Bitcoin Nyheter

Strategi (MSTR) Spotlight: Bitcoin‑fremtiden i 2045

mm
Publisert
Oppdatert
Securities.io maintains rigorous editorial standards and may receive compensation from reviewed links. We are not a registered investment adviser and this is not investment advice. Please view our affiliate disclosure.

Bitcoin på vei opp

As Bitcoin prices experienced a stratospheric rise following Donald Trump’s election, interest in companies that had the foresight to have been investing in the asset followed.

Ingen bedrift har vært mer tydelig i sin hengivenhet til Bitcoin enn MicroStrategy og deres karismatiske og kontroversielle tidligere administrerende direktør, Michael Saylor. Så dette ser ut som det perfekte tidspunktet for en grundig analyse av MicroStrategy, teknologiselskapet som ble til et Bitcoin‑derivat.

(MSTR )

MicroStrategy: Programvareselskapet

MicroStrategy is, at its core, et programvareselskap. Hovedproduktet er MicroStrategy ONE, en forretningsintelligensplattform. Denne typen bedriftsprogramvare er designet for å kombinere forretningsmålinger for å hjelpe beslutningstakere med å forstå selskapets aktivitet og inntektsdrivere bedre.

MicroStrategy selger fortsatt dette produktet, som er en av selskapets viktigste kilder til driftskontantstrøm. Merk at selskaper som Pfizer, Visa, Sony, Hilton og Guess alle bruker det.

MicroStrategy ONE uses AI extensively to analyze enterprise data and is integrating with most major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP). The AI tools offered include, among others:

  • Auto SQL for datamodellering.
  • Auto Dashboard for innholdsproduksjon.
  • Auto Answers og AI Bot for naturlig språkinteraksjon.

The software revenues are rather steady and growing on a yearly basis, with a lot of variation quarter-to-quarter.

It should, however, be noted that the software business line is not profitable and was responsible for a loss of $18.5M in Q3 2024, entirely driven by a $19M from non-cash stock-based compensation expense.

MicroStrategy sin Bitcoin‑kjøpsspree

While MicroStrategy was a respected but somewhat niche tech SaaS company, its Bitcoin activism brought it into the investing spotlight. For the last four years, the company has been buying more Bitcoin, often ignoring the short fluctuation and focusing on the high price it considers Bitcoin will reach in the long term.

Som et resultat ble mesteparten av selskapets Bitcoin anskaffet til langt lavere nivåer enn dagens Bitcoin-priser, mindre enn halvparten av den siste Bitcoin-verdien. Med Bitcoin-beholdninger på rundt 23 milliarder dollar per 18. november 2024, overskygger dette fullstendig de 94,9 millioner dollar i inntekter fra programvareabonnementer i hele 2023.

MicroStrategy sin Bitcoin‑plan

What has driven the company’s focus on Bitcoin acquisition was its ex-CEO Michael Saylor’s dedication to the cryptocurrency.

Han har notorisk gjort ekstraordinære spådommer for fremtidige Bitcoin-priser, med et sluttmål på 13 000 000 $ (13 M$) per Bitcoin innen 2045. På kortere sikt ser han frem til at grensen på 100 000 $ snart blir brutt.

Imidlertid var denne urokkelige troen på Bitcoin ikke en jevn reise. Prisvolatilitet og Bitcoins nedgang i 2022 førte til at MicroStrategy registrerte en nedskrivningskostnad på 917 millioner dollar.

Soon after, Saylor stepped down as MicroStrategy’s CEO, assuming the role of an executive chairman, to focus even further on the company’s Bitcoin initiatives.

«Som administrerende styreleder vil Mr. Saylor primært fokusere på innovasjon og langsiktig bedriftsstrategi, samtidig som han fortsetter å ha tilsyn med selskapets Bitcoin-anskaffelsesstrategi som leder av styrets investeringskomité.

Som administrerende styreleder vil jeg kunne fokusere mer på vår Bitcoin-anskaffelsesstrategi og relaterte Bitcoin-forkjemperinitiativer, mens Phong får myndighet som administrerende direktør til å håndtere den overordnede driften.»

This was actually probably for the best, as Saylor’s focus had clearly become Bitcoin, potentially leaving the company’s CEO to neglect its SaaS business.

Finansiering av Bitcoin

Utnytte Bitcoin

The way MicroStrategy had enough money to buy billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin was to raise money through the company balance sheet. One part was through issuing debt, especially benefiting from the very low rates available in the last years.

Det meste av denne gjelden har en årlig rente på under 1 %, noe som er langt under den nåværende amerikanske og globale inflasjonsraten. Dette betyr at gjelden i praksis har en negativ realrente, med vedvarende inflasjon som betaler tilbake en del av pengene. Gjeldens forfall er også ganske langt frem i tid, med betalingsdatoer fra 2028 til 2032.

Alt i alt, selv om det ble gjort for å kjøpe Bitcoin som skjøt i været i pris, var det en svært solid bedriftsstyringsstrategi, å skaffe penger når rentene var på bunnnivå og låse kapital til langt under inflasjonsraten.

Bruke egenkapital

The company has also consistently issued new shares to finance more Bitcoin purchases. MicroStrategy has issued between 182,000 and 255,000 shares annually since 2020, raising significant money from them as well.

As MicroStrategy was the first publicly traded company to use Bitcoin as its main asset, it early on made it a sort of proxy for Bitcoin. This was at a time when many potentially interested investors would not go on owning Bitcoin directly:

  • Noen detaljinvestorer var mer komfortable med å eie MicroStrategy enn å eie sin egen Bitcoin-lommebok.
  • De fleste institusjonelle investorer (banker, forsikring, pensjonsfond) var ikke autorisert av regelverk og sine egne vedtekter til å investere i Bitcoin, selv om noen av deres aksjonærer eller ledelse var åpne for det.
    • MicroStrategy, som teknisk sett først er et programvareselskap og har vært børsnotert siden 1998, befant seg i et slags gråområde, noe som gjorde det til en ideell proxy for Bitcoin.
    • Det bør bemerkes at dette er mindre interessant om MicroStrategy nå som Bitcoin‑ETF‑er eksisterer.

MicroStrategy‑verdivurdering

MicroStrategy’s market capitalization is somewhat high, considering that the majority of the company’s value is from its Bitcoin holdings. At $71B, its valuation largely outpaces its $23B Bitcoin stash. Of course, MicroStrategy is not a Bitcoin wallet but a publicly traded company, so there is more to that story.

The first element is that, as a company, it can leverage its assets (like its Bitcoin holdings) to raise more money. This opens at least two possibilities:

  • Det kan utstede flere aksjer, ved å bruke differansen mellom aksjekursen og Bitcoin-prisen til å kjøpe mange flere Bitcoins.
  • Det kan selge gjeld (obligasjoner) for å øke sin giring og bruke pengene til å kjøpe Bitcoins.

And this is exactly what the company announced, with its “42 strategy”: $21 billion through equity offerings and another $21 billion via fixed-income securities between 2025 and 2027. This adds to the $4.6B in Bitcoin purchase in November 18th 2024.

The 42 strategy would almost triple the company’s Bitcoin total holdings at the current price. This would also make MicroStrategy owning almost 4% of the world’s total bitcoin supply; a supply that is going to grow slower and slower over time, as per the algorithmic rules governing Bitcoin.

Gir MicroStrategy‑verdivurderingen mening?

So far, investors in MicroStrategy have done just great. Not only did they beat the so-called Magnificent 7 :

But they also beat Bitcoin itself, with returns over the last 4 years double that of the leading cryptocurrency.

This also makes MicroStrategy a stock that performed better since it adopted its Bitcoin strategy in august 2020 (+1,989%) than even the AI mega-winner Nvidia (+1,165%).

So you can find among the main reasons for optimism regarding MicroStrategy’s future strategy:

  • En fortsettelse av overprestasjonen, takket være strategisk giring, fortsetter å lønne seg.
  • Inertien i aksjemarkedene, med vinnere som har en tendens til å fortsette å stige på grunn av tidligere resultater.
  • Praktiskheten og det juridiske/regulatoriske aspektet ved å investere i MicroStrategy‑aksjen i stedet for å eie Bitcoin‑lommebøker og ETF‑er direkte.
  • Tilliten til Saylor sin evne til å holde seg stabil og utnytte Bitcoins midlertidige svakheter.
  • Tendensen i finansmarkedene til å opprettholde ekstreme verdsettelsesmultipler, med premien på Bitcoins verdi som potensielt kan vokse.

Risikoene

In every spectacular rise in value in the stock market, there is always the risk of a bubble popping and taking down the previous winners. This is especially true when a lot of leverage is present, meaning that the short-term losses could lead to failure & bankruptcy before a recovery can make up the losses.

However, it should be noted that any decline in Bitcoin price creates an accounting loss on paper only for MicroStrategy (but not in actual cash), at least as long as it does not need to pay back all its bonds.

On top of this, MicroStrategy’s valuation seems for now to have run up quite far ahead of its balance sheet Bitcoin holding. So the current price only makes sense if the planned leverage of the “42 strategy” turns out to compensate for the current extra price an investor pays for MicroStrategy’s Bitcoins.

So this is a risky bet, no matter what, as it does not just require Bitcoin prices to keep growing slowly or stay stable but to rise significantly. It still could work, as the total value of Bitcoin is still a very small volume compared to other asset classes.

In that respect, it could paradoxically mean that the planned $21B in new debt to buy Bitcoin might actually be a little too low.

If it was an outrageous $70-100B of extra debts (as much as the current market cap), the current extra valuation would be irrelevant: either Bitcoin goes to the million-dollar mark, and this is a massively winning strategy thanks to the multiplying effect of debt leverage. Or it does not and MicroStrategy stock was a bad investment.

Of course, Michael Saylor is now known as a technologist with a knack for taking big risks at the right moment, so maybe he is planning something that big, and did not make it public just yet.

Spekulasjon på MicroStrategy.

MicroStrategy is already more volatile than any S&P500 stock, making it a stock only for seasoned investors able to handle its wild price moves.

This is also one of the stocks with the most speculative activity. When looking at MicroStrategy-related options or daily-traded volume, it is in the same category as Alphabet, Amazon, or Netflix, and only behind NVIDIA, Tesla, Apple, and Meta.

So, for the most experienced and daring investors, adding their own speculation through derivatives and/or their own leverage seems to be a way to multiply further the already built-in leverage on Bitcoin present in MicroStrategy’s valuation.

Konklusjon

From its foundations as a SaaS company, MicroStrategy is mostly today a Bitcoin holding company, buying digital assets with increasing levels of leverage. As such, it should probably be fairer compared to Bitcoin derivatives than any stock, Bitcoin ETF, or direct Bitcoin ownership.

Maybe the best description could be that MicroStrategy’s stock is Bitcoin future with an expiration date in the 2030s-2045. If Bitcoin rises to multi-million dollar marks, being a shareholder of MicroStrategy will pay off probably more than any other investment. And if Bitcoin somewhat stabilizes and stops rising for a long time (or worse, decline in value), it will be a costly mistake.

As such, investing in the company is a way to take a riskier bet than direct Bitcoin holding, with larger rewards and larger risks, which should therefore be done in a balanced strategy. Therefore, MicroStrategy’s stock belongs together in a portfolio with other assets, including direct Bitcoin holding, other cryptocurrencies, equities, and other asset categories like bonds, real estate, etc.

mm

Jonathan er en tidligere biochemistforsker som arbeidet med genetisk analyse og kliniske forsøk. Han er nå en aksjeanalytiker og finansforfatter med fokus på innovasjon, markedssykluser og geopolitikk i sin publikasjon The Eurasian Century.