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2021-08-15
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Where Will Virgin Galactic Stock Be In 10 Years?
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{"i18n":{"language":"zh_CN"},"detailType":1,"isChannel":false,"data":{"magic":2,"id":897417380,"tweetId":"897417380","gmtCreate":1628957056740,"gmtModify":1631889096272,"author":{"id":3577076974308726,"idStr":"3577076974308726","authorId":3577076974308726,"authorIdStr":"3577076974308726","name":"KohJinHui","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"userType":1,"introduction":"","boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"fanSize":12,"starInvestorFlag":false},"themes":[],"images":[],"coverImages":[],"extraTitle":"","html":"<html><head></head><body><p>👍🏻</p></body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body><p>👍🏻</p></body></html>","text":"👍🏻","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":8,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/897417380","repostId":1149823415,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1149823415","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1628909753,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1149823415?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-08-14 10:55","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Where Will Virgin Galactic Stock Be In 10 Years?","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1149823415","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nVirgin Galactic fell more than 30% post-earnings as the market was disappointed with the \"d","content":"<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>Virgin Galactic fell more than 30% post-earnings as the market was disappointed with the \"delay\" affecting the launch of its private commercial revenue service.</li>\n <li>However, we think the company's \"delay\" is necessary for it to rectify its supply constraints and meet the huge demand that the company is experiencing.</li>\n <li>We would also discuss in detail the company's long-term opportunities and threats, and what investors need to monitor moving forward.</li>\n <li>Lastly, we present our valuation arguments for long-term investors who are considering adding exposure to Virgin Galactic.</li>\n</ul>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00922c9874a28954c08c613b8dbf378b\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"493\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Nastco/iStock via Getty Images</span></p>\n<p><b>Investment Thesis</b></p>\n<p>Back in May, when we published our previous article (link to article appendedhere) on Virgin Galactic (SPCE), we clearly highlighted that we think the Street's consensus has been too optimistic about Virgin Galactic's revenue estimates as we thought the projections overstated the market opportunity for suborbital space tourism over the next 10 years to a large extent, based on our research that consulted multiple sources, and we submitted a revised projection.</p>\n<p>Since then, the Street has revised its near-term projections downwards as the company recently indicated that they are expecting to commence commercial service only from late Q3'CY22.</p>\n<p>This article will discuss the circumstances leading to Virgin Galactic's \"delayed\" launch, the long-term opportunities, and the competitive threat facing Virgin's leadership quest in suborbital space tourism.</p>\n<p>Lastly, we would present our valuation argument for long-term investors considering adding exposure to the stock right now.</p>\n<p><b>Revisions to Virgin Galactic's Mean Consensus Estimates</b></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9e15e65a740bf4a03405cd6f31e82bfc\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"396\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>May's consensus revenue estimates & Aug's consensus revenue estimates. Data source: S&P Capital IQ</span></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/149d99203d29b3a3e785096ccc509c57\" tg-width=\"600\" tg-height=\"371\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Scale of revised estimates (Between May and Aug estimates). Data source: S&P Capital IQ</span></p>\n<p>Investors should be able to glean clearly that near-term consensus estimates were revised downwards from May's projections that affected CY21 to CY25. However, we think what's important for investors to note is that the Street revised its estimates meaningfully upwards from CY26 to reflect the strong demand that SPCE highlighted during its recent earnings call, which we think demonstrates the company's confidence in a strong revenue runway for the long term, which we would discuss in detail in the subsequent sections.</p>\n<p><b>Private Commercial Full Revenue Service is Expected from Q3'CY22</b></p>\n<p>SPCE has since lost about 33% of its value since its earnings release on Aug 5, which we think is largely attributed to the near term headwinds resulting from its \"delay\" on commercial service launch as a result of proposed critical enhancements to VSS Unity and the mothership VMS Eve to increase their turnaround time between flights and maintenance significantly.</p>\n<p>As a result of the enhancements that would take place after the completion of Unity 23 revenue-generating flight with the Italian Air Force, the company expects to commence its private commercial full revenue service only from late Q3'CY22, which we think may have taken investors aback as while the market expected full commercial service to begin in 2022, they did not expect it to be as late as Q3.</p>\n<p>However, we think the market has once again chosen to focus on the uncertainty resulting from the near-term revenue service delay and ignore the importance of the enhancements that are expected to improve VMS Eve's turnaround time so significantly that Virgin Galactic emphasized:</p>\n<blockquote>\n These enhancements\n <i>could potentially allow Eve to fly 100 flights between major maintenance inspections</i>. This is up from the current interval of 10 flights between major inspections today. This will be an incredibly important success factor during the early commercial service period while we are in process of manufacturing additional motherships.\n</blockquote>\n<p>In addition, the company also highlighted that with the enhancements, the company is also \"targeting a reduced turnaround flight between Unity flights of 4 to 5 weeks, and that's down from what has at best, been 7 to 8 weeks for VSS Unity.\"</p>\n<p>The Street and the market were certainly disappointed with the announcement, as analysts cut near-term forecasts and downgraded ratings, and Morgan Stanley also emphasized: \"During this heavy maintenance period, Virgin Galactic will not be able to conduct any space flights until summer of 2022.\"</p>\n<p>Sure, no flights. We are certainly not concerned, as the company reiterated the significance of these enhancements:</p>\n<blockquote>\n These are reasonably robust modifications to Eve. But the reason we are taking the additional scope and the additional time for this enhancement period of Eve is because the flight rate that we will derive from Eve following this enhancement period is we plan to build that to effect. It's almost 10x greater between major inspections and what we've been doing now. That will give us an ability to fly Eve much more frequently, and\n <i>that's really important to our initial group of future astronauts as well as the people that we're going to be signing up starting today</i>.\"\n</blockquote>\n<p>If investors could clearly glean the language used by the company in the above sentence, the company is clearly doing it because they are expecting such a robust demand for its space flight services that we think may have exceeded what the company had initially planned for. So while the recent launch event with Sir Richard Branson was largely seen as a major PR coup, it certainly allowed the company to measure the response from interested customers, and the company has clearly indicated that they see such robust demand that they needed to open up a priority list as soon as possible as CEO Michael Colglazier articulated:</p>\n<blockquote>\n Leveraging the substantial demand we have seen to our website, I am pleased to announce that we will soon open a priority list for future space travelers who wish to be next in line. We will reach out first to this list with any available inventory following the conclusion of our spacefarer conversion process. Registration for this list will soon be made available on our website...We have an enormous amount of confidence in the total addressable market that's been kind of shown from the response to [Sir Richard Branson's] Unity 22. So we won't be absorbing all of it, but we do think we can make a major step forward here.\n</blockquote>\n<p>We are not sure what the market and other investors think. Still, the company needs to find a way to cope with the demand from what's obviously a heavily supply-constrained situation. The next best thing they would do in the near term is to make the necessary modifications to VMS Eve and VSS Unity to ensure these highly valued potential customers don't go knocking on the door of Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin (BORGN).</p>\n<p><b>Are There Really So Many Customers Who Couldn't Wait to Get On Board VSS Unity?</b></p>\n<p>Yes, it's pretty incredible to think that the company is expecting so many customers who couldn't wait to get on board. Lisa Rich, the Managing Partner at the venture capital firm Hemisphere Ventures, articulated: \"...I've met so many Virgin [Galactic] ticket holders over the years. And by the way, every one of them has told me that the $250,000 they've spent waiting has paid for itself 10 times over because of the experiences that they have shared over the years.\"</p>\n<p>Investors should clearly understand that the community of 600 future astronauts that have committed to Virgin Galactic's flight services formed a tight-knit group over the years as the company emphasized: \"I think one thing that probably [is] not well known outside of the existing future astronaut is one of the secret weapons of Virgin Galactic is our astronaut office. This is a group of people who have brought together these 600 people into a true community.\"</p>\n<p>The company emphasized that these customers really value the journey towards realizing the flight experience as these customers consider it a \"life-transitional journey.\" They see so much value in what Virgin Galactic is doing that the company emphasized that their customers consider joining the community that the company brought together is \"[a] top, top of mind [priority] and very powerful.\"</p>\n<p>Importantly, the company also highlighted that they have opened up ticket sales to their 1000-strong \"Spacefarer\" community who has signed up through the company's \"One Small Step\" program, with a price starting from $450K per seat, that's way higher than the $200K to $250K per seat that the initial 600 future astronauts signed up for.</p>\n<p>Virgin Galactic believes that these future astronauts are going to be the \"sales ambassadors\" for the company because of the experience of the strong and tight-knit astronaut community that the company has painstakingly built up: \"...And so I think you can think about lifetime value in several ways. One of them is as people move through being a future astronaut graduate into the astronaut community, I think they're going to come back, and I think it will just be very natural in how people will share the experience<b><i>.</i></b>And I think them sharing the experience will not only let people say how wonderful it was, but it will also bring normalcy to the concept of human spaceflight. So this group of people as we bring them in, the lifetime value is all-around demand and continuing to increase the total addressable market as they go out there and share what they've done.\"</p>\n<p><b>Strong Demand Justifies Rapid Scaling Up To Achieve Strong Operating Leverage</b></p>\n<p>Astute investors would clearly have recognized that if the company relied on just the fleet of VSS Unity or VSS Imagine to dominate the market for suborbital space tourism, it would have been largely insufficient.</p>\n<p>Based on the company's guidance and the Street's estimates, working through the company's initial community of 600 future astronauts would take a few years at least without the modifications to VMS Eve.</p>\n<p>The initial cadence (before modifications) for 2022 is a maximum of 10 revenue flights comprising 60 passengers in total. Moving on to 2023, the company could also only fly a maximum of 24 to 36 flights annually, which would allow them to fly a maximum of 144 to 216 astronauts. Thus, it may be at least another 2 years until 2025 before Virgin Galactic could start to work through the order book from the 1000 Spacefarer community, and we think by then, at least some of them would have gone over to Blue Origin. Therefore, the initial cadence really doesn't work, especially with the company preparing to draw up its priority list soon for the interest generated from the Unity 22 PR campaign, and they need to work through the 1,600 future astronauts fast, which in the near term would be solved by Eve's modifications since it allows SPCE to fly 10x more in between major inspections.</p>\n<p>However, the company still thinks that would still be insufficient to cater to the level of demand that they have been experiencing. As a result, they announced that they would be building their next-gen Delta class vehicles \"that are capable of turning on a 1-week interval.\" This class of ships is expected to form the majority of the company's future capacity over time.</p>\n<p>Part of the reason that the company needed to raise the $500M equity offering recently is that they are ready to start developing and build the Delta class vehicles that would be highly instrumental towards meeting their long term capacity and cadence, that VSS Unity and VSS Imagine would never be able to meet sufficiently.</p>\n<p>Crucially, the company highlighted that by ramping production and capacity through the Delta class, they would be able to achieve significant operating leverage as Virgin Galactic emphasized: \"...And that's why we're so focused on getting the Delta class with next generation of mothership. That's where we really get efficiency. That's where we get scale. That's where you'll really see the flow-through come because we'll have a fixed cost basis that is easy for us to communicate and easy for us to contribute the trade for efficiency down the road.\"</p>\n<p><b>Competing Against Blue Origin</b></p>\n<p>We think operating leverage will be the name of the game here, and Virgin Galactic clearly recognizes that it would be vital for the company to operate at a sufficient scale justified by its demand drivers to compete strongly against Blue Origin.</p>\n<p>While we don't think Blue Origin's main game is in suborbital space tourism, as Jeff Bezos also highlighted previously that: \"The architecture and the technology we have chosen is complete overkill for a suborbital tourism mission.”</p>\n<p>We think Blue Origin's main market certainly goes beyond suborbital space tourism that Morgan Stanley highlighted that \"Mr. Bezos’ company is seeking business in a space market that will triple in size to more than $1 trillion in annual sales by 2040, assuming rapid technological developments enable routine moon landings, asteroid mining and space tourism.\"</p>\n<p>Therefore, while Blue Origin focuses on building up its Space colonies' vision over the long term, we think they would most certainly be able to ramp their production quickly and gain significant operating leverage. The key is how those advantages translate to its suborbital space tourism segment in the near term would be key to determine Virgin Galactic's leadership.</p>\n<p>One thing is for sure. Both companies expect the price for the suborbital space tourism tickets to come down substantially over time as production scales up and technologies improve. Thus, the key for Virgin Galactic's leadership and survival in this market is to gain operating leverage as quickly as possible to build up those advantages while Blue Origin has its plate full with its various projects across the entire spectrum.</p>\n<p>Virgin Galactic wants to make suborbital space tourism much more accessible, and the key to achieving that is to drive prices down through operating leverage achieved by ramping up production. As a result, we think the company's Delta class plans are highly pivotal to Virgin Galactic's leadership against Blue Origin and highly encourage investors to keep their eyes closely focused on these plans.</p>\n<p><b>Free Cash Flow Forecast & Valuations</b></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/48be5e8da375fdc72591e31b96a223f4\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"359\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>EBITDA margin forecast & CapEx margin forecast. Data source: S&P Capital IQ</span></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/57509b52b1c0ac46a44e7a0dd619bd97\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"361\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>EV / Fwd EBITDA trend. Data Source: S&P Capital IQ</span></p>\n<p>Despite the delay in launching full revenue service to Q3'22, the Street's estimates expect the company to be FCF profitable from the end of FY24. We think that's important as it demonstrates the long-term cash flow potential for the company's business in this market, where only BORGN and SPCE are the clear leaders right now.</p>\n<p>However, the valuations still look expensive at 18.5x by the end of 2030, 36% above its aerospace and defense peers comp set mean of 13.61x.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1084f3186f9732fad8d28b824c65de2a\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"472\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Street's mean price target. Source: TIKR</span></p>\n<p>The Street is also not too optimistic, as the mean target price of $35.55 is a mere 13.5% above the last closing price, as analysts focused on SPCE's near term \"headwind\" of moving its revenue service to Q3'CY22, which we think is highly important to its long term competitive advantage.</p>\n<p>While we are really excited about the company's long-term prospects, as well as its ambition to bring suborbital space tourism to the world, we are not so sure about Virgin Galactic's expensively-looking valuation.</p>\n<p><b>SPCE Stock Price Action and Trend Analysis</b></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4f872b3e8670eac6d5ca4d8afce15200\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"390\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Source: TradingView</span></p>\n<p>While we don't think SPCE would be a suitable stock for long-term investors given its expensive valuation, we think position traders may still find an opportunity lurking around the horizon with this stock.</p>\n<p>SPCE is strongly supported along its 50-week moving average dynamic support level that has held strongly since 2020, including the recent false break to the downside (bear trap) it saw in May. Therefore, position traders keen to trade this stock may find an opportunity once the price action resolves itself in the next couple of weeks, we hope.</p>\n<p>In summary, we assign a neutral rating to SPCE for long-term investors.</p>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Where Will Virgin Galactic Stock Be In 10 Years?</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nWhere Will Virgin Galactic Stock Be In 10 Years?\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-08-14 10:55 GMT+8 <a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4449270-virgin-galactic-stock-10-years><strong>seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Summary\n\nVirgin Galactic fell more than 30% post-earnings as the market was disappointed with the \"delay\" affecting the launch of its private commercial revenue service.\nHowever, we think the company'...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4449270-virgin-galactic-stock-10-years\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"SPCE":"维珍银河"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4449270-virgin-galactic-stock-10-years","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1149823415","content_text":"Summary\n\nVirgin Galactic fell more than 30% post-earnings as the market was disappointed with the \"delay\" affecting the launch of its private commercial revenue service.\nHowever, we think the company's \"delay\" is necessary for it to rectify its supply constraints and meet the huge demand that the company is experiencing.\nWe would also discuss in detail the company's long-term opportunities and threats, and what investors need to monitor moving forward.\nLastly, we present our valuation arguments for long-term investors who are considering adding exposure to Virgin Galactic.\n\nNastco/iStock via Getty Images\nInvestment Thesis\nBack in May, when we published our previous article (link to article appendedhere) on Virgin Galactic (SPCE), we clearly highlighted that we think the Street's consensus has been too optimistic about Virgin Galactic's revenue estimates as we thought the projections overstated the market opportunity for suborbital space tourism over the next 10 years to a large extent, based on our research that consulted multiple sources, and we submitted a revised projection.\nSince then, the Street has revised its near-term projections downwards as the company recently indicated that they are expecting to commence commercial service only from late Q3'CY22.\nThis article will discuss the circumstances leading to Virgin Galactic's \"delayed\" launch, the long-term opportunities, and the competitive threat facing Virgin's leadership quest in suborbital space tourism.\nLastly, we would present our valuation argument for long-term investors considering adding exposure to the stock right now.\nRevisions to Virgin Galactic's Mean Consensus Estimates\nMay's consensus revenue estimates & Aug's consensus revenue estimates. Data source: S&P Capital IQ\nScale of revised estimates (Between May and Aug estimates). Data source: S&P Capital IQ\nInvestors should be able to glean clearly that near-term consensus estimates were revised downwards from May's projections that affected CY21 to CY25. However, we think what's important for investors to note is that the Street revised its estimates meaningfully upwards from CY26 to reflect the strong demand that SPCE highlighted during its recent earnings call, which we think demonstrates the company's confidence in a strong revenue runway for the long term, which we would discuss in detail in the subsequent sections.\nPrivate Commercial Full Revenue Service is Expected from Q3'CY22\nSPCE has since lost about 33% of its value since its earnings release on Aug 5, which we think is largely attributed to the near term headwinds resulting from its \"delay\" on commercial service launch as a result of proposed critical enhancements to VSS Unity and the mothership VMS Eve to increase their turnaround time between flights and maintenance significantly.\nAs a result of the enhancements that would take place after the completion of Unity 23 revenue-generating flight with the Italian Air Force, the company expects to commence its private commercial full revenue service only from late Q3'CY22, which we think may have taken investors aback as while the market expected full commercial service to begin in 2022, they did not expect it to be as late as Q3.\nHowever, we think the market has once again chosen to focus on the uncertainty resulting from the near-term revenue service delay and ignore the importance of the enhancements that are expected to improve VMS Eve's turnaround time so significantly that Virgin Galactic emphasized:\n\n These enhancements\n could potentially allow Eve to fly 100 flights between major maintenance inspections. This is up from the current interval of 10 flights between major inspections today. This will be an incredibly important success factor during the early commercial service period while we are in process of manufacturing additional motherships.\n\nIn addition, the company also highlighted that with the enhancements, the company is also \"targeting a reduced turnaround flight between Unity flights of 4 to 5 weeks, and that's down from what has at best, been 7 to 8 weeks for VSS Unity.\"\nThe Street and the market were certainly disappointed with the announcement, as analysts cut near-term forecasts and downgraded ratings, and Morgan Stanley also emphasized: \"During this heavy maintenance period, Virgin Galactic will not be able to conduct any space flights until summer of 2022.\"\nSure, no flights. We are certainly not concerned, as the company reiterated the significance of these enhancements:\n\n These are reasonably robust modifications to Eve. But the reason we are taking the additional scope and the additional time for this enhancement period of Eve is because the flight rate that we will derive from Eve following this enhancement period is we plan to build that to effect. It's almost 10x greater between major inspections and what we've been doing now. That will give us an ability to fly Eve much more frequently, and\n that's really important to our initial group of future astronauts as well as the people that we're going to be signing up starting today.\"\n\nIf investors could clearly glean the language used by the company in the above sentence, the company is clearly doing it because they are expecting such a robust demand for its space flight services that we think may have exceeded what the company had initially planned for. So while the recent launch event with Sir Richard Branson was largely seen as a major PR coup, it certainly allowed the company to measure the response from interested customers, and the company has clearly indicated that they see such robust demand that they needed to open up a priority list as soon as possible as CEO Michael Colglazier articulated:\n\n Leveraging the substantial demand we have seen to our website, I am pleased to announce that we will soon open a priority list for future space travelers who wish to be next in line. We will reach out first to this list with any available inventory following the conclusion of our spacefarer conversion process. Registration for this list will soon be made available on our website...We have an enormous amount of confidence in the total addressable market that's been kind of shown from the response to [Sir Richard Branson's] Unity 22. So we won't be absorbing all of it, but we do think we can make a major step forward here.\n\nWe are not sure what the market and other investors think. Still, the company needs to find a way to cope with the demand from what's obviously a heavily supply-constrained situation. The next best thing they would do in the near term is to make the necessary modifications to VMS Eve and VSS Unity to ensure these highly valued potential customers don't go knocking on the door of Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin (BORGN).\nAre There Really So Many Customers Who Couldn't Wait to Get On Board VSS Unity?\nYes, it's pretty incredible to think that the company is expecting so many customers who couldn't wait to get on board. Lisa Rich, the Managing Partner at the venture capital firm Hemisphere Ventures, articulated: \"...I've met so many Virgin [Galactic] ticket holders over the years. And by the way, every one of them has told me that the $250,000 they've spent waiting has paid for itself 10 times over because of the experiences that they have shared over the years.\"\nInvestors should clearly understand that the community of 600 future astronauts that have committed to Virgin Galactic's flight services formed a tight-knit group over the years as the company emphasized: \"I think one thing that probably [is] not well known outside of the existing future astronaut is one of the secret weapons of Virgin Galactic is our astronaut office. This is a group of people who have brought together these 600 people into a true community.\"\nThe company emphasized that these customers really value the journey towards realizing the flight experience as these customers consider it a \"life-transitional journey.\" They see so much value in what Virgin Galactic is doing that the company emphasized that their customers consider joining the community that the company brought together is \"[a] top, top of mind [priority] and very powerful.\"\nImportantly, the company also highlighted that they have opened up ticket sales to their 1000-strong \"Spacefarer\" community who has signed up through the company's \"One Small Step\" program, with a price starting from $450K per seat, that's way higher than the $200K to $250K per seat that the initial 600 future astronauts signed up for.\nVirgin Galactic believes that these future astronauts are going to be the \"sales ambassadors\" for the company because of the experience of the strong and tight-knit astronaut community that the company has painstakingly built up: \"...And so I think you can think about lifetime value in several ways. One of them is as people move through being a future astronaut graduate into the astronaut community, I think they're going to come back, and I think it will just be very natural in how people will share the experience.And I think them sharing the experience will not only let people say how wonderful it was, but it will also bring normalcy to the concept of human spaceflight. So this group of people as we bring them in, the lifetime value is all-around demand and continuing to increase the total addressable market as they go out there and share what they've done.\"\nStrong Demand Justifies Rapid Scaling Up To Achieve Strong Operating Leverage\nAstute investors would clearly have recognized that if the company relied on just the fleet of VSS Unity or VSS Imagine to dominate the market for suborbital space tourism, it would have been largely insufficient.\nBased on the company's guidance and the Street's estimates, working through the company's initial community of 600 future astronauts would take a few years at least without the modifications to VMS Eve.\nThe initial cadence (before modifications) for 2022 is a maximum of 10 revenue flights comprising 60 passengers in total. Moving on to 2023, the company could also only fly a maximum of 24 to 36 flights annually, which would allow them to fly a maximum of 144 to 216 astronauts. Thus, it may be at least another 2 years until 2025 before Virgin Galactic could start to work through the order book from the 1000 Spacefarer community, and we think by then, at least some of them would have gone over to Blue Origin. Therefore, the initial cadence really doesn't work, especially with the company preparing to draw up its priority list soon for the interest generated from the Unity 22 PR campaign, and they need to work through the 1,600 future astronauts fast, which in the near term would be solved by Eve's modifications since it allows SPCE to fly 10x more in between major inspections.\nHowever, the company still thinks that would still be insufficient to cater to the level of demand that they have been experiencing. As a result, they announced that they would be building their next-gen Delta class vehicles \"that are capable of turning on a 1-week interval.\" This class of ships is expected to form the majority of the company's future capacity over time.\nPart of the reason that the company needed to raise the $500M equity offering recently is that they are ready to start developing and build the Delta class vehicles that would be highly instrumental towards meeting their long term capacity and cadence, that VSS Unity and VSS Imagine would never be able to meet sufficiently.\nCrucially, the company highlighted that by ramping production and capacity through the Delta class, they would be able to achieve significant operating leverage as Virgin Galactic emphasized: \"...And that's why we're so focused on getting the Delta class with next generation of mothership. That's where we really get efficiency. That's where we get scale. That's where you'll really see the flow-through come because we'll have a fixed cost basis that is easy for us to communicate and easy for us to contribute the trade for efficiency down the road.\"\nCompeting Against Blue Origin\nWe think operating leverage will be the name of the game here, and Virgin Galactic clearly recognizes that it would be vital for the company to operate at a sufficient scale justified by its demand drivers to compete strongly against Blue Origin.\nWhile we don't think Blue Origin's main game is in suborbital space tourism, as Jeff Bezos also highlighted previously that: \"The architecture and the technology we have chosen is complete overkill for a suborbital tourism mission.”\nWe think Blue Origin's main market certainly goes beyond suborbital space tourism that Morgan Stanley highlighted that \"Mr. Bezos’ company is seeking business in a space market that will triple in size to more than $1 trillion in annual sales by 2040, assuming rapid technological developments enable routine moon landings, asteroid mining and space tourism.\"\nTherefore, while Blue Origin focuses on building up its Space colonies' vision over the long term, we think they would most certainly be able to ramp their production quickly and gain significant operating leverage. The key is how those advantages translate to its suborbital space tourism segment in the near term would be key to determine Virgin Galactic's leadership.\nOne thing is for sure. Both companies expect the price for the suborbital space tourism tickets to come down substantially over time as production scales up and technologies improve. Thus, the key for Virgin Galactic's leadership and survival in this market is to gain operating leverage as quickly as possible to build up those advantages while Blue Origin has its plate full with its various projects across the entire spectrum.\nVirgin Galactic wants to make suborbital space tourism much more accessible, and the key to achieving that is to drive prices down through operating leverage achieved by ramping up production. As a result, we think the company's Delta class plans are highly pivotal to Virgin Galactic's leadership against Blue Origin and highly encourage investors to keep their eyes closely focused on these plans.\nFree Cash Flow Forecast & Valuations\nEBITDA margin forecast & CapEx margin forecast. Data source: S&P Capital IQ\nEV / Fwd EBITDA trend. Data Source: S&P Capital IQ\nDespite the delay in launching full revenue service to Q3'22, the Street's estimates expect the company to be FCF profitable from the end of FY24. We think that's important as it demonstrates the long-term cash flow potential for the company's business in this market, where only BORGN and SPCE are the clear leaders right now.\nHowever, the valuations still look expensive at 18.5x by the end of 2030, 36% above its aerospace and defense peers comp set mean of 13.61x.\nStreet's mean price target. Source: TIKR\nThe Street is also not too optimistic, as the mean target price of $35.55 is a mere 13.5% above the last closing price, as analysts focused on SPCE's near term \"headwind\" of moving its revenue service to Q3'CY22, which we think is highly important to its long term competitive advantage.\nWhile we are really excited about the company's long-term prospects, as well as its ambition to bring suborbital space tourism to the world, we are not so sure about Virgin Galactic's expensively-looking valuation.\nSPCE Stock Price Action and Trend Analysis\nSource: TradingView\nWhile we don't think SPCE would be a suitable stock for long-term investors given its expensive valuation, we think position traders may still find an opportunity lurking around the horizon with this stock.\nSPCE is strongly supported along its 50-week moving average dynamic support level that has held strongly since 2020, including the recent false break to the downside (bear trap) it saw in May. Therefore, position traders keen to trade this stock may find an opportunity once the price action resolves itself in the next couple of weeks, we hope.\nIn summary, we assign a neutral rating to SPCE for long-term investors.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":458,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":4,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"isTiger":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"url":"/m/post/897417380"}
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