Why Virgin Galactic Stock Rocketed Today

Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) stock soared 17.3% through 11:10 a.m. ET Tuesday, despite reporting big GAAP losses last night.

With its space tourism rocket fleet still grounded, the company reported $0.3 million in revenue for the quarter, and $1.5 million for all of 2025. Losses totaled $0.98 per share for the quarter, and $5.44 per share for the year. (Per share losses would have been higher, but Virgin Galactic issued so many shares over the past year -- more than doubling its share count -- that losses were spread out among many more shares outstanding.)

Free cash flow was deeply negative, with Virgin burning $94.6 million in Q4 and $438.2 million for 2025.

And none of that is the point.

Virgin Galactic aims for space

With essentially zero revenue but plenty of spending going on to complete its new spaceplane and resume flying tourists to space, investors had assumed Virgin Galactic's numbers would look awful. What people were really looking for in this report, therefore, was evidence that things will improve soon.

And Virgin Galactic gave that to them.

Virgin Galactic's new "SpaceShip" (I guess that's the official new name) will begin ground tests in April, and flight tests sometime in Q3. By Q4, management expects to have SpaceShip ready to begin commercial flights. What's more, it will do so at higher ticket prices -- ticket sales have already resumed, and at a new price of $750,000 per seat.

A second SpaceShip could be ready to begin flying in Q4 as well -- or in early Q1 2027 at the latest.

What this means for Virgin Galactic

Granted, now Virgin Galactic needs to deliver on all the promises it just made. But at least now there's hope. Virgin Galactic isn't out of the space race yet.

Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.