MicroStrategy Chief Executive Michael Saylor will be stepping down from that post and focusing on his board role, a change announced Tuesday as the software company that has made big bets on bitcoin posted a decline in revenue and took a large impairment charge in the wake of a decline in digital-asset prices.
Saylor has served as MicroStrategy’s
MSTR,
CEO and chairman since he founded the company in 1989, but starting Aug. 8 he will move to the new role of executive chairman while giving up his CEO duties. Phong Le, the company’s president, will take on the CEO post.
“I believe that splitting the roles of chairman and CEO will enable us to better pursue our two corporate strategies of acquiring and holding bitcoin and growing our enterprise analytics-software business,” Saylor said in a release. “As executive chairman I will be able to focus more on our bitcoin acquisition strategy and related bitcoin advocacy initiatives, while Phong will be empowered as CEO to manage overall corporate operations.”
MicroStrategy also posted results for its second quarter, reporting a net loss of $1.06 billion, or 94 cents a share, which included $917.8 million in digital-asset impairment charges. A year prior, MicroStrategy posted a loss of $299 million, or $30.71 a share, which that loss reflecting $424.8 million in impairment charges.
The company disclosed that the carrying value of its digital assets, representing about 129,699 bitcoins
BTCUSD,
stood at $1.988 billion as of June 30 when accounting for cumulative impairment losses of $1.989 billion.
MicroStrategy’s revenue fell to $122.1 million from $125.4 million, while analysts tracked by FactSet had been anticipating $123.3 million.
Shares of MicroStrategy were off about 2% in after-hours trading Tuesday following the report.
