Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc.

Good afternoon. My name is Rob and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Virgin Galactic's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Thank you. Hosting today's conference call will be Jeff Zaslow, Vice President of Investor Relations. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Zaslow. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Virgin Galactic's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. On the call with me today are Michael Colglazer, Chief Executive Officer Mike Moses, President of Space Missions and Safety, Swami Iyer, President of Aerospace Systems, and Doug Ahrens, Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Our press release was issued about 45 minutes ago and is available on our investor relations website, as is the slide presentation that will accompany today's remarks. Let me refer you to slide two of the presentation, which contains 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 section of Virgin Galactic's second amendment to its annual report on Form 10-K. filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other documents filed by Virgin Galactic from time to time. Readers 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. Please also note that we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial information on today's call. you can find reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings press release. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Michael.

Thanks, Seth, and good afternoon, everyone. I hope you are all doing well. As part of my plan to execute on our strategy to grow and scale the business, I've brought in some exceptional talent in key areas. Doug Ahrens is our new CFO, and Swami Iyer is our new head of aerospace systems. Doug has extensive experience as a public company CFO with companies in complex technology and manufacturing environments. Doug's leadership and relational skills and his expertise in capital markets and M&A will be incredibly valuable as we expand and monetize the business. Swami joined Virgin Galactic in March to lead the team responsible for building and designing our current and future fleet of vehicles. SWAMI brings great depth and expertise in business expansion, while also having the deep process and production orientation necessary to lead our aerospace teams as we build out commercial operations. We're incredibly pleased to have them both on board. Moving to the agenda for today's call, I will start with an update on the business and our key areas of focus. I'll then ask Mike Moses to provide an update on our upcoming flight. SWAMI will talk about his initial impressions and how he's viewing our fleet expansion strategy. And following Swami's remarks, I'll provide some comments on our commercial plans and how we are positioning the organization for scale and success. After that, Doug will provide a financial update. So with that, let's get started. Turning to slide four. Our focus remains on the following three areas. Number one, fleet readiness. Completing our test flight program and preparing for commercial service. Number two, fleet expansion. adding new spaceships and motherships to our fleet and pivoting the organization from an R&D phase to a manufacturing phase. And number three, developing our customer experience and commercial strategy to create expanded revenue opportunities. We set an ambitious schedule for 2021 and beyond. It's a dynamic time for both our company and the space industry as a whole, and we are entering what we believe is going to be a long period of growth and expansion. Turning to slide five. Let's start with fleet readiness. Our planned flight test schedule consists of four flights. These flights are intended to demonstrate our capabilities for the three markets that we plan to serve with our suborbital spaceflight system. Those are private astronauts, microgravity research, and suborbital training for professional astronauts. We are committed to delivering one of the world's most unique and transformational customer experiences with safety at the core of everything we do. Safety is designed into our vehicles, our policies and procedures, and our decision-making. And safety is the foundation of our culture. Typically, we don't use an earnings call as a forum for a detailed discussion of the specifics of our engineering systems and processes. However, given the level of interest around our space flight program, today we will share a more granular look into the steps that we've taken to prepare for our next flight. I'll now turn the call over to Mike Moses.