Strategy posts record $20.9 billion profit as CFO Andrew Kang resigns

Strategy reported a record $20.9 billion operating profit for the third quarter, the company said on October 29. Almost all of it was a paper gain on its bitcoin. Not from selling anything. The same filing said its chief financial officer will leave.

Those figures came in a press release filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Operating income of $20.91 billion was the most Strategy has ever booked. Net income reached $19.53 billion. Diluted earnings per share came to $44.75, far above the $13.86 that analysts had expected, according to Investing.com. Strategy, the company once known as MicroStrategy, releases these numbers every quarter, and the market now reads them less for the software than for the coins.

In recent years Strategy has raised billions of dollars through debt and stock sales to buy bitcoin, turning its shares into a proxy for the coin. It still sells the business-analytics software it was built on. That software brought in the $125.4 million of real revenue booked for the quarter.

That approach has made Strategy widely regarded as the largest corporate holder of bitcoin. It has also tied the company's results tightly to one volatile price. When the coin is up on reporting day, the books look spectacular. When it is down, they do not.

Where the profit actually came from

The record was not built on sales. US accounting rules now require listed companies to value their bitcoin at the market price at the end of each quarter, then run the change through earnings. Before this, firms could record a loss when the price fell but never a matching gain when it rose.

Bitcoin climbed over the three months to the end of September. So Strategy marked its holdings up and booked the difference as a large unrealized gain. That gain becomes cash only if the company sells coins. It has not.

An unrealized gain lives on the books, not in the bank. If bitcoin falls before the next quarter closes, part of this profit disappears with it, and the accounting records a loss instead.

Strategy held about 848,517 bitcoin as of October 25, bought at an average of $75,446 each, the release said. That is a cost base of $64.02 billion. The reported profit is more than 160 times the company's actual quarterly revenue. The number is real. The money is not.

Diluted earnings of $44.75 a share flatter the picture the same way. Most of that number is the bitcoin mark-up divided across the company's stock, not money earned from selling software or services.

Kang leaves, and the finance job splits

Andrew Kang, Strategy's executive vice president and chief financial officer, told the company on October 26 that he would resign. His last day is November 5. Strategy said the decision is for personal reasons and not the result of any disagreement over its accounts or its operations.

Kang will stay on as an adviser through December 31. Phong Le, the president and chief executive, takes over as principal financial officer in the meantime. From January 1, 2027, Reza Virasteh, who now runs operations, becomes chief financial officer and shares the top finance duties with Le. Shelley Khanna, the global controller, moves up to chief accounting officer on November 6.

Splitting the chief financial officer role in two is rare for a US-listed company. It fits how Strategy now sees itself, a software maker bolted to a bitcoin treasury, each side large enough to want its own finance lead.

Finance chiefs come and go. The timing still stands out, arriving on the same day as the largest profit Strategy has ever reported. The company has not said whether Kang's exit is linked to how that profit is being counted, and the filing points to no dispute.

A profit that moves with one coin

Strategy's results now rise and fall with a single asset. When bitcoin climbs, the company prints a paper profit. When the price drops, the same accounting turns that into a loss. The quarterly figure says more about bitcoin's price on the reporting date than about the software business under it. That makes the earnings report, in effect, a bitcoin price report with a company attached.

Its bitcoin pile barely grew over the quarter, from 847,666 coins at the end of September to about 848,517 by October 25. Investors have learned to watch that figure, and the average price paid, more closely than the profit line. Both moved little. The record, by contrast, was written by the market.

For readers, the gap between a headline number and real earnings is the point. A $20.9 billion profit reads like a cash haul. Most of it is a revaluation on paper that can reverse within three months. Strategy's shares fell after the results even so, according to Investing.com's earnings coverage. The market, in other words, priced the coin, not the quarter.

The report also landed in a soft market. Bitcoin had been sliding through late October, part of a broader pullback with several familiar causes. Institutional demand had cooled too, with US spot bitcoin funds posting heavy outflows in the same stretch. A record profit, written in bitcoin, met a crowd that had turned cautious on bitcoin.

What to watch next

Watch the split finance structure that starts in January, with Virasteh running the software numbers and Le running the bitcoin side. Watch bitcoin's price into the next report, because it will write the profit line again. And watch whether Strategy keeps buying coins or pauses to steady its balance sheet. The company has not said what it plans for the fourth quarter, or whether the new finance setup will change its appetite for debt.