Clear Leisure makes good progress with investments

Clear Leisure updated the market on its investments on Monday, reporting that the court in Bologna had chosen to continue the company’s €1.03m (£0.91m) legal claim against the previous management of Sosushi through an arbitration process.

The AIM-traded firm said the process began on 18 January, with Clear Leisure notifying the chairman of the Monza Guild of Accountants, requesting to appoint three independent chartered accountants to preside over the arbitration process.

It said the process would conclude with a legally binding decision on the matter.

The board said it expected the arbitration process to be complete within one year of the appointment of independent accountants, adding that the company and its lawyers were confident with the strength of its case.

Looking at Mediapolis, Clear Leisure said that as part of the settlement agreement reached with the receiver, Clear Leisure 2017 Limited offered to buy the rights of a potential claim against former Mediapolis directors and members of its internal audit committee for €50,000.

The value of the claim was still to be assessed by the company’s legal team, but the receiver had originally estimated that it could be above €20m.

Clear Leisure confirmed that a mandatory public bidding process held in front of a notary in Turin had been completed, and the claim assigned to Clear Leisure 2017 Limited, with the assignment completed on 20 January.

The consideration of €50,000 would be deducted from the balance of €182,068, yet to be paid to the company, by the Mediapolis’ receiver following the sale of the Mediapolis land.

On its ForCrowd investment, as at 31 January, Clear Leisure said ForCrowd had sold 13.5 million of the 54.2 million ordinary shares in Clear Leisure it had received in consideration for its investment in ForCrowd.

It said that ForCrowd had now sold the balance of its holding of 40.7 million Clear Leisure shares, and had thus disposed of all the shares it received as part of the investment agreement in October 2019.

Under the original agreement between Clear Leisure and ForCrowd, the company was due to issue ForCrowd a further 19.7m Clear Leisure shares.

It said on Monday that, in light of the difficulties encountered so far by ForCrowd in fully launching its operations, particularly due to the Covid-19 outbreak, it was agreed that in lieu of issuing 19.7 million new Clear Leisure sares, the company would instead make a €20,000 payment to ForCrowd within the next six months.

Looking at Eufingest, Clear Leisure confirmed that all of that company’s outstanding loans and accrued interest, totalling €3.42m, had been converted into a new zero coupon bond with a maturity date of 15 December 2022, at a face value of €3.5m and an implicit yield to maturity of 1%.

Under the terms of the agreement, Eufingest was entitled to convert the new bond, partially or completely, into new Clear Leisure ordinary shares at a conversion price of 1p.

Additionally, the bond is secured against all of Clear Leisure 2017 Limited’s shares.

On top of the new bond, Eufingest also held €3m of the company’s €9.9m zero coupon bond, of which the total face value currently in issue was €4.8m.

Finally, on Miner One, Clear Leisure said that due to the increase in the price of cryptocurrencies, it was assessing the optimal cost of resuming extraction of cryptocurrencies at economic electricity prices, in the most cost efficient location and with up-to-date cryptocurrency mining hardware.

Clear Leisure said it was reviewing a proposal received from a third party which could be appointed to run the Bitcoin mine on behalf of its wholly-owned subsidiary Miner One.

“Despite the difficult operating environment consequent upon the Covid pandemic, we have managed to make progress with legal actions, as planned; have completed the restructuring of our debt and have continued to focus on every aspect of the investment portfolio,” said executive chairman and chief executive officer Francesco Gardin.

At 1258 GMT, shares in Clear Leisure were up 33.94% at 0.44p.