Chris Bryant, Columnist

Virgin Galactic's Share Price Has Left the Stratosphere

Shares in the billionaire’s Virgin Galactic have soared 400% since December. But short-seller interest shows this isn’t a stock for the faint-hearted.

February 21, 2020 at 7:00 AM UTC

By Chris Bryant

Chris Bryant is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies in Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for the Financial Times.

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A year ago Richard Branson was on his private island, Necker, when the former Twitter executive Adam Bain came to see him with a proposal for how to take Branson’s suborbital space travel company public.

The bearded British billionaire is doubtless glad he took the meeting: After an unsteady start, Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc.’s valuation has rocketed. The stock has surged more than 400% since a low in December, valuing the company at close to $8 billion, or almost 2,000 times the revenues it’s estimated to have generated in 2019. (For comparison, Uber Technologies Inc. trades on about 5.5 times last year’s revenue).