Just one day after CEO Michael Saylor announced that his company MicroStrategy was proposing a private offering of $600 million of convertible senior notes to buy more bitcoin, he announced that the offering will actually be $900 million of notes, according to a release.
The terms around this offering were also further clarified from what was proposed yesterday, as it was announced that they will not bear interest, and the principal amount of the notes won’t accrete. These notes will mature on February 15, 2027 unless they are repurchased earlier.
The release states that MicroStrategy “estimates that the net proceeds from the sale of the notes will be approximately $879.3 million (or approximately $1.0 billion if the initial purchasers exercise in full their option to purchase additional notes), after deducting the initial purchasers’ discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by MicroStrategy.”
As announced in yesterday’s proposal, today’s release reaffirmed that MicroStrategy will offer the purchaser the option to purchase the notes “within a 13-day period beginning on, and including, the date on which the notes are first issued,” but today’s announcement clarified that this would only be the case for “up to an additional $150 million aggregate principal amount of the notes.” The offer is expected to close in two days, on February 19, 2021.
If there was any doubt about the intentions for the use of this money, following MicroStrategy’s ongoing bitcoin buying as well as its proposal from yesterday, this announcement stated that the company “intends to use the net proceeds from the sale of the notes to acquire additional bitcoin.”
There is only 21 million bitcoin out there for the entire world, ever. This is just one company, taking on massive debt to buy more bitcoin yet again, front-running all its competitors and other institutions in the process. If other big players want to keep pace with MicroStrategy, they’re going to have to not only accumulate massive amounts of bitcoin as well, but also likely take on debt to do their best to catch up.
MicroStrategy has set a new standard for companies when it comes to preserving shareholder value. And that is the Bitcoin standard.
