Billionaire Chewy cofounder Ryan Cohen takes over as GameStop CEO
- Ryan Cohen was announced as the new CEO of GameStop on Thursday.
- The founder of Chewy has a 12.1% stake in the company and was already executive chairman.
GameStop has a CEO once again after Ryan Cohen, the billionaire founder of Chewy, was appointed Thursday.
Cohen had been executive chairman since early June after CEO Matt Furlong was shown the door. The company reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss along with the dismissal of Furlong, a former Amazon executive.
Cohen won't be paid a salary for the CEO role, or for his role as chairman and president, the company said in a statement.
Cohen, who's the largest investor in GameStop with a 12.1% stake, sold Chewy in 2017 for $3.3 billion. He's worth about $3.2 billion, Forbes reported.
GameStop shares jumped more than 7% in premarket trading Thursday. However, GameStop is now worth about $5 billion — some $3 billion less than when Furlong was axed.
Cohen first took a stake in GameStop in 2020 and joined its board in January 2021 before becoming chairman that June. His initial appointment helped spark a 50% surge in GameStop shares in a matter of days as it became one of the "meme" stocks that triggered a frenzy among retail investors.
However, the company was also being touted months earlier on the subreddit r/WallStreetBets by Keith Gill, who was also known as u/DeepFuckingValue, or DFV, and on YouTube as Roaring Kitty.
The saga has had renewed attention following the release of the film "Dumb Money" earlier this month.
GameStop stock peaked in late January 2021 at $483, costing some hedge funds billions and generating huge gains for retail traders. Gill was seen by many as a David standing up to a Goliath, Insider previously reported.
Earlier this month, GameStop reported a slight rise in net sales for the second quarter ending July 29 to $1.164 billion, compared with the same period last year. The net loss was slashed from $108.7 million to $2.8 million for the period.