Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc.

What does it do?

Virgin Galactic is a space tourism company that flies paying customers to the edge of space — about 50 miles up — where they experience a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of Earth's curvature before gliding back down. Think of it like a very extreme, very expensive theme park ride. Their spacecraft, called VSS Unity, takes off attached to a mothership plane, then detaches and rockets upward. The company is now transitioning to a next-generation spacecraft called the Delta class.

How does it make money?

Virgin Galactic's primary revenue model is selling spaceflight tickets to wealthy individuals, with seats reportedly priced around $450,000 each. The company has also sold tickets to research agencies and governments for payload and experiment flights. In its latest fiscal year, revenue was essentially zero — they completed only a handful of commercial flights before pausing operations to develop the next-generation Delta class vehicles. Until those ships fly and scale, there is almost no income coming in.

Why do investors care?

The bull case is simple: if space tourism becomes a real industry, Virgin Galactic got there first among consumer-facing companies and has a recognizable brand. The Delta class ships are being designed to fly much more frequently — potentially once a week versus the rare flights of their old vehicle. If they can hit that cadence, the math on ticket revenue starts to look meaningful. But everything hinges on whether the new spacecraft arrives on time, works reliably, and whether enough people will actually pay nearly half a million dollars for the experience.