Cathie Wood Cuts Remaining Virgin Galactic Stake By 99% As Shares Surge

Cathie Wood-led Ark Investment Management on Thursday shed nearly all of its remaining stake in Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc SPCE on the day shares jumped after the space tourism company announced its next spaceflight test is set for the weekend.

What Happened: The investment firm held the shares of the Richard Branson-founded company via the Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF ARKQ and the recently floated Ark Space Exploration & Innovation ETF ARKX.

On Thursday, Ark sold the last remaining 3,125 shares of the company in ARKQ while ARKX has just 45 shares left. 

Why It Matters: Branson last month sold nearly $150 million worth of shares of the space tourism company and still holds 56.8 million shares in Virgin Galactic.

Ark’s firm started selling Virgin Galactic shares last month after an initial bullish streak.

Virgin Galactic plans to fly people to space and back. It has collected deposits from 600 customers who have paid $250,000 each to board a Virgin Galactic flight to space in the future.

The company hopes to begin commercial service in 2022.

Price Action: Shares of Virgin Galactic soared as much as 25% in early trading but closed 17.71% higher at $19.81 on Thursday and were further up 2.5% in after-hours trading. The stock has a 52-week high of $62.80 and low of $14.21.

Photo by Land Rover Mena on Flickr