21Shares courts retail with 3-for-1 Bitcoin ETF stock split

The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) will undergo a 3-for-1 share split later this month as the fund’s issuer, 21Shares, says it is looking to boost its appeal to retail investors.

The stock split is slated for June 16 and is designed to “make shares more accessible to a broader base of investors and enhance trading efficiency,” 21Shares said on June 2.

The exchange-traded fund’s (ETF) investment strategy aiming to track the price of Bitcoin (BTC) won’t change, and its Bitcoin holdings will remain identical, 21Shares said. It added that the ETF will continue trading as usual, and the total net asset value of the fund will also remain unchanged.

A stock split is when a company divides its existing shares into multiple new shares. In a 3-for-1 split, each share becomes three, but the total value remains the same.

Some investors may feel priced out when asset or share prices rise, which can dissuade them from buying certain stocks. This leads some companies or ETF issuers to split their stock and lower the price per share, making it more affordable to retail investors, even though the underlying value is unchanged.

ARKB closed June 2 trading at $104.25 a share, meaning if a stock split happened now, one share would be priced at a third of the current value at just under $35.

*ARKB stock split details. Source: ARK 21Shares*

The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, a joint offering between 21Shares and investment manager ARK Invest, has recently been the worst-performing fund in terms of flows out of the 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US.

It has seen six consecutive trading days of outflows totalling $430 million. That trend didn’t change on June 2, when $74 million left the product, according to CoinGlass.

However, it is the third-largest fund in terms of total aggregate inflows with $2.37 billion, trailing similar ETFs from BlackRock and Fidelity.

ARKB currently has $4.8 billion in assets under management with a year-to-date return of 7.35%.

Bitcoin ETFs outflows increase

Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US have reversed a trend of inflows, with an aggregate net outflow of $1.2 billion over the past three trading days, according to CoinGlass.

The outflows accelerated as Bitcoin prices dropped 4% in a fall from over $108,000 to just below $104,000 on June 2.

Glassnode reported that last week’s inflow of more than 6,100 BTC marked the seventh consecutive week of net inflows, “highlighting consistent demand despite cooling momentum.”