Strategy repurchases $176 million of STRC shares and makes no bitcoin purchases or sales

Strategy repurchased 1.81 million STRC preferred shares for around $176.3 million last week. Strategy made no bitcoin purchases or sales during the week. An 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said Strategy's bitcoin holdings remained at 845,050 BTC. The holdings were valued at $66.1 billion. The holdings represented more than 4% of bitcoin's 21 million supply cap. They implied around $2.4 billion in paper gains at current prices. Strategy increased its digital credit securities repurchase program to $2 billion from $1 billion. The firm funded the repurchases through its USD Cash reserve. As of Sept. 7, the USD Reserve balance was $5.10 billion. The USD Cash balance was $1.44 billion. Strategy CEO Phong Le said the company’s sale of roughly 7,000 BTC at $60,000-$65,000 was the right trade at the time to fund preferred dividends. Strategy paused bitcoin purchases for about 10 weeks after the sale. Le said Strategy reduced net debt from roughly $7 billion to zero. Le said Strategy built about $7 billion in total cash reserves. Strategy acquired 4,603 BTC for approximately $369.7 million between Aug. 24 and Aug. 30. The average price was $80,318 per bitcoin. Le said selling MSTR at a premium to buy bitcoin was the right trade at that point. Strategy called MSCI's proposal to exclude certain non-operating asset companies from its global investable market indexes a disguised effort to remove digital asset treasury firms from the indexes. A letter signed by Michael Saylor and Le said the consultation was discriminatory, arbitrary, and misguided. The letter called for the proposal to be withdrawn. Strategy said adoption of the proposal would have no meaningful impact on its business. Strategy said adoption would harm MSCI's reputation as a reliable and neutral index provider. Bitcoin Treasuries data said 197 public companies had adopted some form of bitcoin acquisition model. Tether-backed Twenty One held 43,514 BTC. Metaplanet held 43,000 BTC. MARA held 35,577 BTC. Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company held 30,021 BTC. Strategy's stock gained 6.6% overall last week. It closed Friday at $142.80. The stock was down 7.6% year to date. It was down 56.7% over the past year. Bitcoin rose 1.8% during the same period.