GameStop chairman, Ryan Cohen.
Courtesy of Ryan Cohen; Chewy; GameStop; Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images; Reddit; Samantha Lee/Insider
- Ryan Cohen bought 100,000 shares in GameStop, boosting his stake in the Reddit favorite.
- The transaction, made via his investment firm RC Ventures, gives him an 11.9% stake in the company.
- After a 20% gain in after-hours trading, GameStop rose 11% in Wednesday’s pre-market session.
Billionaire activist investor Ryan Cohen has added to his GameStop stake by buying 100,000 more shares, which sent the video-game retailer’s stock soaring as much as 20%.
Cohen’s purchase, made through his investment firm RC Ventures, takes the total number of his GameStop shares to 9.1 million, or an 11.9% stake, a regulatory filing from Tuesday shows.
His transactions were made at a price as low as $96.81 a share and as high as $108.82. The GameStop chairman tweeted about his purchase.
—Ryan Cohen (@ryancohen) March 22, 2022
Cohen, the founder and former CEO of online petcare retailer Chewy, managed to convince Wall Street that pets are a big business. GameStop approached him early last year to transform the retailer into the “Amazon of gaming” via a focus on e-commerce opportunities.
Shortly after he joined GameStop’s board in January last year, the company experienced one of the wildest moments in Wall Street history as retail investors on Reddit boosted its shares in defiance of long-established hedge funds. The resulting short squeeze spread to other heavily-shorted stocks like AMC, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and Blackberry.
Thanks to its meme-stock status, GameStop gained more than 680% over the course of 2021.
Cohen spent $76 million for 9 million shares in the video-game retailer in December 2020 — a stake worth more than $1 billion today after the meme stock’s jaw-dropping gains in early 2021.
He recently disclosed a 9.8% stake in Bed, Bath & Beyond and urged company directors to refocus their strategy and explore a sale of the entire company to a private buyer.
GameStop rose 11% in Wednesday’s pre-market, after a 20% jump in after-hours trading. The retailer closed up 30.7% higher at $123.14 a share on Tuesday, but is down 17% so far this year.
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