Virgin Galactic stock fell 23.4% through 11 a.m. ET on Friday, even after the company beat analyst expectations on sales and earnings in its Q3 earnings report. The Delta stock move turned on one number more than the quarter itself: a slower commercial flight schedule for the company’s next spacecraft.
Analysts had expected a loss of $0.47 per share on sales of $231,670. Virgin Galactic reported a loss of $0.39 per share and sales of $430,000, a cleaner top-and-bottom-line result than Wall Street had modeled. Rich Smith wrote that the shares had fallen 23.4% by 11 a.m. ET on Friday.
Virgin Galactic in June 2024
Virgin Galactic has been a company without a product for the last two-and-a-half years, and it retired its last Unity spaceplane in June 2024. That leaves the company’s next revenue step tied to Apeiron, not to the quarter’s earnings line. For shareholders, the immediate read-through was not about the size of the loss, but about how long the business will remain stuck between aircraft retirement and a fresh flying schedule.
Apeiron slips into 2027
Virgin Galactic said Apeiron will not make its first commercial spaceflight before early Q2 2027, and a second spaceplane will not join it until late Q2 or early Q3 2027. That timing pushes the first meaningful commercial flying well beyond the current year and delays the point at which two aircraft can support recurring operations. The stock’s response suggests investors care less about a quarterly beat than about how long the company stays grounded.
150 flights by 2028
Virgin Galactic now predicts its two spaceplanes together will fly only 150 times per year by the end of 2028, far below a pace of four flights per week, which would amount to about 200 per year. At that higher rate, the article says, positive free cash flow in 2027 would be practically guaranteed; at 150 flights a year, that path looks much less direct. The open issue is whether the company can move from a late start in 2027 to anything close to that four-flights-a-week cadence by 2028.
