Brendan McDermid / Reuters
- Virgin Galactic shares rose 22% on Thursday.
- The space tourism group could be added to Ark Investment Management’s planned exchange-traded fund for space exploration.
- The fund manages a total of $ 42 billion in ETF products, Bloomberg estimates.
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Virgin Galactic shares rose 22% on Thursday, increasing its market capitalization by about $ 1.4 billion, after a major investment fund announced plans to launch an exchange-traded fund.
Investors in the commercial space company – whose co-founder is billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson and whose chairman is billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya – bet it will be included in Ark Investment Management’s ARK Space Exploration ETF.
Ark, led by Cathie Wood, its founder and chief investment officer, already manages seven ETFs focused on areas such as genomics, 3D printing, robotics and financial technology. Its largest flagship of Ark Innovation ETF is Tesla.
Read more: The space industry will grow by more than $ 1 trillion in the next decade, says Bank of America. Here are the 14 stocks that are best positioned to take advantage of the boom.
Thanks to a massive influx of investment capital in recent months, Ark now oversees $ 42 billion in ETF products, a sharp increase from less than $ 4 billion a year ago, Bloomberg estimated.
Wood and her team plan to actively manage their space ETF. They aim to invest in domestic and foreign companies engaged in space exploration and innovation and own 40 to 55 shares.
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