At Oshkosh AirVenture, Yakima, Washington-based backcountry aircraft manufacturer CubCrafters announced that it would go public, making a stock offering though a program designed for smaller companies. Plane & Pilot spoke with CubCrafters’ Brad Damm at AirVenture, and he told us that the offering’s early days were the hottest such opening its management company had ever had. Damm said that following the death of founder Jim Richmond in 2021, CubCrafters wanted to keep the company’s interests close to home, and it weighed all of its options before deciding on this route. Among other possible plans for the funding that’s to come, Damm said increasing production capacity for the maxed-out Yakima factory is tops on the list, but with new plane development being another priority. The offering, as it’s set up, allows would-be stock buyers to reserve the purchase option with a stock reservation of as little as $400 for stock at $5 per share. In other comparable offerings, the average buy is around $2,700, according to CubCrafters, whereas the Yakima plane maker’s average has been around $8,000, a good sign of a strong interest all around. After reserving the stock buy, purchasers then have the option to buy the reserved number of shares at the pre-offer price of $5 per share.
