Bank of America downgraded spacecraft builder Terran Orbital from buy to underperform on Friday, hitting the space stock with a rare double downgrade due to concerns of a limited customer base and waning liquidity. Terran Orbital stock slipped 4%. Like many SPAC space companies, Terran’s stock has slid steadily since its public debut near $12 a share in March 2022 . This year, it’s down 24.7%. Bank of America also slashed its price target on Terran’s stock to $1.35 from $7 a share. Terran Orbital ended the first quarter with $57.4 million in cash on hand, Bank of America analyst Ron Epstein noted, and is aiming to raise another $37 million in a direct offering. But that buys Terran “just one more quarter of liquidity,” due to its current average burn rate of about $35 million a quarter, Epstein wrote. “We remain skeptical around the market’s appetite” for higher risk space investments. Additionally, while Terran won a $2.4 billion contract from Rivada in February, Epstein thinks Terran’s “backlog is overexposed” to the single customer, which makes up all but about $200 million of the company’s current backlog. “We believe Terran’s revenue ramp and margin expansion is overly tied to one single customer, which carries with it significant risk,” Epstein wrote. – CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
