Ryan Cohen made his name—and his fortune—at Chewy, co-founding the online pet store before, selling it to Petsmart for $3.35 billion before it went public as an independent company in 2019.
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But in recent years, Cohen has staked his reputation on the turnaround of video game retailer GameStop. Cohen, a billionaire from his Chewy success, first invested in GameStop in September 2020, winning a board seat a few months later. His presence at GameStop catalyzed retail traders, organizing on Reddit and Discord’s WallStreetBets channels, to execute an unprecedented short squeeze of the stock. In the primordial moment of the meme stock era, traders drove GameStop’s stock from about $5 a share at the start of 2021 to an intraday high of $483 just a few days later.
In the years since the short squeeze, GameStop’s stock price has gradually sunk while Cohen has increasingly amassed control. Cohen effectively took over the flagging company, removing its executives and filling the board with loyal associates. In June, GameStop’s board ousted Matt Furlong, the former Amazon executive brought in as CEO after the short squeeze, and promoted Cohen from chairman to executive chairman.
But now Cohen is stepping into the CEO role himself, a culmination of his longstanding efforts to fix the business and help boost his own personal stake. And he’ll have that opportunity: There’s no longer any distance between Cohen’s will and GameStop’s business.
Can GameStop turn it around?
GameStop is arguably a business of the past. In fact, nostalgia played a large role in why retail investors glommed onto the brand—just like they’ve tried to boost other 2000s-era strip-mall vendors like AMC, Bed Bath & Beyond, and BlackBerry.
The video game industry has naturally moved away from physical discs and toward digital downloads. Want the latest Zelda game? You can simply power on your Nintendo Switch, connect to the internet, pay for the game, download it instantly, and start playing. However, there are perks to physical disks: Downloads take up local device storage, physical discs don’t. Additionally, physical disks can be resold—including to GameStop which still operates a lively trade-in business.
Since joining the board, Cohen has exerted pressure to steer GameStop toward a more robust ecommerce business—despite its expansive brick-and-mortar footprint—and launch a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace. Neither strategy has paid off.
Earlier today (Sept. 28), the GameStop board announced Cohen will become president and CEO. Details were scarce, but the announcement mentioned Cohen would not take a salary for any of his roles—though he maintains a 12% stake.
Three years after first buying GameStop stock, Cohen has few barriers to making GameStop the company he wants it to be. If he fails, there will be no one to blame but himself.
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