#mstr Community Insights & Market Sentiment

Strategy spent $22.1 million buying Bitcoin last week and $193 million buying back its own preferred stock

In the same 8-K, filed on October 19 and covering October 12–18, are two figures that differ by 8.7x: $22.1 million spent buying Bitcoin, and $193.1 million spent repurchasing its own STRC preferred stock.

A lot of people think the company goes on a major buying spree every week. In fact, that week it bought just 267 coins at an average price of $82,900, including fees. Where did the money come from? Selling MSTR shares. It issued 140,872 shares that week, netting $22 million, then added $100,000 in cash to reach $22.1 million. It still had $18.786 billion in remaining issuance capacity, and used only a tiny fraction of it.

I made the chart using Binance daily data and the two cost figures in the filing; it’s not a screenshot from the announcement. The dotted line above, at $82,900, is the purchase price for that week. The dashed line below, at $75,446, is the average cost of its 848,517 coins, or $64.02 billion including fees. The current BTCUSDT price on Binance is $81,804.07 (October 22 at 22:26; that day’s candle hadn’t closed yet). At that price, the holdings are worth $69.41 billion—$5.39 billion above cost, or 8.42%.

The buyback is more interesting. It repurchased 1,938,780 shares of STRC for $193.1 million, or $99.60 per share. The par value is $100, but it bought the shares back below par. STRC is a floating-rate perpetual preferred stock. Its peers STRF, STRK, and STRD have coupon rates of 10%, 8%, and 10%, respectively. These dividends are hard costs and have nothing to do with the price of Bitcoin. That week, the board also raised the repurchase authorization for its digital credit securities from $2 billion to $3 billion, with $1.16 billion still unused.

In one week, 90% of the money went to the liability side and 10% to the asset side.

Buying back its own high-dividend preferred stock at a 0.4% discount means trimming the dividends it has to pay each year, while also easing maturity pressure. That’s my interpretation of the numbers; the filing doesn’t state the motivation, so it’s speculation. To confirm it, we’ll need to see whether it keeps doing this over the next few weeks. Everything above comes from the filing; the speculation is only in this paragraph.

There’s one thing this filing can’t answer: whether this marks a change in direction. One week’s numbers aren’t enough to establish a trend. I didn’t go back and check how much it bought in earlier weeks, so I’m only discussing this one week.

Don’t treat the $5.39 billion in unrealized gains as cash, either. That figure is based on Binance’s current price, not the fair value reported in its financial statements, and doesn’t account for preferred stock dividends or taxes. The $75,446 average price is the filing’s “total cost including fees divided by holdings.” I used it to calculate the difference, which means fees are included in the cost basis and the return is slightly understated.

The next 8-K will cover October 19–25. Just watch two figures. If BTC Purchased rises above 1,000 coins again, that means it’s back to buying aggressively. If STRC repurchases exceed $100 million again, it’s still defending the credit side. If both figures fall, this week’s activity was a one-off.

Sources:
8-K filing https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1050446/000119312526424688/mstr-20261019.htm
Market data https://api.binance.com/api/v3/klines?symbol=BTCUSDT&interval=1d&limit=150

$BTC $MSTR
#BTC #MSTR #EarningsChart

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