Brainspark

Ambitious investment minnow Brainspark is looking forward to the £25m Milan flotation of its key Italian leisure park holding Mediapolis.

Alfredo Villa, the Swiss-based fund manager who heads the AIM-quoted company, says Mediapolis could achieve a stockmarket tag of about £42m if the planned float goes ahead later this year, which would give it a value of some 120p a share for Brainspark, now trading at 103.5p.

According to Villa, Brainspark, whose portfolio includes 25% of potentially acquisitive UK stockbroker Daniel Stewart (where a board seat could be in the offing), is mooting two more deals in Italy, one in finance and one in leisure. The company, which slashed its loss last year from £2.3m to £202,000, is taking a newly activist role at Mediapolis and some of its other investments, though Villa says he is well content with the performance of Onderland, Italy's leading water theme park operator, and AIM-quoted Vyke Communications, which recently struck a deal with BLS TEL, a specialist in US and international mobile telecoms.

Villa says Brainspark, which also owns 29.9% of another AIM counter Indian Restaurants and has a big holding in Italian football club Ancona, might seek £2 to £3m later this year to increase its stakes in its more promising investments. But he insists the company, which has chiefly raised finance through convertible bonds, will go to the equity market only if its share price more fully reflects the value of these investments. 

Brainspark's strategy is to identify itself as a player in finance, leisure and telecoms, which might help investors rate its prospects. The shares, twice their 12-month low but half their year's high, clearly carry a risk of volatility, but, if the Mediapolis float goes well and Villa's other ploys look like paying off, they could reward a bold flutter.