In a move that caused double takes on Wall Street trading floors and prompted comments on Twitter about how this must be the top of bitcoin mania, a little known micro-cap stock called Long Island Iced Tea Corp said Thursday it’s now “Long Blockchain Corp,” and its stock leaped more than 200 percent at the open of trading.
The Farmingdale, New York-based beverage maker said in a release it is “shifting its primary corporate focus towards the exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology.”
The company, however, is still going to make iced tea and other juice beverages, it said. As of Wednesday, it had a market value of just $23.8 million. In the 12 months ending in September, the company had about $5 million in sales, according to FactSet.
Even though it’s named after the popular mixed alcoholic drink it appears the company sells non-alcoholic iced teas, according to its website.
A 450-percent gain, where it traded at one point in the premarket, for 9.76 million outstanding shares, according to FactSet, would still give the company a market value of just about $138 million, tiny by Wall Street standards.
The company said it “intends to request Nasdaq to change its trading symbol in connection with the name change” and has already reserved the web domain “www.longblockchain.com.”
Nasdaq and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment. The company did not immediately return a call for comment.
This is just the latest in a line of companies making questionable moves to ride the euphoria surrounding bitcoin and the blockchain technology backing it. Most of these moves, if not all, involve risky, small stocks that have little volume and fly under the radar of the typical investor…for good reason.
Amazingly, this is already the second case of a company that sells beverages to see a pop in value because of speculation surrounding bitcoin.
