Virgin Galactic surges 47% as Richard Branson’s space tourism company preps first commercial flight

• Shares of Virgin Galactic soared on Friday on news the company was readying commercial flights.

• After years of delays, the first flight will take place on June 27, with another scheduled for August.

• The stock spiked 47% Friday, but is still trading far below highs reached in 2021.

Virgin Galactic stock rocketed as much as 47% higher on Friday, as investors cheered the news that the space tourism company was preparing its first commercial flights after a long series of delays.

Soon after the market opened, the stock jumped to $5.97, then pared its gain to $5.50, up 36% from Thursday’s close.

Billionaire Richard Branson’s space company announced that the first flight, dubbed Galactic 01, is scheduled between June 27 and June 30. The flight will carry a science team of three crew members from the Italian air force who will conduct microgravity research, the company said. A second flight will follow in early August. Private space flights will cost $450,000 per ticket, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The news comes after a string of delays and technical issues that pushed out the date of Virgin’s first commercial operations. The company has also struggled to make money. It rode a wave of enthusiasm around the SPAC boom in the early days of the pandemic, but ultimately missed its 2021 revenue projection by 98%.

As the air came out of the SPAC bubble over the course of 2022, many firms that went public in a merger with a blank-check firm saw their stock price crumble. Virgin Galactic is trading far below highs reached in 2021, when the stock was trading at nearly $60 per share.

In 2021, Branson was aboard the first fully crewed spaceflight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. That was part of the test flight program.

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