🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Strategy’s billion-dollar bitcoin buy leans on a high-dividend stock popular with individual investors

• The ‘Stretch’ preferred stock, ticker STRC, helped fund the purchase and targets investors who want steady income 1.
• STRC pays a high variable annual dividend, recently 11.5%, and resets monthly to keep the price near its US$100 par value 2.
• Individual investors own about 80% of STRC shares 2.
• The dividend can be cut or skipped, and the shares do not have Strategy’s bitcoin as collateral unlike a bond 3.

Strategy leans more on preferred stock to pay for bitcoin

• The company is funding more bitcoin buys with preferred stock rather than issuing common shares 4.
• In 2025, perpetual preferred offerings such as Stretch, which have no maturity date, raised US$7 billion, and CEO Phong Le said that was 33% of the entire preferred stock market 4.
• By issuing securities that sit apart from its more volatile common stock, Strategy offers a template for financing exposure to one volatile asset 5.
• The structure splits the core software business from the bitcoin vehicle, letting a public company operate in some ways like a specialized exchange-traded fund, or ETF.