Virgin Galactic chairman dumped more than $210 million worth of stock as prices plunged

Based on a MarketWatch calculation of data from a Form 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the weighted average price of the sales was $34.3181, including $35.2817 on March 2 and $33.3544 on March 3.

Palihapitiya’s sales came as the stock tumbled 11.5% on March 2 to $33.77 and dropped 5.2% on March 3 to $32.03, before falling another 5.4% on March 4 to $30.30.

The company said it would provide a statement shortly.

On Friday, the stock SPCE, -10.07% dropped 5.6% in premarket trading, which would bring losses to about 25% over the past four days.

The stock’s weakness this week comes after the company reported after last Thursday’s close a narrower-than-expected fourth-quarter loss, but said the COVID-19 pandemic continued to put pressure on its space-tourism business.

Palihapitiya played a big part in the stock’s trading volume

Trading volume in Virgin Galactic shares was 14.8 million shares on March 2 and 18.3 million shares on March 3, according to FactSet. That means the dollar volume of trading over those two days was about $1.09 billion, based on closing prices. That suggests Palihapitiya’s sales accounted for about one-fifth of the dollar volume of sales over those two days.

Palihapitiya still owned a large stake in Virgin Galactic. In the 10-K annual report filed on March 1, the company said Palihapitiya owned 37.95 million shares, or 15.5% of the shares outstanding.

Subtracting the latest sales, that suggests he still owns 13.4% of the shares outstanding, which at Thursday’s stock closing price would be valued at about $962 million.

Virgin Galactic’s stock has gained 5.4% over the past three months through Thursday and has climbed 25.8% over the past 12 months. In comparison, the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.61% has tacked on 1.9% the past three months and advanced 24.6% the past year.