Strive raises $630 million at a 15% dividend to buy more bitcoin, and TD Cowen lifts its price target 27% even as the shares drop 6.6%

Strive is raising more than half a billion dollars to keep buying bitcoin, and Wall Street's analysts like the pace. The Dallas company, listed on Nasdaq as ASST, said in a Form 8-K that it priced 7,000,000 shares of 15.00% Series A Perpetual SATS Preferred Stock at $90 a share, 2,000,000 more than it first announced, for gross proceeds of about $630 million before fees. Barclays and Cantor are the joint book-running managers and the deal is due to settle on October 20. The company's release says proceeds go to general corporate purposes, including bitcoin and bitcoin-related products.

The preferred pays cumulative dividends at 15% on a $100 stated amount, if declared, with the first regular payment on November 9. Strive is setting aside about $22.50 a share, enough to cover the first 18 months of dividends. Because the shares were sold at a 10% discount to that $100 stated amount, CoinDesk calculated the effective yield for buyers at 16.67%.

TD Cowen's Lance Vitanza and Jonnathan Navarrete responded by lifting their target to $56 from $44, a 27% increase, The Block reported. Strive bought 3,311 bitcoin announced on Tuesday and 2,822 on Wednesday, taking its holdings to 35,595 coins, worth roughly $2.9 billion, from 28,000 at the end of September, and already past the 4,750 coins the analysts had pencilled in for the whole fourth quarter. That makes it the fourth-largest public bitcoin treasury, just ahead of MARA, per The Block. The analysts said warrant exercises had diluted the share count and pressured "BTC Yield", though no $27 warrants remain. The shares fell 6.6% to $23.96 on Friday but are up more than 38% this year.