Virgin Galactic: Creating A New Market Out of Thin Air
Our Role
FTI was retained by Virgin Galactic to manage its communications activity during its merger with Social Capital Hedosophia (SCH), set to create the world’s first and only publicly-traded commercial human spaceflight company, listed on New York Stock Exchange. The primary objective was to support Virgin Galactic as it moves towards commercialization and position the transaction as a unique opportunity to invest in the future of space. FTI was also tasked to work with Virgin Galactic’s financial advisors and SCH’s advisors to head off the potential issues and concerns over-investment in the new “business of space”.
In much the same way that FTI has provided Virgin Galactic with independent communications advice over the last few years, FTI combined its corporate and financial communications expertise with its space and tech sector knowledge to support this process. The program was executed jointly out of our New York and London offices. We adopted an integrated approach across financial communications, media relations, and internal and customer communications to ensure that all external communications served to support Virgin Galactic’s equity story. Part of this strategy involved working with senior executives from both entities to demonstrate the commercial opportunities for Virgin Galactic that Sir Richard Branson, George Whitesides and the team identified.
FTI delivered an announcement day that generated over 4,000 factually-correct and mostly-positive articles across the globe. The team coordinated activities in the US and UK, arranged exclusive Tier-1 media interviews with the Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and other outlets, and managed over 50 live enquiries, securing further media opportunities. We used our understanding of the process and the limitations put on communications by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to plan for negative scenarios and prepare responses in advance of leaks and other unplanned events. FTI developed guidelines for all spokespeople and other stakeholders, covering media engagement, social media and events, and supported Virgin Galactic beyond announcement day through the entire transaction process.
