What happened
Shares of Virgin Galactic (SPCE -11.74%) popped nearly 7% in early trading Tuesday, and remain up a respectable 4.2% around noon EDT.
Why did this happen? Your guess is as good as anyone else's.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
There's no analyst news at all out on Virgin Galactic today -- no upgrades, no downgrades, nothing. Press release activity from the company itself is similarly crickets, and the only thing Virgin has so much as tweeted today is the opening of applications for Summer 2021 internships.
Our Summer 2021 internship program is OPEN! We're looking for creative problem solvers that have a passion for designing innovative products. Want to play a part in opening space for good? Apply below;
— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) October 5, 2020
Engineering; https://t.co/NsixsYSSzC
Multi-team; https://t.co/bSFFgxiXr1 pic.twitter.com/lTZqXMg3PE
Those should be pretty fun, assuming Virgin Galactic is running regular flights to space and back by then. And it could happen. Virgin has its next test flight on the WhiteKnightTwo spaceplane scheduled for later this month, and at last report was expecting to fly company founder Sir Richard Branson to space in the first quarter of 2021 -- well before the summer begins.
Branson has previously promised to fly aboard the spaceplane personally, and test its safety himself, before taking money from any other passengers. If all goes well, Virgin Galactic could be a revenue-generating, profit-making business by summer 2021.
Now what
Of course, that's what we used to say about 2020, but Branson has yet to fly, and Virgin Galactic ended up posting zero revenue last quarter. Until one of those two things changes, expect Virgin Galactic stock to trade mostly on investor sentiment about when they will change -- rising one day, and falling the next.
The rest of this year promises to be bumpy. Here's hoping for a smoother incline in 2021.
