The strategy update announced this morning from Argo Blockchain contains no surprises to us. To continue to offer the MaaS (Mining as a Service as coined) in the face of the hurricane force winds that the crypto currency market has been experiencing this last 12 months made no sense. As we have suspected for some time, management have adjusted their strategy to address the current backdrop and are, for the moment, mining for itself. We however believe this to be merely a temporary cash preservation move with more material events around the corner. We believe management are either waiting for a return to an environment within the crypto space that does make this original business plan profitable or, more likely, will look to explore the potential for a transformative acquisition/reverse in the tech space.

The key elements to us as large shareholders from this morns RNS are:

1. The market cap of just over £8m relative to the cash balance of £15m is one of the largest cash per share discounts we have seen for many a year in the market.

2. The net cash situation illustrates that as per the RNS of 4 December the burn rate is nominal/non existent now. With further cost cuts, management is now telegraphing there is a clean de facto “shell” here for a deal with no material liabilities.

We plan to press management to carry out a share buy back as clearly, reducing the share float at this point whilst the company can buy their own shares in for a large discount to cash is a total “no brainer” on many fronts. With ourselves and Hadron Capital tightening up the share float in recent days, the impact here could turn the stock around by 100%. From the prospectus, almost all the directors and founder remain on lock ins too and adviser warrants kick in from 8p (and share options not until 16p) so there is clear air to that level at least and an obvious incentive to try and get the stock price back to there.

The current price of ARB present, to us, a very unique opportunity to effectively buy a large cash shell at a 50% discount to cash pending a likely deal in the tech space. These circumstances are very rare hence our buying millions of shares in recent weeks and in fact  remaining ongoing buyers. Buy

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• Argo Blockchain