Virgin Galactic’s Unity spacecraft will land on a glide test flight on May 1, 2020.
Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic shares fell in trading on Tuesday after Ark Invest’s space exploration ETF sold nearly half of its stake in the space tourism company.
Cathie Wood’s firm sold 275,204 shares of Virgin Galactic from its ARKX fund on Monday, reducing the ETF’s holdings from 585,675 shares to 315,781 shares. Of the 39 ARKX holdings, Virgin Galactic was 19th largest but now ranks 33rd, accounting for just over 1% of fund weight.
Ark Invest also sold 315,600 shares of Virgin Galactic from its ARKQ “autonomous technology and robotics” fund on Monday. Die Ark ETF retains 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 as of yesterday’s closing price.
Virgin Galactic’s stock was down 7% during trading from the previous close of $ 22.46 a share, falling a whopping 10% earlier during the day’s session.
Wood’s new Space ETF only started trading late last month and many investors believed that Virgin would be a top spot for the fund as it was one of the industry’s first publicly traded pure plays. But ARKX continues to focus its greatest interests on GPS-based service company Trimble, another Ark Invest fund PRNT, and a variety of aerospace and defense contractors, including Kratos, L3Harris, Komatsu, Lockheed Martin, Thales and Boeing. The largest pure play space company in ARKX is satellite operator Iridium Communications.
Virgin Galactic’s stock cleared its gains in 2021 last week, after more than doubling to highs above $ 60 a share in February. The losses have accelerated over the past month following test program delays and commercial flights, as well as the sale of shares by chairman Chamath Palihapitiya and then founder Richard Branson.