Strategy buys 250 bitcoin for $21.5 million, while $192.4 million went to buying back its STRC preferred

Strategy Inc reported on October 12 that it bought 250 bitcoin between October 5 and October 11 for $21.5 million, an average of $86,194 per coin. That lifts its total to 848,250 BTC, according to its press release filed with the SEC. The same filing shows it repurchased 1,932,145 shares of its STRC preferred stock for $192.4 million in the same week.

The number behind the number

The preferred buyback was 8.9 times the size of the bitcoin purchase. At $192.4 million for 1,932,145 shares, the average repurchase price works out to about $99.58 a share, close to the $100 par value the stock is meant to trade around. We worked that figure out ourselves from the two numbers in the filing.

Where the money came from also matters. Strategy sold 125,183 shares of its common stock (MSTR) for $21.0 million in net proceeds, and the filing says that money funded the bitcoin. The other $0.5 million of the purchase came from its USD cash balance. In other words, last week's coins were paid for almost entirely by common stock sales, and the preferred buyback was paid for from somewhere else, most plausibly its cash and USD reserve, though the filing does not itemize that.

As of October 11 the company held a USD reserve of $4.88 billion, set aside for preferred dividends and interest, and $640.5 million of separate USD cash. It also said $354.8 million remains available under its preferred repurchase program.

What it does to the cost basis

The 848,250 coins cost $64.00 billion in total, an average of $75,444 each. Bitcoin traded at $83,366 on Coinbase at about 9:30 AM ET on October 13, so the position is worth roughly $70.7 billion, about 10.5% above cost. The week's purchases were made at $86,194, above the current price, so they are slightly underwater.

How to read this

A 250-coin week is small against 848,250 coins: it adds about 0.03% to the stack. The more informative number is the preferred buyback, which shows the company currently treats defending its preferred stock near par as a bigger use of cash than adding bitcoin. We covered the same pattern earlier, in Strategy buys 950 bitcoin, but spent more on preferred buybacks. Whether that is a deliberate priority or a response to where the preferred is trading is a question the filing does not answer, and we would not guess.

For anyone tracking corporate demand for bitcoin, the practical point is that "Strategy bought" and "Strategy bought a meaningful amount" are different statements. The weekly 8-K lists both the coins and the preferred repurchases, and the second line has been the larger one in recent weeks.

See live prices on our crypto prices page.

Sources: Strategy Inc press release, Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K (SEC EDGAR); Strategy Form 8-K; Coinbase Exchange BTC-USD stats. Information, not investment advice.