So, I have been dabbling in electric planes for a couple of years. Archer was my first one to take a test position in, then a little while ago I added the teensiest position in Beta Technologies. (I have looked at Joby, but nothing has made me pull the trigger yet.)
This post is about something I just learned about BETA and it caused me to recall why I went strong into Rocket Labs (RKLB) a few years back.
RKLB impressed me upfront with two things. The founder/CEO Peter Beck caught my attention for being a straight forward person and his planning impressed me. He knew it was going to be a tough road and he knew they were going to break things. What he decided was that he knew enough about composites and other engineering materials to fail fast and improve faster.
Then I watched Rocket Lab make smart acquisitions and build a whole ('nuher?) business around supplying parts to others. So, they now have a full system to build whatever a customer wants, a vehicle to support customer end goals, and they can sell many of the satellite parts to others. To me, I figured that being vertically integrated and able to sell to others was a good business model.
The 52 week range is from something like $25/share to $139/share and I have been holding since the $4/share times of early 2023 (if not earlier but that is as far back as previous broker will let me look.) That is cool and all, but I am now thinking this is overbought and I’ve been spinning options on them for over a year.
Today, I looked into an article on electric planes and who is where in their FAA certifications. Then Beta Tech showed an almost 8% pop this morning. “Why?” says I and I started poking around.
BETA, or Beta Technologies is one of the current crop. They have all been getting recent boosts from political spending and defense monies and stuff. That is never an investing decision for me, but I did find that they are becoming a company with a similar model to what is making Rocket Labs successful.
They vertically integrate from making their own motors and flight controllers, building their own planes, and today I learned they can also deploy their own charging system specifically for fast turn around and high-power charging demanded by flight schedules. Then it turns out they just signed a contract to sell some of those motors to another electric plane company (Eve, I think) and they can offer the flight controllers to others.
I know nothing about the management, but the outcomes seem to point to good decision making. They have been on a recent barn burning tour around the country and they recently proved they can set up, from scratch, at a new airport in Florida and then conduct round the clock flights. (They are based out of Vermont.)
Things look really interesting and I bumped up my position by another tiny bit today. (By tiny I mean I went from like $500 invested to just under $1000.) Not totally convinced yet, but now more convinced to pay attention.
Anyone else come across this company and have thoughts? Anyone know anything about management that might be good to learn?