Strive’s SATS Preferred IPO, Explained: Yield by Price, mNAV and Amplification

Preferred stock sits between debt and common stock. It pays a set dividend that comes before anything paid to common shareholders, but it carries no vote on most matters. SATS also has no maturity date, so it is “perpetual”. On October 15, 2026, Strive priced the initial public offering of its new 15.00% Series A Perpetual SATS Preferred Stock: 7,000,000 shares at $90 each, upsized from the 5,000,000 shares it announced on October 13.¹²⁴ Gross proceeds are about $630 million before underwriting discounts and expenses.

The shares settle on October 20. Strive has applied to list them on the Nasdaq Global Market as “SATS” and expects trading to start within 30 days of settlement. Once they list, it intends to start an at-the-market (ATM) programme, which sells more shares gradually on the exchange.¹³ Barclays and Cantor Fitzgerald ran the books. The first use Strive names for the money is buying bitcoin; the others are working capital, income-generating assets, acquisitions, and buying back its ASST common stock or its SATA preferred.²

SATS accrues dividends at 15.00% a year on its $100 stated amount: $15.00 a share a year, or $1.25 a month. The rate is fixed in its terms. Strive’s older SATA preferred is different: its board resets that rate each month. SATS dividends are cumulative: one that isn’t paid still builds up, and Strive can’t pay common dividends or buy back common stock while any are owed. They are payable every business day, “when, as and if” the board declares them, starting November 9. The first payment, covering October 20 to November 9, would be $0.8710 a share.¹

At closing, Strive plans to add $22.50 a share, 18 months of dividends, to its dividend reserve. For 7,000,000 shares that is $157.5 million, paid from cash and securities it already holds rather than from the new money.¹ The prospectus says Strive expects to fund SATS dividends “primarily through additional capital raising activities”, including ATM sales.³

The $15.00 is a fixed share of the $100 stated amount, not of the price a buyer pays. So the cash yield moves the opposite way to the price: $15.00 ÷ $90 = 16.67% at the IPO price, 15.00% at $100 and 37.50% at $40 (see the table). On $10,000 that is $1,667 a year at $90 and $3,750 at $40.

The yield leaves some things out. SATS has no maturity, so a holder gets $100 back only in a few cases. Strive may redeem all of it at the liquidation preference after a tax event, or if fewer than 25% of all SATS shares ever issued remain outstanding. Holders can make Strive buy their shares back at $100 plus unpaid dividends after a “fundamental change”, such as a takeover.¹ Otherwise a seller gets the market price. If SATS trades above $100, its liquidation preference rises to the 10-day average price (or the previous day’s price, if Strive has sold SATS in the last 10 days, whichever is higher). It never drops below $100.⁴ Dividends depend on the board declaring them, and SATS ranks behind any debt and behind SATA.¹³

Strive’s first preferred, SATA (Variable Rate Series A), listed in November 2025 after an IPO of 2,000,000 shares at $80.⁸ At October 9, 2026 there were 14,030,176 SATA shares, or $1,403.0 million of stated amount.⁵ Its rate is 13.00% for November, paid daily at $0.0571 a share each business day.⁷ SATA ranks ahead of SATS for both dividends and liquidation, so SATS holders are paid after SATA holders.³ SATA closed at $97.85 on October 15, a 13.29% cash yield at its current rate.¹⁰ Both appear in Bitcoin-backed preferred stocks by dividend rate, and SATA in the largest preferred stock launches.

mNAV (multiple of net asset value) compares a company’s stock market value with its bitcoin: market cap ÷ (BTC held × BTC price). At an mNAV of 1.0 the shares are worth exactly the bitcoin; the ASST price where that happens is the bitcoin value per share. Before SATS it was 35,595 BTC × $82,156 ÷ 124,061,907 shares = $23.57 a share, or about 28,691 satoshis (hundred-millionths of a bitcoin) per share.⁵⁶⁹

If all $630 million bought bitcoin at $82,156, Strive would add about 7,668 BTC and no new common shares, and the mNAV 1.0 price would rise to $28.65 (about 34,872 satoshis a share). At ASST’s October 15 close of $25.65, that is an mNAV of 1.09 before the raise and 0.90 after. ASST closed at $27.59 on October 13, the day the IPO was announced, and at $24.68 on October 14.¹⁰

This measure counts the bitcoin bought with preferred money, but not the preferred holders’ claim on it. Take off SATA and SATS at $100 a share, and the bitcoin per common share falls from $12.26 to $11.70, because $700 million of stated amount was sold for $630 million. At a $100 sale price it would not have changed; at $40 it would fall to $8.88.

Amplification is Bittery’s measure of how much of a company’s bitcoin is matched by claims that rank ahead of its common stock: (debt + preferred) ÷ bitcoin value. Strive reports no debt, so before SATS it was $1,403.0 million of SATA ÷ $2,924.3 million of bitcoin = 48.0%.³⁵ SATS adds $700 million of claims (7,000,000 × $100) and at most $630 million of bitcoin, which takes it to 59.2%.

The lower the sale price, the higher amplification ends up: each share adds $100 of claim but only its sale price in bitcoin. The same 7.0 million shares would give 58.0% at $100 and 65.6% at $40. The ratio also moves with bitcoin: on the post-IPO figures, a 10% fall in BTC from $82,156 would lift 59.2% to about 65.7%. Bittery’s treasury company ranking shows amplification for every listed company, updated each Monday.

With SATS, Strive’s preferred dividends come to about $287.4 million a year: $182.4 million on SATA at 13.00% and $105.0 million on SATS at 15.00%.¹⁷ That is about 8.1% of its bitcoin value after the raise. At $82,156, the bitcoin would cover about 12.4 years of those dividends, against 16.0 years for SATA’s dividends alone before the IPO. For Strive, the investor’s yield is the cost of the money: selling at $90 costs 16.67% a year in cash on what it raised, and selling at $40 would cost 37.50%.

At October 9, Strive held $310.3 million of cash and cash equivalents and $50.3 million of Strategy’s STRC preferred.⁵ It then reported $369.2 million expected from warrant exercises on October 12–13, the same days it bought 2,822 BTC for about $235 million.⁶ Top digital credit companies and dividend cover tracks how many months of dividends each company’s cash covers; SATS joins Strive’s row once the shares are issued.