Tea company's shares rocket after adding the word "blockchain" to its name

Moribund tea maker sees shares leap almost 300 per cent purely by adding "blockchain" to its name

Drinks company Long Island Iced Tea Corporation saw its stock price rocket yesterday after announcing plans to change its name to "Long Blockchain".

The company added that the name change reflected plans to develop blockchain-based products and services as well as tea - but indicated that it didn't have any ready at the moment.

When the company announced the name-change yesterday, shares rocketed by 289 per cent, from $2.45 to $9.49, before falling back below $7.

The New York-based company claimed that the rebranding reflected changing innovation being implemented in its daily operations.

"Long Island Iced Tea Corp. today announced that the parent company is shifting its primary corporate focus towards the exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology," said the firm.

"In connection with the shift in strategic direction, the Company has approved changing its name from Long Island Iced Tea Corp to 'Long Blockchain Corp' and has reserved the web domain www.longblockchain.com."

It added that it also planned to change its ticker symbol to reflect the changed name.

It continued: "The company will continue to operate Long Island Brand Beverages, LLC as a wholly-owned subsidiary and maintain the focus of this business on the ready-to-drink segment of the beverage industry."

Cynics have suggested that the company is simply integrating the word "blockchain" into its name in a bid to boost its flagging stock price - perhaps because executives have share options to exercise?

Either way, the strategy has so far worked.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Scott Nations, author of the book A History of the United States in Five Crashes, said: "It's so reminiscent of what happened in the late 1990s: 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."