Another BTC treasury company exits: Huge losses from hoarding at high prices, but less than a year

Author: Protos; Compilation: Chopper, Foresight News

11 months ago, French semiconductor company Sequans Communications launched an enterprise Bitcoin reserve plan to address the risk of delisting from the New York Stock Exchange. Today, this trial has ended in disappointment.

The chip company confirmed that it had fully repaid its convertible bonds by selling its Bitcoin holdings, and it also plans to gradually liquidate the remaining 658 Bitcoins. The company’s peak Bitcoin holdings reached 3,234 coins at one point.

Sequans previously claimed publicly that it would accumulate and hold more than 3,000 Bitcoins as a long-term reserve asset. But as it turned out, this so-called “long-term” lasted for less than a year.

The company’s stock (ticker SQNS) is down 77% so far this year, and its cumulative decline over nearly five years is as much as 97%.

Sequans’s Bitcoin reserve plan began on June 23, 2025, when Swan Bitcoin and its CEO Cory Klippsten were still heavily promoting the project (Note: Swan Bitcoin is the exclusive operator and advisor for Sequans’s Bitcoin reserve strategy). And just 18 days before the plan was implemented, the NYSE issued a delisting warning to Sequans: both the company’s market value and shareholders’ equity had fallen below the exchange’s minimum threshold of $50 million.

Sequans’s latest announcement—its convertible bonds have been fully repaid

At the time, Klippsten said, “Sequans is expected to become a leader in the corporate Bitcoin reserve sector.” Back then, SQNS shares were $23.40; now, the stock’s opening price is only $3.98.

Bitcoin reserve strategy declared a failure from the outset

After the market bubble burst in early summer 2025, the stock prices of many listed companies that had positioned themselves with digital-asset reserves all weakened at the same time. The optimistic vision Sequans once painted has now fallen short.

Sequans CEO Georges Karam had previously made high-profile remarks, firmly believing that Bitcoin is a high-quality asset with extremely high long-term investment value.

At the time, the company selected Swan Bitcoin as the cooperation execution party, while Coinbase Prime served as the asset custodian. Meanwhile, Northland Capital Markets and B. Riley Securities served as joint lead underwriters, helping the company complete a total private placement financing of $384 million.

Of this funding, only $195 million came from American Depositary Receipts sold at a price of $1.40 per share; the remaining $189 million was in collateralized convertible bonds using Bitcoin as the collateral. In other words, starting from the first day the plan went live, the Bitcoins used as reserves by Sequans were, in substance, already pledged to the creditors.

As of October 3, 2025, Sequans held a total of 3,234 Bitcoins, with an average holding cost of approximately $116,643 per coin. As of the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin has fallen to $73,000.

Just one month later, this listed company became “notorious” due to a negative news story: to repay part of its debt, the company sold 970 Bitcoins.

This move completely violated the core rule of the corporate coin-holding camp. The pioneer of this model, Michael Saylor, left behind a widely circulated line: “Even if you’re at the end of your rope, don’t sell your Bitcoin.” But in the end, Sequans still chose to sell coins to repay the debt.

Changes in the percentage of adjusted net asset value (mNAV) per share for multiple Bitcoin treasury companies since July 22, 2025

“Bitcoin Reserve Strategy Officially Terminated”

Five months later, Sequans finally put a complete stop to the plan. In its announcement, the company wrote only briefly: “The Bitcoin reserve strategy has been terminated.”

Karam, the CEO who had once been enthusiastic about Bitcoin, now said that this debt repayment was an important turning point for the company’s development. Going forward, Sequans will focus entirely on its IoT semiconductor core business and drive business expansion.

All the past praise for Bitcoin’s value and the promises to create long-term returns for shareholders through crypto-asset reserves have been abandoned. At present, the company is left with only a plan to liquidate and cash out.

In fact, as early as the 2026 Q1 earnings report released three weeks earlier, the company had already signaled its exit. In the report’s risk warning section, the official statement explicitly mentioned that it would terminate Bitcoin reserve-related business. In that quarter, Sequans’s revenue was only $6.1 million, and its operating loss reached $50.5 million.

Based on annual report data, Sequans’s net loss for the full year of 2025 was $109.3 million. Of that amount, an unrealized impairment loss on Bitcoin assets alone reached $67.4 million, and the company’s total accumulated losses have already reached $145.1 million.

In short, Sequans bought high and sold low on Bitcoin, ultimately resulting in losses of several tens of millions of dollars.

The company originally hoped that Bitcoin reserves would enhance financial resilience and create long-term value for shareholders, but both goals have failed. At present, SQNS’s stock price is down more than 80% compared with the day the Bitcoin plan was launched, and down 92% compared with its recent one-year high.