Metaplanet cuts 2026 revenue forecast by 59% after $170m loss

Metaplanet, one of the world's biggest corporate holders of Bitcoin (BTC), cut its 2026 revenue forecast by 59 percent on 13 November, from 16 billion yen to 6.5 billion yen. The reason is blunt. Its own shares are worth less than the coins it holds.

The company filed the change with the Tokyo Stock Exchange on 13 November, alongside its results for the nine months to 30 September. It also cut its operating profit target to 3 billion yen, down from 11.4 billion yen. That is a 74 percent reduction.

Why Metaplanet cut the numbers

Metaplanet's model runs on a loop. The company sells new shares at a premium to the Bitcoin they represent, spends the cash on more Bitcoin, then does it again. For most of 2026 that loop worked well enough to turn a small Tokyo hotel operator into a Bitcoin holding company. It has now stalled.

The problem is a figure called mNAV. It measures a treasury firm's market value against the Bitcoin it owns. When mNAV sits above 1, the shares trade richer than the coins, so issuing stock adds Bitcoin for each share. When it falls below 1, the shares are worth less than the coins behind them, and every new share hands existing owners less Bitcoin, not more. Metaplanet's mNAV has stayed under 1 for weeks.

So the company stopped selling shares. That choice cut off the funding behind its Bitcoin buying and its Bitcoin Income business, which earns money by selling options tied to Bitcoin. Lower funding, lower revenue. The 6.5 billion yen figure is what that looks like once the share sales stop, down from the 16 billion yen set in January.

Gold makes the mechanics easier to picture. A company prints new stock to buy gold while its shares trade above the metal's value. Each sale leaves holders with more gold per share. Reverse the share price and the machine runs backward, moving value away from existing owners with every sale. Metaplanet pulled the lever the other way.

The loss behind the cut

Metaplanet lost 27.16 billion yen, about $170 million, in the first nine months of 2026. The same stretch a year earlier showed a 13.53 billion yen profit. Most of that swing is a paper markdown on Bitcoin bought at higher prices, not cash leaving the business.

Operating revenue still grew. It reached 5.9 billion yen for the nine months, up 30.5 percent from a year before. The company held about 44,000 Bitcoin at the end of September, a net gain of roughly 1,000 coins over the quarter. The buying did not stop. It slowed.

There is a gap between the headline loss and the operating result. Metaplanet's core business, selling options and managing its Bitcoin, made money over the nine months. The 27.16 billion yen loss comes almost entirely from marking its Bitcoin down to a lower price. If Bitcoin climbs again, much of that markdown reverses on paper, with no cash raised or spent. That is the double edge of parking a balance sheet in one volatile asset.

Metaplanet did not say when it expects the discount on its shares to close, or at what Bitcoin price the mNAV math turns back in its favor. That depends on a market it cannot control.

Buybacks and a drop from the MSCI index

With new share sales off the table, Metaplanet is spending on buybacks instead. Proceeds from a 52 billion yen convertible bond issued in October are going to repurchases first. The logic is the mirror of the issuance loop. If the stock trades below the value of its Bitcoin, buying the stock back is cheaper than buying Bitcoin on the open market.

Chief executive Simon Gerovich flagged the approach months ago. "When mNAV is below 1.0x we will strongly consider repurchasing," he wrote in June, when the ratio first slipped to 0.92. The shares closed at 219 yen on Friday, down about 53 percent for the year.

A second blow lands on 30 November. MSCI will drop Metaplanet from its Japan Small Cap Index at the close that day. Funds that track the benchmark then sell the stock automatically, adding supply at a weak moment. Strategy, the US firm that pioneered the Bitcoin treasury model, faced the same index question this month.

Metaplanet is not an isolated case. A wave of listed companies spent the past two years raising stock to stockpile Bitcoin, and the model works cleanly only while their shares trade above the coins they hold. As Bitcoin has fallen through the autumn, several of those premiums have thinned or vanished. When they do, the same options narrow: stop issuing, buy back stock, or sell coins. Metaplanet has picked the first two.

What to watch

It turns on one thing. Bitcoin has to recover enough to push Metaplanet's shares back above the value of its holdings. Bitcoin traded near $64,800 at 05:00 UTC on 15 November 2026, according to CoinGecko, below the prices at which the company bought much of its stack. Until that gap closes, the share-sale engine stays off.

Two dates frame the next few weeks. The MSCI removal on 30 November will force index-tracking funds to sell, whatever the price. Before that, any sharp move in Bitcoin either way will show up fast in Metaplanet's share price, which has swung harder than the coin itself all year. Investors will also watch whether the buybacks are large enough to matter against a stock down more than half in 2026.

Metaplanet says its long-term Bitcoin strategy has not changed. That may be true, and it still misses the point. The plan was never simply to hold Bitcoin. It was to buy more of it with a premium share price. That premium is gone. Other treasury companies, including Nakamoto, are stuck with the same arithmetic.