The strategy is to pause buying Bitcoin.
Michael Saylor said on Sunday that the company will not increase its Bitcoin holdings this week and is suspending its regular buying program ahead of the release of first-quarter earnings on Tuesday.
“No shopping this week. Back to work next week,” Thaler wrote on the X.
This is the second pause this year for Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which has become the largest publicly traded Bitcoin funding firm and one of the most closely watched agencies for institutional Bitcoin exposure. The company last skipped weekly purchases during the week of March 23 to March 29.
Strategy currently holds 818,334 BTC, equivalent to nearly 3.9% of Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply. The most recent purchase was 3,273 BTC at an average price of $77,906 per Bitcoin. In early Asian trading on Monday, BTC was trading near $80,100, up about 20% from the past month.
The pause may not seem like a big deal, but it comes before Strategy reports first-quarter results on Tuesday, with some Wall Street analysts expecting a loss of $18.98 per share.
Strategy expects first-quarter revenue of about $125 million, up about 12.6% from $111.1 million a year earlier, according to data from six Yahoo Finance analysts. That would mark an improvement from the same period last year, when sales fell 3.6%, and show that the underlying software business is still on the rise, even though the company’s profile is now almost entirely tied to Bitcoin.
However, earnings are expected to be lower. The average estimate for the March quarter is for a loss of $27.33 per share, according to Yahoo Finance, while the upcoming quarter is expected to see a loss of $3.41 per share, according to Zacks Research.
Strategy is no longer viewed as a software company with a Bitcoin position, but as a Bitcoin financing vehicle that happens to offer business intelligence software. That means Tuesday’s report may depend more on the durability of Thaler’s financing machines than true operational performance.
One product that’s garnering attention is STRC, a perpetual preferred stock that trades close to $100 while paying a variable monthly dividend that’s currently around 11.5% annualized.
The strategy’s pitch is for yields backed by Strategy’s balance sheet and Bitcoin-focused capital strategy, but ongoing concerns are that if market sentiment shifts, the product could start to look less like steady income and more like credit risk.
Higher Bitcoin prices support Strategy’s valuation, improving its ability to raise capital to fund more Bitcoin purchases. However, when emotions weaken, the same structures become more fragile.
Thaler said buying will resume next week, but earnings on Tuesday will show how confident investors still are in the mechanisms to achieve that goal.