Sharplink Gaming’s shares fell slightly, even as Ethereum Treasury Firm moved forward with an ambitious stock repurchase program and bought another million shares.
The company trading under Ticker SBET said the latest purchases were each run at an average price of $16.67. Despite the move, Sharplink shares fell 2.8% to $16.32 by the late afternoon in New York.
The buyback is part of the $1.5 billion approval approved in August. So far, the company has retired about 1.93 million shares for around $32 million, funding purchases with cash reserves, staking income and other funding, rather than debt.
Ethereum Reserve expands
In addition to buying back, Sharplink continued to build the balance sheet for Ethereum. The company reported that as of September 16, 838,152 ETH had risen to a total of around $3.86 billion, from 740,760 tokens a month ago. The diagram includes 3,240 ETHs acquired by staking since June.
The company, backed by Ethereum Developer Consensys, is ETH’s second largest corporate holder after Bitmine Immersion, which manages over 2 million tokens.
Together, the two companies make up a large portion of Ethereum, which maintains the book by around 70 public digital asset financing companies, each with at least 100 ETHs.
Buyback and valuation strategies
Sharplink said it will only buy back shares if its net asset value (NAV) falls below 1.
As of September 15th, SBET’s NAV was 0.91 times. In other words, the market valued stocks at about 9% below ether reserves.
While controversial, buybacks are becoming increasingly common among the Treasury of digital assets. Critics say there is risk in prioritizing short-term price support, but former BlackRock executive Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom claims the program is “on the fly” and strengthens long-term shareholder returns.
Sharplink shares briefly broke $78 in June after announcing its partnership with Consensys earlier this year, but were then pulled back.
The company said it continues to commit its shareholder value to Ethereum’s growth, highlighting its strategy of “buy low and sell high” using token accumulation and selective buybacks.
