Yesterday, Strategy Director Carl Rickertsen filed his purchase of 5,000 shares of the company’s common stock, MSTR, with the SEC. His form is coded P for an actual purchase on an open or private market, in contrast to a non-purchasing acquisition like an award or derivative exercise.
His $779,395 purchase was a rare event, interrupting years of insider selling. Interestingly, his impressive average price of $155.88 across multiple transactions nearly bottom-ticked the day’s $154.69 to $163.82 trading range.
Prior to yesterday, Rickertsen had filed 19 SEC forms to disclose exclusively sales of Strategy’s common stock on five trading days since July 2022.
With no other purchases since July 2022, Rickertsen has been a seller throughout the last three and a half years.
Indeed, Rickertsen has made a fortune selling MSTR over the years. He received most of his shares not from purchases but from equity compensation.
To his credit, he purchased $608,000 worth of Strategy’s equity on June 13, 2022. That was, however, his latest purchase prior to yesterday’s acquisition.
Along the way, Rickertsen has sold tens of millions of dollars worth of MSTR over the past 3.5 years, dwarfing both purchases and thanks in most part to his compensation as a board member.
Rickertsen has served as a director at Strategy since 2002 when the company’s name was MicroStrategy. He often receives MSTR through grants of equity convertibles like stock options.
Unfortunately, he has a history of exercising those convertibles and then selling the resulting MSTR on the same day.
For many years, he reported $0 of MSTR beneficial ownership during the months between his equity grants.
A slight vote of confidence
Strategy has a $67 billion enterprise value, only slightly above the $64 billion value of its bitcoin (BTC) holdings.
Analysts at S&P rate its corporate creditworthiness at B- or “junk” status while analysts at Citigroup, Bernstein, HC Wainwright, Canaccord Genuity, and TD Cowen have a wide range of price targets for MSTR spanning $54 to $705.
Rickertsen has also filed insider transactions in companies besides Strategy. Over the years, for example, he disclosed transactions in numerous public companies.
He is, after all, a managing partner of two private equity investment firms, and a trustee of two management investment companies.
Rickertsen’s purchase of MSTR comes after a serious decline in the company’s multiple-to-Net Asset Value (mNAV), a valuation metric that measures how much premium investors pay for the company’s equity relative to its BTC holdings.
Read more: Michael Saylor is running out of ways to boost Strategy’s BTC per share
In November 2024, MSTR traded up to a 3.4x mNAV or 240% higher than its BTC holdings. At the time, BTC was rallying amid Donald Trump’s promises to align White House policies with the Bitcoin community.
Ever since, Trump has mostly promoted crypto instead of BTC, and BTC has traded sideways. Over the same time period, MSTR has declined from $543 to today’s $169 per share.
In other words, Rickertsen has bought MSTR near a 14-month low and after a 68% drawdown from its peak. He’ll also, presumably, continue to receive periodic compensation for his board membership going forward to offset his cost basis even lower as time progresses.
Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
The post Strategy director Carl Rickertsen is buying MSTR after years of selling appeared first on Protos.
