MicroStrategy MSTR +0.91% CEO Michael Saylor said he would step down from the top job next week and assume the role of executive chairman, as his company reported a loss of $1.06 billion in the second quarter.
MicroStrategy stock fell 2.6% to $271 in after-hours trading.MicroStrategy’s nominal business is selling business analytics and intelligence software, but in 2020, Saylor made the radical decision to invest the company’s balance in Bitcoin. Today, its stock is driven mostly by those holdings, whose market value at the end of June stood at about $2.45 billion.
“If there was a spot ETF, you’d be paying a 1% fee, and it wouldn’t be leveraged. With MicroStrategy, we have a software company that generates cash flow, so we convert our cash flows into bitcoin,” said Saylor in April.
On the call, Saylor argued that MicroStrategy’s enterprise software business and Bitcoin investment business are essentially two separate companies and that the new structure, with Le in charge of software, reflects that. But for investors considering the company’s stock, increasingly it’s only the Bitcoin investments that matter.