For investors in Joby and Archer Aviation, Tesla givethand Tesla taketh away.
Shares of the pair, which make electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, dropped on Tuesday after an announcement from Tesla turned out to be only about cars, as generally expected. There wasn’t so much as a whisper about aviation.
Joby stock dropped 3.4%, closing at $18.91. Archer shares fell 8.5%, closing at $12.48. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.4% and 0.2%, respectively.
Those moves came after Joby stock added 7% on Monday, with Archer shares up 18%, as investors speculated that the significant announcement the company planned to make Tuesday might have something to do with aviation. A tweet about Tuesday’s announcement included a video showing a spinning wheel with a Tesla logo that could have been the rotor of a Tesla eVTOL, or quadcopter drone.
Instead, Tesla unveiled “Standard” versions of its Model Y and Model 3 vehicles, starting under $40,000 and $38,000, respectively.
The news was essentially what investors expected. Tesla stock rose 5.1% in anticipation of the news and fell 4.4% on Tuesday, leaving shares up about $3 for the week.
Joby stock is still up 3.6% for the week. Archer stock is up 7.9%. Whether those gains hold is anybody’s guess.
Neither Joby nor Archer generates significant sales yet, and both are waiting for regulatory approvals to launch commercial services. Wall Street doesn’t expect either company to achieve billions of dollars in sales until late in the decade.
The stocks, which tend to move on product updates, trade widely. Joby stock has ranged from $4.80 to $20.95 over the past 12 months, while Archer has ranged from $2.85 to $13.92.