In late August, Canaan sold its entire Ethereum position and part of its Bitcoin holdings while prices were running high, generating about $13.9 million in cash. It then put a portion of that to work buying back its own shares.
The company sold 3,952 ETH at roughly $2,400 each and 54 BTC at roughly $79,000 each, according to a September 14 company press release. It then deployed $5.4 million to repurchase about 13.6 million American Depositary Shares — the units that trade on Nasdaq — bringing its year-to-date total to about 16.4 million ADSs repurchased.
The board authorized the conversion on August 4, saying it believed the share price did not fully reflect the company's underlying assets and performance, the release said. For shareholders, a buyback on that premise means the company is treating its own shares as a better use of capital than holding digital assets at current prices — and each share retired makes the remaining ones a slightly larger stake in the same company.
Shares closed 16.79% higher at $0.3728 on September 21, after the release, on dollar volume of about $14.9 million.
Canaan still held 1,868 BTC at month-end after the sales. During August it mined 44 BTC, kept its non-joint-venture installed hashrate at 10.05 EH/s, and ran at an average all-in power cost of $0.043 per kilowatt-hour, the release said.
The authorization to draw on the digital asset treasury for further buybacks remains active, the release said. The pile it could draw on is many times what it has already sold.