Strategy slashes STRK offering after falling $25B short of share target

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) has slashed its $20.33 billion STRK at-the-market (ATM) offering on March 22 after selling just 5% of its 269.8 million share goal.

The bitcoin (BTC) treasury company has slashed the number of authorized STRK shares by 85% from 269.8 million to 40.3 million, and has sold only 14.02 million.

Switching focus, the company simultaneously quadrupled authorized shares of its quasi-pegged preferred, STRC, as well as a massive increase of its MSTR common stock ATM.

The market barely noticed.

Strategy’s own X account announced the filing by trumpeting new $21 billion STRC and $21 billion MSTR authorizations. It didn’t mention the sunsetting of STRK — the company’s first dividend-paying preferred public share offering — on social media.

Indeed, in January 2025, Michael Saylor’s Strategy announced that it had raised $563.4 million in STRK after targeting just $250 million for that capital raise. 

At the time, publications called that raise “upsized” or “oversubscribed,” even though Saylor offered a 20% discount on liquidation preference to manufacture STRK’s so-called oversubscription.

$700 million sold of a $21 billion goal

By March 2025, Strategy had authorized the sale of up to $21 billion in 8% perpetual preferred shares convertible into MSTR at $1,000 per share. A year later, approximately $20.3 billion of that capacity remained unsold. 

Demand was weak from the start and ended in a 94.8% shortcoming: 14.02 million shares sold of 269.8 million authorized.

As of March 22, 2026, $20.33 billion STRK remained unsold.

Strategy priced STRK’s initial offering at $80, a 20% discount to its $100 liquidation preference, raising roughly $563 million selling 7.3 million shares from unsurprisingly motivated buyers whose positions had gained 20% within three weeks as STRK traded up to $100 per share.

Barron’s correctly reported on lackluster STRK demand before shares even debuted, with Strategy offering steep discounts to induce buying. 

Quarterly reductions in STRK demand

Within a few months, STRK sales soon slowed to a trickle. Indeed, by the end of Q1 2025, Strategy had only sold $765 million, or just $202 million more across two months than it had sold in January. 

By the end of Q2, STRK notional had increased 59% to $1.22 billion. That would be its final quarter of substantial growth.

At the end of Q3, the total face value of STRK was $1.36 billion, a mere 11% increase from Q2, and by the end of Q4, STRK notional was $1.4 billion, a mere 2.7% increase.

As of today, STRK’s notional has increased just 0.3% or $3.9 million more year-to-date.

By the time the company pulled the plug this week, STRK had produced a notional value of $1.4 billion after the company sold roughly 14 million shares out of an authorized 269.8 million. 

Strategy raised about 95% less from STRK than it could have, had investors wanted to its buy its fully authorized quantity of shares.

Read more: Strategy fails to list options on its flagship preferred, STRK

Trading 25% below par

Yesterday, STRK closed for trading at $75.20. That gives its 14 million outstanding shares a market value of roughly $1.05 billion, $348 million below the notional on which Strategy pays its 8% dividend.

The stock briefly rallied above $129 in July 2025, when optimism around the embedded MSTR conversion feature peaked. It’s since lost 42% of that value. 

The conversion option lets holders swap into MSTR at $1,000. MSTR trades near $140, making that option deeply out of the money and nearly worthless.

Strategy now owes roughly $112 million per year in STRK dividends on the shares it did manage to sell. To service those dividends, the company posted a $5.4 billion operating loss in fiscal year 2025. 

STRK dividends, by design, never stop.

Sunsetting the first preferreds

Saylor didn’t kill STRK entirely.

The same 8-K registered a new STRK ATM for up to $2.1 billion, a 90% reduction. With 40.3 million shares now authorized and 14 million outstanding, about 26 million shares of issuance remains.

Although the company might sell some more STRK in the future, it seems unlikely given the above quarterly trend toward zero.

The real emphasis at the company is on STRC, Strategy’s variable-rate and quasi-pegged preferred paying 11.5% annualized dividends. STRC raised over $1.18 billion in net proceeds in a single week of March 2026.

That one week dwarfed STRK’s entire ATM output over twelve months.

Strategy wants investors focused on STRC. The company’s first preferred offering, however, was supposed to raise up to $26.9 billion and will instead be remembered for the $25 billion it never raised.

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