Space tourism company Virgin Galactic is looking forward to sending private astronauts to suborbital space and back, with an expected average of 125 flights per year, using its two new spaceships.
The Tustin-based firm (NYSE: SPCE) on Nov. 13 sought to assure investors that it’s on track to resume flights in the fourth quarter of next year, with would-be astronauts to follow six to eight weeks after.
“We remain full steam ahead, bringing our new spaceships into service,” CEO Michael Colglazier told stock analysts in a conference call after the earnings release.
Shares of the company, founded by U.K. billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, were trading at $3.58 apiece as of Nov. 17, about than half of what they were worth just a year ago. It has a $226 million market cap.
125 Annual Flights
The Virgin flights, which include several minutes of weightlessness and a brief encounter with the edge of space, will resume after a break of more than two years to get the company’s new Delta spaceships operational.
It plans to start with one flight a week, then move to two, and eventually three flights a week over the first two to three months of operation. The target is 125 flights a year carrying a total of 750 passengers after an initial ramp-up period, and Colglazier said the number will climb even higher.
The company estimates that there are about 300,000 would-be private astronauts.
Colglazier said he expects the ticket price to be “higher than” the most recent figure of $600,000 per person when sales resume early next year. By comparison, that was already a significant jump from the earlier price of $450,000 offered in 2023.
The exact timing has become crucial for Virgin Galactic’s efforts to establish its space tourism business on a stable footing.
It’s promised investors that it will be a company with $450 million in annual sales and with high margins.
In the third quarter, its loss narrowed to $64 million compared to $75 million in the same quarter a year ago. The company burned $108 million in cash in the third quarter and has forecast that it will burn between $90 million to $100 million in the current quarter.
The company has $424 million in cash equivalents and marketable securities as of Sept. 30.
About 675 people have Virgin Galactic Spaceflight reservations.
Musk, Bezos Competition
Virgin Galactic faces competition from other companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.
Southern California has become increasingly active in the 21st-century space race.
One of the most prominent companies, Rocket Lab, a Long Beach-based provider of spacecraft launch services, announced on Nov. 10 that its third-quarter revenue jumped 48% to $155 million.
