Shares of Elon Musk’s Tesla (NasdaqGS: TSLA) are off 5.6% Thursday, extending the once beloved stock’s three-month decline to over 20%.
That is enough to put the electric carmaker in bear market territory, but at least one manager of actively managed exchange traded funds sees value in Tesla. ARK Investment Management, a New York-based money manager that emphasizes thematic investing in an effort to unearth companies with disruptive, game-changing potential , has boosted Tesla exposure in two of the firm’s actively managed ETFs
The ARK Industrial Innovation ETF (NYSEArca: ARKQ), one of the first two ETFs launched by ARK last September, and the ARK Innovation Fund (NYSEArca: ARKK) added to already solid positions in California-based Tesla.
“I think one of things that people miss about this stock is one of things they made fun of in the very early days when this car was being conceptualized and that is the battery,” said Cathie Wood, founder and CEO of ARK Investment Management, in an interview with CNBC earlier today. “These are consumer electronics, small cell size batteries. No one else is building a car this way. They (Tesla) are riding the battery cost curve of the consumer electronics industry. No one is being able to catch them.”
Despite a two-year run that has seen the stock rise more than fivefold, broad market benchmark indices have been slow to afford much more than token weights to Tesla. However, ARKQ is one of a scant number of ETFs the feature Tesla as its largest holding. With ARK Investments purchasing more Tesla shares, the stock now accounts for 6.44% of ARKQ’s weight. That is nearly 50 basis points ahead of the ETF’s second-largest holding, Stratasys (NasdaqGS: SSYS). [Two New Disruptive ETFs]