Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. (NYSE:SPCE) touted a path to nearly $1 billion in annual revenue as it scales its fleet and launch cadence. However, CEO Michael Colglazier has warned the task may not be as easy as it looks.

Doubling Ships, Spaceports

During the company’s earnings call on Wednesday, the commercial space tourism company’s Chief Financial Officer Doug T. Ahrens said that the company could “fully utilize one spaceport by doubling the size” of its fleet to four spaceships and adding a launch vehicle; “we project that adjusted EBITDA will more than quadruple to over $450 million per year.”

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Ahrens then said that the predicted boost was for a single spaceport. “We plan to keep going,” he said, adding that the company expects to “be able to generate over $1 billion of adjusted EBITDA annually” by fully utilizing two spaceports. “These economies of scale are expected to continue as we expand into additional spaceports globally,” Ahrens said.

Challenges Remain

However, challenges to such expansion remain, according to Colglazier, who confirmed that the company had delayed its first commercial space flight to February next year. The CEO said that the move would “allow additional time” for the company “to complete avionics and systems installations.” He then said that “no single issue” was driving the schedule push.

“We have experienced modest time duration extensions across hundreds of relatively small but important installation tasks involved in the first build of our new spaceship,” Colglazier said.

He also added that the team had “made outstanding progress” on its ships, but the “progress required more time than we expected.” Notably, the company had earlier touted a late 2026 date for the flight.

Earnings Call

Virgin Galactic reported an EPS loss of 50 cents per share for the second quarter, which beat the Wall Street consensus estimate for losses of 66 cents per share. Its revenue of $134,000 beat market consensus, but was down from the $406,000 revenue figure it reported last year during the same period.

The earnings call was part of what was a major earnings week for space-related companies, like Rocket Lab Corp. (NASDAQ:RKLB), Velo3D Inc. (NASDAQ:VELO) and more.

Price Action: SPCE fell 9.70% to $2.98 per share during overnight trading on Wednesday.

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