Defence & Aerospace

See also: Technical analysis on Rocket Lab · Rocket Lab company tracker

Last Updated: 6 September 2026

Rocket Lab has done something unusual for a space company: it has grown revenue from $62m to $602m in four years while its share price round-tripped from $37 to $151 and back to $64. The operating business keeps setting records — $234m of revenue in the June 2026 quarter, a $2.36bn backlog, 94 Electron launches flown, and a national-security franchise now worth well over $2bn in awarded contracts. What the market is discounting is everything sitting on top of that: a Neutron rocket that has slipped at least three times and may not fly until 2027, an $8bn agreement to buy Iridium Communications backed by a $3.6bn bridge loan, and $2.7bn of equity issued through at-the-market programmes in eighteen months. This report lays out both halves from the filings.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Legal name	Rocket Lab Corporation (Rocket Lab USA, Inc. became a wholly owned subsidiary of the new parent on 23 May 2025)
Ticker / exchange	RKLB, Nasdaq Global Select Market
Headquarters	Long Beach, California, with launch complexes at Mahia, New Zealand and Wallops Island, Virginia
Sector	Aerospace and defence — launch services and space systems
Market cap	~$41.1bn (639.4m shares including 41.0m Series A preferred on an as-converted basis, at the $64.26 close on 4 September 2026)
Revenue (FY2025)	$601.8m, up 38% year on year; trailing twelve-month revenue $769.1m
Net loss (FY2025)	$198.2m, or $(0.37) per diluted share
Backlog	$2.36bn at 30 June 2026, up 137% year on year
Cash and marketable securities	$2,302.2m at 30 June 2026 (cash $2,129.5m plus current marketable securities $172.7m)
Employees	Over 2,600 full-time permanent employees worldwide at 31 December 2025
CEO / Leadership	Sir Peter Beck, founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; Adam Spice, Chief Financial Officer
Launch record	94 Electron missions flown to 2 September 2026; 21 Electron and HASTE missions in 2025 with 100% mission success

Sources: Rocket Lab FY2025 Form 10-K (filed 26 February 2026), Q2 2026 results release (10 August 2026), and SEC XBRL company facts.

2. Bull Case and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Revenue is compounding at an extraordinary rate: $62.2m in FY2021 to $601.8m in FY2025 is a 76.3% compound annual growth rate, and the trailing twelve months already stands at $769.1m. Q3 2026 is guided to $250m–$265m, which would be a fifth consecutive record quarter.
• Backlog gives unusual visibility: $2.36bn at 30 June 2026, up 137% year on year and more than three times trailing revenue. Rocket Lab booked over $437m of new launch contracts in the June quarter alone across Electron, HASTE and Neutron.
• A genuine national-security franchise: the Space Development Agency has awarded more than $1.3bn in total, including 18 Tranche 2 Transport Layer Beta satellites and an $816m Tranche 3 Tracking Layer prime contract. Add a $397m Flatellite award for the Space Force's SB-AMTI programme, a $266m Kodiak suborbital award in July 2026, and an on-ramp to the $5.6bn NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 vehicle.
• The balance sheet has been rebuilt: cash and marketable securities of $2.30bn at 30 June 2026 against borrowings of just $14.8m, after the 4.250% convertible notes were converted down from $345.4m at end-2024 to $13.1m. On any conventional measure the company is heavily net cash.
• Vertical integration is real, not a slide: Space Systems is now the larger business at $402.8m of FY2025 revenue, spanning satellite buses, solar cells, star trackers, reaction wheels, separation systems, EO/IR payloads through GEOST and laser optical terminals through Mynaric. Rocket Lab increasingly sells the spacecraft as well as the ride.

Bear Case

• Neutron has slipped again and may miss 2026 entirely: originally targeted for 2024, then mid-2026, then reset to Q4 2026 after a Stage 1 tank qualification failure in January 2026. As of early September 2026 the company still guides to delivering the vehicle to the pad in Q4 2026, while independent reporting describes the window as narrowing and a slip into 2027 as increasingly likely.
• The Iridium acquisition changes the risk profile entirely: announced 29 June 2026 at roughly $8bn enterprise value, $54 per Iridium share in cash and stock, funded in part by a $3.6bn 364-day senior secured bridge loan from Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo, plus further planned debt and equity. It is not expected to close until mid-2027, leaving a twelve-month financing overhang.
• Relentless equity issuance: at-the-market offerings raised $1,146.1m in FY2025 and a further $1,529.6m in the first half of 2026. Shares outstanding rose from 504.5m at end-2024 to 598.2m at 30 June 2026. Growth here is being bought with paper.
• Losses are widening in absolute terms: the FY2025 operating loss of $228.8m was the largest in the company's history and the trailing twelve-month operating loss is $223.5m. Free cash flow over the same period was negative $371.1m as capital expenditure ran at $148.7m. No date for GAAP profitability has been guided.
• The valuation still embeds a great deal: at roughly 53 times trailing sales with no earnings, the shares price in Neutron working and the Space Systems franchise scaling. That multiple is what fell by 58% between May and September 2026 without any deterioration in the operating numbers, which shows how sensitive it is to sentiment.

3. Revenue Segments

Rocket Lab reports two segments. The balance flipped decisively toward Space Systems in 2024 and has widened since; in the June 2026 quarter Space Systems was more than four times the size of Launch Services.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Space Systems	66.9% of FY2025 revenue ($402.8m); ~81% of Q2 2026 revenue ($189.5m)	Satellite manufacture and spacecraft components. Includes the SDA Transport and Tracking Layer constellations, the Flatellite product line, solar cells from the SolAero acquisition, star trackers, reaction wheels, radios, separation systems, flight software, EO/IR sensor payloads via GEOST and laser optical communications terminals via Mynaric. Components have supported over 1,700 missions.
Launch Services	33.1% of FY2025 revenue ($199.0m); ~19% of Q2 2026 revenue (~$44.6m)	Dedicated small-satellite launch on Electron from Mahia and Wallops, plus the HASTE suborbital variant used for US Department of Defense hypersonic testing. Customers include Synspective, iQPS, BlackSky and Kinéis. Neutron, the medium-lift reusable vehicle, will sit in this segment once it flies.
Neutron and future programmes	Nil to date — no Neutron revenue recognised	The 13-tonne-class reusable rocket in development at Wallops Launch Complex 3, with the Archimedes engine, the "Hungry Hippo" fairing and the "Return On Investment" sea-landing barge. Contracted but unflown work includes the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 on-ramp and an AFRL point-to-point cargo demonstration.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Two ways, and the smaller one is the famous one. Launch Services sells dedicated rides on Electron, a small rocket that has flown 94 times and carries a few hundred kilograms; the pricing model is a premium for schedule control and orbital precision rather than the cost-per-kilogram economics that favour rideshare. Space Systems, now two-thirds of revenue, sells satellites and satellite parts — either as a prime contractor building entire constellations for the Space Development Agency, or as a component supplier whose solar cells and star trackers fly on other people's spacecraft. Contracts in the second segment are larger, longer and mostly government-funded.

What the moat is supposed to be. Vertical integration plus a launch record. Rocket Lab owns its engines, its avionics, its solar cells, its separation systems and two launch complexes, which means it can bid a mission end-to-end and control its own schedule. The 2025 cadence of 21 launches with 100% mission success is a credential very few companies can offer, and it is what qualified Neutron for the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 on-ramp in March 2025. In defence work, a demonstrated flight heritage functions as a genuine barrier: the Space Development Agency has now routed more than $1.3bn through the company.

Why the moat is contested. SpaceX exists, is now publicly listed, and flies at a cadence and cost Rocket Lab cannot match on the launch side. Neutron is explicitly an attempt to move up-market into the medium-lift segment SpaceX dominates, against a competitor that has already amortised reusability. On the satellite side, the competitive set includes established primes as well as newer entrants such as Redwire and Karman. Rocket Lab's structural advantage is therefore narrower than the vertical-integration story implies: it is strongest where a customer wants a single supplier for both the spacecraft and the launch, which is exactly what the SB-AMTI Flatellite award represents.

5. Financial Health

All figures below come from Rocket Lab's own quarterly and annual results releases and from SEC XBRL company facts. Rocket Lab publishes no adjusted earnings per share in any period — its non-GAAP headline is adjusted EBITDA — so the adjusted column repeats GAAP with a footnote.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	$62.2m	+77.0%	$(0.56)	$(0.56)†	Nil	$100.1m
FY2022	$211.0m	+239.0%	$(0.29)	$(0.29)†	Nil	$102.9m
FY2023	$244.6m	+15.9%	$(0.38)	$(0.38)†	Nil	$105.4m
FY2024	$436.2m	+78.3%	$(0.38)	$(0.38)†	Nil	$401.5m
FY2025	$601.8m	+38.0%	$(0.37)	$(0.37)†	Nil	$154.1m

† Rocket Lab does not report an adjusted or non-GAAP earnings-per-share figure in any period. The GAAP figure is repeated so the column is not left blank. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $8.8m in Q2 2026 and a loss of $11.8m in Q1 2026.

The long-term debt column is the sum of all interest-bearing borrowings at each year end, taken from the XBRL balance sheet: secured borrowings of roughly $100m through FY2021 to FY2023, then the addition of $355m of 4.250% convertible senior notes issued in February 2024, which stepped the FY2024 total to $401.5m. Those notes were largely converted during 2025 and 2026, taking the carrying value from $345.4m at end-2024 to $152.4m at end-2025 and $13.1m at 30 June 2026. Total borrowings at 30 June 2026 were $14.8m. Aggregator "total debt" figures of around $133.7m include operating and finance lease liabilities of roughly $119m, which are not borrowings.

Quarter / Half	Revenue ($m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026 (to 30 Jun 2026)	$234.1m	$(0.08)†	$(0.08)
Q1 2026 (to 31 Mar 2026)	$200.3m	$(0.07)†	$(0.07)
Q4 2025 (to 31 Dec 2025)	$179.7m	$(0.09)†	$(0.09)
Q3 2025 (to 30 Sep 2025)	$155.1m	$(0.03)†	$(0.03)
Q2 2025 (to 30 Jun 2025)	$144.5m	$(0.13)†	$(0.13)
FY2025 total	$601.8m	$(0.37)†	$(0.37)

Gross margin is improving as Space Systems scales: GAAP gross profit was $84.6m in Q2 2026 on $234.1m of revenue, a 36.1% margin, against 38.2% in Q1 2026 and 38.0% in Q4 2025; non-GAAP gross margin was 41.5% in Q2 2026. Guidance for Q3 2026 is revenue of $250m to $265m, GAAP gross margin of 29% to 31%, and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $17m to $23m — the margin step-down reflecting mix. Over the trailing twelve months to 30 June 2026, operating cash flow was an outflow of $222.5m, capital expenditure was $148.7m, and depreciation and amortisation was $62.4m.

6. Valuation Metrics

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

Metric	Value
Market cap	~$41.1bn (639,410,989 shares at the $64.26 close on 4 September 2026). The share count includes 40,951,250 Series A preferred shares held by founder Sir Peter Beck's Equatorial Trust, which convert one-for-one into common and vote as a single class; the common-only count was 598,180,438 at 30 June 2026.
Enterprise value	~$38.8bn (market cap ~$41.1bn + total borrowings $14.8m − cash and current marketable securities $2,302.2m per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet). A further $85.4m of non-current marketable securities is excluded. This figure does not reflect the $3.6bn bridge facility committed for the Iridium acquisition, which is undrawn and does not close until mid-2027.
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	n/m — trailing twelve-month diluted EPS is $(0.27), a loss. Rocket Lab has never reported a profitable year and publishes no adjusted earnings-per-share measure that could produce an alternative multiple.
P/E (forward)	~1,446x on a consensus forward EPS of $0.04. The company itself guides only to revenue, gross margin and adjusted EBITDA, and guides an adjusted EBITDA loss of $17m to $23m for Q3 2026, so the forward multiple rests on a very small and uncertain denominator.
P/S (TTM)	~53x (market cap ~$41.1bn / trailing twelve-month revenue $769.1m, being Q3 2025 through Q2 2026)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	n/m — trailing twelve-month EBITDA is negative $161.1m (operating loss of $223.5m plus depreciation and amortisation of $62.4m, using the combined cash-flow-statement figure). The company reports adjusted EBITDA rather than EBITDA, and that was a loss of $8.8m in Q2 2026.
P/FCF	n/m — trailing twelve-month free cash flow is negative $371.1m (operating cash flow $(222.5)m less capital expenditure of $148.7m). Capital expenditure more than doubled in FY2025 to $156.3m as Neutron infrastructure was built.
52-week high	$151.00 intraday on 27 May 2026; $150.23 on a closing basis
52-week low	$37.57 intraday; $39.48 on a closing basis
Short interest (% of float)	8.0% (44,395,701 shares short against a 556,860,860-share free float), settlement date 14 August 2026. Aggregators quoting 7.5% are using a slightly larger float denominator.
Days to cover	2.3 days on the same 14 August 2026 settlement. Low, reflecting very heavy average daily volume of roughly 15–19m shares.
Price/book	~11.8x (market cap ~$41.1bn against shareholders' equity of $3,492.2m at 30 June 2026, itself up from $382.5m at end-2024 on equity issuance and note conversion)

The drawdown itself is worth reading on a chart rather than in prose — the ChartsView Live Charts page carries the full history.

7. What Are They Building

Neutron. A 13-tonne-class, reusable, medium-lift launch vehicle and the single largest determinant of the equity's value. Progress through 2026 has been real but slower than promised. The Archimedes engine has logged more than 400 hot-fires, and a second-stage engine has completed a full-duration burn of roughly five and a half minutes at the Archimedes Test Complex at NASA's Stennis Space Center. The "Hungry Hippo" fairing has completed qualification and been delivered to the assembly and integration complex in Virginia; the thrust structure is qualified and the interstage is in qualification. Launch Complex 3 at Wallops Island is open, with a 700-tonne launch mount, a 200,000-gallon water tower and liquid oxygen and liquid natural gas propellant farms. The gating item has been the first stage: a tank qualification test failed in January 2026, forcing a redesign for greater structural margin and a move toward automated fibre placement on future tanks, and pushing the debut to Q4 2026. As of early September 2026 the company still targets delivering the vehicle to the pad within the year, while independent coverage treats a 2027 first flight as increasingly likely.

Sea recovery. A 400-foot modified deck barge, the former Oceanus, renamed "Return On Investment" and converted by Bollinger Shipyards in Louisiana with autonomous ground-support equipment, blast shielding and station-keeping thrusters. It is intended to support Neutron booster recoveries off the US East Coast.

Flatellite and the constellation business. Flatellite is a flat-packed, mass-manufacturable satellite designed to be stacked in volume on Neutron. In August 2026 Rocket Lab disclosed a $397m contract, including options, to deliver multiple Flatellite spacecraft launching on Neutron for the Space Force's Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator programme — one of only two vendors providing both the spacecraft and the launch. Alongside it sit the Space Development Agency programmes: 18 Tranche 2 Transport Layer Beta satellites under a $515m award with a launch commitment no later than July 2027, and an $816m Tranche 3 Tracking Layer prime contract for 18 missile-tracking spacecraft.

Acquired capability. GEOST closed on 12 August 2025 for $275m before adjustments, roughly $125m in cash plus 3,057,588 shares, with up to $50m of earn-out, adding electro-optical and infrared sensor payloads. Mynaric closed on 14 April 2026 for $155.3m, above the originally agreed price, after final German foreign-direct-investment approval on 31 March 2026, adding laser optical communications terminals and establishing Rocket Lab Europe. Motiv also closed in the June 2026 quarter, and two smaller 2025 deals brought in Optical Support Inc. and Precision Components Limited.

Electron and HASTE. The workhorse continues. The 94th Electron mission flew on 2 September 2026 for Synspective, which has 16 further missions on the manifest; the 93rd flew on 20 August 2026. iQPS took its third Electron launch in three months on 6 August 2026, BlackSky added four dedicated launches in February 2026 taking its cumulative total to 17 since 2019, and Kinéis has five satellites scheduled. The HASTE suborbital variant serves US Department of Defense hypersonic testing, and a new globally deployable launch system branded GHOST was unveiled in August 2026 with a debut suborbital launch from Kodiak planned for 2027.

8. Competitive Landscape

Peer	Market cap (September 2026)	Key 2025/2026 metric
AST SpaceMobile (ASTS)	~$24.2bn	Trailing revenue of ~$115m against a $24.2bn capitalisation — roughly 210 times sales, versus Rocket Lab's 53 times. The direct-to-device constellation build-out is still pre-commercial at scale.
Planet Labs (PL)	~$6.6bn	Trailing revenue of ~$378m from Earth-observation imagery and data subscriptions. A satellite operator rather than a manufacturer, and a customer archetype for the constellations Rocket Lab builds.
Karman Holdings (KRMN)	~$5.3bn	Trailing revenue of ~$590m from missile, hypersonic and space propulsion components — the closest comparison to Rocket Lab's Space Systems components business, and profitable where Rocket Lab is not.
Firefly Aerospace (FLY)	~$3.6bn	Trailing revenue of ~$287m. The most direct small-launch competitor, with the Alpha vehicle and the Blue Ghost lunar lander; listed publicly in 2025.
Redwire (RDW)	~$2.6bn	Trailing revenue of ~$426m from space infrastructure, components and in-space manufacturing. Competes with Rocket Lab's components catalogue on solar arrays and structures.

Two names sit outside the table but shape the landscape. SpaceX listed on Nasdaq on 12 June 2026 after pricing its IPO at $135 per share on 11 June, closing its first day near a $2.1 trillion valuation; it operates at a launch cadence and cost base no competitor approaches, and Neutron is a direct move into its territory. Iridium Communications, capitalised at roughly $5.0bn on trailing revenue of $884m, is Rocket Lab's own acquisition target rather than a peer — the $8bn enterprise-value agreement announced on 29 June 2026 would convert Rocket Lab from a supplier into an operator of a global satellite network.

9. Insider Activity

Founder and Chief Executive Sir Peter Beck is the only insider with material disclosed 2026 Form 4 activity identified in this review. The sales below were made through the Equatorial Trust, a family trust, under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted on 27 March 2026 — that is, scheduled in advance rather than discretionary — and were executed over three consecutive days near the all-time high. Beck retained 491,930 shares held directly after the programme, and the trust continues to hold 40,951,250 Series A preferred shares convertible one-for-one into common. No open-market purchases by any insider were identified.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Sir Peter Beck (CEO), via The Equatorial Trust	6–8 Jul 2026	Sale	3,275,779 in aggregate	$81.59 to $101.57 weighted average	~$286.4m	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 27 Mar 2026
Sir Peter Beck (CEO), via The Equatorial Trust	8 Jul 2026	Sale (single-day leg)	Included in the aggregate above	Within the range above	~$94.0m	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 27 Mar 2026
The Equatorial Trust	Q2 2026	Conversion	5,000,000	One-for-one	Not a cash transaction	Series A preferred to common conversion
The Equatorial Trust	17 Jun 2025	Conversion	5,000,000	One-for-one	Not a cash transaction	Series A preferred to common conversion

Context on the preferred stock: on 3 December 2024 Rocket Lab agreed to exchange 50,951,250 of the trust's common shares into an equal number of Series A preferred shares, consummated on 7 January 2025. The structure is share-count neutral — the preferred votes and converts one-for-one — but it is why the reported common share count and the fully-counted market capitalisation differ.

10. Key Risks

• Neutron schedule risk: the vehicle has slipped from 2024 to mid-2026 to Q4 2026, with a Stage 1 tank qualification failure in January 2026 forcing a redesign. A first flight is not the end of the risk either — a failed debut would push revenue recognition, the AFRL cargo demonstration and the NSSL task orders further right, and Neutron is the basis for the Flatellite constellation contracts.
• Iridium acquisition financing: the roughly $8bn deal is backed by a $3.6bn 364-day senior secured bridge loan, with further debt and equity planned, on a company generating $769m of trailing revenue and no profit. The exchange ratio is collared between $67.50 and $112.50, so a share price below the collar increases the cash and dilution burden. Completion is not expected until mid-2027.
• Dilution: at-the-market equity programmes raised $1,146.1m in FY2025 and $1,529.6m in the first half of 2026 alone. Common shares outstanding rose 18.6% in eighteen months to 598.2m. Continued growth spending on this scale implies continued issuance.
• Cash consumption: trailing twelve-month free cash flow was negative $371.1m, with capital expenditure at $148.7m and rising. The $2.30bn cash pile is large but is earmarked in part for the Iridium cash consideration and Neutron infrastructure.
• Customer and programme concentration: a growing share of backlog is US government work — the SDA Tranche 2 and Tranche 3 awards, the SB-AMTI Flatellite contract, the Kodiak suborbital award and NSSL task orders. Programme cancellations, continuing-resolution funding gaps or a shift in defence priorities would hit disproportionately.
• Competition from a newly capitalised SpaceX: SpaceX's June 2026 listing gives an already dominant launch provider public currency for acquisitions and expansion, in the same medium-lift segment Neutron is designed to enter.
• Integration load: GEOST, Mynaric, Motiv, Optical Support and Precision Components have all been absorbed since August 2025, with headcount rising several hundred in a single quarter. Rocket Lab is running an acquisition programme, a first-flight campaign and an $8bn merger simultaneously.

11. Recent Developments

• 02 Sep 2026 — 94th Electron mission flies. A successful launch for Synspective, which has 16 further missions on the manifest, eleven days after the 93rd mission on 20 August 2026.
• 10 Aug 2026 — Q2 2026 results set records across the board. Revenue of $234.1m, up 62% year on year; backlog $2.36bn, up 137%; GAAP gross margin 36.1% and non-GAAP 41.5%; adjusted EBITDA loss $8.8m; GAAP loss per share $(0.08). Q3 2026 guided to $250m–$265m of revenue. A $397m Flatellite contract for the Space Force SB-AMTI programme was disclosed, the GHOST launch system was unveiled, and the Mynaric and Motiv acquisitions were confirmed closed.
• 21 Jul 2026 — $266m US Space Force award. Twelve suborbital missions with six options from Kodiak, Alaska — described as the largest single US government launch award in the company's history.
• 06 Jul 2026 — Chief Executive sells $286m of stock. Sir Peter Beck, through the Equatorial Trust and under a 10b5-1 plan adopted in March 2026, sold 3,275,779 shares over three days at $81.59 to $101.57.
• 29 Jun 2026 — Agreement to acquire Iridium Communications. Roughly $8bn enterprise value, $54 per Iridium share as $27 cash plus stock on a collared exchange ratio, funded partly by a $3.6bn bridge loan from Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo. Rocket Lab rose 16% and Iridium 25% on the day; closing is expected mid-2027.
• 12 Jun 2026 — SpaceX begins trading on Nasdaq. Priced at $135 the previous day, it closed its first session near a $2.1 trillion valuation. The run-up into and unwind out of the listing is the proximate cause of the space-stock cohort's round trip.
• 27 May 2026 — Rocket Lab shares reach an all-time intraday high of $151.00. The peak came a week after SpaceX filed its IPO prospectus on 20 May 2026.
• 14 Apr 2026 — Mynaric acquisition completes. $155.3m, above the originally agreed price, in a nominal cash payment plus 2,277,002 shares, adding laser optical communications and creating Rocket Lab Europe. Final German foreign-direct-investment approval had come on 31 March 2026.
• 26 Feb 2026 — FY2025 results. Record annual revenue of $601.8m, up 38%; Q4 revenue $179.7m; backlog $1.85bn, up 73%, including the $816m SDA Tranche 3 Tracking Layer prime contract. Neutron's first launch was reset to Q4 2026 following a Stage 1 tank qualification test failure in January 2026.
• 12 Aug 2025 — GEOST acquisition completes. $275m before adjustments plus up to $50m of earn-out, adding electro-optical and infrared payloads to a portfolio that already covered launch and spacecraft.

12. Key Dates

• Expected Nov 2026 — Q3 2026 results. Rocket Lab has not confirmed a date; aggregators variously estimate the week of 9 November and 16 November 2026, and Q2 2026 was reported on 10 August 2026.
• Expected Q4 2026 — Neutron delivery to Launch Complex 3 at Wallops Island, with a first launch attempt to follow. Independent reporting treats a slip into early 2027 as increasingly likely.
• Expected 2027 — Debut suborbital launch of the GHOST globally deployable launch system from Launch Complex 4 at Kodiak, Alaska.
• Expected Jul 2027 — Contractual launch commitment for the 18 Space Development Agency Tranche 2 Transport Layer Beta satellites, which must launch no later than that month.
• Expected mid-2027 — Anticipated completion of the Iridium Communications acquisition, subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals; the $3.6bn bridge facility is a 364-day instrument.
• 01 Feb 2029 — Scheduled maturity of the 4.250% convertible senior notes issued in February 2024, of which only $13.1m of carrying value remained at 30 June 2026.
• TBC — Electron and HASTE missions continue on a rolling manifest for Synspective, iQPS, BlackSky and Kinéis; individual launch windows are announced a few weeks ahead.

Macro events that move the defence and high-growth-technology complex are tracked on the ChartsView Economic Calendar, and this report can be discussed in the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

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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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 19 August 2026

The Boeing Company is one of two firms on earth capable of building large commercial jetliners at scale, and simultaneously one of the largest defence contractors in the United States. After six consecutive loss-making years, FY2025 produced Boeing's first positive reported earnings per share since 2018 — but that figure exists only because of a $9.6bn one-off gain on the sale of its Digital Aviation Solutions business. Strip the disposal out and Boeing lost money again. What has genuinely changed is the operational picture: the FAA production cap has been lifted, the 737 line is transitioning to 47 aircraft a month, the 737-7 was type-certified on 3 August 2026, and the order book stands at a record $715.3bn. This report sets out what the filings actually say, with every figure traced to a company release, a 10-K, a 10-Q or a regulator. There are no analyst ratings or price targets anywhere in it.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Company	The Boeing Company
Ticker / Exchange	BA / New York Stock Exchange
Headquarters	Arlington, Virginia, United States
Founded	1916
Sector	Aerospace and Defence
CEO / Leadership	Robert Kelly Ortberg, President and Chief Executive Officer (since August 2024). Jesús "Jay" Malave, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (since August 2025).
Employees	Approximately 182,000 as of 31 December 2025, of whom roughly 72,000 (40 per cent) are union members across 32 separate agreements with nine US unions (FY2025 Form 10-K)
Revenue (FY2025)	$89,463m, up 34.5 per cent on FY2024
Net income (FY2025)	$2,235m, the first reported annual profit since 2018 — driven entirely by a $9,566m pre-tax gain on the Digital Aviation Solutions disposal
Market cap	Approximately $176.3bn (19 August 2026)
Share price	$223.06 (last quote, 18 August 2026 close)
Total backlog	$715,261m at 30 June 2026, a company record, including over 6,200 commercial aircraft
Dividend	None on the common stock. Suspended March 2020 and not reinstated
Credit ratings	Moody's Baa3 (stable), S&P BBB- (stable), Fitch BBB- (stable) — all one notch above sub-investment grade

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• A duopoly with a record order book: Boeing carried $715.3bn of total backlog at 30 June 2026, including more than 6,200 commercial aircraft. In an industry with exactly two large-jet manufacturers and a decade-long delivery queue, that backlog is the closest thing aerospace has to contracted forward revenue.
• The regulatory handbrake has come off: the FAA cap imposed after the January 2024 door-plug incident was raised from 38 to 42 aircraft a month in October 2025, Boeing passed the FAA capstone review in May 2026, and the 737 line is now transitioning to 47 a month with the regulator's concurrence. A fourth 737 line entered low-rate production in July 2026.
• Certification milestones are finally landing: the FAA granted the 737-7 an amended type certificate on 3 August 2026 after an eight-year programme, and the 737-10 completed certification flight testing in July 2026. Together those two variants represent 37 per cent of the undelivered 737 backlog and roughly 40 already-built aircraft sitting in inventory.
• Deleveraging is real and rapid: consolidated debt fell from $54.1bn at 31 December 2025 to $45.9bn at 30 June 2026, helped by $10.6bn of Digital Aviation Solutions proceeds. Q2 2026 was the first positive free cash flow quarter of the year at $631m, and management reaffirmed FY2026 free cash flow guidance of $1bn to $3bn.

Bear Case

• The FY2025 profit is an accounting artefact: reported EPS of $2.48 and core EPS of $1.19 both exist only because of the $9,566m Digital Aviation Solutions gain, worth $11.83 of Q4 2025 earnings per share. On a normalised basis Boeing remained loss-making in FY2025, and it has now recorded operating losses in six of the last seven financial years.
• Cash generation still does not cover capital spending: on a trailing twelve-month basis to 30 June 2026, operating cash flow of roughly $3.6bn was slightly less than capital expenditure of roughly $3.8bn, leaving free cash flow marginally negative. Boeing has burned cash in five of the last seven years.
• Programme charges keep arriving: a $4.9bn pre-tax charge on the 777X in Q3 2025 on the slip of first delivery to 2027, a $280m VC-25B charge in Q2 2026, $0.6bn of KC-46A losses in Q4 2025 and a $1,770m T-7A reach-forward loss in 2024. Fixed-price development contracts remain a structural loss machine at Boeing Defense.
• Labour risk is live and dated: two contracts covering roughly 16,000 SPEEA engineers and technical staff expire on 6 October 2026, with negotiations under way in Q3 2026. Boeing's two most recent contract cycles both ended in strikes — 53 days at IAM 751 in 2024 and 101 days at IAM 837 in 2025 — despite tentative agreements having been reached with union leadership on each occasion.

3. Business Segments

Boeing reports three operating segments plus an unallocated corporate line. The FY2025 revenue split below is taken from the FY2025 Form 10-K; percentages are of total revenue of $89,463m.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Commercial Airplanes (BCA)	46.4% ($41,494m)	Design, manufacture and sale of commercial jetliners — the 737 MAX family, 767, 777 and 777X, and 787 Dreamliner — together with commercial and freighter derivatives. Delivered 600 aircraft in FY2025, the highest since 2018.
Defense, Space & Security (BDS)	30.4% ($27,234m)	Military aircraft, rotorcraft, weapons, satellites, space and autonomous systems. Programmes include the F-15EX, F/A-18, F-47, KC-46A tanker, T-7A Red Hawk, MQ-25, AH-64 Apache, CH-47 Chinook, P-8 Poseidon, VC-25B and Starliner.
Global Services (BGS)	23.4% ($20,923m)	Aftermarket support for commercial and government operators — spare parts, modifications, pilot and maintenance training, and fleet analytics. Structurally the most profitable segment, running at an 18.1 per cent operating margin in Q2 2026.
Unallocated items and eliminations	-0.2% (-$188m)	Corporate costs, share-based plans, deferred compensation and unallocated research spending, plus intersegment eliminations.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Boeing sells very large capital assets against multi-year contracts, takes progress payments and deposits along the way, and then earns a long annuity from servicing the installed fleet. Commercial Airplanes is the revenue engine but has been loss-making since 2019; Global Services is the profit engine, converting nearly a quarter of group revenue into the great majority of group operating earnings. Defense sits between the two, mixing profitable cost-plus production work with a set of fixed-price development contracts that have destroyed several billion dollars of value.

Where the moat comes from. There are only two credible manufacturers of large commercial aircraft anywhere in the world. Certification of a clean-sheet airliner takes upwards of a decade and tens of billions of dollars, and no new entrant has cleared that bar in fifty years. Airlines that operate Boeing fleets face substantial switching costs in pilot type ratings, maintenance infrastructure and spares inventory, which is precisely what makes Global Services durable. On the defence side, Boeing holds sole-source positions on platforms such as the F-47 next generation air dominance fighter and the KC-46A tanker that are effectively unassailable for the life of the programme.

Where the model breaks down. The moat protects revenue, not margin. Boeing's problem for seven years has not been demand — the backlog has grown throughout — but its inability to convert that demand into delivered aircraft at an acceptable cost. Production rate caps, supply-chain shortages, strikes, rework and fixed-price development overruns all attack the same point: throughput. The bull and bear cases on Boeing are ultimately the same question asked twice, which is whether the factory can now hold rate.

Capital structure. Boeing raised roughly $24.3bn of equity in October 2024, comprising $18.2bn of common stock and $5.7bn of 6.00 per cent Series A mandatory convertible preferred. There has been no further equity issuance since, no share buyback, and no common dividend. Free cash flow and disposal proceeds are being directed at debt reduction, which is the rational response to sitting one notch above junk at all three rating agencies. For live pricing and technical context on the shares, see the ChartsView Live Charts page.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Boeing's quarterly earnings releases and Forms 10-K and 10-Q, cross-checked against the company's XBRL filings with the SEC. Boeing's financial year ends on 31 December. "Core EPS" is Boeing's own non-GAAP measure, which excludes pension and other post-retirement expense components.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	62,286	+7.1%	-$7.15	-$9.44	$0.00	$56,806m
FY2022	66,608	+6.9%	-$8.30	-$11.06	$0.00	$51,811m
FY2023	77,794	+16.8%	-$3.67	-$5.81	$0.00	$47,103m
FY2024	66,517	-14.5%	-$18.36	-$20.38	$0.00	$52,586m
FY2025	89,463	+34.5%	$2.48	$1.19	$0.00	$45,637m

Adjusted EPS is Boeing's reported core (non-GAAP) earnings per share. Long-term debt is the non-current portion of debt and finance lease obligations at each year end, per the SEC XBRL tag LongTermDebtAndCapitalLeaseObligations. Boeing's common dividend has been suspended since March 2020; the $0.75 quarterly distribution visible on some data services relates to the 6.00 per cent Series A mandatory convertible preferred stock (NYSE: BA-PA), not the common shares.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026 (to 30 Jun 2026)	$24,560m	-$0.76	-$0.67
Q1 2026 (to 31 Mar 2026)	$22,217m	-$0.20	-$0.11
Q4 2025 (to 31 Dec 2025)	$23,948m	$9.92	$10.23
Q3 2025 (to 30 Sep 2025)	$23,270m	-$7.47	-$7.14
FY2025 total	$89,463m	$1.19	$2.48

Quarterly earnings per share do not sum precisely to the annual figure because of movements in the weighted average diluted share count and the accrual of mandatory convertible preferred dividends. Q4 2025 carries the $9,566m Digital Aviation Solutions gain, worth $11.83 of earnings per share; Q3 2025 carries a $4.9bn pre-tax charge on the 777X programme, worth $6.45 of loss per share.

Cash flow tells the more important story. Boeing generated operating cash flow of $1,065m in FY2025 against capital expenditure of $2,942m, giving free cash flow of negative $1,877m. In the first half of 2026 operating cash flow was $1,185m against capex of $2,008m. Q2 2026 was the first positive free cash flow quarter of the year at $631m, on $1,364m of operating cash flow and $733m of capex. Cash and short-term investments stood at $20,022m at 30 June 2026 against consolidated debt of $45,900m, with a further $10.0bn of undrawn credit facilities.

6. Valuation Metrics

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

Metric	Value
Market cap	Approximately $176.3bn (share price $223.06 × 790,370,020 shares outstanding per the Q2 2026 Form 10-Q cover page). A further 5,750,000 mandatory convertible preferred shares will dilute on conversion.
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	Approximately 81x on trailing-twelve-month GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.74. Summing the four reported quarterly figures (-$7.14, $10.23, -$0.11, -$0.67) gives $2.31 and implies roughly 97x; the difference is share-count weighting. Either basis is uninformative, because the entire trailing profit is the $9,566m Digital Aviation Solutions disposal gain booked in Q4 2025. Excluding it, Boeing is loss-making on a trailing basis.
P/E (forward)	Approximately 54x, on a consensus forward earnings estimate of $4.12 per share (Yahoo Finance, 19 August 2026). Boeing itself publishes no earnings guidance; its only FY2026 financial guidance is free cash flow of $1bn to $3bn and roughly 500 737 deliveries.
P/S (TTM)	Approximately 1.9x (market cap $176.3bn / trailing-twelve-month revenue $93,995m, being Q3 2025 $23,270m + Q4 2025 $23,948m + Q1 2026 $22,217m + Q2 2026 $24,560m).
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	Approximately 30x on reported figures (enterprise value $202.2bn / trailing EBITDA $6,796m; EBITDA = trailing operating income $4,600m + trailing depreciation and amortisation $2,196m, using the SEC tag DepreciationDepletionAndAmortization). This is heavily distorted: the trailing operating income includes the $9,566m disposal gain, and excluding it trailing EBITDA is approximately negative $2.8bn, so the multiple is not meaningful on an underlying basis. Yahoo Finance's normalised FY2025 EBITDA of negative $2,338m corroborates that reading.
P/FCF	Not meaningful — trailing free cash flow is negative. FCF = trailing operating cash flow $3,639m less capital expenditure $3,849m = negative $210m. Management guides FY2026 free cash flow of $1bn to $3bn, which if delivered would put the multiple in a roughly 59x to 176x range on the current market capitalisation.
Enterprise value	Approximately $202.2bn (market cap $176.3bn + total debt $45,900m − cash and short-term investments $20,022m, per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet; total debt is the $41,335m non-current portion plus $4,565m current portion).
52-week high	$254.35
52-week low	$176.77
Short interest (% of float)	Approximately 2.1 per cent of the 758.5m free float, being roughly 15.9m shares short at the most recent settlement. The FINRA settlement of 30 June 2026 showed approximately 14.0m shares short, or 1.73 per cent of shares outstanding. Note that Yahoo Finance's short interest field for BA is corrupt, returning 71,835 shares.
Days to cover	Approximately 2.1 to 2.3 days on average daily volume of roughly 6m to 7.5m shares. There is no short-squeeze dynamic in this name.
Price / book	Approximately 29x. Total equity was only $6,115m at 30 June 2026, following seven years of accumulated losses. Book value carries limited information for Boeing.

7. What Are They Building

Boeing spent $3,615m on research and development in FY2025, down from $3,812m in FY2024, split $2,202m at Commercial Airplanes, $877m at Defense, $125m at Global Services and $411m unallocated. First-half 2026 R&D was $1,824m, up 4 per cent year on year.

Commercial programmes. The 777X remains the largest single development item. Boeing received Type Inspection Authorization for the fourth phase of certification flight testing in Q2 2026 and expects approval of the final phases in the second half of 2026, with first delivery of the 777-9 in 2027. The 777-8 Freighter is expected roughly two years after that and the 777-8 passenger variant not before 2030. An engine durability issue identified in 2025 is still being worked with the engine supplier and the FAA. Work-in-process inventory on the programme rose to $6,366m at 30 June 2026 from $4,313m at the end of 2025. The 737-7 was certified on 3 August 2026 and the 737-10 completed certification flight testing in July 2026, with Boeing guiding to certification during 2026 and first delivery in 2027.

Defence programmes. The US Air Force awarded Boeing the Next Generation Air Dominance platform contract in March 2025, designated the F-47. The first airframe is in production and the Air Force target for first flight is before the end of 2028, although Boeing management has declined to commit publicly to a date. The T-7A Red Hawk trainer entered low-rate initial production in Q2 2026 after the first operational aircraft was delivered in Q4 2025. The MQ-25A Stingray uncrewed tanker achieved first flight and Milestone C in Q2 2026, moving it into production. The KC-46A tanker continues to absorb losses, including $0.6bn in Q4 2025. The VC-25B presidential aircraft took a further $280m charge in Q2 2026 with first delivery guided to 2028.

Space. NASA restructured the Starliner contract on 24 November 2025, converting the Starliner-1 mission from a four-astronaut flight to cargo-only and reducing crewed flights from six to four, saving roughly $500m. Launch has slipped to no earlier than Q4 2026. On the positive side, the Boeing-built Space Launch System core stage powered the first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon in April 2026.

Portfolio changes. Boeing has been shrinking rather than broadening. Digital Aviation Solutions went to Thoma Bravo for $10.55bn in October 2025, and on 10 August 2026 Boeing agreed to sell Wisk Aero, SkyGrid and Insitu to Archer Aviation, taking an equity stake in Archer plus a technology-sharing arrangement that preserves access to Wisk's autonomy stack. No clean-sheet commercial aircraft programme has been launched.

8. Competitive Landscape

Boeing's commercial business faces exactly one direct competitor of comparable scale, and lost the delivery race again in 2025. Its defence business competes with the US primes across a fragmented set of programmes. Market capitalisations below were retrieved live on 19 August 2026.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Airbus SE (AIR.PA)	€166.1bn	Delivered 793 commercial aircraft in 2025 against Boeing's 600, beating its own revised 790 target. The 2025 mix was 607 A320neo family, 93 A220, 57 A350 and 36 A330.
RTX Corporation (RTX)	$303.9bn	FY2025 sales of $88.6bn, up 10 per cent, with adjusted EPS of $6.29. Also a Boeing supplier and, since 14 August 2026, party to a new production-expansion framework agreement with Boeing.
Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT)	$140.1bn	FY2025 net sales of $75.0bn, up 6 per cent, with net earnings of $5.0bn and diluted EPS of $21.49. Joint owner with Boeing of United Launch Alliance.
General Dynamics Corporation (GD)	$106.5bn	FY2025 revenue of $52.6bn, up 10.1 per cent, with net earnings of $4.2bn, up 11.3 per cent.
Northrop Grumman Corporation (NOC)	$83.7bn	FY2025 sales of $42.0bn, up 2 per cent, with net earnings of $4.2bn and diluted EPS of $29.08.
Embraer S.A. (EMBJ)	Approximately $13.7bn	Delivered 244 aircraft in 2025 including defence, up from 206 in 2024, of which 78 commercial and a record 155 executive jets. Note the NYSE depositary share ticker changed to EMBJ; ERJ no longer resolves, and market cap estimates for Embraer vary widely by source between roughly $11bn and $14bn.

9. Insider Activity

Chief Executive Officer Kelly Ortberg has been in post since August 2024 and continues to file as President and Chief Executive Officer, most recently on 12 August 2026. The pattern in Boeing's Form 4 filings over the last twelve months is unusual and worth reading carefully: the only genuine open-market purchases were made by two non-executive directors, and there is essentially no discretionary selling by executives. Almost every executive disposal carries transaction code F, meaning shares automatically withheld to cover tax on restricted stock unit vesting in mid-February 2026, which is a mechanical event rather than a sentiment signal.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Bradley D. Tilden (Director)	20 May 2026	Open-market purchase	1,370	$218.50	$299,345	Open market, no 10b5-1 plan disclosed
Mortimer J. Buckley (Director)	03 Mar 2026	Open-market purchase	2,230	$224.20	$499,966	Open market, no 10b5-1 plan disclosed
Uma M. Amuluru (EVP, Chief HR Officer)	24 Feb 2026	Sale	1,503	$233.79	$351,478	No 10b5-1 plan disclosed
Robert Kelly Ortberg (President and CEO)	17 Feb 2026	Equity award	58,097	$0.00	Annual long-term incentive grant	Compensation award
Robert Kelly Ortberg (President and CEO)	10 Aug 2026	Tax withholding on vesting	6,233	$234.09	$1,459,000	Automatic withholding, not a discretionary sale
Jesús Malave (EVP and CFO)	17 Feb 2026	Equity award	18,788	$0.00	Annual long-term incentive grant	Compensation award
David Christopher Raymond (EVP, CEO of BGS)	14 Aug 2026	Gift	907	$0.00	Gift, no consideration	Not a market transaction

Boeing's Q2 2026 Form 10-Q states that during the quarter none of its directors or officers adopted, modified or terminated a Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement. Directors also receive quarterly phantom stock unit credits, which are compensation rather than open-market purchases.

10. Key Risks

• Production rate execution: the entire investment case rests on Boeing holding 47 aircraft a month on the 737 line and 8 a month on the 787. The 787 line already slowed in April 2026 on supply-chain shortages before recovering in May. Any regression on quality escapes, supplier failure or FAA intervention resets the cash flow trajectory, and the new fourth 737 line still requires FAA production certification before it can deliver aircraft.
• Fixed-price development contracts: Boeing Defense continues to absorb reach-forward losses on programmes priced years ago — $4.9bn on the 777X in Q3 2025, $1,770m on T-7A in 2024, $0.6bn on KC-46A in Q4 2025 and $280m on VC-25B in Q2 2026. These charges are recognised as soon as a loss becomes probable, so they arrive without warning and in large increments.
• Labour disruption: two SPEEA contracts covering roughly 16,000 engineers and technical staff expire on 6 October 2026. Boeing's last two contract cycles both produced strikes, of 53 and 101 days respectively, each after leadership had already agreed tentative terms. A repeat would halt or slow the very production ramp the recovery depends on.
• Balance sheet fragility: Boeing sits at Baa3 / BBB- with all three agencies, one notch above sub-investment grade, with $45.9bn of debt against $6.1bn of total equity. A downgrade to junk would materially raise the cost of the remaining debt stack and constrain the customer-financing business. This is why capital is going to deleveraging rather than to a dividend or buyback.
• 777X certification slippage: first delivery has already moved to 2027, final-phase FAA approval is still outstanding, and an unresolved engine durability issue sits with the supplier. Programme work-in-process inventory grew by more than $2bn in the first half of 2026 alone. Further slippage triggers further reach-forward losses.
• Competitive share loss: Airbus outdelivered Boeing 793 to 600 in 2025 and led Boeing on 2026 gross orders by roughly 607 aircraft at the end of July. Every year Boeing spends recovering capacity is a year of narrowbody share that is difficult to win back, given delivery slots now stretch years into the future.
• Defence programme and platform risk: the US Army grounded all AH-64 Apache training flights on 14 August 2026 following a fatal crash near Fort Hood on 12 August. Apache is a meaningful Boeing Defense line. Separately, Boeing and Lockheed each guarantee $500m of United Launch Alliance credit facilities maturing 30 July 2027, and Boeing's Q2 2026 filing warns of further support or losses if ULA cannot resume Vulcan launches on plan.

11. Recent Developments

• 18 Feb 2026 — Two large Vietnamese orders land on the same day. Vietnam Airlines finalised an order for 50 737 MAX aircraft and Sun PhuQuoc Airways ordered up to 40 787 Dreamliners, following Air Cambodia's order for up to 20 737 MAX jets on 3 February.
• 31 Mar 2026 — Fifth Circuit upholds dismissal of the DOJ 737 MAX criminal case. The appeals court held that the Crime Victims' Rights Act does not give victims an unlimited right to appeal the dismissal of a prosecution, closing out the criminal matter that had run since 2021. Judge Reed O'Connor had dismissed the case at the Department of Justice's request on 6 November 2025 under a non-prosecution agreement worth over $1.1bn, while stating on the record that it failed to secure the necessary accountability.
• 22 Apr 2026 — Q1 2026 results show revenue growth but heavy cash burn. Revenue of $22,217m was up 14 per cent, but free cash flow was negative $1.5bn and core loss per share was $0.20. Backlog reached a then-record $695bn.
• 27 May 2026 — Boeing passes the FAA capstone review. This cleared the 737 production rate increase from 42 to 47 aircraft a month and is arguably the single most important operational milestone of the year, since the cap imposed after the January 2024 door-plug incident had constrained cash generation for two years.
• 20 Jul 2026 — Farnborough Airshow produces a substantial order haul. SMBC Aviation Capital ordered 100 737 MAX jets, Riyadh Air committed to 28 787s and added the 787-10, Philippine Airlines committed to up to 20 787s, AerCap took 15 787s, MSC Air Cargo ordered 777-8 Freighters and Uganda Airlines placed its first Boeing order.
• 28 Jul 2026 — Q2 2026 results deliver the first positive free cash flow quarter of the year. Revenue rose 8 per cent to $24,560m, free cash flow was positive $631m against negative $200m a year earlier, and total backlog reached a record $715.3bn. Offsetting this, core loss per share was $0.76 and a $280m charge was taken on the VC-25B programme.
• 03 Aug 2026 — FAA grants the 737-7 an amended type certificate. This clears the smallest MAX variant for commercial service after an eight-year certification programme involving more than 1,000 hours of flight and ground testing, and includes an updated engine anti-ice system. It unlocks roughly 6 per cent of the 737 backlog and part of the approximately 40 built aircraft held in inventory awaiting certification.
• 10 Aug 2026 — Boeing agrees to sell Wisk Aero, SkyGrid and Insitu to Archer Aviation. Boeing takes an equity stake in Archer plus a technology-sharing arrangement that retains access to Wisk's autonomy technology. Consideration and closing date were not disclosed. The transaction exits electric vertical take-off and tactical uncrewed aerial systems.
• 14 Aug 2026 — US Army grounds all AH-64 Apache training flights. The stand-down followed a fatal crash near Fort Hood, Texas on 12 August 2026 in which two soldiers died. Boeing shares fell 2.5 per cent to $225.95 on Monday 17 August. An internal Army memo reported by Defense One indicated flight operations were due to resume on 19 August.
• 14 Aug 2026 — New seven-year production framework agreements signed. Boeing signed agreements with the US Department of War and with Raytheon, an RTX business, to expand munitions and weapons production capacity.
• 14 Aug 2026 — July delivery figures show Boeing trailing Airbus. Boeing delivered 53 aircraft in July, down 17 per cent from June, against Airbus's 67. Year to date through July, Boeing has delivered 367 aircraft against 328 in the same period of 2025, but Airbus leads on 2026 gross orders by roughly 607 aircraft.

12. Key Dates and Catalysts

• Expected October 2026 — Q3 2026 results. Boeing has not yet issued its scheduling notice. Precedent: Q3 2025 was released on 29 October 2025, Q1 2026 on 22 April and Q2 2026 on 28 July. Track confirmed release dates on the ChartsView Economic Calendar.
• 06 Oct 2026 — two SPEEA contracts covering approximately 16,000 engineers and technical staff expire. Boeing states in its Q2 2026 Form 10-Q that it is negotiating during Q3 2026. This is the highest-probability negative catalyst on the calendar.
• Expected October 2026 — FAA type certification of the 737 MAX 10. Boeing guides to certification during 2026 with first delivery in 2027; Bloomberg reported on 23 July 2026 that approval is expected around October.
• Expected December 2026 — FAA approval of the final phases of 777-9 certification flight testing, which Boeing guides to the second half of 2026.
• Expected December 2026 — FAA production certification of the new 737 North Line, required before that fourth assembly line can deliver aircraft. Low-rate initial production began in July 2026.
• Expected December 2026 — Starliner-1 uncrewed cargo mission to the International Space Station, now no earlier than Q4 2026 after slipping from April 2026.
• Expected 2027 — first delivery of the 777-9, and first deliveries of the 737-7 and 737-10.
• 30 Jul 2027 — United Launch Alliance credit facilities mature, with Boeing and Lockheed Martin each guaranteeing $500m.
• Expected 2028 — first delivery of the VC-25B presidential aircraft, and the US Air Force target for first flight of the F-47.

Boeing has no investor day or capital markets day currently scheduled, and no outstanding court dates on the 737 MAX criminal matter, which is closed. Monthly order and delivery figures are published by Boeing in the second week of each month and are the most useful high-frequency read on whether the production ramp is holding. Readers comparing notes on aerospace names can do so in the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

See also: Technical analysis on Axon · Axon company tracker

Last Updated: 18 August 2026

Axon Enterprise sells an integrated public-safety ecosystem: TASER energy weapons, body-worn cameras, drones and counter-drone hardware, and an increasingly dominant cloud software layer covering evidence management, real-time operations, AI report drafting and, since February 2026, 911 call handling. Its fiscal year ends on 31 December, and the most recent reported quarter is Q2 2026, ended 30 June 2026 and reported after the close on 5 August 2026. Q3 2026 has not been reported. This report is built entirely from Axon's SEC filings, shareholder letters and SEC XBRL company facts. Every figure below comes from a primary filing; there are no analyst ratings or price targets anywhere in it.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	AXON, Nasdaq Global Select Market. Constituent of the S and P 500 since 4 May 2023
Headquarters	Scottsdale, Arizona, United States
Fiscal year end	31 December
CEO / Leadership	Patrick W. "Rick" Smith, founder and Chief Executive Officer. Brittany Bagley, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. Joshua M. Isner, President
Employees	More than 5,100 full-time employees plus more than 1,200 temporary staff as of 31 December 2025, per the FY2025 Form 10-K. Full-time headcount grew approximately 24 per cent during 2025, though $28.7m of severance was booked in Q4 2025
Revenue (FY2025)	$2,779.5m, up 33.5 per cent on FY2024
Revenue (trailing twelve months to 30 Jun 2026)	$3,219.1m
GAAP net income (FY2025)	$124.7m
Adjusted EBITDA (FY2025)	$710.2m, 25.5 per cent of revenue
Annual recurring revenue	$1,639m at 30 June 2026, up 38.5 per cent year on year
Future contracted bookings	$15.1bn at 30 June 2026, up 41 per cent year on year
Market capitalisation	Approximately $49.1bn at $604.32 per share (18 August 2026)
Shares outstanding	81,237,415 as of 31 July 2026 (Q2 2026 Form 10-Q cover page)
Reportable segments	Two: Connected Devices and Software and Services
Dividend	None. Axon has never declared or paid a cash dividend and states it does not intend to

You can follow the price action on our Live Charts page and check upcoming scheduled events on the Economic Calendar.

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Four consecutive years above 30 per cent growth, and guidance raised twice this year: revenue grew 37.1 per cent, 31.5 per cent, 33.4 per cent and 33.5 per cent in FY2022 through FY2025, and Q2 2026 revenue rose 35.3 per cent to $904.4m. Full-year 2026 guidance has been raised twice, from 27 to 30 per cent in February, to 30 to 32 per cent in May, to 32 to 34 per cent on 5 August 2026.
• Recurring revenue is outgrowing the hardware: annual recurring revenue reached $1,639m at 30 June 2026, up 38.5 per cent and faster than total revenue, with net revenue retention of 126 per cent. Software-only gross margin continues to exceed 80 per cent.
• A contracted backlog worth roughly 4.7 times trailing revenue: future contracted bookings stood at $15.1bn at 30 June 2026, up 41 per cent year on year. Management expects to fulfil 20 to 25 per cent over the next twelve months and the remainder generally over the following ten years, which gives unusual visibility for a company growing this fast.
• The AI tier is the fastest-adopting product in the company's history: AI Era Plan product revenue, comprising the plan plus standalone Draft One and Axon Assistant, grew more than 700 per cent year on year in Q1 2026 and near 700 per cent again in Q2. Draft One customers report 50 to 80 per cent reductions in report-writing time. This is an incremental per-seat step-up on agencies already running Evidence.com, with almost no incremental hardware.
• Adjacent markets bought and integrated: the Prepared acquisition (closed 1 October 2025) and Carbyne (closed 18 February 2026, approximately $551.7m net cash) take Axon into 911 call handling under the new Axon 911 line, while Dedrone grew approximately 300 per cent year on year and drove Platform Solutions up 122.6 per cent in Q2 2026.

Bear Case

• The valuation is the dominant variable: at $604.32 the shares trade on roughly 252 times trailing GAAP earnings, roughly 90 times trailing non-GAAP earnings and roughly 15 times trailing sales. The stock fell from a $791.62 closing high on 18 August 2025 to $345.94 on 10 April 2026, a 56 per cent drawdown, on no company-specific bad news. That is the de-rating risk in plain sight.
• Margin guidance has not moved despite two revenue raises: management held full-year 2026 adjusted EBITDA margin at 25.5 per cent at every raise, citing rising component costs, particularly memory, and ramp costs on Dedrone, Axon Body Mini and Axon 911. Q2's 26.8 per cent margin was flattered by $47m of one-off global tariff refunds that will not repeat in Q3. The shares fell 14.3 per cent the day after the Q2 print on exactly this point.
• Free cash flow has gone backwards while revenue compounds: FY2025 free cash flow was $75.1m, down 77 per cent from $329.5m in FY2024, and first-half 2026 free cash flow was negative $55.6m. Growth is being funded through working capital, with inventory at $486.6m against $341.8m at year end and current contract assets at $750.9m against $582.6m.
• Stock-based compensation is enormous relative to profit: FY2026 stock-based compensation is guided at $590m to $620m, roughly 16 to 17 per cent of guided revenue and more than two-thirds of guided adjusted EBITDA. Diluted shares have risen from 66.2m in FY2021 to 82.5m in Q2 2026, and Axon is still issuing equity through an at-the-market programme with approximately 1.0m shares remaining at 30 June 2026.
• Concentration in politically-exposed public budgets: 82 per cent of Q2 2026 revenue came from the United States, overwhelmingly from state, local and federal public-safety agencies funded by discretionary municipal and grant budgets.

3. Business Segments

Axon reports two segments. The legacy names Software and Sensors and Axon Cloud and Services are no longer used. Percentages below are of Q2 2026 total revenue of $904.389m, with the FY2025 position given alongside.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Connected Devices	56.0 per cent in Q2 2026 ($506.553m); 56.7 per cent in FY2025 ($1,576.864m)	All hardware. Comprises TASER handles, cartridges and related warranties; Personal Sensors, meaning body cameras, accessories and signal sidearm; and Platform Solutions, meaning fleet in-car video, interview room, fixed cameras, drones and counter-drone equipment and VR training hardware. Grew 34.6 per cent year on year in Q2 2026 at a 53.4 per cent adjusted gross margin
Software and Services	44.0 per cent in Q2 2026 ($397.836m); 43.3 per cent in FY2025 ($1,202.672m)	Axon Evidence cloud storage and evidence management, Axon Records, Axon Fusus real-time operations, Axon Respond, Axon Air, Draft One, Axon Assistant, Axon Vision, Axon Guardian, and Axon 911 call handling via Carbyne and Prepared. Grew 36.2 per cent year on year in Q2 2026 at a 75.1 per cent adjusted gross margin, with software-only margin above 80 per cent
Product-category detail within Connected Devices, Q2 2026	TASER 28.9 per cent ($261.321m, up 20.9 per cent); Personal Sensors 10.5 per cent ($95.392m, up 2.8 per cent); Platform Solutions 16.6 per cent ($149.840m, up 122.6 per cent)	Platform Solutions is the growth engine inside hardware, driven by Dedrone counter-drone and drone-as-first-responder deployments. Personal Sensors has flattened as body-camera penetration matures in core US agencies

By geography, Q2 2026 revenue was $742.307m from the United States, 82 per cent of the total, and $162.082m from other countries.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. The original model was classic razor and razorblade: sell the TASER handle, then annuitise on cartridges and batteries. That business is still substantial, at $913.9m or 32.9 per cent of FY2025 revenue. But the strategic shift has been to bundle hardware into a multi-year subscription so the device becomes an entitlement inside a software contract rather than a capital sale. Axon prices in tiered per-officer, per-month bundles rather than by SKU, with the premium tier now the AI Era Plan. The evidence the shift is working is that annual recurring revenue is growing faster than total revenue and future contracted bookings are running at roughly 4.7 times trailing revenue.

Where the moat comes from. Once an agency standardises on Evidence.com, its chain-of-custody, retention and disclosure workflows are built around it, and years of video evidence sit inside it. Switching means migrating evidence with legal defensibility intact, retraining every officer, and re-procuring hardware. That is why net revenue retention runs at 126 per cent and why the AI upsell converts so quickly: the agency is already on the platform, and the AI tier is an incremental per-seat step-up rather than a new procurement. The CJIS-compliant environment Axon has built around its AI products is itself a barrier, since general-purpose AI vendors cannot easily meet criminal-justice data handling requirements.

The land-and-expand motion in numbers. Axon does not depend on single mega-contracts. Its model is many mid-size multi-year agency deals: Springfield, Missouri at $5.3m for 285 body cameras in July 2026, Evanston, Illinois at $5.8m in December 2025, a proposed five-year $27m contract with Denver Police in December 2025, and a body-worn camera rollout across UK fire services in early 2026 that extends the addressable market beyond core policing. Each of those becomes a base for the AI Era Plan upsell.

What it costs to run. The model is expensive in equity. FY2026 stock-based compensation is guided at $590m to $620m, driven largely by the eXponential Stock Plan and the 2024 CEO Performance Award, which vest in tranches against joint revenue-or-EBITDA, stock-price and service conditions. This is why GAAP operating income is close to breakeven while adjusted EBITDA runs at over 25 per cent of revenue, and it is the single most important reconciling item for anyone valuing the business.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Axon's Forms 10-K and 10-Q, its quarterly shareholder letters, and SEC XBRL company facts for CIK 0001069183. Note that FY2023 figures were revised upward in the FY2024 Form 10-K, with net income restated from $174.227m to $175.783m and diluted EPS from $2.31 to $2.33; the revised figures are used here.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021 (ended 31 Dec 2021)	865.6	n/a	$(0.91)	$2.35	Nil	Nil
FY2022 (ended 31 Dec 2022)	1,187.1	+37.1%	$2.03	$2.19	Nil	$674.0m
FY2023 (ended 31 Dec 2023)	1,560.7	+31.5%	$2.33	$4.14	Nil	$677.1m
FY2024 (ended 31 Dec 2024)†	2,082.5	+33.4%	$4.80	$5.94	Nil	$0m
FY2025 (ended 31 Dec 2025)	2,779.5	+33.5%	$1.51	$6.85	Nil	$1,730.2m

† The FY2024 non-current long-term debt figure is genuinely $0m rather than missing. The $690.0m of 0.50 per cent convertible senior notes due 2027, issued in December 2022, were reclassified in full to current liabilities at 31 December 2024 at a carrying amount of $680.3m as they approached conversion. Those notes were then fully extinguished by 11 February 2026. The FY2025 figure of $1,730.2m is the carrying amount of $1,000.0m of 6.125 per cent senior notes due 2030 and $750.0m of 6.250 per cent senior notes due 2033, both issued in March 2025. At 30 June 2026 the carrying amount was $1,731.8m with no current portion.

‡ Axon reports both non-GAAP diluted earnings per share and adjusted EBITDA in every quarterly shareholder letter. The Adjusted EPS column above is the company's own non-GAAP diluted EPS. The gap between GAAP and non-GAAP is dominated by stock-based compensation. FY2025 in particular shows GAAP EPS of $1.51 against non-GAAP EPS of $6.85, and FY2024's GAAP EPS of $4.80 was inflated by a large one-off tax benefit rather than by operations. Adjusted EBITDA over the same five years ran $178.1m, $232.3m, $329.3m, $521.4m and $710.2m, at margins of 20.6, 19.5, 21.1, 25.0 and 25.5 per cent.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026 (ended 30 Jun 2026)	$904.4m	$1.88	$0.36
Q1 2026 (ended 31 Mar 2026)	$807.3m	$1.61	$2.05
Q4 2025 (ended 31 Dec 2025)	$796.7m	$2.15	$0.03
Q3 2025 (ended 30 Sep 2025)	$710.6m	$1.17	$(0.03)
Q2 2025 (ended 30 Jun 2025)	$668.5m	$2.18	$0.44
Q1 2025 (ended 31 Mar 2025)	$603.6m	$1.47	$1.08
FY2025 total (ended 31 Dec 2025)	$2,779.5m	$6.85	$1.51

Two quarterly figures need context. Q1 2026 GAAP EPS of $2.05 includes a $189.0m other-income gain, largely the fair-value step-up on Axon's pre-existing 10.7 per cent stake in Carbyne plus strategic-investment marks; it is non-operating and should not be annualised. Q2 2026 GAAP net income of $29.4m was below Q2 2025's $36.1m purely for tax reasons, since the prior-year quarter carried a $75.0m tax benefit. On a pre-tax basis Q2 2026 improved from a loss of $38.9m to income of $32.7m, and operating income improved by $47.8m year on year to $46.8m. Quarterly EPS does not sum exactly to the full-year figure because of share-count weighting.

Cash flow and balance sheet. FY2025 operating cash flow was $211.3m against capital expenditure of $136.3m, giving free cash flow of $75.1m. On a trailing twelve-month basis to 30 June 2026, operating cash flow was $265.8m and capital expenditure $132.6m, giving free cash flow of $133.2m. Depreciation and amortisation was $83.2m in FY2025 and $109.4m on a trailing twelve-month basis. At 30 June 2026 Axon held $597.7m of cash and equivalents plus $75.7m of short-term investments against $1,731.8m of fixed-rate senior notes with no maturities before 2030, leaving net debt of approximately $1.1bn. Goodwill rose from $1,370.2m to $1,898.8m in six months on the Carbyne acquisition.

6. Valuation Metrics

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

Priced at $604.32 per share on 18 August 2026. The last completed regular session close was $612.83 on 14 August 2026. Trailing twelve-month figures are the sum of Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026.

Metric	Value
Market cap	Approximately $49.1bn ($604.32 x 81,237,415 shares outstanding per the Q2 2026 Form 10-Q cover page)
Enterprise value	Approximately $50.2bn (market cap $49.1bn + total debt $1,731.8m - cash and equivalents $597.7m - short-term investments $75.7m, all per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet). Net debt is approximately $1.1bn
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	Approximately 252x on trailing twelve-month GAAP diluted EPS of $2.40. On trailing twelve-month non-GAAP diluted EPS of $6.69 the same price is approximately 90x. The gap is almost entirely stock-based compensation, guided at $590m to $620m for FY2026
P/E (forward)	Approximately 57.2x on a consensus forward EPS estimate of $10.56 on a non-GAAP basis. Axon issues no EPS guidance at all; it guides revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA margin only, and explicitly declines to reconcile projected net income to projected adjusted EBITDA
P/S (TTM)	Approximately 15.3x (market cap $49.1bn / trailing twelve-month revenue $3,219.1m)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	Approximately 61x on Axon's own trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA of $827.0m. On GAAP EBITDA the multiple is approximately 377x and is not meaningful: GAAP EBITDA of only $133.2m is trailing twelve-month operating income of $23.8m plus depreciation and amortisation of $109.4m, and GAAP operating income is held near breakeven by stock-based compensation of roughly $600m a year. The adjusted figure is the one that reconciles to how the business is managed and to the company's own 2028 target of a 28 per cent adjusted EBITDA margin
P/FCF	Approximately 369x (market cap $49.1bn / free cash flow $133.2m; free cash flow = trailing twelve-month operating cash flow $265.8m - capital expenditure $132.6m per the cash flow statements). Free cash flow is currently suppressed by inventory and contract-asset build funding 33 per cent-plus revenue growth, and first-half 2026 free cash flow was negative $55.6m
52-week high	$794.29 intraday. The highest closing price in the trailing 52 weeks was $791.62 on 18 August 2025
52-week low	$339.01 intraday. The lowest closing price in the trailing 52 weeks was $345.94 on 10 April 2026
Short interest (% of float)	4.39 per cent of shares outstanding, or approximately 4.60 per cent of the 77,424,943-share free float. 3,563,990 shares short at the 31 July 2026 settlement date per the Nasdaq file. A narrower float basis gives 5.20 per cent. Short interest is up roughly 40 per cent year to date but has eased from a June peak of 4,074,449 shares
Days to cover	5.10 on the Nasdaq calculation using 699,220 average daily volume at the 31 July 2026 settlement date. A wider volume window gives 3.93
Dividend yield	Nil. Axon has never paid a dividend and states it does not intend to
Price/book	Approximately 13.4x on book value per share of $45.23

7. What Are They Building

The AI Era Plan and Draft One. Axon's premium subscription tier packages Draft One, which drafts police reports from body-camera audio transcripts, together with Axon Assistant and the newer AI products. Uptake has been the standout number of 2026: AI Era Plan product revenue, comprising the plan plus standalone Draft One and Axon Assistant, grew more than 700 per cent year on year in Q1 2026 and near 700 per cent again in Q2. Agencies report report-writing time reductions of 50 to 80 per cent, with Fort Collins, Colorado citing 67 per cent. Because these agencies are already running Evidence.com, the AI tier is a per-seat upsell rather than a new procurement.

Three new AI products launched at Axon Week 2026. At the Nashville event on 7 to 10 April 2026 Axon introduced Axon Vision, which applies AI analysis to live camera feeds for threat detection; Axon Guardian, which detects escalation on body cameras and can automatically call for assistance through Axon Fusus, with a sentinel mode on fleet cameras; and the cloud-based Axon 911 platform uniting call-taking, video and reporting. Axon Assistant was also expanded across devices inside a CJIS-compliant environment.

Axon 911, built by acquisition. The 911 call-handling business is new. Prepared closed on 1 October 2025 and Carbyne closed on 18 February 2026 for approximately $551.7m net of cash acquired, against a $625m headline value announced on 4 November 2025. Axon already held 10.7 per cent of Carbyne, and the step-up produced a $38.0m non-taxable gain in Q1 2026 along with $523.3m of goodwill and $108.2m of intangibles. Carbyne's purchase price allocation is still open, with the measurement period running to Q1 2027.

Drones and counter-drone. Platform Solutions grew 122.6 per cent year on year in Q2 2026, with Dedrone alone up approximately 300 per cent. This line covers drone-as-first-responder deployments and counter-drone equipment, and it is currently the fastest-growing hardware category by a wide margin. Its scaling is partly gated by US airspace rules on beyond-visual-line-of-sight flight, where the FAA's Part 108 rulemaking remains in progress; Axon has not published a date it relies on.

The 2028 financial targets. Introduced on 24 February 2026, management is targeting approximately $6bn of annual revenue, an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 28 per cent, adjusted free cash flow conversion of 60 per cent of adjusted EBITDA, and annual stock-based-compensation dilution below 2.5 per cent. The last of those is an acknowledgement that the current dilution rate is higher.

Compare notes on the AI adoption curve with other members in the ChartsView Forum.

8. Peer Comparison

Market capitalisations were re-checked live on 18 August 2026. Metrics are each from the named company's own results release or SEC filing.

Peer	Market cap (Aug 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Palantir Technologies (PLTR)	Approximately $415bn	FY2025 revenue of $4,475.4m; Q2 2026 revenue of $1,935.5m for the quarter ended 30 June 2026. Overlaps with Axon in government and public-safety software rather than hardware
Motorola Solutions (MSI)	Approximately $75.6bn	FY2025 revenue of $11,682m; Q2 2026 revenue of $3,133m for the quarter ended 4 July 2026. The closest direct competitor across command centre software, video security and land mobile radio
NICE Ltd (NICE)	Approximately $5.72bn	FY2025 revenue of $2,945.4m per its Form 20-F. Competes in public-safety recording and analytics
Cellebrite DI (CLBT)	Approximately $2.62bn	Annual recurring revenue of $508m at 30 June 2026, up 21 per cent but below management's own guidance, with FY2026 ARR guidance cut to $550m to $560m. FY2025 revenue was $475.7m. New Chief Executive Shiv Ramji took office 13 August 2026
Wrap Technologies (WRAP)	Approximately $0.09bn	FY2025 revenue of $4.7m; Q2 2026 revenue of $2.1m. Sub-scale and not a genuine competitive threat at present

Two peers that appear in older comparisons are no longer usable. Verint Systems filed a Form 15-12G on 8 December 2025 and is no longer an SEC reporting company following its take-private; its last public full-year revenue was $909.2m for the year ended 31 January 2025. Digital Ally has been renamed and repositioned as Kustom Entertainment, trading as KUST, with FY2025 revenue of $13.8m, and is no longer a pure body-camera comparable.

9. Insider Activity

Chief Executive Officer Patrick W. "Rick" Smith, the company's founder, sold 70,000 shares for approximately $37.5m between February and August 2026, every tranche under a Rule 10b5-1 plan. Across 51 Form 4 filings since 1 February 2026 there were zero open-market purchases by any insider; every disposition is either a programmed sale or a tax-withholding surrender on vesting. Separately, a company-wide wave of code-A equity settlements landed on 16 August 2026, including 97,015 shares to Rick Smith under the 2024 CEO Performance Award granted on 22 December 2023. These are vesting events, not purchases, and are consistent with Tranche 3 of the eXponential Stock Plan settling now that trailing revenue of $3,219.1m and trailing adjusted EBITDA of $827.0m have cleared the $2,866m and $611m hurdles and the June 2026 service date has passed.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Patrick W. Smith, Chief Executive Officer	16 Aug 2026	Acquisition, performance award settlement	97,015	Nil	Nil	2024 CEO Performance Award
Joshua M. Isner, President	13 Aug 2026	Tax withholding on vesting	15,704	$615.59	Approximately $9.67m	Withholding, not a market sale
Patrick W. Smith, Chief Executive Officer	07 Aug 2026	Sale	10,000	$548.90	Approximately $5.49m	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Joshua M. Isner, President	05 Aug 2026	Acquisition, award	78,200	Nil	Nil	Equity award
Patrick W. Smith, Chief Executive Officer	07 Jul 2026	Sale	10,000	$643.79	Approximately $6.44m	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Patrick W. Smith, Chief Executive Officer	29 Jun 2026	Sale	10,000	$500.00	$5.00m	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Joshua M. Isner, President	05 Jun 2026	Sale	13,000	$488.45	Approximately $6.35m	10b5-1 plan adopted 17 Dec 2025
Patrick W. Smith, Chief Executive Officer	04 Jun 2026	Sale	20,000	$500.00	$10.00m	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Elizabeth Reid Coughlin, Chief Human Officer	04 Jun 2026	Sale	1,554	$485.00	Approximately $0.75m	No 10b5-1 flag on filing
Brittany Bagley, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer	02 Jun 2026	Sale	5,969	$485.00	Approximately $2.90m	No 10b5-1 flag on filing
Isaiah Fields, Chief Legal Officer	22 May 2026	Sale	2,000	$400.00	$0.80m	No 10b5-1 flag on filing
Joshua M. Isner, President	10 Mar 2026	Sale	34,581	$534.39	Approximately $18.48m	No 10b5-1 flag on filing
Patrick W. Smith, Chief Executive Officer	09 Mar 2026	Sale	10,000	$560.24	Approximately $5.60m	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Brittany Bagley, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer	02 Mar 2026	Sale	4,266	$552.90	Approximately $2.36m	No 10b5-1 flag on filing
Patrick W. Smith, Chief Executive Officer	25 Feb 2026	Sale	10,000	$500.24	Approximately $5.00m	Rule 10b5-1 plan

Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Brittany Bagley, Chief Product Officer and Chief Technology Officer Jeffrey C. Kunins, Chief Revenue Officer Cameron Brooks and Chief Accounting Officer Jennifer H. Mak all received code-A award settlements on 16 August 2026 alongside the Chief Executive. Directors received annual restricted stock unit grants of 611 shares each on 29 May 2026, and the two new directors appointed on 8 July 2026, Vivek Mohindra and Eiso Kant, each received 600 shares.

10. Key Risks

• Valuation and multiple compression: at roughly 252 times trailing GAAP earnings, 90 times trailing non-GAAP earnings and 15 times trailing sales, the shares carry no valuation support. The 56 per cent drawdown from $791.62 on 18 August 2025 to $345.94 on 10 April 2026 happened on no company-specific bad news, which is the clearest available evidence of how the stock behaves when high-multiple growth de-rates.
• Margin compression from mix and component costs: management held the FY2026 adjusted EBITDA margin at 25.5 per cent even while raising revenue guidance twice, citing rising memory and component costs and the ramp of lower-margin Dedrone, Axon Body Mini and Axon 911. Software and Services adjusted gross margin fell 380 basis points year on year to 75.1 per cent on professional-services mix, and Q2's headline 26.8 per cent margin was flattered by $47m of one-off tariff refunds.
• Negative and lumpy free cash flow: FY2025 free cash flow fell 77 per cent to $75.1m from $329.5m, and first-half 2026 free cash flow was negative $55.6m. Inventory rose to $486.6m from $341.8m and current contract assets to $750.9m from $582.6m. Growth is being funded from working capital, and only 20 to 25 per cent of the $15.1bn backlog converts within twelve months.
• Shareholder dilution and stock-based compensation intensity: FY2026 stock-based compensation of $590m to $620m is roughly 16 to 17 per cent of guided revenue and more than two-thirds of guided adjusted EBITDA. Diluted shares rose from 66.2m in FY2021 to 82.5m in Q2 2026, and the at-the-market equity programme is still live with approximately 1.0m shares remaining at 30 June 2026.
• AI and civil-liberties regulation on Draft One: the ACLU and EFF have publicly criticised Draft One for not retaining or marking the AI-generated first draft, arguments that could compromise reports as evidence. Utah and then California, through SB 524 signed in October 2025, now require disclosure and audit trails for AI-assisted police reports, and more states are legislating. Because AI Era Plan revenue is the fastest-growing and highest-margin line, an adverse regulatory turn lands directly on it.
• Concentration in law-enforcement budgets: 82 per cent of Q2 2026 revenue came from the United States, overwhelmingly from state, local and federal public-safety agencies funded by discretionary municipal and grant budgets that are politically exposed and cyclically vulnerable.
• Patent litigation aimed at the newest growth lines: Airspace Systems is suing Axon and Dedrone in the Eastern District of Virginia over drone technology, seeking injunctive relief and treble damages, with the case stayed pending USPTO validity decisions expected in October 2026. Separately, CentralSquare Technologies is suing Carbyne in the Western District of Texas over 911 technology with trial set for May 2027. Both target the drone and 911 businesses driving current growth.
• Residual antitrust and product-liability exposure: the FTC dismissed its administrative complaint over the Vievu acquisition in October 2023 without consent decree or condition, but a purported antitrust class action brought by three municipalities remains pending in the District of New Jersey, based largely on the FTC's unproven allegations. Separately, as a weapons manufacturer Axon is a defendant in two wrongful-death or personal-injury suits involving TASER devices; it self-insures the first $5.0m per claim and states no judgment or settlement has ever exceeded that amount.
• Acquisition integration and goodwill: goodwill rose from $1,370.2m to $1,898.8m in six months and strategic investments from $416.8m to $853.8m. Axon paid approximately $1.18bn in cash for Prepared and Carbyne within five months, and Carbyne's purchase accounting remains open, explicitly including pre-acquisition legal contingencies.

For completeness, none of the above is a liquidity, solvency or going-concern risk. Axon holds approximately $685m of cash and short-term investments against $1.8bn of fixed-rate senior notes with no maturities before 2030, generates positive trailing adjusted EBITDA of $827.0m, and has a $15.1bn contracted backlog.

11. Recent Developments

• 16 Dec 2025 — Convertible note exchanges clean up the capital structure. Axon exchanged $196.854m principal of its 0.50 per cent 2027 convertible notes for $196.86m cash plus 526,802 shares, ahead of calling the balance.
• 18 Dec 2025 — Notice of redemption issued for all remaining 2027 convertible notes. Axon called the balance for a 10 February 2026 redemption date.
• 31 Dec 2025 — Workforce reduction booked in Q4 2025. Axon recorded $28.7m of non-recurring severance in selling, general and administrative expense and $1.1m in research and development, approximately $31.8m in total. The Form 10-K does not disclose how many roles were cut.
• 11 Feb 2026 — Convertible notes fully extinguished. $0.84m was redeemed for cash and $80.27m of conversions were settled with approximately $80.3m cash and 211,870 shares, with 41,139 shares received back from hedge counterparties. No convertible notes remain outstanding.
• 17 Feb 2026 — Nathan Cummings Foundation sues over exclusion of a shareholder proposal. The foundation sought expedited injunctive relief to force a political-spending-transparency proposal into the 2026 proxy. A judge ordered the parties toward a compromise and the matter was subsequently settled.
• 18 Feb 2026 — Carbyne acquisition closes, taking Axon into 911 call handling. Axon bought the remaining 89.3 per cent of Carbyne for approximately $551.7m net cash, booking a $38.0m non-taxable gain on its prior 10.7 per cent stake plus $523.3m of goodwill. Together with Prepared, this anchors the new Axon 911 line.
• 24 Feb 2026 — Q4 and FY2025 results beat and the shares rose 17.6 per cent the next session. Q4 revenue of $797m up 39 per cent and adjusted EPS of $2.15 against roughly $1.60 expected. FY2025 revenue of $2.78bn up 33 per cent, a fourth straight year above 30 per cent, with FY2025 bookings of $7.4bn up 46 per cent. Initial FY2026 guidance of 27 to 30 per cent growth and new 2028 targets of approximately $6bn revenue and a 28 per cent adjusted EBITDA margin were introduced.
• 06 Apr 2026 — Second director departure announced. Matthew McBrady notified the board he would not stand for re-election, following Julie Anne Cullivan on 5 March 2026. Both filings state the decisions were not the result of any disagreement with the company.
• 10 Apr 2026 — Shares hit a 52-week closing low of $345.94. Roughly 56 per cent below the August 2025 high, on general high-multiple-growth de-rating and margin concerns rather than any company-specific disclosure.
• 10 Apr 2026 — Three new AI products launched at Axon Week 2026 in Nashville. Axon Vision for AI analysis of live camera feeds, Axon Guardian for escalation detection on body cameras with automatic assistance calls through Axon Fusus, and the cloud-based Axon 911 platform. Axon Assistant was expanded across devices in a CJIS-compliant environment.
• 06 May 2026 — Q1 2026 results and the first guidance raise. Revenue of $807m up 34 per cent, AI Era Plan product revenue up more than 700 per cent year on year, Platform Solutions up 95 per cent and Dedrone alone up 300 per cent. FY2026 revenue growth guidance lifted from 27 to 30 per cent, to 30 to 32 per cent.
• 08 Jul 2026 — Two new independent directors appointed. Vivek Mohindra joined the Audit and Compensation Committees and Eiso Kant joined as a non-voting observer on the M and A and Capital Structure Committee, each with initial terms to the 2027 annual meeting and $260,000 initial restricted stock unit awards.
• 30 Jul 2026 — Continued press criticism of Draft One's evidentiary value. Commentators argued Axon's own evidence shows Draft One makes reports faster but not demonstrably better, echoing the EFF's charge that the product does not retain or mark the AI-generated first draft.
• 05 Aug 2026 — Q2 2026 results beat and guidance was raised again, but the shares fell 14.3 per cent the next day. Revenue of $904.4m up 35 per cent beat roughly $876.5m consensus and adjusted EPS of $1.88 beat $1.83, with FY2026 growth guidance raised to 32 to 34 per cent. But the adjusted EBITDA margin guide was held at 25.5 per cent, with management flagging higher component costs especially in memory, no further tariff-refund benefit in Q3, and ramp costs on Dedrone, Axon Body Mini and Axon 911. The stock fell from a $609.49 close on 5 August to $522.46 on 6 August, then recovered to $636.31 by 11 August.
• 16 Aug 2026 — Company-wide performance-award settlement. Rick Smith received 97,015 shares under the 2024 CEO Performance Award, alongside code-A settlements to Isner, Bagley, Kunins, Brooks, Fields, Coughlin and Mak, consistent with Tranche 3 of the eXponential Stock Plan vesting.

No published short-seller report on Axon was found in this period.

12. Key Dates

• Expected Nov 2026 — Q3 2026 results. Not yet announced as of 18 August 2026. Q3 2025 was reported on 4 November 2025 and Q3 2024 on 7 November 2024; Axon typically announces the date around two weeks in advance
• Expected Oct 2026 — USPTO decision on Axon and Dedrone's validity challenges to all three patents asserted by Airspace Systems. The infringement suit in the Eastern District of Virginia is stayed pending this decision
• 31 Dec 2026 — minimum service date for Tranche 4 of the eXponential Stock Plan and 2024 CEO Performance Award, which also requires trailing revenue of $3,583m or adjusted EBITDA of $801m and a $483.20 share price. Trailing revenue was already $3,219.1m and trailing adjusted EBITDA $827.0m at 30 June 2026
• Expected Feb 2027 — Q4 and full-year 2026 results, plus initial FY2027 guidance. FY2025 was reported on 24 February 2026 and FY2024 on 25 February 2025
• Expected Mar 2027 — completion of the Carbyne purchase price allocation as the measurement period closes in Q1 2027
• Expected May 2027 — trial in CentralSquare Technologies LLC versus Carbyne in the Western District of Texas, a 911-technology patent suit in which Carbyne has counterclaimed
• Expected Jun 2027 — 2027 annual meeting of stockholders. The 2026 annual meeting was held on 1 June 2026, and the new directors' initial terms expire at the 2027 meeting
• TBC — FAA Part 108 final rule on beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operations, which gates the scaling of the drone-as-first-responder business. The rule remained at proposal stage in the sources available and no firm date has been confirmed
• TBC — Axon Week 2027. Axon Week 2026 was held 7 to 10 April 2026 in Nashville, but no 2027 date has been published

Full-year 2026 guidance, as issued on 5 August 2026, is for revenue growth of 32 to 34 per cent and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 25.5 per cent. Applied to FY2025 revenue of $2,779.5m, that implies approximately $3.67bn to $3.72bn of FY2026 revenue and approximately $935m to $950m of adjusted EBITDA.

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