By Eric M. Johnson
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Billionaire Richard Branson's space tourism company, Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (N:SPCE), said on Tuesday its fourth-quarter net loss widened to $73 million from a year-ago loss of $46 million as it reported its first results as a publicly traded company.
The fourth-quarter results, which include one-time transaction and other related costs, come as the company is aiming for a first flight later this year with Branson on board, while seeking a new source of revenue in thousands of potential space travelers.
Shares of Virgin Galactic were volatile in after-hours trading and were last down 6.4%. Shares had rallied in recent days, driven by investor interest in the first space tourism company to hit public markets.
Virgin Galactic competes with billionaire-backed ventures such as Blue Origin, founded by Amazon.com Inc (O:AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos, to be the first to offer suborbital flights to fare-paying tourists, presaging a new era of civilian space travel that could kick off as soon as this year.
Other players including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Boeing Co (N:BA) have their sights set on higher altitudes like the International Space Station, the moon and eventually Mars.
Virgin was expected to update investors on its progress toward commercial flights and other topics a conference call later on Tuesday.
Some 600 people from 60 countries have paid or put down deposits to fly on one of Virgin's suborbital flights, worth about $80 million in total collected deposits and $120 million of potential revenue, the company said.
A 90-minute flight, which allows passengers to experience a few minutes of weightlessness, costs about $250,000.
Now, Virgin plans to seize on a wave of more than 7,900 "registrations of interest" it has received since then from would-be astronauts by collecting $1,000 deposits to secure a place in line as seats become available, it said on Tuesday.
The company, which went public last year, reported fourth-quarter revenue of $529,000, and $3.8 million for 2019, the first full year of results.