances, expected to close by the end of 2026 with an outside date of 9 May 2027.
• 10 Aug 2026 — Q2 2026 results and a litigation settlement. Revenue $5.0m, net loss $263.2m, loss per share $(0.34), adjusted EBITDA loss $177.1m, cash and short-term investments $1,560.6m. Q3 adjusted EBITDA guided to a $170m to $200m loss. On the same day a Stipulation and Agreement of Settlement was filed in the Delaware de-SPAC class action for an amount immaterial net of insurance and with no admission of wrongdoing, subject to court approval — the source of the $6.0m one-time accrual excluded from Q2 adjusted EBITDA.
• 12 Aug 2026 — Shares give back part of the Boeing rally. ACHR fell 7.36% to close at $6.29, having spiked as much as 21% to 25% intraday on 11 August on roughly 123m shares, as attention turned to the Q3 loss guidance, the ongoing cash burn and the roughly 19.75% dilution implied by the Boeing consideration.

12. Key Dates

• 08 Sep 2026 — Hearing in the Northern District of California on Joby's motion to dismiss Archer's amended counterclaims. Confirmed in the Q2 2026 Form 10-Q.
• Expected Sep 2026 — Public and private placement warrants expire: 17,394,997 public plus 8,000,000 private placement warrants at an $11.50 strike, 25,394,997 in total, deeply out of the money at $6.29. Confirmed in the FY2025 10-K, exact day not published.
• Expected Nov 2026 — Q3 2026 results. Not yet confirmed by Archer; the recent pattern is Q3 2025 on 6 November 2025, Q1 2026 on 11 May 2026 and Q2 2026 on 10 August 2026.
• 14 Nov 2026 — The $65.0m Synovus loan converts from interest-only to principal and interest, beginning 84 monthly instalments of approximately $0.2m. Confirmed in the FY2025 10-K.
• Expected Dec 2026 — Targeted closing of the Boeing transaction covering Wisk Aero, Insitu and SkyGrid. Company-stated expectation of "by the end of 2026".
• Expected Dec 2026 — First Midnight operations in the United States under the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, with Florida, Texas and New York named. Company target for "later this year"; no date published.
• Expected Dec 2026 — First passenger-carrying flights in Abu Dhabi with Abu Dhabi Aviation, and Midnight's first piloted transition flight, both company targets for the second half of 2026 with no published date.
• 31 Mar 2027 — Expiry of Archer's one-time right to require Boeing to purchase up to $55.0m of Class A stock alongside a third-party offering of at least $400m gross, or three months after closing, whichever is later.
• 09 May 2027 — Termination date of the Boeing equity purchase agreement, extendable by three months if only the regulatory condition remains outstanding.
• Expected 2027 — Thunder's first flight, per Archer's statement at the Farnborough unveiling.
• 14 Sep 2027 — ITC target date for a final determination in Archer's patent case against Joby, Inv. No. 337-TA-1499. Confirmed in the Q2 2026 Form 10-Q.
• Expected Jul 2028 — The LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games, for which Archer is the exclusive Official Air Taxi Provider. Archer's own operational milestones within the Games are not published.
• 05 Oct 2033 — Final maturity of the $65.0m Synovus loan.

Two undated items are worth tracking. Boeing's lock-up on the consideration shares expires twelve months after closing, at which point its warrants also first become exercisable, and stockholder approval of the Boeing warrants and forward purchase is required under NYSE rules within twelve months of closing, failing which the warrants are replaced under the Governance Side Letter. Archer has not announced an investor day. Compare notes on the eVTOL certification race with other members in the ChartsView Forum.

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