Nancy Pelosi. Photo: John Harrington / Office of the Speaker, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Key points
- Bloom Energy joins the S&P 500 on September 21
- It replaces Molson Coors, about a tenth its size
- Pelosi's household bought Bloom shares in late July
S&P Dow Jones Indices published its quarterly index changes on Friday. Bloom Energy (BE) is going into the S&P 500, and I'd read that ticker two weeks ago in a congressional filing.
The change takes effect before trading opens on Monday, September 21. Bloom replaces Molson Coors (TAP), and the size gap between them is wide now. Bloom's market value is about 74 billion dollars against 7 billion for Molson Coors. S&P said the moves "ensure that each index is more representative of its market capitalization range." Illumina (ILMN) and Everpure go in the same day, replacing Builders FirstSource and The Trade Desk.
Joining the index brings some buying with it. Funds that hold every name in the S&P 500 have to add a new member, and funds that track the index in other ways adjust by varying amounts, so the size and timing of that demand differ from fund to fund. Some of it tends to arrive before the effective date, because that's the deadline the trackers work to. It doesn't guarantee the stock rises in the meantime.
Bloom rose 7.4 percent on Friday to close at $252.87, ahead of the announcement. It traded at $266.18 after hours, once the news was out.
Where the Pelosi position stands
We wrote about the Bloom purchase on August 24th, when the disclosure itself was the news. The filing is a periodic transaction report signed August 21st. Every Bloom line on it carries the owner code SP, which means they're her husband Paul's trades. House rules require her to report them.
Across two days the household bought 10,000 Bloom shares and 100 call options on July 24th, then added 5,000 shares and another 100 calls on July 28th. July 24th was a bad day for the stock: Bloom fell about 15 percent to close at $184.89, and by July 28th it had dropped again to close at $166.84. Both closes sit well below where the stock trades now.
A call option is a contract to buy stock later at a set price. Both lots strike at $100 and run to June 2027, so with Bloom above $250 those calls are more than $150 per share in the money. Whether they turn a profit depends on the premium paid for them. The filing reports each options purchase in a dollar range, without disclosing the premium per contract.
Pelosi retires when her term ends on January 3, 2027. In July the House passed a bill barring members, their spouses and their dependent children from buying individual stocks, and the Senate has it now.
What the filing tells you, and where it stops
There's one more piece of context in the stock chart. Bloom closed Friday 28 percent below the $351.28 it reached on June 25th, so a name that's done well since late July has had a rougher stretch inside the same year.
House disclosures report a value range. The four Bloom lines land somewhere between $3,000,004 and $12,000,000, and the filing stops there. It also leaves out the prices paid on both the shares and the options, so any estimate of the position's current gain is built from where the stock traded on those two dates.
More on the Congress tracker, Bloom's BE page, and whether copying these filings actually works.
