Prenetics Global Limited halted its Bitcoin treasury buying program, ending daily purchases announced in June to refocus on its consumer health brand co-founded with former football player David Beckham.
According to an on Tuesday, the company paused its Bitcoin purchases on Dec. 4 and will not pursue additional BTC acquisitions, focusing instead on scaling its nutritional brand IM8, which Prenetics said surpassed $100 million in annualized recurring revenue within 11 months of launch.
The company will keep 510 Bitcoin () on its balance sheets, along with more than $70 million in cash and cash equivalents. IM8, a subsidiary of Prenetics, sells an all-in-one daily nutrition supplement marketed as a replacement for multiple standalone products.
In June, company , investing $20 million to acquire about 187 Bitcoin at an average price of $106,712 per coin. Bitcoin was trading at $88,198 at time of writing, implying an unrealized of about 17%, or about $3.4 million on the position.
Prenetics’ shares fell 3.32% in Tuesday trading on Nasdaq, while still up nearly 170% on the year, according to Google Finance .
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According to from BitcoinTreasuries.NET, 192 publicly traded companies now hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets, collectively accounting for nearly 1.1 million BTC.
A large share of that total is concentrated in Strategy, the Michael Saylor-led company laid the blueprint for corporate Bitcoin treasury companies. Following Strategy’s, the company holds 672,497 Bitcoin.
Strategy chief financial officer Andrew Kang Tuesday on a podcast that the company continues to buy and hold Bitcoin, citing expectations of further upside. He said:
We know it’s [Bitcoin] going to go from where it is today back to 125k, up to 200k, up to a million, and up to 21,000,000 one day. That all still is going to happen. It just is going to happen over a period of time […] And so for us, why we keep doing it [buying] with that principle in mind.”
Managing director of GoMining Institutional, Fakhul Miah, that he feared “copycat” companies that are “trying to create Bitcoin banks without proper safeguards or risk management.”
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