Beverage maker Long Island Iced Tea has renamed itself Long Blockchain Corp to re-focus its business on blockchain technologies and crypto currencies.
After announcing the re-brand, the company's shares rose by a whopping 300% as investors backed the opportunity. Although it's quite a shift for a company used to making lemonade and other soft drinks, it seems to have made a big impact on speculators, with its market capitalisation rising from $23.8 million up to $92 million.
However, at the moment, Long Blockchain Corp doesn't have any agreements with other blockchain businesses, nor does it really seem to have any plans to get into the blockchain industry.
As a result of the change, the company has also cancelled its plans to sell shares, which it was going to do to recoup losses after merging with Cullen Agricultural Holding Corp. back in 2015.
Long Island Ice Tea joins a whole raft of other companies moving their focus to fintech from non-tech-related businesses, including other drink-makers (SkyPeople Fruit Juice, Ping Shan Tea Group Limited), e-cigarette creators (Vapetek), sports bra manufacturers (Croe Inc.) and sofa retailers (Nova LifeStyle). Each of these companies' shares have experienced a significant boost after changing their name and announcing their shift.
"It's so reminiscent of what happened in the late 1990s," Scott Nations, author of A History of the United States in Five Crashes,' told Bloomberg. "A company that had nothing to do with the internet would put out a press release that they were going to become an internet company now, and the same sort of thing would happen."
