Last week, Samara´s portfolio company nextmarkets AG, has decided to liquidate its subsidiaries and other assets and is expected to subsequently propose liquidation at its Annual General Meeting. This step was inevitable, given the weakness in the brokerage space throughout FY22 and Q1´23, the challenging situation in the public capital market and the weakness of the financing markets.

According to last week´s statement, Samara owns 37.68% of nextmarkets and has invested roughly € 14.6m through deposit and loans. In prior years, Samara has already recognized € 5.2m of impairments. The remaining € 9.4m, consisting of € 5.7m in equity and € 3.7m in convertible loans. Since we estimated the unimpaired value of nextmarkets at only € 5.9m (eNuW: € 3.9 in equity and € 2.0m in convertible loans), the likely impairment for this year amounts to only 2% on the total NAV.

Samara´s overall portfolio hardly changed and is still dominated by the non-listed company Block.One (shares owned plus asset management upside), which contributes c. 85.2% to the total NAV. Northern Data remains the second biggest investment with c. 8.0% of the total NAV. The remaining five investments (all non-listed) contribute a combined 2.1%. 

In fact, the liquidation of Samara´s only non-crypto related asset nextmarkets is indirectly accelerating the company’s recently initiated strategic transition from a leading publicly traded Bitcoin and blockchain holding company to a deep-tech powered alternative asset management platform.

With the recent rebranding and the launch of SAM, management is once again showing its strong conviction that the future of finance lies in decentralization and democratization, empowered by Bitcoin. SAM is empowering the disenfranchised and forgotten investors by unlocking investment opportunities in crypto related hedge and venture funds for all investors.

On the back of the resilience of the crypto- and blockchain space during the last weeks, strategic transition of the company as well as the ongoing institutionalization of the overall blockchain and crypto space and crypto currencies, the NAV should have reached the bottom.

BUY with an unchanged PT of € 5.00 based on our SOTP.