Blue Star Capital PLC (LON:BLU) Chief Executive Officer Anthony Fabrizi caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their re-investment in SatoshiPay
Q1: Now Tony, you’ve announced this morning that FastForward no longer have an interest in the ordinary shares of the company, can you share your thoughts with us regarding the reason for the FastForward stake change?
A1: Yes, as you will be aware, some weeks ago Blue Star Capital issued shares in itself to acquire another 10% of SatoshiPay and FastForward bought those shares, or took those shares for their stake, and we arranged at that time a lock-in period of 9 months and an orderly dispose of those shares every quarter. Our view, as a Board, was that the arrangement in place while we felt they were in the best interest at the time actually led to a slightly depressed share price and from the levels we expected, post the SatoshiPay announcement. So, I think it was in our interest and our shareholders interest to try and place that stock out earlier rather than leave that 9-month period of overhang and I’m delighted to say that was all completed yesterday and we now have a number of new shareholders and FastForward no longer had a shareholding in Blue Star Capital.
Q2: Are there any plans for Blue Star capital to buy more shares in SatoshiPay?
A2: Well, Blue Star Capital have 3 investments and SatoshiPay, now in terms of value, is nearly our largest so our shareholding in DTL is still larger in value. We’ve bought into SatoshiPay over the last 3 months so obviously, you can gather from that that we like the stock and we like the story. We’re a small company, as you know, so there is a limit on how much we can buy and I think having bought 20% in a relatively short period of time we’d like now to see some progress in the company before we increase our stake further, that’d be wise. Longer term, we believe that SatoshiPay has extremely good potential and certainly, at a later date, we certainly might be interested in buying more.
Q3: Talking of progress, how are SatoshiPay doing? Can you update us there?
A3: Yes, I speak to the management on a very regular basis. They are making good progress, the key development that we’re waiting for is for an ability to take credit cards and PayPal onto clients of SatoshiPay so they can actually use those payment methods rather than having to use bitcoins. Obviously, bitcoins are still not widely used, a lot of people obviously are concerned about using such instruments and also their value’s very high so it does limit the market. Once you get down to being able to deposit £10 through your credit card or your PayPal account, the market is completely different and I think that’s a major development for the company. So, we’re waiting for that, that’s been progressing very well over the last 6 months, they did a trial with Visa Collab which went very well so we’re very hopeful we’re have some news on that and I think that will be a game-changer for the company.
