It's no secret that Virgin Galactic has taken off.
The skyrocketing space tourism stock has gained a whopping 199% year to date and nearly 310% in the last three months as speculative investors piled into the name, leading some to label it Wall Street's new Tesla.
Explanations for the sudden surge have been few and far between, with Morgan Stanley analysts — who have an "overweight" rating on the name along with a $22 price target — calling for an "overdue" correction on Thursday. The stock cooled off on Friday, falling nearly 7% in intraday trading after snapping an eight-day winning streak.
For Andrew Chanin, CEO of ProcureAM and the man behind the Procure Space ETF (UFO), there were three relatively clear drivers for Virgin Galactic's monster move.
"Space is open for business."
"There's a few things, one being that more institutions are actually starting to pick up coverage on this, so, it's actually getting a lot more attention from the banks; two, a potential short squeeze, and three, a scarcity factor," Chanin told CNBC's "ETF Edge" on Wednesday. "It's one of the only pure-play ways that investors get exposure to space tourism."
Chanin had a point — or three. Analysts at Vertical Research Partners, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley all initiated coverage on the stock in the final months of 2019 with "overweight" or "buy" ratings, leading institutional and individual investors to pile into the stock via platforms such as SoFi and Fidelity. That has led to increased short interest in the name, which can trigger a "short squeeze" as those who bet on the stock falling are forced to cover their positions.
Chanin's third reason for the move is perhaps the most significant: Virgin Galactic is essentially the only stock on the market focused squarely on space travel. Its closest publicly traded competitors are largely drone operators with penny stocks, and Elon Musk's SpaceX is privately held.
That's good for Chanin's space ETF, of which Virgin Galactic is the No. 1 holding at a nearly 17% weighting. Satellite companies Maxar Technologies and Iridium Communications are Nos. 2 and 3 in the portfolio, with 6.5% and 5% weightings, respectively. UFO is up about 5% year to date.
"This is more than just Star Wars rides for rich people."
"Space is open for business. It's an investable industry now," Chanin said. "There's a large belief that the next wave of growth for the space industry will be coming from broadband internet communication. So, with the amount of data that's being generated around the world with many of these new transformational technologies that are reliant upon satellites, it's bringing a lot of these names back in[to] play."
From companies such as Uber using satellites for GPS capabilities to the advent of 5G at major telecommunications firms, a lot of the growth space industry analysts are expecting will come from companies that manufacture and operate satellites orbiting the earth, Chanin said.
"Morgan Stanley says $1.1 trillion by 2040. Bank of America [says] $2.7 trillion by 2045. They believe it's going to be from broadband internet," he said, referring to some of Wall Street's total addressable market estimates for the space industry.
"You look at different technologies like big data, connected devices and internet of things, blockchain, 5G, cloud computing," Chanin said. "All those things are data-intensive industries, and satellites are being utilized as these toll operators for the digital data superhighway."
For Tom Lydon, the CEO of ETF Trends, "this is more than just Star Wars rides for rich people," he said in the same "ETF Edge" interview. "It's the business of space, everything from your GPS to your [Sirius XM] radio."
As that business expands, playing it with an ETF can "[give] you exposure to many companies from around the world doing all different things in different stages of their own life cycles," Chanin said.
UFO lost more than 2% in Friday trading as the broad market paced for a week in the red.
