Archer Aviation Has $6.9 Million of Revenue. It’s Buying a Boeing Business With More Than $200 Million.

Archer Aviation (ACHR -5.02%) is buying Boeing’s (BA +0.58%) Wisk Aero, Insitu, and SkyGrid subsidiaries, and the price is a piece of itself. At closing, Archer will issue Boeing new stock equal to 19.75% of its shares outstanding just before the deal completes — which leaves Boeing owning about 16.5% of the company, or about a sixth.

The sixth buys a revenue base Archer doesn’t have. Insitu, a maker of unmanned military aircraft used by the armed forces of 35 nations, brings more than $200 million of annual revenue — profitable revenue, Boeing’s release notes.

Archer’s own trailing-12-month revenue is $6.9 million. The acquired revenue is about 29 times that.

Wisk Aero builds autonomous aircraft, and SkyGrid runs digital airspace-management software. Neither’s revenue was disclosed.

The rest of the terms

Boeing also receives two warrants, each covering about $100 million of stock, struck at $13.00 and $17.88 per share. It gains the right to nominate a director. And it agreed to buy up to $55 million of stock in a future Archer offering of at least $400 million, at Archer’s election.

The deal is expected to close by the end of 2026, pending the antitrust waiting period and national-security approvals.

Today’s Change

(-5.02%) $-0.35

Current Price

$6.62

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$5.1BMarket cap calculated using publicly traded shares outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or dual-class non-traded shares. Implied market cap may vary.

Day’s Range

$6.49 – $7.29

52wk Range

$4.30 – $14.62

Volume

44.1M

Avg Vol

44.4M

Gross Margin

-39275.36%

Of course, stock is a currency that moves. The 19.75% is fixed as a slice of the share count, not as a dollar figure, so what the sixth ends up costing Archer’s current owners depends on where the stock trades at closing.

For scale, Archer’s market value is about $4.8 billion, so the new shares Boeing is taking were worth about $950 million at Monday’s close. The company’s second-quarter revenue was $5.0 million, its net loss $263.2 million, and its cash and investments $1.56 billion.

Existing shareholders end up owning about a sixth less of a company with far more revenue in it. What the stock rides on, though, hasn’t changed. Archer’s valuation still rests mostly on Midnight, its electric air taxi — the acquired businesses account for about $200 million of annual revenue at a company valued near $4.8 billion. What Wisk and SkyGrid grow into could change that arithmetic. For now, the rest of the valuation is still the aircraft.