MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor likened his company’s performance to rowing a boat against wind blowing harder than one can row. Is bitcoin really the way out?
Earlier in the week, MicroStrategy announced it purchased $25 million in bitcoin (BTC) in January. CEO Michael Saylor joined crypto podcast “UpOnly” to reveal the back story of his company’s move to accumulate 125,051 bitcoin in 2020 and 2021.
Founded in the late 1980s by Saylor, MicroStrategy (MSTR) is a publicly traded business intelligence and software provider, but it is now better known for the $4.7 billion in bitcoin it holds on its balance sheet.
Before buying all that bitcoin, it was already one of the largest independent, publicly traded companies in its industry. In 2020, its revenue was nearly $480 million and it had an enviable 8.29% EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) margin in the trailing 12 months before its first BTC purchase. When discussing the company’s position during the “UpOnly” podcast, Saylor said, “It’s profitable, that’s what we are. We love it, we’ll keep doing it. But you can’t really scale it.”
He then claimed that while the company was profitable, it wasn’t viable to reinvest profits into hiring sprees or increasing marketing spending. That makes MicroStrategy a cash cow that keeps collecting cash on its balance sheet.
That sounds like a good problem to have, except it becomes a problem if those accumulated dollars start diminishing in value because of inflation.