Strategy Asks Holders to Vote on Daily Dividends for Four Preferreds

Strategy wants to pay its preferred shareholders every day. The company filed a preliminary proxy statement on Friday asking common stockholders to amend four classes of perpetual preferred stock, STRC, STRD, STRF and STRK, so that every calendar day becomes a dividend record date and each day's accrual is paid out on the next business day. The board approved the amendments on Thursday and disclosed them in an 8-K the same day. Rates do not change and neither does the annual total. Only the timing moves. Shareholders vote on 28 October.

Three or four cents a day

STRC is a variable-rate perpetual preferred share with a stated amount of $100 and an annualized rate now at 12%. Perpetual means there is no maturity date, so the dividend is meant to run indefinitely. It has paid semi-monthly since June, while STRF, STRD and STRK pay quarterly. All four would accrue daily under the proposal, with payment skipped on weekends and on days the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is shut. Unchained works the arithmetic through: at 12%, a $100 share earns three or four cents a day. It also puts $9.3 billion of STRC outstanding, a figure no other account in this sweep carries.

The price the change is aimed at

STRC has traded under its $100 stated amount since May, CoinDesk writes, and no other outlet says so. The Block has it closing Thursday at $98.31, down 0.6%, and CoinDesk, writing Friday, puts it near $98.65. The June low is where the accounts part. CoinDesk says $71, The Block says below $75, and they do not reconcile.

Buybacks have been running alongside. CoinDesk counts $174 million of STRC repurchased in the week ended 20 September, and this desk reported the company spending $176.3 million on the same shares in the week to 7 September while buying no bitcoin. How much is authorized is disputed too: CoinDesk describes a programme of about $1 billion, Unchained and The Block both say $2 billion, and the early-September filing this desk read had the board doubling the figure from the first to the second. Unchained puts recent repurchases around $97 a share.

Only the common stock votes

The amendments pass if holders of more than half the voting power approve them, and on Unchained's reading the preferred classes do not vote at all. Michael Saylor controls 32.9% of that voting power, mostly through Class B shares carrying ten votes each. Both details come from Unchained alone. The precedent runs the other way on participation: when STRC moved to semi-monthly payments in June, The Crypto Times reports 97.5% approval from STRC holders alongside 99.9% from common holders. That vote included the preferred class. This one, as described, does not. No outlet notes the difference.

Whether anyone else does this

The Crypto Times says no company pays preferred dividends this way. CoinDesk, the same day, writes that Strive's SATA preferred pays every business day at a 13% annual rate and trades near $100. Daily calendar-day accrual and every-business-day payment are not the same mechanic, and neither outlet answers the other.

"Strengthening our preferred securities would create a competitive advantage," the company said in the filing.

Saylor said the changes aim to support price stability, liquidity and demand. The four classes are what Strategy calls its Digital Credit platform, and they fund a bitcoin position CoinDesk puts at 846,000 coins bought for $63.80 billion, an average of $75,416 each, as of Monday. That position produced an $8.2 billion second-quarter loss on paper when the price went the wrong way.

The dates sit close together and are not reported identically. Unchained has voting opening on 5 October, while The Crypto Times expects the definitive proxy that day. STRC's last semi-monthly record date would fall on 15 October and its first daily one on 1 November, with CoinDesk giving 2 November for the first payment. The other three classes stay quarterly through 15 December and turn daily on 4 January. Nothing in the filing says what follows if the shares stay under $100 anyway.