Metaplanet cuts executive reward pool by 41%, extinguishes $220 million in value

Bitcoin BTC$77,374.08 treasury firm Metaplanet (3350) cut the size of its management equity reward pool by 41% following protests from shareholders.

The Tokyo-based company reduced the total pool of potential shares in the Series 10 Stock Acquisition Rights plan by 41% to 188.2 million, according to filings published on Friday. The move follows an adjustment in August that cut the pool to about 320 million shares.

When initiated in 2022, the plan established a reward pool of 20% of Metaplanet’s fully diluted share capital rather than granting executives a fixed number of shares. Investors who flocked to the company after 2024, when it adopted a strategy of selling shares to buy bitcoin, objected to the structure, saying it diluted their holdings while boosting management’s.

“We never intended to incentivise non-accretive or modestly accretive dilution,” CEO Simon Gerovich said in a post on X. Friday’s move “extinguishes over $220 million of warrant value,” which is the scale of what the floating mechanism produced management at shareholders’ expense.

However, the 64 million shares Gerovich received through his Aug. 28 rights exercise under the old, inflated terms are not being returned. Gerovich retains the right to acquire a further 49,128,000 shares under the revised structure.

Gerovich made no reference to MMXX Ventures, its share sales or his personal economic interest in the Metaplanet shareholder, on which investors also sought clarity.

The company withdrew a previously announced plan to transfer warrants into an employee incentive vehicle, saying it will design a new compensation plan with external advisers.

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