Well-known investor Chamath Palihapitiya, who was once dubbed the SPAC King, has fielded criticism in recent years after the valuations of several of the companies he took public have crashed.
On Wednesday, Palihapitiya clashed with the co-host of a well-known financial podcast over one of his most famous SPAC deals.
What Happened: Space travel company Virgin Galactic Holdings SPCE went public in 2019 in a SPAC merger anchored by Palihapitiya’s Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp, formerly known as ticker IPOA. The space company recently took its first private tourists to space.
At the time of the SPAC merger, Virgin Galactic was valued at an enterprise value of $1.5 billion, with IPOA investing $800 million in the combined company and Palihapitiya investing an additional $100 million personally.
After its stock climbed in 2019 through 2021, shares have fallen significantly in the space company and Palihapitiya has distanced himself.
“Remember when Chamath went on CNBC in spring 2020 and advocated letting $SPCE competitors (the airlines) go bankrupt and everyone thought it was amazing and righteous,” Joe Weisenthal tweeted Wednesday morning.
Weisenthal is the co-host of the Bloomberg "Odd Lots" podcast with Tracy Alloway.
The tweet from Weisenthal, who has nearly 350,000 followers, drew a response from Palihapitiya who used the meme of Ralph Wiggum from "The Simpsons" seen below.
Another user asked Palihapitiya if he would go on "Odd Lots."
“If a tree falls in the forrest does anyone hear? And by tree I mean an irrelevant podcast,” Palihapitiya responded.
Palihapitiya’s posts didn’t see huge engagement in the form of likes or retweets, while the initial post and several reactions making fun of the investor saw stronger engagement, prompting calls of Chamath being ratioed.
Palihapitiya stepped down as chairman of Virgin Galactic in 2022 after serving in the role since its public debut in 2019 and sold a large position in the company.
“I generated some liquidity to manage my risk and then to be able to make a big investment in climate change. It was misreported,” Palihapitiya said.
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Why It’s Important: The interaction with Weisenthal follows other dust-ups with Twitter users calling out Palihapitiya over his past dealings with SPACs.
On Tuesday, Palihapitiya tweeted about it being “just a matter of time until one gaffe is the gaffe that breaks the camels back.”
A user responded that he didn’t have good luck with an investment in Virgin Galactic.
“You said buying $SPCE stock is like owning tech business. Their profit margin going to be 80%. I bought $SPCE. You sold. Now I am a bag holder and I lost everything,” the user said.
Palihapitiya questioned why the user didn’t sell the stock when he did.
Another user tore into Palihapitiya over the losses investors in his SPAC deals have weathered and accused him of being a pump and dumper.
“I didn’t inflict any losses. Stop being a victim, the world will pass you by,” Palihapitiya said.
“I’m in the arena trying stuff. Some will work, some won’t. But always learning. You’re anonymous and afraid of your shadow. Enjoy the sidelines.”
After years of leading several SPACs and plans for IPOs of blank check companies with tickers IPOA to IPOZ, Palihapitiya has since distanced himself with this investment vehicle.
“SPACS, we stumbled into this thing because we wanted to raise money for a bunch of our companies that were extremely capital intensive, and we demonstrated something that, in a moment, just caught a lot of wind,” Palihapitiya said in March.
The investors said he thinks SPACs “bought good companies” and also sold well.
“It’s one of these things where it was fueled by a moment in time of just enormous excess liquidity. And now I think we’re sort of back to basics.”
Palihapitiya also recently got into a Twitter war with Mark Cuban over the “go woke, go broke” mantra.
SPCE Price Action: Virgin Galactic shares trade at $2.77 versus a 52-week trading range of $2.62 to $6.61. Shares are down 72% over the last five years.
Photo courtesy of Virgin Galactic.
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