(Alliance News) - Shares in Blue Star Capital PLC rose on Wednesday after the company issued conclusions from its portfolio review.
Shares in Blue Star were trading 5.3% higher at 0.15 pence each as the investment company focused on e-sports, payments and technology summarised its new policy.
Blue Star will sell non-core assets when the opportunities arise to concentrate on two core investments.
The first is its e-sports portfolio. The company will concentrate on two companies - Dynasty Gaming & Media PTE. Ltd and Guild Esports PLC - having initially made investments worth GBP900,000 into a portfolio of six early-stage companies in November 2019. Since then, the company has made two smaller investments worth GBP175,000.
Blue Star holds a 14% stake in Dynasty, having invested GBP895,000 in total. The current carrying value is around GBP4.6 million. Blue Star has a smaller stake in Guild and noted its disappointing share price performance since its IPO. However, it remains hopeful that "Guild's recent stronger performance will continue."
The company will be looking into the potential write-off of the remaining six of its smaller esports investments within the next financial statement. The portfolio has a combined value of GBP6.7 million when counting a sale of 1.5% of the Guild position and discounting the six other esports investments.
The second of the company's core investments is SatoshiPay Ltd. SatoshiPay enables cross-border money transfer and frictionless micropayments.
Blue Star has a 28% stake in SatoshiPay. It said that the current carrying valuation for SatoshiPay of approximately GBP4.8 million could "significantly understate its current market value". Based on this valuation and the investment to date of GBP1.8 million, the investment in SatoshiPay is showing an unrealised gain of approximately GBP3 million.
Although non-core due to the small size of the share holding, Blue Star Capital drew attention to Sthaler Ltd, a biometric identity and payments technology business. Blue Star believes "Sthaler is an excellent business with enormous potential"
Blue Star values its reduced portfolio at GBP11.9 million which is equivalent to an estimated NAV per share of approximately 0.24p.
"The board believes there is significant scope for this figure to materially increase over the next twelve to eighteen months. Accordingly, the board intends to focus its attention and resources on supporting its two core investee companies and does not anticipate making any new investments for the foreseeable future," Blue Star said.
By Chris Dorrell; chrisdorrell@alliancenews.com
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Blue Star (BLU)