Ethereum-focused digital asset treasury firm ETHZilla (ETHZ) on Froday sold about $40 million ether from its treasury, so far using some of the cash to repurchase shares of its own stock, the company said on Monday.
Since the sale on October 24, the firm bought back around 600,000 shares for roughly $12 million. The repurchases are part of a broader $250 million buyback plan approved by its board.
The firm said it plans to continue with repurchases with the remaining cash raised. Furthermore, it intends to continue selling ETH to fund more buybacks “until the discount to NAV is normalized.”
For now, the firm still holds around $400 million in ETH.
Interestingly, the ETH sales made Friday likely were made in the $3,900 area — ETH subsequently rose throughout the weekend, trading as high as $4,250 overnight before pulling back to the current $4,150. So while the timing of the ETH sales may not have been ideal, the repurchase effort will surely send a warning to sellers of the stock to be careful getting short at any substantial discount to NAV.
ETHZ shares rallied 14.5% Monday alongside a major rally in the beaten-down digital asset treasury sector. The stock’s higher by another 12% in after hours trade following the buyback announcement.
The maneuver underscores the ongoing pressure digital asset treasuries face. Many stocks are now trading below the net asset value (NAV) of their underlying holdings as their stock prices plunged over the past months, limiting their ability to raise funds to expand their crypto holdings. ETHZ cratered as much as 90% from its August peak, and traded at a 30% discount to its NAV, Blockworks data shows.
“By opportunistically repurchasing shares while our stock is trading below NAV, we plan to reduce the number of shares that are available for stock loan/borrow activity, while increasing the NAV per share of the company,” chairman and CEO McAndrew Rudisill said in a statement.