Brera Stock Plunges Amid Growing Solana Pivot as 'Solmate' Firm Dumps Soccer Teams

In brief

• Shares of Brera Holdings (SLMT) have dumped more than 19% on Wednesday.
• The firm announced its intentions to shift focus to a UAE-centered Solana infrastructure firm late Tuesday.
• One of its largest institutional shareholders, Ark Invest, began offloading small portions of its holdings on Monday.

Shares of publicly traded Solana treasury firm Brera Holdings (SLMT), also known as Solmate, have plunged more than 19% so far Wednesday following a late Tuesday announcement that the company is shifting its strategic focus to being an Abu Dhabi-centered Solana infrastructure company.  The proposed shift, approved by the firm’s board of directors, will center its interests on “digital infrastructure” like institutional-grade staking and validating, while “aligning its legal structure with a core blockchain mission,” according to the announcement. “This transformation is the culmination of Brera’s strategic shift toward infrastructure opportunities we see in Abu Dhabi,” said Solmate CEO Marco Santori in a statement. “By focusing our capital and corporate identity on Solana, we are positioning ourselves to be a central player in the region’s rapidly expanding digital economy.”

As part of its repositioning, the firm will be dumping legacy business assets Brera Tchumene and Brera IIch, two soccer clubs participating in leagues in Mozambique and Mongolia, respectively. Capital “liberated” from those clubs, which it identified as “underperforming soccer teams,” will be utilized to implement its Solana strategy in the UAE. However, the firm will maintain its flagship soccer team, Juve Stabi, which plays in the second tier of professional soccer leagues in Italy.  Brera also intends to conduct a reverse 10-for-1 stock split with an effective date expected sometime after April 7, the day of a scheduled shareholder meeting seeking approval for its new initiative.  Shares in the firm were recently changing hands around $0.89, down over 19% on the day after dipping as low as $0.84. SLMT shares have dropped almost 35% in the last week of trading. During that time, one of its most notable shareholders—Cathie Wood’s investment firm, Ark Invest—began offloading shares of Brera for the first time.

Wood’s firm had been accumulating shares in the Solana company since December, creating a multi-million-dollar position in Brera, including a purchase as recent as last week. It also participated in the firm’s private investment in a public equity (PIPE), netting around 11.5% of the firm’s shares, according to a Brera announcement from the time.  However, Ark started trimming its position on Monday, selling around $76,000 worth of SLMT shares. On Tuesday, it trimmed nearly $54,000 worth of the stock as well, but it still maintains a nearly $10 million position in the firm, according to data from Cathie’s Ark.  Brera announced its intentions to shift to a Solana treasury strategy in September, raising $300 million via its PIPE. The firm also purchased $50 million in discounted Solana tokens directly from the Solana Foundation.