Investing

GameStop's New Leader Cohen Buys the Dip Along With Other Board Members

Ben Ward

Published: June 14, 2023 10:39 pm

GameStop (US:GME) has been on a rollercoaster ride over the past week, with a series of developments affect its stock price and investor sentiment.

GME stock plunged 20% on June 7 in the wake of weak first-quarter results and the unexpected firing of CEO Matthew Furlong.

However, in the following trading days, the once-meme stock made a significant recovery as prominent investor and board chairman Ryan Cohen, along with two other directors, purchased a significant number of GameStop shares, pushing the stock higher again, only to be propelled by the disclosure of the trades themselves.

Cohen purchased a whopping $10 million worth of GME shares, accumulating 443,842 shares at an average price of $22.53 per share across several transactions on June 9. He now owns 36.85 million shares, pushing his stake even in the gaming retailer even higher, according to data compiled by Fintel.

Board Buyers

Two other board members also used the opportunity of a weak share price to boost their holding in the company.

Lawrence Cheng purchased a further 5,000 shares in a trade worth $112,000, bringing his total share count ownership to 42,088.

Cheng also purchased shares in late March, which show a maximum return of more than 18% on Fintel’s dashboard of Short-Term Profit Analysis of Insider Purchases. That tracks insiders’ most recent open market purchases that were not part of an automatic trading plan.

Alain Attal bought 10,000 shares in a trade worth $224,000 and owns a total of 538,692 shares after the trade.

Higher Sentiment

All of these insider trades have contributed to GME’s bullish insider sentiment score of 76.04 which ranks the company in 713th spot, or in the top 5% of the 14,888 other global securities screened for the highest levels of insider trading activity.

News of these insider trades pushed shares up a further 10% in trading Tuesday and moved GME’s shares into positive territory when compared to the pre-result share price as shown in a Fintel chart. Ahead of Wednesday’s regular session, the NYSE-traded shares are up a further 1.6%, to $27.39, in pre-market activity.

The share price decline from the result now looks like a slight blip on the three-month chart with momentum indicators.

While the rally is a positive for the stock, GameStop shares are still down around 80% from their peak during the meme-stock frenzy of 2021.

Ryan Cohen, through his firm RC Ventures, has been a driving force behind GameStop’s strategic review and digital pivot in recent years. Now in the box seat, investors will be eagerly waiting to see how he steers the company in a new direction while at the helm.

This article originally appeared on Fintel