Strategy spent more on preferred buybacks than bitcoin last week

Strategy spent more than twice as much buying back its own preferred stock last week as on bitcoin. It bought 1,036 bitcoin for $81.9 million and repurchased $188.3 million of STRC preferred shares, a filing dated 9 November 2026 showed.

The numbers came from an 8-K that Strategy filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Michael Saylor, the company's executive chairman, posted the same figures on X. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, holds more bitcoin than any other public company, and its weekly disclosures are watched as a gauge of corporate demand for the asset.

More on its own shares than on bitcoin

That split is the story. Strategy sold 2,051,348 of its Class A common shares for $283.8 million in net proceeds over the week. Of that cash, $188.3 million went straight into buying back STRC, a preferred stock the company first sold earlier in 2026. The bitcoin purchase, 1,036 coins at an average of $79,012 each, took the smaller slice.

This was not a one-week quirk. A week earlier, Strategy repurchased $208.2 million of STRC and added just 811 bitcoin. The tilt has held for more than a month. Bitcoin buying slowed. Preferred buybacks picked up. The firm still has about $18.3 billion of room left on the common-stock sales program it is using to raise the cash.

What STRC is, and why Strategy wants it back

STRC, which Strategy markets as Stretch, is a preferred stock with no maturity date and a monthly dividend the company can adjust. It is built to hover near a $100 stated value. Strategy sells it to raise cash for bitcoin without taking on ordinary debt.

That dividend is the draw. STRC's monthly payout has reached an annual rate of about 12 percent, far above a bank deposit, which is how the company pulled in buyers. Every share it now retires is a dividend it stops paying. Across 1,887,464 shares, that saving adds up.

Trouble came when STRC fell well under $100. During a selloff earlier in 2026 it dropped below $72, more than a quarter beneath par, a sign of weak demand. Buying the shares back at a discount lets Strategy support the price and trim the dividends it owes. "Our corporate objective is for STRC to trade over time at $99 to $100," Saylor wrote on X in June, casting the buybacks as part of what the company calls its digital credit plan.

Selling stock to buy back stock

To fund all this, Strategy leaned on its common shares. It sold 2,051,348 MSTR shares for $283.8 million in net proceeds and routed $188.3 million of that into STRC buybacks. That raises an old complaint. Selling common stock spreads the company's value across more shares and dilutes the holders who stay.

Strategy's shares no longer trade at the large premium to its bitcoin they once held. By the middle of 2026 the firm's enterprise value had slipped close to the worth of its coins, closing the gap that made issuing stock to buy bitcoin look almost free. Selling common shares to retire preferred ones, rather than to buy more bitcoin, is a different trade. Not everyone is sure it rewards long-term MSTR holders. Strategy has not set out how long the balance will stay tilted this way.

The company's defenders make a plain case. Retire a preferred share that pays a double-digit yield, bought back below its face value, and Strategy locks in a saving and sheds a liability. It can return to heavier bitcoin buying when its stock trades at a wider premium again. Seen that way, the quiet weeks are housekeeping, not a retreat from bitcoin.

A treasury sitting near its cost

Strategy now holds 850,364 bitcoin, bought for an aggregate $64.16 billion, an average of $75,456 a coin.

Here the margin looks thin. Bitcoin traded near $75,238 at 22:41 UTC on 9 November 2026, up about 1.3 percent on the day, according to CoinGecko. That left the market price just below Strategy's average cost. For a company whose whole case rests on bitcoin rising over time, the stack is barely above water on paper.

Timing matters for the market too. Strategy has been one of the largest corporate buyers of bitcoin through this cycle, and a slower pace from its biggest corporate holder takes one steady bid out of the market. That comes as prices wobble. Bitcoin slipped below $75,000 over the weekend as a selloff in technology stocks spread to crypto, and US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds lost $1.28 billion in a week, their worst run since June.

Strategy's own stock has fallen with the coin. The firm faces a further risk, after index provider MSCI said it may drop companies that mainly hold crypto from its benchmarks, with a decision due on 11 November. That question hangs over the whole class of bitcoin treasury companies.

What to watch

Next week's filing will show whether the lean toward buybacks holds or Strategy swings back to buying coins. Watch the STRC price. If it climbs back toward $100, the discount that makes buybacks worthwhile narrows, and the case for them fades. Watch bitcoin against that $75,456 average too. A deeper fall would push the treasury underwater and sharpen the questions Saylor already fields about selling stock to buy bitcoin. Neither the filing nor Saylor has said what comes next.