VORB - Virgin Orbit stock is sized up after historic mission ends in failure

Virgin Orbit ( NASDAQ: VORB ) conducted the first launch of satellites from British soil on Monday, but the mission failed when the rocket suffered an anomaly that prevented the mission from reaching orbit.

CEO Dan Hart said the company is proud of the many things that it successfully achieved as part of this mission, but is mindful that it failed to provide  customers with the launch service they deserve.

"The first-time nature of this mission added layers of complexity that our team professionally managed through; however, in the end a technical failure appears to have prevented us from delivering the final orbit. We will work tirelessly to understand the nature of the failure, make corrective actions, and return to orbit as soon as we have completed a full investigation and mission assurance process."

Shares of VORB pared an earlier loss and were showing a drop of 11.92% at 1:57 p.m.

Seeking Alpha author Dhieren Bechai beat Wall Street analysts in posting a breakdown on the implications for investors. He warned the bigger risk to Virgin Orbit remains the risk to its overall launch schedule requirements which before the most recent mission failure were already challenging. See the full analysis.

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