Michael Saylor’s Strategy bought 811 bitcoin for $65.5 million last week. For every dollar it put into Bitcoin, it spent about $3.18 buying back STRC, the preferred stock it sells to investors seeking dividend income. The purchases, disclosed Monday, brought Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings to 849,327 BTC as of November 1.
The company was buying one kind of Strategy stock while selling another. Between October 26 and November 1, it sold about 1.18 million shares of MSTR, its common stock, raising $164 million after expenses. Of that, $65.5 million paid for the Bitcoin and $98.5 million went into cash. Separately, Strategy used cash to buy back approximately 2.09 million STRC shares. Strategy’s November 2 filing.
Post from @StrategyView the original post on X↗
Why buy back the dividend-paying shares?
MSTR and STRC give investors different stakes in the same company. Selling MSTR brings in fresh cash and spreads common shareholders’ ownership across more shares. STRC carries a variable dividend. Buying those shares back uses cash today and reduces the number of shares on which Strategy may pay dividends in the future.
This was the second straight week Strategy spent about $200 million on STRC. The previous week, it repurchased $204.9 million of the preferred stock and bought no Bitcoin. Across the two weeks, that adds up to $413.1 million in buybacks. The timing matters for STRC holders because their dividends began accruing daily on November 1, including weekends and holidays. Strategy’s quarterly results.
For investors following the weekly Bitcoin tally, there’s a second number worth tracking. Strategy ended the week with $4.79 billion in its U.S. dollar reserve, which it maintains for preferred dividends and debt interest. It drew $43.4 million from that reserve to pay preferred shareholders during the week. That’s the cash side of a business whose best-known asset pays no dividend of its own.
Moonshots wants Saylor’s answer to Chamath
On the October 21 episode of Moonshots, Chamath Palihapitiya predicted that Bitcoin would eventually be hacked and its value would fall to zero. A week later, host Peter Diamandis told listeners he had contacted Saylor, Strategy’s executive chairman, to hear the other side. Blockster’s coverage of Chamath’s remarks.
“I reached out to Michael Saylor to have him come back and address Chamath’s point on Bitcoin.”
— Peter Diamandis, host of Moonshots, October 28
Diamandis described an invitation. He didn’t announce a booking or an air date. Saylor has already offered a clue to how he might approach the question. In an October 28 post on X, he drew a distinction between an attacker compromising a crypto app and an attacker compromising Bitcoin itself. He compared it to the difference between hacking a messaging app and breaking the language people use to communicate through it.
Post from @saylorView the original post on X↗
For shareholders, the immediate question is where Strategy puts its next dollar. Last week it paid an average of $80,846 per bitcoin to expand its holdings, while committing more than three times as much cash to buying back preferred stock. Following both figures gives investors a clearer view of what they own: a growing Bitcoin treasury and a company that needs dollars to finance it.
Reporting by Eric Spivak
