Despite having its bids to acquire multiple Solana treasury firms denied, Forward Inc.'s (FWDI) stock was up as much as 8.6% on Tuesday morning, on a day when (SOL) itself is slightly down.

On Tuesday, Solana Company issued a message stating its board has unanimously and unambiguously rejected Forward’s unsolicited bid to acquire the firm.

In recent days, Forward, the largest Solana digital asset treasury (DAT), has sent non-binding proposals to buy out smaller DATs, including Solana Company (HSDT), SkyAI, Inc. (SKYA), and Solmate (SLMT).

All of those proposals, which offered to mint new FWDI shares for the would-be acquisition target’s shareholders at a 1:1 rate with a 10%-30% premium, were rejected.

"After careful consideration, the Board unanimously concluded that the Forward proposal substantially undervalues the Company. Accordingly, the Board determined that the proposal was not in the best interests of the Company and its stockholders," Solana Company said in a statement on Tuesday. 

Solana Company's HSDT fell as much as 6% on Tuesday, according to Yahoo Finance, while SKYA is up 2% and SLMT is up over 11%, as Forward works to keep its bids alive.

 Notably, in Solmate’s response on June 12 to Forward’s acquisition bid, the firm accused Forward of coordinating secretly with others, including major market maker RockawayX and Viktor Fischer, as "an undisclosed 'group,'" as part of a hostile takeover.

Forward has since denied acting as a group or in coordination with others, and argued the claims were baseless and motivated by SLMT's desire to block the deal.

Forward's motivation

For its part, Forward has argued it is one of the few DATs with a positive net asset value (mNAV), the metric used by DATs to determine their corporate value relative to the value of their underlying crypto holdings. Forward said it has a 1.01 mNAV on a fully diluted basis.

The firm is also set to be included in the Russell 2000 and 3000 indexes at the end of the month, which will serve as a major liquidity boost for FWDI from passive buyers, and has multiple cash-generating operations, including its investment in the OnRe reinsurance platform. It has also taken out low-interest-rate loans, with Galaxy, backed by its staked SOL capital.

Forward is the largest Solana DAT, with over 7 million tokens, most of which are staked on the Solana protocol or deployed in DeFi applications. The next three largest SOL DATs all hold around 2 million tokens, according to The Block’s data.

Most other crypto ecosystems have one or two major DATs, like Ethereum's SharpLink and Bitmine, Telegram’s TON Strategy Co. and AlphaTON, or Hyperliquid’s Hyperliquid Strategies Inc. and Hyperion DeFi.

The Solana Foundation helped support the creation of multiple SOL treasuries by selling tokens at a discount, The Block previously reported, making the Solana DAT ecosystem uniquely poised for consolidation.

"We see a lot of opportunities, especially in this dislocation, where we can play offense and others are playing defense," Forward Chief Investment Officer Ryan Navi previously told The Block. "There's room for win-win outcomes."

Navi noted that many smaller DATs may not be able to meet their SG&A (Selling, General, and Administrative) overhead expenses, even if staking their full treasuries. These costs include rent, salaries, and other corporate registration fees. Forward’s quarterly SG&A costs are about $4.5 million, Navi estimated.

"A lot of them are in trouble, right?" Navi said. "In a lot of cases, people are hoping that prices go up and that allows them to live to fight another day, which could happen. But we're coming at it from a spirit of partnership more broadly, where like — I don't think there needs to be 20 Solana DATs."