Strategy Spends $176M on STRC Buybacks and Buys No Bitcoin

Strategy bought back 1,810,885 of its STRC preferred shares last week for $176.3 million and left its bitcoin alone. The board also doubled the authorization behind those purchases, from $1 billion to $2 billion. Both items sit in an 8-K covering 31 August to 7 September, filed on Tuesday. Holdings stayed at 845,050 bitcoin, bought for $63.73 billion at an average of $75,412 a coin. The money came out of cash, because the company sold no shares at all in the period.

"Strategy did not sell any shares under its at-the-market offering program and did not purchase or sell any bitcoin," the filing said of the week.

What STRC is and why par matters

STRC is a perpetual preferred share with a stated amount of $100 and an annualized dividend rate now at 12%. Perpetual means there is no maturity date, so the dividend is meant to run indefinitely. It has been trading under that $100 all summer. CoinDesk says it has not been back to par since mid-May, an account no other outlet in this sweep carries. Four outlets priced it across Monday and Tuesday and no two printed the same number: $97.70 in premarket trading at Cointelegraph, $98.04 for 8 September at crypto.news, about $98 at CoinDesk, and $97 to $98 at CryptoSlate. Those are snapshots taken at different moments of one day. They agree on the direction and they do not reconcile as a price.

The cash that paid for it

The filing puts the USD Reserve at $5.10 billion and USD Cash at $1.44 billion, both as of 7 September. Those are separate pots. The reserve is held against preferred dividends and debt service; the cash is what it can spend elsewhere. The $176.3 million came out of the second one. Strategy had already stopped buying bitcoin once this year to build that reserve, and this pause has a different destination.

The same filing says $1.19 billion of the enlarged $2 billion authorization remained available on 7 September, which leaves roughly $810 million drawn against the program to date. CryptoSlate puts the running total at approximately $811.5 million and describes the weekly purchases climbing from $25 million in the first week to this one, reversing an original plan to taper as the discount closed. That account stands alone in this sweep. The arithmetic in the filing sits within rounding of it.

One filing, two totals

Cointelegraph gives the aggregate purchase price of the bitcoin as $63.6 billion. The filing and crypto.news both say $63.73 billion. Both accounts use the same 845,050 coins and the same $75,412 average, and that multiplication produces the higher figure. The two do not reconcile, and only one of them has a document behind it. Market value is a separate number again. The Block put the stack at $66.1 billion and above 4% of bitcoin's 21 million supply cap, which no other outlet in this sweep carries.

The common stock had a worse day

MSTR fell 4.40% on Tuesday to close at $136.52, on crypto.news. Cointelegraph, writing while the session was still open, had it down more than 3%. Those two describe the same day and they do not reconcile; the closing figure is the firmer one. The Block, measuring the week before, says the stock gained 6.6% and finished Friday at $142.80. CoinDesk has MSTR down 12% for the year to date and The Block has it down 56.7% over twelve months. Different windows, both as published. The company has spent much of the year working the other side of its balance sheet, including a stretch when it sold 1,690 bitcoin below cost to fund payouts.

Questions the 8-K does not answer

It sets no date for bitcoin buying to resume. The STRC dividend rate for the coming month is not in it. Nor is any word on whether the doubled authorization is a ceiling Strategy means to reach. What the document does establish is the order of priorities for one week in September. Cash went to the preferred, and the coin count did not move.