Archer has maintained buoyant messaging in their first quarter earnings call pointing to significant progress in the their quest for type certification despite not yet having a prototype capable of flying the entire flight profile that will be demanded for certification in FAA and other jurisdictions, CEO Adam Goldsmith assured participants to the call that this milestone would be achieved “in the second half, before the end of the year”. Goldsmith when on to outline plans to add an additional eight aircraft to the flight test programme again by the end of the year.
Archer’s participation in the US eIPP programme was also covered in the call but the company conceded that while discussions with participating cities are ongoing no decisions had yet been made about how many of the prototypes would be used for eIPP projects and how many would be retained for the flight test programme.
The recently announced decision to transfer certification in the UAE to a Restricted Type Certificate for initial certificate was also touched on with Archer calling it a way to generate early revenue though the analysts selected for questioning failed to press the company for clarification given the limitations of the RTC described in the UAE’ GCAA’s Part 21 would appear to rule out commercial operations. Asked about production, Archer said that work was in hand to secure a production certificate and it would be aiming for an initial production rate of 50 aircraft a year.
Turning to the bottom line Archer has posted a net loss of USD217.7 million with revenues of USD1.6m the former as the result of a combination of Midnight flight testing, work on hybrid propulsion and military product development while the latter was thanks to revenues generated by the Hawthorne Airport investment – it acquired the master lease for the airport last year for USD126m.
Looking ahead, the company expects spending in the second quarter to be in the range of USD170-200m with Interim CFO Priya Gupta saying the company expected expenditure to remain at present levels which she called a spike caused be elevated test and development spending before “potentially” falling back to lower levels though she did not expand on what those lower levels might be nor did any of the analysts enquire. Archer’s accumulated deficit at the end of the quarter stood at USD2.522 billion with reserves in the form of cash, cash equivalents and short term investments of USD1.775 bn.
Image: Archer
