What in the world sent Virgin Galactic (NASDAQ:SPCE) shares up over 27% in Tuesday’s trading session? The answer was as simple as it was breathtaking: the first commercial flights into space are about to go live, and tickets have already gone on sale at spectacular rates. That was all investors needed to pump cash into this suddenly much more viable enterprise.
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We already had a window for the latest Virgin Galactic launch; some time between June 27 and June 30—assuming no serious issues like weather crop up—the Galactic 1 mission will go live and take three crew members with the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy up into space. Once there, they will analyze the impact of microgravity.
From there, monthly space flights are expected to start up, and already, there’s a substantial waiting list. Around 800 tickets have already been sold, and the tickets already pre-sold came with a deposit of—and you should be sitting down for this—$200,000 apiece. That rate actually managed to go up; the current market price for a Virgin Galactic flight is now $450,000, and Virgin Galactic has already sold 100 tickets at that new, doubled rate.
Despite these incredible numbers, Virgin Galactic doesn’t have a lot of analyst support. With four Hold ratings and three Sell, Virgin Galactic stock is considered a Moderate Sell by analyst consensus. Worse, Virgin Galactic stock also boasts a 36.61% downside risk thanks to its average price target of $3.81 per share.
