(Bloomberg) — Just two months ago, shares of Jasmine Technology Solutions PCL were climbing higher in the global communications equipment sector after a massive surge catalyzed by the Thai firm’s plan to embrace bitcoin mining.
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Now the picture is completely different. The cryptocurrency route has led the stock to drop nearly 80% since its April peak, plunging nearly $10 billion from its market cap and pinning the firm to the bottom of the conglomerate.
The reversal for a company that was formerly one of the most valuable in Thailand is an extreme example of how the crypto shakeout is bleeding into more traditional markets. It is also a warning about the risks that come with trying to ride the volatile and speculative digital-asset wave.
Jasmine Technology Solutions delivered an aggregate return of over 3,000% in the 12 months to April 2022, when its shares hit a record low. It led the communications equipment sector to companies worth at least $1 billion. The stock’s 77% decline since then has sent it to the bottom of the sector, which also includes global giants Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
Jasmine Technology Solutions said in a statement that it continues to mine bitcoin and generate revenue from operations such as data centers and cloud computing. Its mining revenue from January to March was 25.2 million baht ($711,425), a fraction of its total sales of 511 million baht, the filing shows.
The firm has said that it plans to invest around 3.3 billion baht to become one of the world’s top bitcoin miners. Thai regulators previously imposed trading restrictions on the stock and asked investors to examine its mining strategy.
“We just don’t like anything that has no fundamentals to support”, Vikas Kawatra and Jason York, analysts at Yunta Securities (Thailand) PCL, wrote in a note on June 15, adding that they The reason for the jump in the share-price was skeptical. By the apparent change in crypto mining.
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