Richard Branson's Virgin Group continued to offload shares in New Mexico-based Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) with a near $300 million selloff, weeks after the British billionaire flew to space alongside a crew of fellow astronauts.
The stock sale occurred between Aug. 10 and Aug. 12, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, and signals a continued reduction in Virgin Galactic stake for Virgin Group, Branson's conglomerate of travel and other types of companies.
With the latest stock sale, Virgin Group and Branson have reportedly offloaded more than $1 billion worth of Virgin Galactic stock since last summer.
The divestment began in May 2020, when Virgin Group began selling a combined $568 million worth of stock throughout several weeks, reported the Financial Times. In April of this year, Branson sold an additional $150 million of shares in Virgin Galactic, followed by this month's stock sale, topping $1 billion.
Some Virgin-branded companies have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, with at least one — Virgin Atlantic — turning to government aid as a result. Virgin Group oversees an airline, hotel, locomotive, cruise ship and other types of companies in addition to Virgin Galactic.
Virgin Galactic is on the leading edge of New Mexico's commercial space industry and has been working to fly customers to space for more than a decade. The company went public in 2019 as part of a merger with a blank-check company in Silicon Valley and recently reopened ticket sales at a price of at least $450,000.
The spaceflight company, with corporate headquarters in Las Cruces, plans to begin commercial service next year. Virgin Galactic recently generated a great amount of fanfare with its most recent test flight with Branson and other crew members from Spaceport America.
Branson's flight reached 53 miles into the sky — lower than the Karman line kept by the the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (about 62 miles) which was crossed by Jeff Bezos's recent Blue Origin flight, but higher than the Federal Aviation Administration's classification of space at 50 miles.
