SpaceShipTwo “Unity” on the runway after an aborted spaceflight test on Dec. 12, 2020.
Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic announced a shakeup of its executive leadership Thursday, with the space tourism company set to report its fourth-quarter earnings after the closing bell.
Chief financial officer Jon Campagna is stepping down, effective Mar. 1, with Virgin Galactic appointing Doug Ahrens, the former CFO of semiconductor specialist Mellanox, in Campagna’s place.
“Doug’s deep experience helping global manufacturing companies scale and grow, combined with his tremendous capital markets and M&A expertise, will be incredibly valuable as we expand our production capabilities and work to monetize the business,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a news release.
“I’d like to thank Jon on behalf of the entire Virgin Galactic team. Jon has been our CFO during our transition from private to public company and helped build excellent relationships with the investment community,” Colglazier added.
Virgin Galactic’s stock slipped 2% in premarket trading from its previous close of $46.12 a share.
The company also made two additions to its engineering leadership, announcing Swami Iyer as president of aerospace systems and Stephen Justice as vice president of engineering.
Iyer, who most recently led GKN Advanced Defense Systems as president, will lead Virgin Galactic’s work building its fleet of spacecraft and aircraft. Justice, who spent 30 years as the director of advanced systems development for Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works division, will lead the growth Virgin Galactic’s engineering corps.
Virgin Galactic’s personnel moves come the morning of the company’s fourth-quarter earnings results and 2020 financial performance. The results are expected shortly after the market closes at 4 p.m. ET, with an investor conference call beginning at 5 p.m. ET.
Shareholders will be looking to hear updates from Coglalzier and his team on Virgin Galactic’s work to complete development of its spacecraft system and timing expectations for the launch of commercial service.
Those milestones were previously forecast to come in the first quarter of this year, but Virgin Galactic’s test flight program was set back after an anomaly during a December spaceflight attempt. Virgin Galactic was set to attempt a redo of that test flight earlier this month but that has been delayed for technical checks of the spacecraft.
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