What happened
Shares of Virgin Galactic Holdings (NYSE: SPCE), which exploded higher on Monday’s promise of a test flight, fall back to Earth today – a 4.9% drop from 11:45 a.m. EST.
The reason: Virgin Galactic is rapidly facing increasing competition in the space industry.
Image Source: Getty Images.
So what
Celebrated at its IPO in 2019 as “the world’s first and only publicly traded commercial manned space company,” Virgin Galactic still technically holds that title, but the differences are starting to pile up. The past few months have given us the promise that the first “spacecraft” company, Stable road acquisition‘s (NASDAQ: SRAC) Momentus, will be made public. That announcement was followed shortly by the announcement of the first satellite-controlled communications network for ordinary mobile phones: Acquisition of New Providence‘s (NASDAQ: NPA) AST SpaceMobile.
Today, a fourth potential pure-play space stock emerged, then a specialty acquisition company Holicity (NASDAQ: HOL) announced that the small missile company will make Astra public through a reverse merger.
What now
Stable Road, New Providence and Holicity have yet to complete their mergers. That means that Momentus, SpaceMobile and Astra do not have an official IPO yet.
But it is clear that momentum is moving in this direction, and the days when Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson can boast that buying Virgin stock is the best way to “ have a little chat in a spaceship company, ” owning a bit of a spaceship business, “is coming to a close. Soon, investors may stop investing in space for the novelty factor, weighing revenues and profits – and price – to determine which space supply is the best bargain.
Whether Virgin Galactic will continue to be the best dog in those types of competitions remains to be seen.