- Ark Invest sold almost 4 million Twitter shares worth $142 million Monday, after shedding 2 million last week.
- The sale comes two days before Twitter's earnings, which should shed light on the impact of Apple changes.
- Ark bought more than 700,000 Roblox shares, reflecting Cathie Wood's bullishness for the metaverse.
Cathie Wood's Ark Invest has doubled down on ditching Twitter stock just days before the social media company's earnings report, which should shed light on whether Apple's privacy shift has hit its digital ads business.
The firm's flagship Ark Innovation exchange-traded fund, which trades under the ticker ARKK, sold 3,663,744 shares of Twitter, according to a trading update from the company Monday.
At the same time, the Ark Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) shed 280,974 shares. The total for both funds was 3.94 million shares of Twitter, worth $142 million at Monday's closing price of $36.04.
Like other social media stocks, Twitter got caught up in the fallout Thursday from Facebook parent Meta's 26% slide following a disappointing earnings report. The stock has recovered somewhat from that sharp drop, but is still down almost 40% from a year ago.
Facebook said it expects its to lose $10 billion in 2021 as Apple's privacy changes to its iOS platform hit its digital ads business. Twitter and other social media companies are seen as vulnerable to the same impact.
Twitter is due to release its fourth-quarter earnings update before the market open Thursday, and the report will be closely watched for any hit to its ads business. Last year, the company's CFO Ned Segal said it had seen a "modest" impact from the Apple changes in the third quarter, noting it was "lower than expected."
Ark funds have been steady sellers of Twitter stock in recent weeks, but have ramped up this week. They ditched more than 700,000 shares then worth $26.5 million on Wednesday, and 2 million shares for $74.1 million on Thursday.
At the same time, Ark Innovation snapped up 729,695 shares of Roblox, worth about $46 million at Monday's closing price of $63.06.
Gaming companies like Roblox are key companies in the metaverse, which Ark's CEO and CIO Cathie Wood believes is a multitrillion-dollar opportunity across all sectors.
"It's a big idea that will probably infiltrate — just like technology is, anyway — every sector in ways that we cannot even imagine right now," Wood told CNBC in December.
