Virgin Galactic Holdings (NYSE: SPCE) provided their Q4 2019 earnings report, with the company booking a paltry $529,000 in revenue and losing $73 million for the quarter on the bottom line.

The earnings release was only the second since the company went public last year as part of a merger with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), Social Capital Hedosophia.

For a company this young and early to a completely un-tapped market, the financial performance quarter by quarter is of little consequence. However, for the record the company missed consensus estimates on the top line as posted revenues were $529,000 compared to estimates of $748,000.

The company also announced today that it is preparing to release its next tranche of seats for sale to the general public. The Company will be launching the process on Wednesday, February 26th, allowing those who are serious about flying to space, to register now and be front of line for firm seat reservations, once they become available.

On the bottom line the company reported a loss of $72 million and a loss of $138 million for the full year.

Given that Virgin Galactic is currently the only pure play publicly traded space exploration and tourism company, it has gained a lot of attention from investors who believe in the business of space.

However, several other prominent private companies have been developing business models for private space exploration and tourism. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are both investing huge amounts in private space exploration, with Blue Origin also potentially being involved in space tourism. SpaceX also has a satellite business, Starlink, which has already begun deploying satellites to help deliver internet across the globe may eventually be spun off to pursue an IPO.

However, at the moment investors have only had one place to put their chips on the casino board that space will be big business down the road and that is Virgin Galactic.

The company’s stock is currently trading at price to sales ratio of 1,764 which also puts it in a category of its own. But investors have been aggressive in continuing to bid the stock up as it has essentially tripled in value thus far in 2020.

After reporting earnings Virgin Galactic stock was up 1.5% in after hours trading as of the time of publishing.

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