Strive Added 1,355 BTC. BTC/Share Increased 3.2% as Warrants Began Exercising.

The BTC/share result

Strive purchased 1,355 bitcoin between September 14 and September 18 at an average price of approximately $79,475 per bitcoin, including fees and expenses. The purchase totaled about $107.7 million and brought total holdings to 26,355 BTC.

The bigger question for us is what happened to the denominator. Effective Common Shares Outstanding increased from 94,968,764 to 97,002,649, or approximately 2.14%. Bitcoin holdings increased considerably faster at 5.42%.

The result was still meaningfully accretive. Effective BTC/share increased approximately 3.21%, from about 26,324 sats per share to 27,169.

That is the part of the filing worth focusing on. Strive added more than two million effective common shares during the week, but the Bitcoin purchase was large enough to more than offset that growth.

Warrants are now part of the financing mix

Last week, the financing story was unusually clean: management said 100% of the capital raised came from SATA. This week was different.

Matt Cole said warrant exercises began during the week, generating $21.2 million in gross proceeds. Including those warrant proceeds, he said 57.7% of total capital raised came from SATA.

The filing supports the idea that warrant activity has begun. Shares underlying traditional warrants declined from 26,596,010 to 25,810,455, a reduction of 785,555 shares.

At the same time, Class A common stock increased by 2,073,760 shares while Class B declined by 39,875. Effective common shares therefore increased by a net 2,033,885 shares.

We should not force a reconciliation the filing does not provide. The reduction in traditional warrants is consistent with management's statement that exercises began, but it does not explain the entire increase in Class A shares. The filing also does not separately identify common ATM proceeds for the period.

The useful takeaway is that Strive's funding engine has broadened. SATA remains important, but warrant exercises are now contributing capital as well.

SATA kept growing

SATA shares outstanding increased from 10,397,966 to 11,184,160, an addition of 786,194 preferred shares.

At SATA's $100 stated amount, preferred notional increased by approximately $78.6 million, bringing total SATA notional to roughly $1.118 billion.

That is not the same thing as saying Strive raised $78.6 million in cash. SATA can be issued above or below its $100 stated amount, so preferred notional and actual proceeds are different measurements.

At the current 13% annualized dividend rate, $1.118 billion of SATA notional corresponds to approximately $145.4 million of annualized preferred dividends, up about $10.2 million from the prior week.

This is the tradeoff we keep coming back to in our preferred-financing guide. SATA can fund Bitcoin without directly increasing ASST's common-share denominator, but it creates a senior preferred claim and an ongoing cash dividend requirement.

AFDS tells essentially the same story

Strive's Assumed Fully Diluted Shares increased from 98,139,091 to 100,144,713, or approximately 2.04%.

Options outstanding declined by 28,263 while unvested employee stock awards were unchanged. Traditional warrants are reported separately and remain excluded from Strive's AFDS calculation.

So both share-count methods we track point in the same direction: effective BTC/share increased 3.21%, while AFDS BTC/share increased 3.31%.

Cash increased despite the Bitcoin purchase

There was another notable move in the balance sheet snapshot. Cash and cash equivalents increased from $204.2 million to $229.6 million, a gain of $25.4 million, even as Strive spent roughly $107.7 million acquiring Bitcoin.

That tells us meaningful new capital came into the company during the period, although the weekly filing does not give us enough detail to reconcile every dollar of capital raised, Bitcoin purchased and cash retained.

Strive also continued to hold 505,000 shares of STRC, with a reported fair value of approximately $49.75 million at September 18.

What we're watching next

This may be a more important week for Strive than the headline Bitcoin purchase initially suggests.

For several weeks SATA has been doing much of the financing work. Now warrant exercises have started contributing capital as well, and the common-share denominator is moving more noticeably again.

That did not make this week's activity dilutive. Bitcoin holdings grew substantially faster than effective common shares, producing approximately 3.2% BTC/share accretion.

Going forward, the traditional warrant balance, effective common shares and SATA outstanding should tell us a lot about how Strive is funding each incremental Bitcoin purchase.

For this reporting period, Strive absorbed a 2.1% increase in effective common shares and still increased Bitcoin per share by more than 3.2%.