Amundi, Europe’s largest asset manager, increased its stake in Strategy (MSTR) by about 44% during the third quarter, according to a Form 13F filed Nov. 6. The filing shows that Amundi held 1,903,725 Strategy shares worth $291.4 million at Sept. 30 prices.

The position grew by 579,672 shares from the 1,324,053 shares reported at June 30, when the holding was valued at approximately $115.1 million. Amundi, based in Paris, managed €2.579 trillion in assets at the end of September, an 11% increase from a year earlier. The firm describes itself as Europe’s leading asset manager. Its third-quarter and nine-month results were released separately.

The filing came after Strategy had surrendered much of its third-quarter gain. The company’s shares closed at $153.09 on Sept. 30 and were trading near $126 on Monday, an 18% decline, according to Yahoo Finance data. At that price, Amundi’s disclosed position would be worth about $239 million.

A Form 13F provides a snapshot of holdings rather than a record of individual trades. The disclosures are required quarterly from institutional managers that exercise investment discretion over more than $100 million in qualifying securities. Amundi submitted a combination report incorporating 17 other managers across its group. As a result, the Strategy position may include client, fund and discretionary holdings instead of representing a single proprietary investment by Amundi. The firm may also have changed the position after Sept. 30.

Strategy continues adding bitcoin

Strategy continued to increase its bitcoin holdings as its share price declined. The company bought another 1,036 bitcoin the previous week for $81.9 million, at an average price of $79,012, according to a Monday 8-K filing and a company release. The purchase brought its treasury to 850,364 BTC acquired for $64.16 billion, at an average cost of $75,456. Strategy’s public ledger tracks the holdings.

That average acquisition cost was above the spot bitcoin price, leaving the holdings below their purchase value on paper even after the company added 811 bitcoin during the preceding week. Strategy remained the largest corporate bitcoin holder listed in its public ledger, with its holdings equal to roughly 4% of bitcoin’s 21 million maximum supply.

MSTR approximately doubled during the third quarter. Amundi’s June 30 filing valued its smaller position at an implied $86.93 per share, compared with Strategy’s $153.09 closing price on Sept. 30. The dollar value of the holding therefore increased faster than the number of shares. Since then, Strategy’s stock has followed bitcoin lower into the mid-$70,000 range, reducing much of that mark-to-market gain for investors who continued to hold the position reported at Sept. 30.

The timing is relevant because Strategy finances most of its bitcoin purchases by issuing new MSTR common shares through an at-the-market program, which sells newly issued stock into the open market at prevailing prices over time. A lower share price means more potential dilution for each bitcoin purchased, a dynamic that has influenced the stock’s movements this year.

Barclays also increased bitcoin proxy exposure

Amundi was not the only major European institution to increase exposure to bitcoin-related assets during the quarter. Barclays’ own Form 13F, filed Nov. 6, reported 3,942,900 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund, worth $186.7 million at Sept. 30. The position was up 48% from the 2,658,147 shares reported three months earlier, according to SEC records.

The Barclays filing carries the same limitation as Amundi’s report: a 13F combines client, managed-account and trading-book positions and does not establish that the bank invested its own capital in bitcoin. Together, however, the two filings show that traditional European financial institutions increased exposure to bitcoin proxies during the third quarter while the spot market cooled toward the fall.

Since quarter-end, bitcoin has declined into the mid-$70,000s, and Strategy shares have moved lower with it. The value of Amundi’s disclosed position has consequently fallen even though the share count reported in the filing remains fixed. At Monday’s close, the position was worth approximately $52 million less than its Sept. 30 value.

Whether Amundi continued buying, reduced its position or held through October’s decline will not be known until the next 13F filing, which will cover year-end holdings and is due within 45 days of Dec. 31. For now, the Nov. 6 report records nearly 1.9 million Strategy shares, up 44%, with a quarter-end value of $291 million.

By Micah Zimmerman. Originally published by Bitcoin Magazine.