GameStop’s stock price surged more than 100% on Wednesday amid a shift in executive leadership this week and a month after day traders disrupted Wall Street by briefly driving up the company’s value to record levels.
Shares in the brick-and-mortar video game retailer jumped just before 3 p.m. were halted with fewer than 30 minutes left during the trading day, which ends at 4 p.m. EST. The stock closed Wednesday up 103.9%, according to CNBC.
GameStop stock just jumped 100 percent, and WallStreetBets is ecstatic https://t.co/qHMHZ8lPGg pic.twitter.com/hCDewolUZs
— The Verge (@verge) February 24, 2021
The surge came one day after the company announced Tuesday that GameStop’s CFO Jim Bell is resigning, effective March 26.
Bell did not willingly leave his post but was forced out by Ryan Cohen, co-founder of pet retail store Chewy, who invested in GameStop last year to aid the company to increase its online sales, sources told Business Insider.
GAMESTOP CFO RESIGNS FOLLOWING TRADING FRENZY
“We acknowledge that leadership changes often follow activist settlements and Mr. Bell’s exit was mutual, non-immediate, and suggests no disagreements with company/board,” Jefferies equity analyst Stephanie Wissink told clients, according to CNBC.
“We believe Mr. Bell deserves recognition for a series of actions that protected GME equity during the late stages of the last hardware cycle, when sales were down sharply,” Wissink added.
Jefferies announced GameStop would likely look for a replacement CFO with a technology background rather than someone with a focus on retail sales.
Last month, the gaming retailer’s stocks surged upward of 400% after swarms of retail investors rallied together to push the company’s value to record prices. The push was largely motivated by individual investors from Twitter or other internet forum groups on Reddit.
Members of the popular “r/WallStreetBets” forum on Reddit rallied behind reports of GameStop stock surging yet again, as several posts on the front page urged stock owners to hold on to their stock or exercise “diamond hands,” a strategic term users on the forum type to imply they won’t sell their shares.
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GameStop had been heavily shorted by a series of hedge funds betting the company’s stock price would fall. The strategy was subsequently thwarted in January after retail investors foiled short sellers by pushing the company’s price to over $340 per share.
