Boom Supersonic

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• bullish fact_claim Blake Scholl

  We did XB1 with 50 people, including the engineers that designed it, the technicians that put it together, the test pilots, all of that. And we've also designed a full-scale jet engine. We've designed a full-scale airplane. We have a factory, almost 200,000 square foot factory in North Carolina.

• bullish fact_claim Blake Scholl

  we've consumed about 450. Which makes it, by a large margin, the most efficient supersonic development program in history.

• bullish fact_claim Blake Scholl

  we have the first five years of production in the books.

• bullish assessment Blake Scholl

  We call it the three-legged stool. There's the technical execution of the airplane, which in many ways is the easiest part. People have been building supersonic jets for a long time. We just have to build it capitally efficiently. But then there's the what are airlines really going to be able to operate profitably and what are passengers going to pay for. And getting those three things in sync is really important.

• bullish endorsement Blake Scholl

  United was first to place an order with a deposit. I think, I have an enormous amount of gratitude for the leadership team at United that had the vision to place an order for supersonic jets during COVID. ... United ordered 15 overtures. They pre-ordered another 35. And most important, they're actually working with us on the airplane development.

• bullish assessment Blake Scholl

  we are, if we look at technically where the development is, we are a few months ago where the Boeing 777 was five years before it carried passengers.

• bullish prediction Blake Scholl

  we will start building the first full-scale airplane next year. And our goal is to have it in the air by the end of 28 and ready for passengers by the end of 29.

• bullish fact_claim Blake Scholl

  Moreover, we can do it without an audible sonic boom.

• bullish assessment Blake Scholl

  we've really had supersonic aviation's Falcon 1 moment.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  with that constraint, there are about 600 routes on the planet where there's enough traffic to fill the seats, at fairs people are already paying, that airlines can operate very profitably, and that turns into a multi-hundred billion dollar market for this product.

• bullish fact_claim Unattributed

  We broke the sound barrier on our prototype airplane. Earlier this year, it's called the XB-1. It is the first supersonic jet made not by a nation state.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  if you can operate a Boeing or Airbus wide body and have profitability in your business class, you can operate a boom overture jet on that same route and have even better profitability because you'll be able to fill the seats with those passengers, they'll probably pay a bit more for speed, and you can do twice the flights with the same airplane and crew because it's faster, and there's enough demand so you can sweat the asset.

• neutral fact_claim Blake Scholl

  the margins are terrible as well. When you have a competitor that has the exact same product line, the customers get to compete you down to like almost no margin, which is the story of Boeing's commercial business and Airbus's commercial business. Like, they're terrible businesses because there's no product differentiation.

• neutral fact_claim Blake Scholl

  If there was perfect competition, if there are lots of airplane manufacturers, they would have to because they would know that if they didn't do what somebody else would. But there's only two. There's only Boeing and Airbus, right?

• bullish criticism Blake Scholl

  Steve Jobs was willing to destroy the iPod business to create the iPhone business, right? Boeing today, many, many, many CEOs removed from the founder, working for the board, being very focused on the next few quarters, is not willing to eat the 787 business to create a much larger supersonic business.

• bullish endorsement Blake Scholl

  This is why United's doing exactly that.

• bullish assessment Blake Scholl

  So if you're Boeing today, you don't want to build an all business class supersonic airplane because it disrupts the bundling of the three class airplanes.

• bullish assessment Blake Scholl

  20% of seats at the front of the airplane business class are 80% of the profit dollars. This is why you have fancy wine lists, nice lounges, essentially all of the money on a per trip basis, is premium international travel.

• neutral criticism Blake Scholl

  There was hand-wavy economics, right? But it was not at all what, you know, any business-minded person would have built first.

• neutral assessment Blake Scholl

  all of that kicks off a vicious cycle. So now there's not enough demand. So then the, you know, one of the economic advantages of supersonic is you can do more flights of the same airplane and crew, but you only realize that benefit if you've constructed the whole thing such that there's enough demand to keep the airplanes full and flying.

• neutral assessment Blake Scholl

  Again, this is Econ 101. The higher the price, the smaller the market, right? And so, if you're going to make an airplane where the tickets are going to cost $20,000 and you're designing for 1970s or 80s market size, the airplane needs to be a lot smaller. What Concorde actually did is fly around a lot of empty seats. Even on the best route, which is New York to London, this is the like rock stars and royalty route, right? This is the, if you want to make a premium supersonic product, there is n

• neutral fact_claim Blake Scholl

  So the internet, so prior to me starting Boom, the internet was full of basically false conventional wisdom about supersonic flight. And one of those myths is, oh, it was 9-11 and, you know, one crash that killed Concord. No.

• bullish assessment Blake Scholl

  20% of seats at the front of the airplane, business class, are 80% of the profit dollars. This is like the business case for what we're doing if life's working.