NEW YORK, Sept. 4, 2026, 9:12 p.m. EDT — Archer Aviation Inc. NYSE:ACHR said Friday that New York Stock Exchange trading in its public warrants has been halted ahead of their Sept. 16 expiration. Its common stock remains listed and continues to trade.
The distinction matters. Archer filed the notice under an SEC item whose heading includes the word “delisting,” but the affected security is ACHR WS. It is not the ACHR share that most investors own.
The warrants also sit far out of the money. Each requires an $11.50 payment for one Archer share. The stock closed Friday at $5.71, down 0.9%, and was near $5.70 after hours. It would need to rise about 101% merely to reach the exercise price.
The $11.50 strike is a long way up
Archer Aviation daily closes and public-warrant exercise price
As of . Source: Yahoo Finance; unadjusted closes. The Sept. 4 close is shown against the contractual strike.
That price gap is the investor angle. Expiration could erase the potential issuance of 25.4 million shares tied to the old SPAC warrants. Yet it could also close off as much as $292 million of theoretical exercise cash.
Neither outcome happens all at once. The $292 million is simple arithmetic, not a forecast. Private warrants can be exercised without cash in some circumstances. Public holders also paid for their warrants, raising their economic break-even above $11.50.
Two securities, three dates
The halt concerns ACHR WS. The common stock keeps trading as ACHR.
Source: Archer’s Sept. 4 Form 8-K. Brokers may impose earlier operational deadlines for holders.
Archer said the NYSE halted ACHR WS on Sept. 1 under Section 802.01D of its listed-company manual. The exchange plans to suspend the warrants before trading opens Sept. 15.
Any warrants left unexercised at 5 p.m. New York time on Sept. 16 become void.
Brokerage cutoffs can arrive sooner. Warrant holders should check their own broker’s timetable and the contractual documents. A suspended security cannot be assumed to trade normally simply because its legal expiration date has not arrived.
The latest quarterly filing counted 17,394,945 public warrants and 8 million private-placement warrants at June 30. Together, they represented 25,394,945 possible shares at the same $11.50 strike.
What disappears if the warrants expire
June 30 counts; dilution and proceeds are conditional calculations
Sources: Archer’s June-quarter Form 10-Q and Sept. 4 8-K. Private-warrant cashless provisions can reduce proceeds. Share count was 770,023,800 on Aug. 5.
Full exercise would increase the Aug. 5 share count by about 3.3%. That is potential issuance, not present dilution. At Friday’s price, rational exercise would require a major move before expiry.
The accounting trail is already shrinking. Archer valued its public and private warrant liabilities at $3 million on June 30, down from $29.9 million at year-end. The revaluation produced a $26.9 million non-cash gain in the first half.
That gain did not fund an aircraft. It reflected the falling fair value of a liability. Expiration should simplify the balance sheet, but investors should not confuse it with operating income or customer cash.
Archer had $1.56 billion of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments at June 30. It used $305.5 million in operating cash during the first half and lost $263.2 million in the second quarter. The company recorded $5 million of quarterly revenue and remains in a pre-commercialization stage.
That explains the trade-off. An extra $292 million would be meaningful beside current spending. But the share price makes broad warrant exercise remote unless the market rapidly reprices Archer.
Operations will have to do that work. Archer said this week that its Midnight aircraft completed 70 test flights during August. Its “No Roads” tour will put the aircraft before government, airline and public audiences as it prepares for early U.S. operations and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
The warrant deadline offers no verdict on certification, manufacturing or demand. It removes a legacy instrument from Archer’s SPAC merger. The common stock remains the vehicle through which investors price those execution risks.
Risks: Archer can issue shares through other securities and transactions even if these warrants expire. Aircraft certification and commercial timing can slip. Cash burn may require more capital, while a sharp share rally before Sept. 16 could revive exercises and dilution.
The near-term watch list is short. Common shareholders should track the ACHR quote, not mistake ACHR WS for the stock, and treat any disappearing warrant overhang as balance-sheet cleanup. It is not a substitute for flight milestones or revenue.
