Strategy’s Stretch preferred stock touched $100 today for the first time since May, returning to the par value the company has spent over $2 billion in buybacks and five months of rate increases to defend.
STRC traded below $80 at times in June, a massive discount to its stated value. The climb back to $100 restores the price at which Strategy says it will resume issuing new shares, the mechanism that funds its bitcoin purchases. Chairman Michael Saylor had pledged to keep the stock at or above par and to hold the dividend at 12% until it got there.
Two changes landed in the past week. Shareholders approved daily dividends on STRC and three other preferreds on Oct. 28 by a 99.3% vote, removing the semi-monthly ex-dividend drops that had added volatility to the price.
The first daily payment went out Monday. And Strategy’s Oct. 29 filing set the November rate at 12% annualized, or $1 per share for the month.
Shares of Strategy (MSTR) were up over 7% today after bitcoin jumped above $80,000.
What Stretch (STRC) is and why it slipped
Stretch, the Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred, launched in July 2025 at $90 with a 9% starting rate. Saylor called it the company’s “iPhone moment.” The design is a feedback loop: Strategy adjusts the dividend each month to hold the price near $100, sells new shares when it trades above par and uses the cash to buy bitcoin.
It became the largest tradable preferred in the world, with a market value above $8 billion and a holder base that CEO Phong Le has put at about 80% retail.
The loop broke earlier this year. STRC drifted below par in late January; Strategy raised the rate to 11.25% in February, 11.5% in March and 12% by summer, and the price kept sliding as bitcoin fell toward $65,000. At $89 the at-the-market program sat idle, cutting off the company’s cheapest funding.
In late May, Strategy sold 32 BTC for about $2.5 million to cover a Stretch distribution, its first bitcoin sale since 2022, and critics raised the prospect of a “death spiral” that analysts at Benchmark and TD Cowen disputed.
The fix was to buy the stock back. Strategy paused bitcoin purchases in the week of Oct. 19 and spent $204.9 million on STRC alone, part of the roughly $2.25 billion it has retired since the discount opened.
Each share bought below $100 shrank the float and reduced the dividend bill at the same time.
A thin cushion under the treasury
The recovery matters because of what sits beneath it. Strategy holds 849,327 BTC after adding 811 coins last week, at an average cost of about $75,446. With bitcoin near $78,300 on Wednesday, the position is about 4% above water.
The company reported $20.91 billion in third-quarter operating income, almost all of it unrealized gains, alongside a negative year-to-date BTC yield and a chief financial officer stepping down.
The preferred stack is the bill that comes due regardless. STRC, STRF, STRK and STRD together carry annual dividends in the hundreds of millions, and the quarter’s 5,552 BTC in sales went to fund them and the buybacks. A Stretch at par lets Strategy pay those obligations with new preferred issuance rather than coins. A Stretch at $89 does not.
The test now is whether the company reopens the ATM at $100 and whether buyers absorb it.
