Virgin Galactic’s Unity spacecraft comes ashore during a plane test flight on May 1, 2020.
Virgin Galactic
Shares of Virgin Galactic fell on Tuesday after Ark Invest’s space exploration ETF sold nearly half of its stake in the space tourism company.
Cathie Wood sold 275,204 Virgin Galactic shares in its ARKX fund on Monday, reducing ETF holdings from 585,675 shares to 315,781 shares. Of the 39 ARKX holdings, Virgin Galactic was 19th in size, but is now at 33, accounting for just over 1% of the fund’s share.
Ark Invest also sold 315,600 shares of Virgin Galactic in the ARKQ “autonomous and robotic technology” fund on Monday. The same Ark ETF holds a larger stake in Virgin Galactic, with 1.76 million shares. Together, ARKX and ARKQ hold a $ 46.7 million stake in Virgin Galactic shares from yesterday’s closing price.
Virgin Galactic shares fell 7% in trading from the previous close of $ 22.46 per share and fell up to 10% earlier in the day’s session.
Wood’s new space ETF only started trading late last month, and many investors believed Virgin to be a top stake for the fund, as it was among the first publicly traded pure pieces in the industry. But ARKX continues to focus its largest stakes on GPS-based services company Trimble, another Ark Invest PRNT fund and a variety of aerospace and defense contractors, including Kratos, L3Harris, Komatsu, Lockheed Martin, Thales and Boeing. . The largest pure gaming space in ARKX is the satellite operator Iridium Communications.
Virgin Galactic shares wiped out their 2021 earnings last week, after doubling to a high of more than $ 60 a share in February. Losses accelerated in the last month after delays in its test program and commercial flights, as well as sales of shares by President Chamath Palihapitiya and then founder Richard Branson.