GameStop (GME) – Get report stocks soared on Wednesday, with investors reacting to board members recently appointed by the video game retailer and encouraging sales results at the holiday season.
Grapevine, Texas, shares on the last check rose 68% to $ 33.45.
Earlier this week, the retailer reached an agreement with RC Ventures to place three of the New York activist investor’s nominees – Alan Attal, Ryan Cohen and Jim Grube – on the board.
A GameStop statement said the three executives had “a deep understanding of e-commerce, online marketing, finance and strategic planning”.
The addition of Cohen and the other new directors is positive, given his success at Chewy (CHWY) – Get report and a vision to “make GameStop a more digitally focused retailer,” Telsey analyst Joseph Feldman wrote in a note on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg.
Cohen is the manager of RC Ventures and co-founder of pet supply specialist Chewy.com, which was purchased by PetSmart in 2017 for $ 3.35 billion.
In November, RC Ventures urged the company to conduct a strategic review of its business and focus on digital sales.
The company, in a December filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, expressed a willingness to become more involved with the company “to produce the best results for all shareholders”.
The company also reported a fourfold increase in e-commerce sales during the nine-week Christmas shopping season. The value represented about 34% of total sales.
In the year, e-commerce sales exceeded $ 1.35 billion, GameStop said, exceeding the company’s $ 1 billion target. Comparable store sales increased 4.8%
GameStop said in a statement that it saw “unprecedented demand for recently released game consoles, and while consumer demand has far exceeded the restricted offer in the nine-week period, the company believes that these products will boost sales by 2021. with the availability of our suppliers’ console improves at the end of the year. “