Strategy Spent $1.1 Billion USD Buying Back Its Own Preferred. Its Bitcoin Pile Has Not Grown
Every Monday, Strategy Inc files a Form 8-K that tells you exactly what it did with its money the week before. Almost all of the coverage reads one line of it: how much Bitcoin it bought. Read the other lines for three months in a row and a different company appears.
Since the end of June, Strategy has spent $1.12 billion USD buying back its own 12% preferred stock and $445.4 million USD buying Bitcoin. It also sold Bitcoin, 6,916 coins of it, to fund preferred dividends and those same buybacks. Its Bitcoin holdings were 846,000 coins as of June 30 and 846,000 coins as of September 20. Twelve weeks, and the pile is exactly where it started.
Monday’s filing was the fourth week running with the same shape, and in Monday’s crypto recap we flagged the one-week version of it and declined to guess at why. Twelve weeks of filings give a better answer than one does.
What the filings actually show
Every figure in this table is quoted from the Form 8-K covering that period. Nothing is estimated.
| Period | MSTR shares issued, net proceeds | Bitcoin bought, or (sold) | STRC preferred bought back | Holdings, end |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 29 to Jun 30 | none | (1,363 BTC) for $80.8M | none | 846,000 |
| Jul 1 to Jul 5 | none | (2,225 BTC) for $135.2M | none | 843,775 |
| Jul 6 to Jul 12 | $466.7M | none | none | 843,775 |
| Jul 13 to Jul 19 | $263.5M | none | none | 843,775 |
| Jul 20 to Jul 26 | $544.5M | none | $25.0M | 843,775 |
| Jul 27 to Aug 2 | $290.6M | (1,638 BTC) for $104.7M | $81.2M | 842,138 |
| Aug 3 to Aug 9 | $653.1M | (1,690 BTC) for $108.6M | $108.6M | 840,447 |
| Aug 10 to Aug 16 | $333.7M | none | $132.2M | 840,447 |
| Aug 17 to Aug 23 | $2,006.5M | none | $136.4M | 840,447 |
| Aug 24 to Aug 30 | $602.8M | 4,603 BTC for $369.7M | $151.8M | 845,050 |
| Aug 31 to Sep 7 | none | none | $176.3M | 845,050 |
| Sep 8 to Sep 13 | none | none | $139.3M | 845,050 |
| Sep 14 to Sep 20 | none | 950 BTC for $75.7M | $174.0M | 846,000 |
All figures in US dollars. Source: Strategy Inc, Forms 8-K Item 8.01, filed between July 6 and September 21, 2026.
Source: Strategy Inc, Forms 8-K Item 8.01, filed 2026-07-06 through 2026-09-21.
Add the right-hand column up and Strategy has retired 11,732,792 shares of STRC for $1,124.8 million USD, at an average of $95.87 per share. Add the Bitcoin column and it bought 5,553 coins and sold 6,916, a net reduction of 1,363. The aggregate purchase price of the whole position went from $63.94 billion USD to $63.80 billion USD, and the average cost per coin barely moved, from $75,578 to $75,416.
The arithmetic behind the choice
STRC is not an ordinary preferred. Strategy’s filings state a $100 stated amount and a semi-monthly cash dividend of $0.50 a share, which the company’s own footnote confirms is a 12.00% per annum rate. That is $12.00 a year of cash out the door for every share outstanding.
So the trade is legible. Retiring 11,732,792 shares removes $140.8 million USD a year of dividend obligation, permanently, and it cost $1,124.8 million USD to do. Measured as cash saved against cash spent, that is 12.5% a year, and it does not depend on any asset going up.
Bitcoin has to beat that from a standing start. Strategy’s two purchases in this window went in at $80,318 and $79,670 a coin. For those to be the better use of the same dollar, Bitcoin has to compound faster than 12.5% a year, and it has to do so while the preferred dividend keeps draining cash in the meantime. On the filings’ own numbers, buying the preferred back below its $100 stated amount is the more defensible of the two.
There is a second benefit that matters more to anyone holding the common. Look at the top of that table again. Between late June and early August, Strategy sold 6,916 Bitcoin, at prices between $59,256 and $64,262, and the filings say plainly where the proceeds went: preferred distributions, the dollar reserve that funds them, and STRC buybacks. That is forced selling of the asset the company exists to hold, at prices well below today’s. Every share of preferred retired makes that scenario less likely next quarter. This is the part of the story that a coin count does not capture, and it is a useful reminder of what a preferred share actually is: not a claim on the upside, but a fixed claim that sits ahead of the common and has to be fed whether the asset cooperates or not. Our guide to what you actually own when you own a share draws that line in the abstract. Strategy is drawing it in cash.
The part that is not comfortable
The bull reading above is real, and it is incomplete.
The machine that funded all of this is currently switched off. Strategy sold $5.16 billion USD of common stock through its at-the-market program over these twelve weeks, including a single $2.01 billion USD week in late August. It has sold nothing in the three weekly periods covering August 31 to September 20.
Source: Strategy Inc, Forms 8-K Item 8.01, ATM Update tables, filed 2026-07-06 through 2026-09-21. Net proceeds are after sales commission.
Meanwhile the buybacks are being paid for out of the cash pile, and the filings show it shrinking every week: USD Cash was $1.59 billion as of August 23, $1.44 billion on September 7, $1.30 billion on September 13 and $1.05 billion on September 20. At the last four weeks’ average pace of roughly $160 million USD a week, that account funds about six more weeks of buying before something has to change, either the issuance restarts or the buying stops. The board raised the preferred repurchase authorization from $1.0 billion to $2.0 billion on September 8, and $875.1 million USD of it is still unused, so the intent to keep going is on the record. The cash to do it is the open question.
The three silent weeks are also hard to read, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. MSTR closed at $129.60 USD on September 15 and $168.50 USD on September 21, a 30.0% gain in four sessions. A company whose stock has just run 30% and which is not tapping its equity program is either exercising unusual discipline or was unable to move, and the filings do not say which. Next Monday’s 8-K will.
One more caveat on the 12.5% figure. It assumes STRC stays outstanding at 12% indefinitely. Strategy has said management will not recommend a change to that rate until STRC trades sustainably at or near its $100 stated amount. It closed Monday at $98.78, which is close. If the rate comes down, so does the return on retiring it, and the case for the preferred over the coin narrows with it.
Where Bitcoin itself sits
As of 7:05 a.m. ET on Tuesday September 22, 2026, Bitcoin (BTC) trades at $85,970.95 USD, or $120,542.92 CAD, down 0.72% over 24 hours after Monday’s run to an eight-month high. Ethereum (ETH) is at $2,743.59 USD, or $3,847.68 CAD, down 1.15%.
At that price Strategy’s 846,000 coins are worth $72.73 billion USD against the $63.80 billion USD paid, an unrealized gain of $8.93 billion, and Bitcoin sits 14.0% above the company’s average cost of $75,416. The position is comfortably above water. It has also stopped getting bigger, and for an investor who buys MSTR as a leveraged Bitcoin proxy, that second fact is the one the filings keep repeating.
Why this matters to a Canadian investor
Canada has its own listed Bitcoin treasury names, on the TSX and the TSXV, and they were all built from the same blueprint: raise equity, buy coins, repeat. Strategy is the biggest working example of what happens when that loop pauses, and the lesson transfers directly. The headline coin count tells you almost nothing on its own. What it cost, what was issued to get it, and what fixed claims sit ahead of you are the numbers that decide whether a share of the company is a better way to own Bitcoin than owning Bitcoin.
That is the question our ranking of Canadian crypto stocks on Bitcoin per share is built to answer, and it is worth re-running against whichever name you hold every time a filing lands. The filings are free, they are weekly, and almost nobody reads past the first line.
What we are watching
Next Monday’s 8-K settles two things at once: whether the at-the-market program restarted into MSTR’s 30% run, and whether the preferred buybacks continued into a cash account with roughly six weeks left in it at the current pace. Either answer tells you more about how this company is thinking than another week of coin counts.
Disclaimer
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. All company figures are taken from Strategy Inc’s Forms 8-K, Item 8.01, filed with the SEC between July 6 and September 21, 2026. STRC’s $100 stated amount, its $0.50 semi-monthly dividend and the 12.00% per annum rate come from the Form 8-K filed September 1, 2026 and the Form 8-K filed August 3, 2026. The increase in the preferred repurchase authorization from $1.0 billion to $2.0 billion comes from the Form 8-K filed September 8, 2026. Both charts are built from those same filings. Bitcoin, Ethereum, MSTR and STRC prices are from Yahoo Finance, taken at 7:05 a.m. ET on September 22, 2026, and are used for market prices only.
