A conservative investment fund reported it has sold its shares in Target and has slapped the retailer with a "refuse to buy" label over its Pride Month collection.
American Conservative Values ETF said in a news release Thursday that Target's "ever-increasing pandering to the Woke LGBT agenda has backfired and its management team's inept response to a crisis of their own making has significantly damaged their brand across the political spectrum."
As part of its Pride Month collection, Target had transgender "tuck-friendly" bathing suits seemingly designed for children. As outrage over the Pride products grew, Target released a statement Wednesday saying it will be "removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior," adding it was doing so because of "threats impacting our team members' sense of safety and well-being while at work."
American Conservative Values said it believes Target's long-term stock performance will suffer and that its actions prove its hostility toward conservative values. Target's stock was $160.96 a share on May 17 but plummeted to $137.21 a share, nearly a 52-week low, by Friday morning, a drop of 14.7%.
The stock rallied to close at $138.93. Target's market capitalization has plunged $10 billion since May 17, when it was $74.29 billion. It ended Friday at $64.12 billion.
"What's important is that I see my job as educating politically conservative investors that we have the power to respond to something like this," American Conservative Values CEO William Flaig told Newsmax on Friday.
Flaig said the investment fund, which started in October 2020, had 777 shares in Target, about 0.28% of the funds' assets. He said the company once had shares in Coca-Cola and Delta but sold them after the companies' CEOs criticized Georgia for passing voting reform legislation in April 2021. He said the fund has never owned shares in Disney "and [we] are happy as can be."
"We're trying to respond to conversations going on in the conservative communities," Flaig said.