GameStop Shares Soar After CEO Steps Down From Position

GameStop, the video game retailer that has seen its stock go on a major roller coaster ride this year, saw its shares rising again on Monday

This time after Wall Street learned that the company’s CEO George Sherman will be stepping down from the company on July 31st. Share prices soared over 9% to hit $169 in morning trading.

The company’s board is now leading a search to find CEO candidates to take his place.

Earlier this year shares had reached a record high of $483 back in January. Shares may have pulled back since the high but are still up a staggering 804% for the year.

It was also earlier in the month that GameStop had announced a $1 billion stock sale to help it transition into e-commerce, a move being led by activist investor and Chew co-founder Ryan Cohen.

GameStop also recently hired former Amazon and Google executive Jenna Owens as its new chief operating officer.

“GameStop’s next CEO and CFO are likely to come from the tech industry, as with the other recent senior hires, and would require a wide range of strategic and operational experience, given GameStop’s complex business model, including ~4,800 global stores, digital, used games, new software and hardware, and collectibles,” said Telsey Advisory Group analyst Joseph Feldman.

Keith Gill, one of the biggest influencers on Reddit, has also doubled down on his GameStop bet. Known as Value on Reddit and Roaring Kitty on YouTube, Gill has exercised his 500 GameStop call options contracts as they expired on Friday, giving him 50,000 more shares at a strike price of just $12.

He could could have made more than $7 million on the bet if he had sold the options at Friday’s price. He additionally purchased 50,000 more GameStop shares, bringing his total investment to 200,000 shares worth more than $30 million.

“We continue to believe the current valuation far exceeds our rosy fundamental expectations and projected multi-year benefits from the strategic transformation,” Feldman said.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.