维珍银河 (SPCE) 2026财年第二季度财报电话会议：商业飞行推迟至2027年2月

核心要点

• 维珍银河将其首次商业太空飞行推迟至2027年2月，理由是数百项航电和机械系统安装任务的完成时间长于预期。管理层表示，没有任何单一问题或实质性的工作范围变更导致了此次延期。
• 最近一轮单座售价为750,000美元的预订已被超额认购并提前结束，为预期未来太空飞行收入增加了超5000万美元。公司计划在秋季以更高价格推出新一轮预订。
• 通过按市价股权融资计划（ATM）筹集1.34亿美元后，该公司在2026年第二季度末拥有的现金、现金等价物及可交易证券达2.86亿美元，高于第一季度末的2.51亿美元。
• 第二季度运营费用从去年同期的7000万美元降至6500万美元。资本支出从5800万美元降至4100万美元，而负自由现金流同比改善20%至9100万美元。
• 管理层预计第三季度将面临短暂的支出压力，自由现金流预测为负9500万至1亿美元，之后将在第四季度改善至负8000万至9000万美元。
• 随着第二艘飞船投入使用，维珍银河继续保持目标：到2027年第二季度末每月至少进行10次太空飞行，并在2027年内实现季度现金流转正。

核心财务数据

2028年到期的票据在2028年3月之前无需偿还本金。管理层表示，较高的现金余额和减少的近期债务负担，使资产负债表能更好地配合计划中的商业运营提速。

业务与运营表现

维珍银河的宇航员社区现已超过700名成员。在最新一批客户中，约60%是以团体形式预订的，包括多代同堂家庭探险、科研任务、企业包机以及非营利组织预订。

在最新一轮预订获得超额认购后，该公司停止了750,000美元这一档位的预订。管理层计划在秋季以更高的价格重新开放预订，如果需求持续强劲，还将在后续各轮预订中继续提价。

首艘新飞船的整船集成地面测试预计将于2026年8月晚些时候开始。公司计划在10月将飞船运往新墨西哥州进行飞行测试。第二艘飞船预计将于2027年3月在新墨西哥州加入船队。

维珍银河正采取两班倒、每周七天的工作制，以完成首艘飞船的制造。来自加利福尼亚州、新墨西哥州、贝尔德事隆（Bell Textron）及合作机构的增援人员正在支持该工作。增加的人工和流程管理成本将增加第三季度的支出，对第四季度也有较小程度的影响。

静力测试船的羽状组件计划于9月初开始结构测试。一旦静力测试用的机翼和机身完成组装并运出，制造资源将转移到第二艘飞船上。

管理层表示，在单班制下，火箭发动机的初始产能约为每周3台。通过增加班次和有限的设备扩充，同一生产基础设施最终可达到每周约15台发动机的产能。

管理层业绩指引

随着业务重心从飞船制造转向商业运营，管理层预计资本支出将在2026年第四季度恢复下降趋势，并在2027年进一步下降。

在宇航员签署乘载条件后支付剩余购票款时，客户现金流入预计将在飞行前启动。

维珍银河估计，每艘新飞船的生产成本约为6000万美元。基于管理层的假设（全生命周期飞行500次，每次搭乘6名宇航员，均价600,000美元，边际贡献率超过80%），每艘飞船在全生命周期内可产生超过14亿美元的边际贡献。

对于一个拥有4艘飞船和1架额外运载飞机的满负荷运营的航天港，管理层预计年调整后EBITDA将超过4.5亿美元。两个满负荷运营的航天港每年可产生超过10亿美元。这些数字是管理层的长期预测，取决于船队扩张、利用率、定价和执行情况。

风险与关注事项

• 由于安装任务耗时超出计划，导致整船集成地面测试较此前内部进度延迟了近两个月，首次商业飞行日程已推迟至2027年2月。
• 首艘飞船是新设计的首次建造，因此在众多细微的安装任务中产生了贴合度、工程审核及质量保证等方面的要求。
• 额外的人力和收尾工作将暂时推高第三季度的资本支出和现金消耗。
• 维珍银河目前依赖VMS Eve作为其唯一的母舰。管理层预计飞行频率为每周三次，不过维护间隔可能会允许更高的利用率。
• 由于工程资源集中用于完成首艘飞船，下一架运载飞机的研制进展较为缓慢。该公司尚未提供相关资本支出的对外预测。
• 长期盈利目标取决于能否实现计划中的飞行频率、维持客户需求、扩大船队规模以及控制飞船生产成本。

分析师问答要点

商业飞行延期：管理层强调，日程调整反映的是现有的安装工作需要额外时间，而非工作范围出现了实质性扩大。在最后的航电、配线及气动系统安装过程中，累积了一些微小的贴合与集成问题。

流动性与未来融资：首席财务官道格拉斯·阿伦斯（Douglas Ahrens）表示，维珍银河目前不需要额外资金。在商业运营启动后，可能会考虑通过未来融资来加快船队增长，而非满足眼下的流动性需求。

资本支出轨迹：管理层预计，随着前两艘飞船走出制造阶段并进入测试与运营阶段，资本支出将在2026年第四季度后大幅下降。2027年成本基数应向运营费用倾斜。

飞船经济效益：据管理层称，估计6000万美元的生产成本适用于近期制造的第三和第四艘Delta级飞船。公司预计，在满足其定价、利用率和利润率假设的前提下，每艘飞船在飞行运营不足一年的时间内即可收回生产成本。

现金转换率：管理层预计，经营性现金转化率将保持接近调整后EBITDA，飞行前收到的客户付款将带来初步的现金流红利。随着另一架运载飞机的研发和组装推进，更高的资本支出可能会在2029年前后重新出现。

业绩电话会议完整文字记录

---

完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Desiree and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Virgin Galactic's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Ken Michaels, Vice President, Finance. Please go ahead.

Ken Michaels

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Virgin Galactic's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. On the call with me today are Michael Colglazier, Chief Executive Officer, and Doug Ahrens, Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Our press release and slide presentation that will accompany today's remarks are available on our Investor Relations website.

Please refer to slide 2 of the presentation for our safe harbor disclaimer. During today's call, we may make certain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements made on this call. For more information about these risks and uncertainties, please refer to the risk factors in the company's SEC filings made from time to time.

You are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and the company specifically disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking statements that may be discussed during this call, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please also note that we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial information on today's call. Please refer to our earnings release for a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial metrics. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Michael Colglazier, who will begin our discussion on slide 3.

Michael Colglazier

I'm pleased to share our recent tranche of spaceflight expeditions has booked out ahead of schedule, demonstrating strong demand from a wide range of customer segments. The allotment we had held at the $750,000 price point was oversubscribed, and we have added over $50 million to our expected future spaceflight revenue. We've moved our first commercial spaceflight to this coming February to allow additional time to complete avionics and systems installations. No single issue is driving the schedule push. Rather, we have experienced modest time duration extensions across hundreds of relatively small but important installation tasks involved in the first build of our new spaceship.

Our teams bring disciplined urgency to their efforts, and they have made outstanding progress on both our first ship and the ship sets that are following. This progress required more time than we expected ahead of our integrated vehicle ground testing. But it was needed to complete the work with the thoroughness and precision we demand. This work is wrapping up in the next couple of weeks, and we expect to begin integrated vehicle ground testing later this month. We've incorporated the learnings from this first build into the schedule forecast for our second ship, which we now expect will join the fleet in New Mexico in March. That schedule continues to support the cadence of flight rate that we shared last quarter and we maintain our projections to deliver positive quarterly cash flow within 2027.

I'll share some insight on the sales process and the additions we've made to our astronaut community, followed by some detail into the build process for our first spaceship, our static test ship, and our second spaceship. I'll then pass it over to Doug for our financial discussion and further context into the unit profitability of our spaceships.

Turning to page 4 in the slide deck. We now have over 700 members within the Virgin Galactic astronaut community, and we're very pleased to welcome our most recent arrivals. This new group, like those who have been in our community for a while, are passionate about space. As a cohort, they represent a diverse range of organizations and individuals who broaden our target market.

One new trend we are seeing is an increase in multi-seat bookings. Approximately 60% of this new cohort is part of a group of some form or another, ranging from multi-generation expeditions of all sorts to research missions, to corporate charters, and nonprofit bookings. Many are adventurers, but most are joining the community for the deep, transformative experience that is enabled with our spaceflights.

Many of our new arrivals see space as a platform for broader initiatives, including science-based and nonprofit endeavors. Consistent with our prior statements, we have now closed active bookings as we onboard our new astronauts and engage them in the community. We have retired the $750,000 price point and we plan to open a new tranche of spaceflight expeditions this fall at higher price points.

Moving to page 5 to discuss spaceship progress. I'll start this section with one of the many fun facts around our spaceships. We have over 12 miles of wire running between the various computers, systems, and sensors throughout the entire ship. Every one of those wires is designed, fabricated, bundled, and connected with detailed precision. And the image on this page gives you a glimpse into the complexity of installation within the unique configuration of our spaceship. The progress our team has been making is incredible, and they are doing their work with thoroughness, precision and quality. As I mentioned at the outset, many of the hundreds of preparation and installation tasks have required more time to complete than we had estimated.

We will always take the time that's needed, and that has caused us to move our first spaceflight expectation to February. We take the time needed for on-ship work and related engineering and quality assurance processes. We also have added resources and improved process management to minimize the overall time impacts. We're operating with 2 shifts, 7 days a week and I'm very proud of and grateful for the massive joint effort of our team and the extended workforce we have brought in from California, New Mexico, Bell Textron, and partner agencies to complete the effort. But these added investments will show up as incremental spending in Q3 and to a lesser degree in Q4. These added expenses bring high return by helping us maintain our expected flight cadence in 2027.

On page 6, we're highlighting progress with our static test ship, which we use to verify our as-built structural configurations. The image on the upper left shows the wing assembly, and the images on the lower left show the fuselage structure in process of assembly. These will be joined together and shipped to the Southwest Research Institute for structural testing. Our feather assembly, shown in the image on the right, is already at the Southwest Research Institute and is being wired for testing, which will start in early September. As soon as the static test wing and fuselage are joined and shipped, we will pivot our manufacturing team to begin assembly of the second spaceship.

So let's turn to page 7. These images show major parts of our second spaceship as they move through the production and assembly process. The image on the left shows a wing skin. The image on the top right shows a cabin skin being fabricated. And the image on the bottom right shows our nearly completed feather assembly. It's exciting to see multiple spaceships being built at the same time.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Doug starting on slide 8.

Douglas Ahrens

Thanks, Michael. Good afternoon, everyone. We are very excited about the upcoming start of commercial service, which is fast approaching. Ahead of this transition, we've strengthened the balance sheet. We have our sights set on growth. Starting with our balance sheet, during the second quarter, we raised $134 million through our current ATM or at-the-market equity offering program, which is now substantially complete. We ended the second quarter with $286 million of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, up from $251 million at the end of the prior quarter. Also, during the second quarter, we reduced the principal balance on our 2027 and 2028 notes by $93 million and further aligned the timing of future payments with the expected ramp in our spaceflight operations.

Specifically, we now have just $17.9 million in principal payments remaining for the 2027 notes. The 2028 notes have no required principal payments due until March 2028. With a higher cash balance and reduced debt obligations, we are ready to launch the exciting growth phase of our business.

Next, we'll do a quick recap of our financial results for the second quarter. Please turn to slide 9. Operating expenses were $65 million compared to $70 million in the prior year period. Capital expenditures were $41 million, down from $58 million in the prior year period, reflecting lower capital requirements overall as we progress through manufacturing our spaceships. Free cash flow was negative $91 million, a 20% improvement compared to the prior year period.

Let's move to our projections on slide 10. Revenue for the third quarter of 2026 is expected to be approximately $400,000 for future astronaut access fees and events. While quarterly capital expenditures have generally been trending lower since last year, given the recent increased time and labor to complete the systems installations for the first spaceship, we now expect to see a temporary increase in capital expenditures in the third quarter. Therefore, free cash flow for the third quarter of 2026 is expected to be in the range of negative $95 million to $100 million. While this represents a quarterly uptick in CapEx for this specific scope of work, we are very proud of the teams that are tirelessly and very skillfully building our spaceships.

The work must be done with meticulous attention to detail, and these assets are being prepared to provide extraordinary experiences to our customers with the goal of also providing extraordinary returns to our shareholders. More on these expected returns from our spaceships in a minute. We forecast the downward trend in capital expenditures to resume in the fourth quarter of 2026. We expect a corresponding improvement in free cash flow, which is projected to be in the range of negative $80 million to $90 million. Revenue recognition for spaceflights is now expected to begin with the start of commercial spaceflight operations in February 2027. Furthermore, with the start of commercial spaceflight operations, we expect to begin receiving cash inflows from customers ahead of their spaceflights.

These inflows represent the remainder of the purchase price for each spaceflight expedition, which is to be collected in connection with the customer signing the conditions of carriage prior to their spaceflight. With our second spaceship entering service, we continue to forecast that we will achieve a flight rate of 10 or more spaceflights per month by the end of the second quarter of 2027. This flight rate is an unprecedented achievement in human spaceflight, and this is made possible with our highly reusable spaceship design. Given these flight rate expectations, we continue to forecast quarterly positive cash flow within 2027, followed by rapid growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA as we manifest our more recent and higher-priced spaceflight expeditions.

Let's turn to page 11 and circle back to the economic returns we project with each new spaceship. Our practical experience flying our first spaceship Unity and our design and manufacturing refinements in our new spaceships have yielded an elegant, purpose-built vehicle optimized for both repeatable production and repeatable operation. It's a beautiful machine with vast potential and now we are approaching the moment when we bring it all together with the ramp of commercial spaceflight operations. Let's do some quick math on what to expect in terms of unit economics for each spaceship. We've already created and refined the design for our spaceship, and we have invested in the tooling and manufacturing capability to make copies of that design.

Our projections have stayed consistent, and we expect each new spaceship to cost approximately $60 million to produce. Given a conservative lifetime estimate of 500 flights per spaceship with 6 astronauts per spaceflight, average pricing of $600,000 per spaceflight expedition and a contribution margin over 80% per spaceflight, each new spaceship has the potential to generate over $1.4 billion of lifetime contribution margin. In addition to turning the dream of human spaceflight into reality, it's clear that these financial returns are also expected to be spectacular.

These exceptional unit economics for our vehicles are what drive the economic model shown on slide 12. We've shown this model before, and it highlights the tremendous economies of scale that can be achieved as we build and operate multiple spaceships and expand to multiple spaceports. To reiterate the model, with our first 2 spaceships in service, we expect to achieve the economics shown in the first column by the time the average price reaches $600,000 for each spaceflight expedition flown.

Therefore, as higher prices flow through the flight manifests, we expect to achieve adjusted EBITDA during a quarter within 2028 that will result in an annualized adjusted EBITDA of $100 million, as shown in the first column of this page. As we noted at the start of today's call, we are pleased to report that we were oversubscribed for the recent tranche of spaceflight expeditions priced at $750,000. This strong demand indication, combined with the economies of scale from expanding our fleet, will make the tremendous economic return shown on this page possible.

As we continue to add spaceships and launch vehicles to the fleet, we can move to the right on this page and we see the potential flow-through of profit that we expect to achieve as we expand. While there is a variable cost component for each flight, much of our corporate cost structure does not need to grow materially as we increase the number of flights. Specifically, as we fully utilize 1 spaceport by doubling the size of our fleet from 2 spaceships to 4 and adding a launch vehicle, we project the adjusted EBITDA will more than quadruple to over $450 million per year.

That is just for one fully utilized spaceport, and we plan to keep going. With 2 fully utilized spaceports, we expect to be able to generate over $1 billion of adjusted EBITDA annually. These economies of scale are expected to continue as we expand into additional spaceports globally. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Michael.

Michael Colglazier

Closing on page 13, here's an image of our first ship having its livery installed. Livery and window transparencies are some of the last steps before integrated vehicle ground testing, and it's exciting to see this ship getting ready for the next stage. We're thrilled with the market response to our latest tranche of spaceflight expedition bookings, and we're pleased with the progress we are making on all our ships. We will incur some added expense in Q3 and Q4 as we absorb the added time to our schedule, but the added efforts will help us maintain delivery of quarterly positive cash flow within 2027.

Our astronaut community is growing and very engaged. Today, we had a group of them together in Mallorca to see the eclipse. And we have exclusive activities planned as they prepare for their upcoming spaceflights, which are soon on the horizon. Let's open the call for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Oliver Chen with TD Cowen.

分析师问答

Julia Shelanski

This is Julia Shelanski on for Oliver Chen. We have 2 questions for you this afternoon. First, regarding the commercial launch time line shift, can you help us distinguish between timing and scope? Has any material work been added since the 1Q update or is this primarily a de-risking decision to increase confidence in the flight test and the commercialization schedule?

And second, on demand durability, you've now had 2 consecutive tranches sell out ahead of schedule at very high prices. Do you see any natural ceiling to that demand curve and how are you thinking about pricing going into the next fall release?

Michael Colglazier

Hi, Julia, it's Michael. Let's see, time line, you asked the question on scope. Let me answer it this way and see if it addresses what you're asking. Generally same scope, same work, same expectations in finishing the installation of all of our avionics and mechanical systems. And the work, which is hundreds, literally hundreds of reasonably short tasks and a lot of those tasks have taken us longer to complete than we had allotted in our estimates and schedule forecast.

And what are those things? It's not that it's a new scope per se. We put a picture in the deck. You'll look at kind of where the pilots would be sitting. There's a panel that's not installed. So you can see kind of the degree of wires and cables and connectors that are involved.

And a lot of these examples are taking the 3D designs, taking all the parts and the kit that need to go in, one of our technicians who are massively capable, does the work. And as they kind of put one wire harness in and another wire harness in and metal tubes for pneumatic systems in. Some of it starts to -- the whole, I'll call it height of those things going on top of each other may end up to be a few thousandths of an inch taller or shorter sometimes than our design had expected.

Sometimes that's not an issue. Sometimes that starts to get to a place where we have a requirement that we'll go and confirm through engineering analysis whether that needs to be adjusted or not. And whenever that happens, there's a whole process for it. Our quality inspectors look at every installation we do. They get the quality engineers. The quality engineers go find further engineers for assessment if necessary.

It all happens pretty quickly, but the number of those kind of, oh, we didn't expect this to not fit just perfectly coming in is higher than we had allotted for. And so that just has started to accumulate on us. It really picked up at the tail end of July. And for a bit, we thought we could manage that in, but the team just needed more time to do it the correct way. So what we've done is we flowed the time needed out so that we can finish the task correctly and do it the right way. And when you add that up, it means we will start our integrated vehicle ground test program almost a couple months later than we had assumed, and we've flowed that through our schedule.

So happy to give you more examples of what it is, but it's a collection of small items, each of which have taken longer than expected. And the kind of summary of all those, adding up all those extra durations is added to our time. So no different scope. We expect to wrap all this phase up later this month. We'll start our integrated vehicle ground testing efforts through there. We've done power on in our ship, and so we'll continue to be testing both the power and connecting everything in the correct way and all the mechanical systems are operating in the functions we like. And then we plan to send the ship out to New Mexico in October to begin our flight test program and that will carry on just the way we thought before.

So hopefully that gives you a little bit of insight into what's behind the push. I think more excitingly is what's behind getting closer to the finish line on this build and to the start of actually carrying our astronauts to space. So shifting to your demand question, yes, we expected to close this first tranche of bookings about the time of our flight test, so not this early. We were getting near the end and we sent the people that we were in conversation with still a note that we were going to close the booking.

A number of those came in and we were oversubscribed by a reasonable amount and that's great. And so we've closed this price point as we said we would do. And we're going to focus on bringing all these people into our astronaut community and making sure they are prepared for the journey ahead of them.

We expect this fall, we will reopen our booking opportunities, it will be at a higher price point. And so you asked for some perspective on that. We're really the only people that will be carrying humans to space beyond if you want to kind of do a $50-plus million orbital flight, which are very few in capacity and very expensive, the real comparison was probably what the Blue Origin folks were flying. They never published their prices.

Anecdotally, I think people are probably in the $1 million to $2 million range. So there's demand, I think for them at probably average that out to $1.5 million. I don't think we need to be driving our prices up that quickly, but there is strong and solid demand, and we do expect each time we release a tranche of tickets, it will be priced higher than the tranche before, and that's appropriate. So I think you'll see us do that for a little bit longer.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Leshock with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Michael Leshock

I wanted to start with the rocket production starting in 4Q. Just given that it's the same propulsion that was used on Unity, will there be additional labor needed to start that back up, or did the propulsion team shift to other areas for these new spaceships in development and are they going to be moving back to propulsion? And then maybe secondly, how long does it take to produce one rocket motor?

Michael Colglazier

Thanks, Mike. The team we have in Arizona are multi-task capable. So right now they are finishing up the systems installation. You see a picture at the end of our deck, finishing up livery installation and will move the ship into the integrated vehicle ground -- integrated ground -- I can't even say, IVGT, Integrated Vehicle Ground Test. When we do that, a lot of the technicians that we have in Phoenix will pivot back over, finish out the static test ship, and when that is shipped out, we will then have all the parts coming in for our second production spaceship, and they will build that.

And as we get ready to finish that and ship that second -- send the second ship out for testing and off to New Mexico, then the majority of that team will shift over into the rocket production area. So we do not expect a big ramp up of labor for that. Most of the labor is currently there in Phoenix and we will move people from one set of tasks to the other as we go.

The pace we can do rockets is, with this new production line, quite rapid. We have -- we'll be testing out and ramping initially up to about a 3 motor a week capability, just to kind of keep up with the flight rate of our first 2 ships. The line itself and the equipment is built to handle more than that. And we can handle more of it with both adding extra shifts. So what I gave you is kind of a single shift across a week duration. So we could always add extra shifts. And there are only a couple, I'll call it equipment bottlenecks in that line, that when we're ready to have an expanded fleet at Spaceport America or a second spaceport, we can ramp the same infrastructure, this production line, to handle all of that. So; probably closer to 15 motors a week when we're ready to go.

We can also use that capacity for other things with rocket motors, but right now we're really focused on just supplying the fleet of spaceships that we'll be flying.

Michael Leshock

And then on the cash position, do you see the need to raise additional capital to get to that positive cash generation in 2027? I appreciate the color on the quarterly guide, but is there any reason we should expect a big step down in burn that in early '27 or just any way we should think about 2027's cadence once commercial flights resume?

Douglas Ahrens

Yes. Thanks, Mike. This is Doug. So we don't need to raise anything right now. We don't need additional capital at the moment. What we highlighted was what we already did with our at-the-market program. We raised $134 million during the quarter. So we have more cash at the end of the quarter than what we started with. We also managed our debt payments and created the time to get ramped on commercial service so we can time our operating cash flows with those debt payments. So as we get into kind of the near term, when we get into the start of commercial service in Q1, that's when we start to see inflows coming from the customers. So we timed that for February of 2027.

So with that, we get the remainder of the expedition price from the astronauts. And we actually start collecting ahead of some of the future flights. We start to get these inflows. And that changes the whole cash flow dynamics as we go forward. So we're getting down to kind of our cost base now as we finish up the -- I gave you the guidance towards the end of the year. But we get to our kind of cost base as we exit because we're done with the manufacturing, we're just moving into the operating stage. But Q1 is that point when it crosses over and the inflows change. So with that said, there will be a time when we want to drive a faster growth and that's when it would make sense probably to add some capital.

We can add more vehicles more quickly, expand the fleet, and that's why we spent some time highlighting these great unit economics for these spaceships. It can tie any future capital raises to some very attractive ROIs on additional assets that can be added more quickly with that capital. So, again, there will come a time, and we'll tie it to growth drivers, and the rationale will be great for shareholders in our opinion. I have nothing to do today with the capital raise.

Operator

Next question comes from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies.

Ceara Perry

This is Ceara Perry on for Sheila. On a similar note, I was wondering if you could frame how we should think about the trajectory for CapEx third quarter into 2027 based on the updated flight schedule.

Douglas Ahrens

So, CapEx in particular is coming down significantly because what's driving that is the build of the spaceship. So as we're wrapping that up, we've done the heavy lifting, right, which was included the tooling and then all the parts fabrication and then all of the labor and everything that goes into the assembly of the ship, that's all CapEx. But that's moving along and with the first vehicle headed into ground test and then the second vehicle coming pretty close behind, you see -- we expect CapEx to be coming down quite a bit by the fourth quarter and then quite a bit more in 2027 because it's just not a CapEx-driven cost structure at that point. Now we're moving into more OpEx for the commercial spaceflight. So it's a shift. So you'll see a continued drop in CapEx after we get by the fourth quarter.

Operator

Next question comes from the line of Myles Walton with Wolfe Research.

Emilee Deutchman

This is Emilee on for Myles. I just had a question on VMS Eve, given it's the solo mothership for now, what is the current flight cycle or maintenance schedule that you're looking at for that? And are there any structural limitations on that ship as the Delta flight testing begins?

Michael Colglazier

So I'll talk on flight schedules. So we have a very detailed maintenance program on Eve like you would see with most airplanes. And they're flight by -- kind of flight interval inspections. So some things are done on an every-flight basis, some a 3-flight basis, some 5, 7, 10, 30, things like that. And when you carry that across the course of a year, we've stated on these calls publicly that we expect Eve to be flying on a 3 times per week cadence.

Our maintenance schedules allow us to go at greater rates than that, than 3, just based upon how the stacking of the maintenance tasks are and how long they take to do. We're holding our stated efforts at 3 times per week. We think that's appropriate right now until we're into it, but the maintenance schedule would suggest we can go more frequently than that.

The way you asked the question was, are there structural limitations on Eve related to the Delta ships? So there are parameters on all of our ships that we don't exceed, how much weight can they carry, what are landing rates, sink rates that we have in tolerance, things like that, but nothing is different with our Delta ships than with our Unity ship or in plan. So Eve is an incredibly capable launch vehicle for these new ships that are coming off the line and it's going to be a workhorse of a launch vehicle for us and it's been adapted and upgraded over the last couple years to do that. So we're very excited for that ship.

Emilee Deutchman

Thanks, and one quick follow-up on that. Do you have a parameter for the CapEx commitment or time line for procuring and building the next mothership, or is that sort of paused at the moment until Delta gets into its operating cadence?

Michael Colglazier

Not paused, but definitely the next launch vehicle is moving more slowly as we are putting all of our attention to finishing up the first spaceship, which is right around the corner. So as we finish that up, we will pivot that team back to the launch vehicle and move through both engineering and then as we get into deciding the full supply chain details, that will give us more clarity around the total CapEx.

So we have our internal estimates for that and we think they're pretty solid and reasonable. But we haven't shared those out at this stage. So next stage with our launch vehicle is to have the engineers come off our ship and really lean into the launch vehicle design. And then we'll start having kind of alternating production between spaceships, we'll build a launch vehicle, probably build a couple of spaceships, we'll match with another launch vehicle and grow the fleet in a balanced fashion like that.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Kristine Liwag with Morgan Stanley.

Kristine Liwag

So I wanted to follow up on the economies of scale that you had laid out, right, for the initial fleet of 2 spaceships in operation, 1 in launch vehicles, you get to the adjusted EBITDA potentially at that run rate at $90 million to $115 million. I wanted to understand with that kind of EBITDA, what were the milestone payments already received? And so if that were to materialize, how should we think about the cash conversion of that EBITDA and operating cash, so taking away any potential impact of CapEx, just so that we understand that run rate and how you get to a positive free cash flow path.

Michael Colglazier

Forgive me, just your phone got a little muffled there. So we got you through economies of scale and kind of repeating how we got to $90 million to $150 million. Would you mind repeating the question again, maybe just close to the microphone?

Kristine Liwag

Yes. So if you could hear me now. So my question is you've received deposits from customers in the past. And then now with that EBITDA for that run rate, I was wondering what would be the operating cash conversion off of that EBITDA considering deposits you've already received in the past. And this is on operating cash, so no CapEx. So just understanding what the free cash flow run rate could be off of that EBITDA.

Douglas Ahrens

Okay, yes, Kristine, good question. So what we do see building into this is actually we're collecting cash ahead of this because the flights -- we're getting cash for flights that are in the future. So we actually have a little better free cash flow ahead of the EBITDA as we ramp into this. As we go forward though, it depends where we're at in the lifecycle of future vehicle development, right, how much we're putting into CapEx at any one time. But what this model reflects is that we have quite a bit of R&D going into vehicle development and there will be some conversion over to CapEx as we move through the development.

But what we're seeing is very high conversion ratios. So the cash conversion relative to EBITDA is very close, so the CapEx never becomes too high until we get out to about call it, 2029 when you're getting into the final -- the bigger lift on a launch vehicle development, getting into the assembly and so on with the vendors. So there's kind of a period there where we see a little more CapEx going on. But in terms of your overall modeling, it's a very high conversion ratio between the EBITDA and the CapEx. Did we cover your question?

Kristine Liwag

Great. And then following up on that, when you look at the growth that you could get with more flights, you're going to need more spacecraft, and you talked about the $60 million spend per incremental spacecraft. So first question on that, is that $60 million number the run rate that you would pay for spacecraft number 3 and 4? Or is that a more mature production down the line? And then the second question I have regarding that growth is, how do you intend to balance growing EBITDA, which then requires investment in CapEx, versus generating more free cash flow and stability for the balance sheet?

Douglas Ahrens

On the first question, Kristine, that's what we're seeing for a spaceship cost going forward. So that's not like down the road, that's Delta 3 and 4 kind of time line based on our recent experience because we've already built a couple, we've closely measured the cost for the parts and the labor and all the components and so that's what we've dialed in. It turned out that our earlier estimates were quite accurate in that regard. So that's not far down the road, that's near term as soon as we start to get back into building additional spaceships. And then if you could please repeat the second question one more time, Kristine.

Kristine Liwag

Yes, and apologies for my connection. My second question is more about understanding the balance between growth, right? Because in order for your revenue to grow and be able to service more customers, you're going to have to buy more spacecraft, which then is the usage of cash. How do we balance growth versus stability in generating positive free cash flow to create more of a bolster for the balance sheet?

Douglas Ahrens

I think the right way to think about this is why we've highlighted these amazing unit economics for these vehicles is the more we add, we rapidly expand the profitability, the revenue and the profitability that we can generate from them. And the payback periods on these is very short. If you look at a spaceship in particular $60 million, it pays for itself in less than a year of flight time because of the returns we get from flying it, the high contribution margin. So it's always going to make sense, right, to expand and put that cash back into the business and build more to meet demand as long as there's always demand to fulfill those. So it's going to be very clear that we should be growing at the fastest rate we can in terms of adding vehicles.

Michael Colglazier

And I think just the way you asked the question, it's a bit of a both end, right? The company needs to be solid, the balance sheet needs to be solid, and we'll need to keep it in that place. We'll need to continue to demonstrate a backlog of demand that's very strong and growing. One of the things we were obviously very, very encouraged by today -- in today's announcement is closing our first tranche out early, even in advance of when we're flying. So that -- and in addition to just the timing of it, I'd say the broadening of categories of people within the demand we had.

So what are the things we want to do to not just bolster the balance sheet, but just bolster confidence in the business model, ongoing book of business, amazing results from the astronauts that we're flying so that you hear from the stories of them. Are they missionary for us? Are they out referring and recommending other people to us, which is already in place, but I think you'll see more of that. And then economically, we need to maintain a reasonable cash balance and manage our growth in a strong fashion. We have multiple options to do so, but those options are always stronger as we hit clear profitable operation, the flight cadence that we expect to be hitting and people see, oh my goodness, this is the solid business they've been telling us all the time. I think that opens up lots of doors to how to grow in a more rapid fashion.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining in. You may now disconnect.