Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. is gearing up for a busy few weeks as the space-travel company prepares for its first commercial flight next month.
On Monday, Virgin Galactic
SPCE,
announced that its first commercial flight was on track for late June. The company, which was founded by Sir Richard Branson, will undertake a launch with Virgin Galactic crew in May before the commercial flight next month.
The Unity 25 launch later this month will mark VSS Unity’s return to space, with the spacecraft crewed by two pilots and four Virgin Galactic mission specialists. The mission will be Virgin Galactic’s first fully crewed spaceflight since July 2021 when VSS Unity carried Branson and three company employees to space.
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“Unity 25 will be the final assessment of the full spaceflight system and astronaut experience ahead of our first commercial flight, ‘Galactic 01,’ planned for late June,” tweeted Virgin Galactic Monday.
Galactic 01 will be a paid scientific research flight with the Italian Air Force. TD Cowen analyst Oliver Chen described the first commercial flight as “out of this world innovation,” in a note this week. “SPCE plans to carry 4 ticketed passengers to space at monthly intervals thereafter,” he wrote. TD Cowen’s fiscal 2023 $8.3 million revenue estimate for Virgin Galactic includes $4.2mm of passenger revenue assuming six commercial flights with four passengers at $250,000 a ticket.
TD Cowen has an outperform rating for Virgin Galactic. Of 11 analysts surveyed by FactSet, two have a buy rating, three have a hold rating, and six have an underweight or sell rating for Virgin Galactic.
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On Monday, Virgin Galactic reported a deeper-than-expected first-quarter loss and revenue that missed analysts’ estimates. The company’s stock fell 2.2% Thursday, compared with the S&P 500 index’s
SPX,
decline of 0.4%.
Virgin Galactic’s stock has been pressured by the struggles of Branson’s satellite launch company Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc., which filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year. Shares of Virgin Galactic have fallen 21.2% over the past three months.
Additional reporting by Bill Peters and Anviksha Patel.
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