Chairman of Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. Chamath Palihapitiya a chunk of his shares this week, and played a part in the crush in prices.
The spaceflight company revealed late Thursday that Palihapitiya sold 6.2 million shares in the open market to raise $ 212,771,951. The sales included 3.1 million shares for $ 109,373,249 on March 2 and 3.1 million shares for $ 103,389,702 on March 3.
Based on MarketWatch calculations of data from Form 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the average selling price was $ 34.3181, including $ 35.2817 on March 2 and $ 33.3544 on March 3.
Palihapitiya sales fell when the stock fell 11.5% on March 2 to $ 33.77 and fell 5.2% on March 3 to $ 32.03, before falling another 5.4% on March 4 to $ 30.30.
In an emailed statement to MarketWatch, Palihapitiya said he would use the money raised from the sale of the shares to make a “major investment” to combat climate change, details of which will be published in the coming months.
“I remain dedicated to the Virgin Galactic team, mission and expectations,” Palihapitiya said.
Palihapitiya still had great property in the Virgin Galactic. In the 10-K annual report filed on March 1, the company stated that Palihapitiya owned 37.95 million shares, or 15.5% of the outstanding shares.
The removal of the latest sales shows that it still owns 13.4% of the outstanding shares, which at current prices would be valued at around $ 865.2 million.
On Friday, the stock
SPCE
morning trading fell 10.1%, bringing losses over the past four days to 28.6%.
The weakness of the stock this week comes after the company reported after Thursday’s closure last year a narrower than expected loss in the fourth quarter, but said COVID-19 pandemics were putting pressure on their space tourism industry.
Palihapitiya trades were a big part of the trade measure
Virgin Galactic shares traded volume at 14.8 million shares on March 2 and 18.3 million shares on March 3, according to FactSet. That means dollar trading volume over those two days was around $ 1.09 billion, based on closing prices. That shows Palihapitiya sales accounted for about one-fifth of dollar sales over those two days.
Virgin Galactic stock has now lost 5.2% over the past three months, but has advanced 13.1% over the past 12 months. In contrast, the S&P 500 index
SPX
has handled 2.5% in the last three months and climbed 25.3% last year.