Solana Treasury Firm Holdings Could Double as Forward Industries Unveils $4 Billion Raise

Forward Industries, the newest and largest publicly traded Solana treasury company, has filed to raise $4 billion through an at-the-market equity offering.

For the sake of comparison, this $4 billion raise is nearly the same size as Bitcoin treasury Strategy’s Stride preferred stock raise in July. And it’s double the size of the Strife preferred stock offering the company did in May.

The proceeds would be used for working capital; pursuit of its Solana token strategy, and “the purchase of income-generating assets to grow its business,” the company said in a press release.

Forward Industries declined to comment to Decrypt on what other income-generating assets it’s considering adding to its balance sheet.

As markets opened Wednesday morning, Forward saw its stock price take a dive. The shares, which trade under the FORD ticker on the Nasdaq, dipped to $31.29 before rebounding to $34.28 at the time of writing—marking a 8.2% fall for the session.

If the company sells all the shares and spends the bulk of the proceeds on buying Solana, it could more than double the amount of SOL being held in treasuries. At the time of writing, there’s already $3.1 billion in Solana treasuries, according to crypto price aggregator CoinGecko.

Users on Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt parent company DASTAN, have been growing more confident that SOL will reach $250 sooner than it sees a significant retrace. As of Wednesday morning, 90% of predictors think it’ll close the gap before it sees $130 again. At the time of writing, Solana is trading for $235.45 after having gained 1.2% in the past day.

Forward Industries has named Cantor Fitzgerald as the sale agent for the offering, for which the financial services firm will collect a 3% fee. Forward Industries also noted that the company’s automatic shelf registration on its S-3 form is already effective—which means the shares will be tradable once they’re sold.

“Through this offering, Forward Industries gains a flexible and efficient mechanism to raise and methodically deploy capital in support of our Solana treasury strategy,” Kyle Samani, Forward Industries’s chairman of the board of directors, said in the press release. He added that the company is well-positioned to scale its SOL treasury, strengthen its balance sheet, and pursue growth initiatives.

Forward isn’t the only Solana treasury company ripping a page from Strategy’s book. DeFi Development Corp. yesterday registered a preferred stock offering with the SEC. The Series C Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock offering mirrors the funding tactics used by the $74 billion Bitcoin juggernaut.

The preliminary SEC registration says the preferred shares will pay quarterly dividends as a fixed rate, but doesn’t specify what that rate will be. The company has applied to list the Series C on Nasdaq Capital Markets, but hasn’t yet disclosed a ticker symbol.

“As for the ticker symbol, stay tuned,” Dan Kang, head of investor relations at Defi Development Corp. told Decrypt. “We’d love to do something clever and crypto-native there.”

For the sake of comparison, the new shares appear to be somewhat comparable to MSTR’s Stride offering, which was a straightforward fixed-rate perpetual preferred with cumulative dividends and optional conversion.

But Kang said copying MSTR isn’t really the point.

“Our goal is to test market receptivity to preferred structures,” he said. “We think these can work really well for Solana treasury companies, because our validator, staking, and onchain activities can help provide consistent dividend or coupon coverage.”

He said that’s one of the benefits to being a Solana treasury. Bitcoin treasury companies “generally need to rely on ATM programs or equity issuance to meet coupon obligations if they don’t have a cash-flow generating operating business,” Kang added.

At the time of writing, DFDV shares—which trade on the NasdaqCM—are changing hands for $17.40, about 4.3% lower than their previous close.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to add comment from DeFi Development Corp Head of Investor Relations Dan Kang.