Michael Saylor, chairman of MicroStrategy, speaks at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, US, on Friday, July 26, 2024. The conference is an annual event organized by BTC Media LLC for fans of the original cryptocurrency. Photographer: Liam Kennedy/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, said it’s almost halfway to its ambitious capital raising goal as it went on a buying spree throughout the postelection rally.
The company formerly known as MicroStrategy said since the end of the third quarter it has acquired 218,887 bitcoins for $20.5 billion. Strategy currently holds 471,107 bitcoins on its balance sheet, about 2% of the total supply.
“We have completed $20 billion of our $42 billion capital plan, significantly ahead of our initial timelines, while leading the digital transformation of capital in the financial markets. Looking ahead to the rest of 2025, we are well-positioned to further enhance shareholder value by leveraging the strong support from institutional and retail investors for our strategic plan,” said Phong Le, president and CEO of the company, said in its fourth-quarter financial release.
Shares of Strategy were little changed in extended trading. Earlier Wednesday, it unveiled its new name and logo, which it said was aimed at underscoring its focus on bitcoin.
In its last financial update, Strategy revealed a plan to issue $42 billion in securities between 2025 and 2027. As cryptocurrencies rallied after the election, the firm piled aggressively into bitcoin on a weekly basis even as the coin hit record after record – making some investors wonder if the plan had been pulled forward.
MicroStrategy shares were little changed in extended trading after the company released its Q4 financial update.
New metrics to watch
The company finished the year with an annual BTC yield of 74.3%. It has raised its annual target for BTC yield in each of the next three years to 15% from a range of 6% to 8%.
BTC Yield is meant to measure the performance of the firm’s bitcoin acquisition strategy; specifically, the percent change from one period to another in the amount of bitcoin it owns per Strategy share. Strategy introduced the metric in August, during its second-quarter earnings update.
The company reached a BTC yield of 2.9% in the fourth quarter, compared with 5.1% in the third quarter.
Strategy also introduced some new metrics to gauge its future performance. The first, BTC Gain, is the number of bitcoins the company has at the beginning of a period multiplied by the BTC Yield for the period. The second, BTC $Gain, takes the BTC Gain metric and translates its value into dollars based on the market price of bitcoin as 4 p.m. ET on the last day of the quarter, using the Coinbase exchange.
Strategy said it achieved a BTC Gain of 140,538 in 2024, and is targeting a BTC $Gain of $10 billion for 2025.
The company famously embarked on an aggressive bitcoin-buying strategy in 2020, and it now drives the company’s valuation. In the past year, it’s become more aggressive in its approach, raising billions of dollars through the sale of convertible bonds for the sole purpose of buying more bitcoin. Along the way, the bitcoin proxy’s gained a fan base of retail investors, grown its market value and landed a place in the Nasdaq-100.
While most investors will focus on the company’s bitcoin assets, it does report earnings for its legacy software business. Those operations posted a fourth-quarter loss of $670.8 million, or $3.03 per share, compared with earnings of $89.1 million, or 58 cents per share, a year ago.
Revenue slipped 3% to $120.7 million from $124.5 million a year ago. Sales of subscription services and product licenses units grew at the software business, offset by declines in product support and other revenue.
