Saylor Breaks the Pattern: STRC Dividend Stays Put at 12% Despite Still Trading in the Penalty Box

Strategy will keep the dividend on its high-yielding preferred stock STRC at 12% for August, Executive Chairman Michael Saylor confirmed via tweet on Saturday, declining to raise the payout despite the shares trading well below their $100 par value. The decision breaks from the company's recent practice of hiking the dividend 50 basis points whenever STRC spent enough of the prior month trading sizably below par.

STRC closed Friday at $89.46 on the Nasdaq, capping a month that began with a 50-basis-point dividend increase following June's slide to as low as $71. Even with a 5.42% price gain in July and some stabilization in bitcoin's price, the security remained significantly below par. Daily volume on Friday ran about two-thirds of the stock's average. August will mark the second month STRC pays its dividend semi-monthly, a change approved by shareholders in June.

On Friday, Strategy CEO Phong Le said management's "corporate objective is for STRC to trade at $99-$100 over time," without specifying a timeline. Strategy is under no obligation to raise the dividend and chose not to do so this month. The company recently repurchased $25 million of STRC preferred shares at a discount to par and said it intends to keep buying the securities while they trade below $100.

Saylor took to social media on Sunday to tease a possible update to Strategy's bitcoin treasury holdings, posting "Bitcoin Drive engaged" on X alongside a chart of the company's BTC buys from Saylortracker.com, in line with his typical Monday pattern. Last week, Strategy reported an $8.22 billion second-quarter net loss, driven primarily by an $8.32 billion unrealized loss on its Bitcoin ($BTC) holdings as the cryptocurrency's price declined during the quarter. The firm said it has built a $3.75 billion U.S. dollar reserve, enough to cover more than two years of preferred dividend payments and interest obligations following the launch of its BTC monetization program.