By
Godfrey Benjamin
November 21st, 2023
Virgin Galactic stock is currently at $27.81 in the pre-market trading, increasing 4.82% over its previous close of $26.53.
American spaceflight company Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (NYSE: SPCE) has lost more than 21% in its stock in the last five days. The spaceflight company has been declining since it delivered a non-profitable earnings result for the fourth quarter.
On the 25th of February, Virgin Galactic reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $59.5 million. The decline is an addition to the loss of $66 million delivered in the previous quarter. In Q4, the company said it had $0 revenue, same with the prior quarter. The company’s chief financial officer Jon Campagna noted during the earnings call that Virgin Galactic did not generate significant revenue in 2020.
As of the end of the third quarter, the spaceflight company had $742 million in cash. However, the cash had reduced to about $666 as of the end of 2020.
Before the announcement of the Q4 earnings result, there were predictions that Virgin Galactic would see a loss of $0.31 per share. As predicted, the company reported exactly a $0.31 per share loss.
Virgin Galactic (SPCE) Stock
Virgin Galactic stock is currently at $27.81 in the pre-market trading, increasing 4.82% over its previous close of $26.53. SPCE has plunged 53.23% over the past month and nearly 21% in the last three months. Despite the recent declines, however, SPCE has jumped 11.80% since the beginning of January. Also, the company’s stock has increased by 43.87% over the past year.
In 2019, when Virgin Galactic became a publicly-traded company through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), several private ventures also went public through SPAC. Since then, there have been about 322 SPAC transactions. In 2019, financial data from Refinitiv showed that there were 87 SPAC transactions valued at an average of about $390 million. In the following year, there were 163 at an average value of $965 million. Also, in the first two months of 2020, 72 private ventures have become public through SPAC transactions with an average value of more than $2 billion.
Lately, the market has been suffering from rising bond yields. In a recent report, Bloomberg noted that the IPOX SPAC index had dropped 20% since its peak in February. The report also revealed that several SPAC has plunged to lesser than the $10 price at which they sold shares.
Venture investor and Virgin Galactic chairman Chamath Palihapitiya said on a podcast that the “SPAC market has taken a real beating.” While speaking, Palihapitiya added:
“If you have one or two more months of this where all of a sudden bonds look better… you’ll have a bunch of busted IPOs or mergers.”
Recently, Palihapitiya sold his 6.2 million shares, worth $213 million in the space-tourism company. Following the announcement of the chairman’s decision to sell off his Virgin Galactic shares, the company plummeted 13%.