Sequans ends bitcoin treasury after sale of last 314 coins
The company gave no sale proceeds or new cash balance, leaving its June 30 cash of US$21.0 million as the latest figure disclosed in the releases.
Julian Okafor
The last 314 bitcoin have left a French chip designer's balance sheet, ending a treasury strategy financed in part with convertible debt. The 314 bitcoin held at June 30 by Sequans Communications S.A. NYSESQNS, the Paris-based maker of cellular IoT chips and radio transceivers, had since been sold, the company said Thursday. Sequans now reports no cryptocurrency holdings and no outstanding debt except obligations tied to government-financed research projects.
The Sept. 24 release describes its cash position as strong but gives neither a current balance nor the proceeds and prices from the final bitcoin sales. Its Aug. 4 preliminary results put cash and equivalents at US$21.0 million on June 30. That is the dated benchmark for the claim, not a Sept. 24 balance; the release does not allow shareholders to calculate the return on the last 314 coins.
The NYSESQNS quote put Sequans's depositary shares at a US$2.97 close at 4 p.m. EDT on Sept. 23, before the announcement. The release arrived at 6 a.m. EDT on Thursday, before the regular New York session, so that close says nothing about a response to the exit.
The chip business gives holders a different set of numbers to follow. In the June quarter, product sales increased 83.7 per cent from a year earlier, while total revenue fell 8.4 per cent to US$7.5 million because the comparison quarter contained substantial licensing and services revenue. Sequans reported a US$9.8 million net loss for the period, so growth in product shipments has yet to produce a reported profit.
The Convertible Debt Was Redeemed Before the Final Sale
Sequans closed a financing on July 8, 2025 that paired US$195 million of equity investment with US$189 million of secured convertible debentures to launch a bitcoin treasury. The company called it a US$384 million investment, but reported about US$376 million of gross proceeds because the debentures carried an original-issue discount. Its plan was to use net proceeds primarily to buy bitcoin, subject to the financing's collateral requirements.
That borrowed leg was gone before Thursday. On May 28, Sequans said it had redeemed all remaining convertible debt issued in July 2025 using proceeds from bitcoin sales and would gradually monetize the rest. It held about 658 unrestricted bitcoin then, compared with 314 at June 30 and none after the sale announced Sept. 24. The final sale ends coin-price exposure on the balance sheet; it is not the event that redeemed the convertible notes.
"Our priority is clear: execute on our growing 4G and RF transceiver product portfolio, accelerate our path to profitability, and advance our 5G roadmap," Sequans chief executive Georges Karam said in the May 28 release.
The balance sheet is simpler, though the amount available to fund chip development is still unquantified after June 30. Thursday's release identifies research-project debt as the remaining borrowing category but gives no amount for it. It also gives no allocation of the last bitcoin-sale proceeds among research, inventory and other uses, so the cash runway cannot be reset from this announcement.
Product Growth Has Yet to Lift Total Revenue
The June-quarter results show the difference between selling more chips and increasing the entire business. Total revenue was US$7.5 million, down from US$8.1 million a year earlier; the prior period included licensing and services revenue from an earlier transaction. Product sales rose 39.4 per cent from the March quarter as well as 83.7 per cent year over year, making the direction of the core business clearer than the headline revenue decline.
The same preliminary results put gross margin at 32.9 per cent in the June quarter, versus 64.4 per cent a year earlier. Sequans attributed the change in part to the mix of more product sales and a prior-period licensing contribution. Its US$7.2 million operating loss included bitcoin accounting effects, which makes a clean comparison of semiconductor profitability harder until the company reports without crypto assets.
Sequans said on Sept. 24 that its six-month product backlog at June 30 had more than tripled from a year earlier, without giving a dollar total. It also said it won its first drone design in the June quarter and is developing its 5G eRedCap platform. Neither the release nor the Aug. 4 results gives a contract value for that drone win or a firm eRedCap shipment date, leaving those growth claims to be tested against sales.
A Treasury Peer Keeps Buying
The exit runs opposite to Strategy Inc. NASDAQMSTR, a listed bitcoin treasury company. Its own Sept. 21 filing records a purchase of 950 bitcoin reported Sept. 21, lifting holdings to 846,000. Mugglehead's earlier report on that purchase showed the other direction publicly traded treasury companies are taking while Sequans returns to semiconductors.
Read more: Strategy resumes bitcoin buying with 950 BTC after a two week pause
For Sequans holders, the Sept. 24 release removes bitcoin inventory from the next balance sheet but does not establish how much cash the last sale added. The next test is its quarter ending Sept. 30: that report will show product sales and a post-exit cash balance together.
