WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic is proposing to raise $300 million in additional capital to accelerate production of suborbital spaceplanes and a mother plane that the company says can fuel its long-term growth.

In a Nov. 6 conference call to discuss the suborbital spaceflight company’s third-quarter financial results, Virgin Galactic executives said that while work on the first two Delta-class spaceplanes was on budget and schedule, they saw an opportunity to raise funds to add vehicles to their fleet. the fleet earlier than expected.

“We have an exciting opportunity to realize economies of scale through our existing investments,” Michael Colglazier, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, said on the call for the plans.

The company had planned to use revenue from operating its first two Delta-class spaceplanes, the first of which will begin flying commercially in 2026, to fund the development of future vehicles. But the company now says it wants to raise money to accelerate work on two more Delta-class vehicles and a second mothership, allowing them to enter commercial service in 2028, two years earlier than planned.

“The growth capital we plan to employ will allow Virgin Galactic to deliver a second mothership and two additional spacecraft much sooner than if we were to finance these ships solely through organic growth,” he said.

A second pair of spaceplanes, along with a second mothership, would result in a “fully utilized” Spaceport America in New Mexico, said Doug Ahrens, Virgin Galactic’s chief financial officer. This would double revenue compared to a two-spaceplane facility, but quadruple earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), because fixed costs are spread across more flights.

“From there, our first fully utilized spaceport becomes the economic engine that generates more than enough cash flow to expand to other spaceports around the world,” he said. a plan the company discussed during its previous earnings call in August.

Ahrens said the company needs to raise $300 million to accelerate work on additional spaceplanes and motherships. He did not disclose a timeline for raising the money, except to say the company had “flexibility” on when to raise it based on its existing cash flow, which is enough to get the first two up and running. Delta class vehicles. Virgin had previously said that putting two vehicles into service would generate positive cash flow for the company.

Most of the additional capital would be devoted to developing a second mothership that will resemble the VMS Eve, the company’s current aircraft that was used on SpaceShipTwo flights and will be used by the first two Delta-class vehicles . Virgin Galactic plans to begin design work on the aircraft in 2025, moving to production in 2026 and testing in 2027 before entering commercial service in 2028.

The company will build this aircraft in-house, taking advantage of an engineering and production workforce that will stop working on the development of Delta-class spaceplanes. Virgin Galactic had already signed a contract with Aurora Flight Sciences, a subsidiary of Boeing, to produce new motherships, but that deal collapsed and leads to dueling lawsuits between Boeing and Virgin.

Virgin subsequently dropped its lawsuit against Boeing, choosing instead to defend Boeing’s suit. According to Virgin’s Nov. 6 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange CommissionThe companies finalized a settlement agreement on October 31, and Boeing’s suit was dismissed on November 4. The filing did not mention the terms of the deal and Virgin executives did not mention it during the earnings call.

Colglazier said work on the first Delta-class vehicles is going well, with subcontractors Bell Textron and Qarbon Aerospace making progress on tooling and parts for the vehicles. Assembly of the first Delta-class vehicle is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2025 at the company’s new facility near Phoenix, with deployment and ground testing planned for the second half of 2025.

He hinted at some issues in the development of some components that required design revisions by Virgin, in conjunction with Bell and Qarbon. “Together, we were able to reorder elements of our construction planning to maintain overall program momentum and on-time delivery.

Virgin reported third-quarter revenue of $402,000 and a net loss of $74.5 million. The company ended the quarter with $744 million in cash and equivalents.

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