A Strategy director, Carl Rickertsen, purchased about $780,000 in shares of the company’s depressed common stock on Monday.
It appears to be the first insider purchase of common stock since 2022.
Rickertsen’s purchase of 5,000 shares at an average price of $155.88 was made on Monday, according to a Form 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Monday. He now owns 5,000 shares. Rickertsen is a managing partner of Pine Creek Partners, an investment firm.
Rickertsen could be taking advantage of the sharp decline in Strategy’s common stock in recent months. The shares, which rose 3.1% Monday to $162.23, are off 62% in the past six months.
The company, led by chairman and controlling shareholder Michael Saylor, is the largest corporate Bitcoin holder in the world with about 687,000 Bitcoin, or more than 3% of the Bitcoin outstanding.
Strategy stock has come under pressure with the drop in Bitcoin prices in the past few months, but Strategy has fallen more steeply than Bitcoin as the premium of the company’s enterprise value relative to its Bitcoin holdings has shrunk dramatically.
Investors have soured on what the company calls its Bitcoin treasury model due to waning investor interest in the cryptocurrency and concerns about financing Strategy’s preferred stock dividends and other financial obligations.
To address these worries, Strategy has raised $2 billion to create a reserve to pay preferred dividends and meet other financial obligations. Strategy issues common stock and preferred to buy Bitcoin, but Bitcoin purchases are less accretive to existing common shareholders at a lower price/net asset value.
Strategy now is valued at just 5% premium to its Bitcoin holdings, according to the firm’s website, compared with a roughly 100% premium last summer.
There have been numerous insider purchases of Strategy preferred stock in recent quarters, but this is the first buy of common stock.
Bitcoin was up about 0.4% to around $91,000 in late trading Monday.
