Strategy reports $4.2B Q1 loss

Tysons-based Strategy, the world’s largest corporate bitcoin investor, reported a loss of $4.22 billion in its first quarter earnings report released Thursday.

Formerly known as MicroStrategy, the company, which rebranded as Strategy in February, said it had a quarterly per-share loss of $16.49. Strategy posted first quarter revenue of $111.1 million, a 3.6% decrease from the first quarter of 2024.

As of Monday, Strategy reported owning 553,555 bitcoins. The cryptocurrency was purchased for about $37.90 billion, averaging approximately $68,459 per coin.

According to Coinbase, the nation’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, as of 5:10 p.m. Thursday, bitcoin was selling for $96,633.39 per coin — making Strategy’s holdings worth about $51.55 billion.

Under the direction of bitcoin whale and company founder Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy announced its first bitcoin purchase in August 2020, making it one of the first public companies to convert its cash treasury reserves into cryptocurrency as a store of value.

“Our capital markets strategy continues to grow our bitcoin holdings while delivering superior shareholder value,” Phong Le, the company’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “With over 70 public companies worldwide now adopting a bitcoin treasury standard, we are proud to be at the forefront in pioneering this space.”

Saylor has made bold pronouncements and statements about bitcoin in the past. In September 2024, he told CNBC that he thought the cryptocurrency could rise as high as $13 million per bitcoin by 2045, a prediction he repeated on Fox Business in December 2024, hours before bitcoin breached the $100,000 mark.

Saylor’s and MicroStrategy’s fortunes have turned before. He stepped down as CEO after MicroStrategy’s August 2022 earnings report, when the company disclosed that it had paid a total of $3.977 billion for its bitcoin, which at that time had fallen to a market value of about $2.451 billion. At that point, MicroStrategy also had taken on about $2.4 billion in loans and debt to acquire bitcoin. At points in 2022, the cryptocurrency fell below $20,000 to prices it had not seen since 2020.