Virgin America Inc (VA): Cyrus Capital Partners Discloses 24% Stake in Recently-Public Company

Stephen C. Freidheim‘s Cyrus Capital Partners has disclosed its position in Virgin America Inc (NASDAQ:VA), a company that went public at the beginning of last week. Cyrus Capital disclosed an activist position that contains around 10.51 million shares of the company, which represent 24.4% of the outstanding common stock. Cyrus has also been a shareholder of Virgin America when the company went private and held 778,726 shares, representing 39.9% of the company prior to the IPO.

Virgin America Inc (NASDAQ:VA) started trading on NASDAQ stock market on Monday, November 17 and it was well received by the market, as its stock gained around 19% since the IPO. The company offered for sale around 13.34 million shares at a price of $23.00 per unit, out of which Virgin America offered around 13.11 million shares and the rest were offered by VX Employee Holdings, a Virgin America employee stock ownership vehicle. Moreover, several investors, including Cyrus Capital offered around 2.0 million shares as over-allotment options.

Virgin America Inc (NASDAQ:VA) is a $1.5 billion US-based airline that was founded in 2007 by the famous British entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson. The company reported a net profit of $56.24 million for the first nine months of 2014, versus a loss of $4.04 million for the same period of last year. Moreover, its revenues went up to $1.12 billion for the first nine months from $1.06 billion a year ago.

Aside from Cyrus, which is one of the largest shareholders of Virgin America Inc (NASDAQ:VA), among other investors is also VX Holdings LP, which held around 9.48 million common shares after the IPO, which represent 24.8% of the company and PAR Investment Partners, with 2.31 million shares, equal to 6.5% of Virgin America’s common stock.

We should see how Virgin America Inc (NASDAQ:VA)’s stock will move in the next following weeks and if it will attract the attention of other big funds that will purchase long positions in the company. Meanwhile, among the funds that we track, Cyrus Capital is the only shareholder of Virgin America and the $373.60 million position is the largest in the fund’s equity portfolio. Cyrus is a fund focused on transportation stocks and aside from Virgin America it also owns shares of several other airline operators such as Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL), American Airlines Group Inc (NASDAQ:AAL), and JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ:JBLU).

Disclosure: none