SSgA Funds Management, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (NYSE:SPCE). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Industrials company by 56.40% to 33.7 million shares with purchase of 12.15 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 8.43% valued currently at $75.15 million. In addition, The Vanguard Group, Inc. raised its holdings by 6.78 million to 29.54 million shares. And BlackRock Fund Advisors has lifted its position by 14.68% or 2.85 million shares – to 22.23 million shares.
With over 11.25 million Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (SPCE) shares trading Friday and a closing price of $2.60 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $29.26 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -37.20% and its price on 12/22/23 gained nearly 5.26%. Currently, there are 399.71M common shares owned by the public and among those 364.26M shares have been available to trade.
3 Tiny Stocks Primed to Explode
The world's greatest investor — Warren Buffett — has a simple formula for making big money in the markets. He buys up valuable assets when they are very cheap. For stock market investors that means buying up cheap small cap stocks like these with huge upside potential.
We've set up an alert service to help smart investors take full advantage of the small cap stocks primed for big returns.
Click here for full details and to join for free
Sponsored
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 60 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 19 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 1,774,509 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 41 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 275,049 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc are SPDR S&P Aerospace & Defense ETF, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, and Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund. SPDR S&P Aerospace & Defense ETF owns 30.25 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $67.45 million. The company bought an additional 0.16 million shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 7.57% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund bought 24776.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 8.04 million shares at a value of $17.94 million. Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund now owns shares totaling to 2.01% of the shares outstanding.
However, the script later moved the day high at 2.6500, up 5.26%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 3.59% and 54.76% over the past three months. SPCE shares are trading -25.29% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -30.85% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $1.38 and touched a high of $6.61 over the same period. SPCE has an average intraday trading volume of 11.30 million shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 14.31%, 32.44%, and -15.94% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (NYSE: SPCE) shares accounts for 33.30% of the company’s 399.71M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 23.39%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 25.16% and 10.03% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $1.04B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.60. The earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at -$1.86. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 7.83% over the week and 8.47% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (SPCE) will achieve an EPS of -$0.3 for the current quarter, -$0.28 for the next quarter and -$1.02 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is -$0.33 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of -$0.25. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was -$0.55 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 16.46%, and 34.37% over the next financial year.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 12 brokerage firm advisors rate Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (SPCE) as a “Hold” at a consensus score of 3.33. Specifically, 2 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 4 of the 12 advise that investors “hold,” and 2 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the SPCE, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Morgan Stanley stated their Underweight rating for the stock in a research note on November 22, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $4-$1.75.
