What happened
Shares of space tourism company Virgin Galactic (SPCE -12.17%) continued tumbling to Earth today, falling more than 6% initially and continuing a stock price rout that began when Goldman Sachs offered a downbeat assessment of the stock Friday.
Although admitting that Virgin Galactic stock "could" have potential once the company begins flying tourists to space, and if it can develop hypersonic airplanes for commercial travel, Goldman warned that the company faces significant competition in the first business area, while hopes for a commercial hypersonic airplane could still be a "very long" way off.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Ultimately, Goldman Sachs simply couldn't bring itself to recommend the stock, and instead assigned it a neutral rating and a $19 price target. Today, with no new news to counteract Goldman's glum opinion, Virgin Galactic is breaking through that barrier, plummeting a further 4.2% in 11:35 a.m. EDT trading.
Now what
And what news were we looking for, precisely?
It had been hoped that Virgin Galactic would fly a successful test flight last week -- but it didn't do that. According to Federal Communications Commission documents, Virgin obtained a license permitting it to make a new crew-only test flight to the edge of space as early as Oct. 22. But we didn't see that happen, nor have we seen any new announcements of when the anticipated flight actually will take place.
Result: For the second day in a row, Goldman Sachs is looking right to be cautious on Virgin Galactic.
