Our financial model has been made open and widely available to the public to facilitate transparent, productive discussion around “fair value” of GameStop Corporation shares
Do Your Own Due Diligence
As Q4 2021 progresses and the launch of GameStop NFT remains ahead, the Chief Executive Officer of Loopring Daniel Wang has responded to a request for some Q&A.
On October 28th, GMEdd.com released source code from Loopring’s public GitHub repository that confirmed the highly speculated partnership amongst GameStop and the Ethereum-based high-throughput, low-cost, layer2 technology company.
Prior to this, GMEdd.com had published digital breadcrumbs leading to that same point, detailing how Loopring has the technology that GameStop would require to bridge traditional e-commerce and blockchain and engineer the revolution of gaming.
While speculative investors and crypto enthusiasts have eagerly awaited an official statement, a Canadian journalist has decided to ask Loopring’s CEO Daniel Wang his thoughts on scalability, the future of Loopring, and the all-but-announced partnership, granting GMEdd.com permission to share what he found.
On November 23rd, 2021, the freelance journalist started with a simple request sent to the Loopring Foundation email for comment on a story in the works about layer-2 solutions in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Emails obtained by GMEdd.com, with private information redacted.
After requesting a quick interview with a Loopring representative and obtaining a response from Daniel Wang himself, the journalist, who asked we keep their identity private, sent over several questions for the CEO.
Three days later, Wang responded to the inquiry, providing color on several different topics related to the company’s technology and its anticipated adoption.
The questions, and Wang’s relevant responses, can be read in their raw format without edits below.
Yes, I do think this will be the case for most users. A layered design is much easier to scale.
The waiting period for withdrawals is a major (noticeable) drawback of optimistic rollups, but the other thing people often neglect is that there needs to be watchers of OR blocks to constantly find potential violation of rules and then challenge the operators in a timely minter to protect user’s interest. These watchers need to be incentives and they cannot share the same interests with operators to stay independent.
That’s a good question that I don’t have a good answer for. The blockchain space has been embracing new ideas and technologys on a daily basis. It’s hard to make a road map for even the next two years. We are more interested in building infrastructures instead of focusing on an application. Recently what makes me excited is that progress Ethereum Foundation has made in their zkEVM effort. I believe in a year or two, there will be general purpose zkRollup built on top of it to offer full EVM compatibility.
Smart wallet with social recovery is really a good product idea, but the adoption is slow due to higher gas cost of deployment and transaction compared with EOA wallets. I believe to solve this barrier to the market, smart wallets shall be deployed onto layer-2s instead of Ethereum mainnet. It will also be great if Ethereum can support converting EOA addresses to contract addresses so people can try EOA first, then convert them to contract-based wallets later to adopt social-revery based solutions.
I cannot comment on that.
I would image most people who have a smart phone will have crypto apps installed and owns some cryptocurrency. By then, Loopring will probably be gone — there will be a lot of younger and smarter people building next generation of technologies to outcompete most existing blockchain platforms/products. It will be sad that two years later most of the current projects are still around. Don’t you agree?
Daniel Wang envisions a future where end-users interact with Ethereum entirely on Layer2, leaving standard L1 ETH as a settlement layer, citing enhanced scalability.
When the question was raised about a road map, the Chief Executive stated that due to the rapid embrace of new ideas in the sector, “It’s hard to make a road map for even the next two years.”
On Loopring’s Discord server in September, Wang stated he was struggling to write the company’s third quarter report in fear of leaking secrets and breaching a non-disclosure agreement, indicating the secrecy of the project.
Amid widespread rumors and source code leaks, by opting to state that he “cannot comment,” in his latest interview on the GameStop partnership, Wang acknowledges the existence of the speculation and declines to negate it.
While official announcements have yet to be made, and with GameStop’s third quarter fiscal 2021 earnings results disclosed on Wednesday, December 8th, retail investors anticipate a product launch of GameStop NFT, bridging the gap between traditional e-commerce and blockchain, within the upcoming month.
Source: Emails with Daniel Wang
GameStop Corp., today announced that it will report third quarter fiscal 2021 earnings results after the market closes on Wednesday, December 8, 2021.
The gaming retailer in the midst of transformation will host an investor conference call at 5:00 pm ET on the same day to review the company’s financial results. This call and any supplemental information can be accessed at GameStop’s investor relations home page.
The phone number for the investor conference call is 877-451-6152 and the confirmation code is 13725350. The conference call will be archived for two months on GameStop’s corporate website.
GMEdd.com had hosted livestreams for prior conference calls, as viewership often surpasses what GameStop’s systems can handle.
For Q1 and Q2 2021 Earnings, GameStop streamed the report on their official YouTube channel, which remain the company’s most viewed videos; a testament to the devotion of the company’s retail investor base.
We advise all GameStop investors follow @GMEdd on Twitter for updates.
This will mark the second earnings call since the departure of former Chief Executive Officer George Sherman and the board overhaul.
While Ryan Cohen announced at the Annual Shareholder’s Meeting that the company does not plan to talk a big game, investors will anticipate some direction or announcements regarding GameStop NFT from the aspiring technology company under new leadership.
The recently instated CEO Matt Furlong, a former Amazon executive, will likely speak during the majority of the conference call, if tradition continues.
Source: GameStop News Room
Since GameStop’s favored Amazon and Chewy don’t refurbish technology, who better to recruit from than Apple? It’s only fair, considering Ryan Cohen remains the company’s largest individual shareholder.
In the year 2000, GameStop started refurbishing games and consoles with just 20 employees in a different building down the street. Just over a decade later, 1,100 worked in a plant formerly used to build wire harnesses for an automotive company, and consoles were just the beginning.
The Verge states that at the time of reporter Sean Hollister’s visit in 2012, factory workers were testing iPads, iPods, and iPhones for basic functionality: the buttons, the screen, the microphone, the headphone jack, the charging port, and software features.
It all happens fast: “Every 42 seconds, a unit will be rolling off this cell,” a factory worker says.
On June 24th 2010, the much-anticipated iPhone 4 was launching in the United States and Apple Inc. had just rehired Randy Teele to his prior position as the company’s Senior Manager of AppleCare Planning and Procurement after a brief one-year hiatus to work for semiconductor producer Micron Technology.
After persevering through the “Antennagate” scandal, Randy Teele would go on to serve the company through multiple promotions over eleven more years, as the tech pioneers changed the world and reinvented the smartphone, achieving over 40% market share.
Randy was at Apple for every iPhone launch except for the 3GS on June 19th, 2009. He came back to the California-based company just in time for the 4.
In November of 2021, Randy Teele’s decade-long commitment to the $2.6T company was foregone to take up an opportunity to deliver Ryan Cohen’s vision.
Revealed via LinkedIn, Randy Teele departed his position as Apple’s Senior Director of AppleCare Service Operations to begin a new role as GameStop’s Vice President of Worldwide Refurbishment and Warranty.
Randy Teele’s LinkedIn as seen on November 22, 2021.
Having relocated from San Francisco to Grapevine, the experienced supply chain professional is now in charge of overhauling GameStop’s Premium Refurbished Program.
Apple has continuously topped LaptopMag‘s comprehensive support rankings for the last few years, through a combination of speed, friendliness, and knowledgeable agents aligning with GameStop Chairman Ryan Cohen’s emphasis on delighting customers.
Stanley “Randy” Teele doesn’t have much of a digital presence, but GMEdd.com was able to find that while working at Cisco in his early career, the global demand planning manager was referred to by an intern from MIT as part of a collective of very smart, dynamic, and driven individuals.
[My manager] has also helped me to work with a very smart, dynamic, and driven set of individuals at Cisco, including Mark Still, Randy Teele, Tom Bomberg, and Kyle Nolan.
And with an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2001 alongside over a decade of growth at Apple, it’s safe to assume that the esteemed executive didn’t leave behind a blue chip to oversee replacing broken Xbox disk drives in Texas.
GameStop must be up to something bigger.
Sources: MIT.edu, The Granite – 1993, The Verge, Randy Teele on LinkedIn, 9to5Mac
GMEdd.com’s Research Report has remained untouched since release, until now.
On January 20th, 2021, as GameStop Corp. traded at $39.36/share on the New York Stock Exchange, GMEdd.com released their first research report outlying a case for an extraordinary $169.00 bull thesis, rebuting naysayers and self-interested short sellers who maintained the stock would plummet “back to $20 fast”.
Since then, GameStop has persisted on discreet public relations, while overhauling the company’s leadership and talent to gear up for a behind-the-scenes, game-changing metamorphosis, as detailed in GMEdd.com’s GameStop’s Impending Market Disruption through an Unprecedented Transformation.
The loose collective of retail investors with a distinguished fascination for GameStop founded GMEdd.com to immortalize the research and high-quality due diligence that the community put into the investment thesis — to prevent it from being drowned out by any attempts to mislead or confuse public discourse on the company’s value.
And at the time of our initial report’s publication, there was tremendous need for the honest, independent discussion of the company’s value that we hoped to foster. At $39/share, the company had rallied more than 400% from Ryan Cohen’s initial 13-D filing, but remained undervalued even by conservative estimates.
However, traditional media outlets were working overtime to cast the rally as illegitimate. Andrew Left’s Citron Research was toying with the public and suggesting longs were “suckers at this poker game”, and even attempts to share research on “retail investor friendly” platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Stocktwits were met with posts being removed and obfuscated by bot responses.
Only a handful of independent voices had the courage, platform, and profile to stand out and engage in a reasonable discussion about what GameStop might be worth.
Keith Gill, aka ‘Roaring Kitty’, was a fan of both our original report – and updating his thesis as facts changed or emerged.
Post an unprecedented short-squeeze in January, GameStop’s stock has remained volatile – but GMEdd.com’s bullish price target has proven robust.
Remarkably, GameStop Corp.’s VWAP, average of the daily Volume Weighted Average Price for the prior thirty consecutive trading days, since February, has landed at $169.79.
Despite the Reddit Apes and unexplainable volatility events, the market has accepted GMEdd’s January bull case of $169 with remarkable precision.
Now, on the one-year anniversary of Ryan Cohen’s landmark Letter to the Board, upon appraising all of the latest guidance and material on the company, GMEdd.com has prepared a refreshed Research Report, detailing a bullish, base, and bearish case once again.
Our financial model has been made open and widely available to the public to facilitate transparent, productive discussion around “fair value” of GameStop Corporation shares
Do Your Own Due Diligence
The content of this report reflects independent research and analysis conducted by a collective of independent retail investors in GameStop Corporation, is for informational purposes only, and is provided “as is” with no warranty of any kind, express or implied. Any content or statement herein should not be construed as investment advice, or as an offer to buy, sell, or solicit the purchase or sale of any security or financial instrument. Your use of the information contained herein is solely at your own risk. Do your own due diligence.
At the time of posting, all GMEdd.com contributors hold a position in GameStop Corp.
GameStop’s stock may have gotten a little ahead of fundamentals in January, but everything that has transpired behind-the-scenes since then may be leading to a massive reevaluation.
GameStop’s transformation from a struggling brick-and-mortar retailer into a technology company that will soon unveil GameStop NFT — a gas-free, consumer-facing, blockchain marketplace — may become one of the greatest turnaround stories in business. All the while, the company has remained silent and the financial media refuses to cover it.
If you’ve been following along since GMEdd.com’s inception almost a year ago, you already know the prologue, but for those who are new here: buckle-up and welcome aboard.
The story begins long ago with a mentor’s inspiring devotion to his business…
Ted Cohen was a glassware importer with an impeccable work ethic, who reportedly never missed a day on the job. He led by example, but not in a deliberate way. “It’s who he was,” his son says.
Ted Cohen pictured on the left.
With a keen eye for capital allocation, the disciplined leader kept track of the expenses that most entrepreneurs forget about. Power bills, the varying prices of hundreds of glassware products that he sold, and even the daily gas prices to accommodate for impacted transportation costs.
If you take a carload of this (pointing to a pallet of glassware) you’ll make more money. But if you take a carload of that (pointing to a different pallet), you’ll make less money, but you’ll keep the customer. So, take a carload of that.
Read more on Ted Cohen in Entrepreneur.
Ted Cohen was in it for the long haul. Less concerned with making a “quick buck,” Ted wanted to please his customers. Through his commitment to the business, Ted went on to motivate his son, Ryan, who credits his father’s guiding footsteps in his career.
Influenced by his father, the 25-year old Ryan Cohen dropped out of college and founded Chewy, originally MrChewy, with a friend he met in an online chat room. Chewy’s goal was to create a household brand and sustainable business that “delivers pet happiness” through unmatched convenience and customer service.
Joan Verdon at Forbes reports that, back then, Cohen used the 1997 Jeff Bezos letter to Amazon shareholders as a roadmap for how to grow the company. Chewy’s playbook became Bezos’ emphasis on the need to scale, to achieve market leadership, and to make bold bets.
MrChewy as seen in a 2011 screenshot of the site.
In need of capital, Cohen has said he approached over 100 venture capital firms. After being turned away by all of them, Cohen finally secured the company’s first outside investment of $15 million through linking with Larry Cheng of Volition Capital.
From that point on, the mission was larger. I was even more committed to making Chewy an industry leader, because it was no longer just our own money on the line. Larry had gone out on a limb for us. I felt that responsibility. [Ryan Cohen in HBR]
By 2016, the pet product retailer had grown to $900 million in sales and had become the number 1 online pet retailer. One year later, Cohen had raised $350 million and was preparing for an IPO.
This all took a turn when PetSmart purchased Chewy for $3.35 billion in the largest e-commerce acquisition of all time. Two years later, PetSmart took Chewy public at a valuation of $8.7 billion.
Ryan Cohen has spoken with TechCrunch about Chewy’s IPO.
In an interview with Connie Loizos of TechCrunch, Ryan Cohen referred to Chewy’s IPO as his “baby graduating from the college that he never went to,” and the year of the record-breaking acquisition Fortune named Cohen one of its “40 under 40.”
After continuing to operate as Chewy’s Chief Executive Officer for nearly a year after the sale, Cohen then stepped away from Chewy to begin an exploratory process.
Ryan Cohen considered retirement overrated.
Without any desire to retire at age 33, the relentless entrepreneur began plotting his next move.
I’m lucky. I’m talking to a lot of different entrepreneurs and business[es] and looking at corporate board opportunities. I’m going through that exploratory process.
In April of 2019, Cohen saw an opportunity with GameStop and invested, pushing the video game retailer to focus on online sales and shutter unprofitable locations.
GameStop had tried and failed to sell itself after years of stagnant growth and corporate strategy missteps. The company hired a new CEO, George Sherman, a veteran of retailers including Advance Auto Parts. Sherman was GameStop’s fifth CEO in less than two years.
At the time, Ryan Cohen was far from being a household name. Living a private life, Cohen had rarely spoken with the press, and GMEdd.com can only cite seven media appearances despite selling a high-profile, multi-billion dollar company prior to his initial GameStop purchase.
With Cohen down on his GME investment, his suggestions to the board largely ignored, and stock reaching an all-time low of $2.80, the investor executed on an activist approach and upped the ante to a 9% stake, as he filed his first 13D for GameStop via RC Ventures LLC on August 28, 2020.
RC Ventures’ first 13D filing, dated August 28th, 2020.
This sparked waves, particularly within value investor circles, as many pondered the e-commerce guru’s investment motives. What was the Founder of Chewy doing investing in GameStop?
For the past year, Cohen had been perfectly crafting a digital presence, coming out of his private life and conducting more than a dozen interviews, seemingly in an effort to build his credibility as an e-commerce mogul and aid with public support in the event of a proxy battle for control of the company.
When Cohen filed his initial stake in GameStop, traders were interested in the business magnate’s motives and discovered his recently-conducted media sharing his groundbreaking story of beating Amazon in the digital world.
At the time, Cohen had established a website, ryan-cohen.com, that embedded various media appearances and formal interviews the Chewy co-founder had given.
Roaring Kitty was impressed with Ryan Cohen’s success as an entrepreneur.
Retail investing icon Roaring Kitty first stumbles upon Ryan Cohen’s rudimentary homepage during an August 28th, 2020 livestream. At the time, the deep value investor was merely trying to learn more about the Chewy founder.
The website has since been shut down in December of 2020. Had the website done its job?
In November of 2020, Ryan Cohen again upped his stake, averaging into a 9.98% position. More importantly, the activist investor amended a letter to the board in his 13D titled, “Maximizing Stockholder Value by Becoming the Ultimate Destination for Gamers.”
Snippets of Cohen’s Letter to GameStop’s Board in November 2020.
In a bold move, Ryan Cohen urged GameStop’s board to adopt the right roadmap to value creation, stating that the company needs to evolve into a technology company that delights gamers.
The letter called to attention the ineptitude of then-CEO George Sherman, “Regrettably, Mr. Sherman appears committed to a twentieth-century focus on physical stores and walk-in sales despite the transition to an always-on digital world,” Ryan Cohen wrote.
To this day, the November 2020 letter remains the preeminent voice of Ryan Cohen’s vision regarding the gaming retailer, that all investors should review for an inside-look at his strategy.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the board responded by hosting a private call with Mr. Cohen.
Outraged with a proposed dilutive offering that was never mentioned on the call, Cohen wrote an email to GameStop’s then-chairwoman, Kathy Vrabeck, warning her that he would go public with his disapproval if the company proceeded with the sale. He urged her to share the email with other directors, people familiar with the matter said. [WSJ, Aug. 12, 2021]
“The ill-timed stock offering created a wedge and he used it to his advantage,” a former board member said.
Reportedly leery of a prolonged fight and open to new ideas to improve the business, the board invited Mr. Cohen and two of his associates to join in January.
Read How Ryan Cohen Took Over GameStop – WSJ for more.
GameStop announced the RC Ventures agreement on January 11th.
With Ryan Cohen and his colleagues from Chewy’s executive suite now appointed to GameStop’s board, the work was just getting started.
One of GameStop’s first Cohen-lead initiatives was recruiting a Chief Technology Officer, Senior Vice President of Customer Care, and a Vice President of Fulfillment.
All of these appointees came from Amazon and Chewy, with the job titles and work experience indicating a new direction the board member was steering the company towards.
Shortly thereafter, the then-CFO Jim Bell was pushed out and a “hiring frenzy” rapidly ensued.
In May, GMEdd.com published GameStop Poaches Talent From The Best – Amazon, Chewy, Facebook, Google, and More.
As if the decades-old company was a startup once again, tech and e-commerce talent looking to be a part of something began leaving blue-chips in droves to fulfill Cohen’s vision. LinkedIn chatter began hinting towards GameStop gearing up for a transformation that will be studied in universities for years to come.
The stock remained volatile, and in April a new slate for the board was announced, with Chewy’s first investor Larry Cheng nominated for a seat and Ryan Cohen to be elected as Chairman.
At the company’s Annual Shareholders Meeting on June 9th, 2021, the newly-appointed Chairman addressed claims that the company was withholding a roadmap from investors.
We know some people want us to lay out a whole detailed plan today, but that’s not gonna happen. You won’t find us talking a big game, making a bunch of lofty promises, or telegraphing our strategy to the competition. That’s the philosophy we adopted at Chewy.
After months of cheeky tweets from Cohen, GameStop had announced two new fulfillment centers, mirroring Chewy’s locations and strategy. Simultaneously, the company had eliminated all long-term debt and raised nearly $2bn to fund transformation efforts.
GMEdd.com also took note of several job listings and LinkedIn posts that indicated the company would be expanding their corporate footprint from Grapevine to South Florida, Seattle, and Boston in an effort to have a vast pool from which to recruit talent.
Sprinkled in these job postings were hints that the company was up to something big. GMEdd.com first noted in an otherwise typical job posting from April 8th, 2021, GameStop inadvertently expressed interest in the booming non-fungible tokens market, alongside blockchain and cryptocurrency.
GameStop’s Job Listing from April 8th, 2021
Listed under additional skills and experience, GameStop asked that applicants have experience in: blockchain, cryptocurrency, or non-fungible tokens.
In an increasing mania, GameStop began recruiting individuals for an “NFTeam” upon establishing NFT.GameStop.com, asking for exceptional engineers, designers, gamers, marketers, and community leaders to join the project.
It wasn’t long until speculative investors began pondering GameStop’s move into NFTs, and what the brick-and-mortar retailer was up to hiring blockchain engineers.
By October, GMEdd.com was confident enough to put all of the pieces together and publish the findings.
Loopring is aiming to leverage blockchain to become the leading user-facing financial services application in the world. Revolutionizing trading, investing, payments, ‘banking’, to become the gateway of choice for users to experience the parallel financial system of Ethereum — in all its glory and security.
Loopring posted an interview titled, “Counterfactual Wallet & NFTs on Loopring” on Medium.
For months, the technology company had teased an NFT Marketplace launch with a “premium owner,” coming soon, and with glaring business ties and family ties, it seemed Loopring had the technology that GameStop would utilize to bridge traditional e-commerce and blockchain, and engineer the revolution of gaming.
Read more on the clues in Clues Point Towards GameStop Launching NFT Marketplace with Leading Crypto Technology Company Loopring
Just days later, with the clues published and the theory gaining traction, GameStop bluntly requested NFT marketplace experience in a job posting, alongside blockchain gaming.
The very next day, GMEdd.com noticed updates pushed to Loopring’s public GitHub repository containing code referring to GameStop, confirming the highly speculated partnership.
Loopring’s ‘NFT feature’ code revealed several references to GameStop.
Loopring had also announced that the NFT marketplace will feature gas-free, instant transactions, eliminating a high drop-off point in the conversion tunnel and a major impediment to mass-adoption.
At this point, with over 250 fresh tech-experienced hires, it has become irrefutable that GameStop is on the brink of transforming into a technology company, and now it’s just a matter of valuation.
It could be argued GameStop’s NFT marketplace has a greater chance of success because the established gaming brand already has a customer base of early adopters, including 55 million PowerUp Rewards members and an enthusiastic base of retail investors eager to adopt the platform.
Through a successful NFT marketplace launch, GameStop has the potential to generate millions of high-value additional revenue per year, cementing itself in the technology sector and forcing Wall Street to stop evaluating the company as a brick-and-mortar retailer and start implementing tech multiples.
On Tuesday, November 16th 2021, at 9:30 AM EST — the one-year anniversary of Ryan Cohen’s landmark Letter to the Board — GMEdd.com will be releasing their first refreshed research report since January, including updated price targets derived from new information, and you won’t want to miss it.
Sources: Ryan Cohen in Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, Roaring Kitty on YouTube, SEC 13D Filing, GameStop Careers, Chewy.com Archive, GameStop News Release, Loopring on Medium, GitHub Archive, Wall Street Journal, HBR
Two days after Elon Musk controversially declares he will decide whether to sell 10% of his Tesla stock based on a Twitter poll, Ryan Cohen has shared some banter.
Ryan Cohen and Elon Musk’s Twitter antics have long been compared, with Cohen’s comical tweets reminding investors of the Technoking of Tesla.
In fact, Ryan Cohen used to place Elon Musk as one of his select follows.
Much has changed since then, including the Tesla CEO shutting down the company’s ability to accept cryptocurrency as payment for their cars, which coincided with Cohen’s unfollowing.
Interestingly enough, it wasn’t until several months later that we learned about GameStop’s plans to launch an NFT marketplace, utilizing blockchain.
On Saturday, November 6th, Musk tweeted a Twitter poll declaring that he will decide whether or not to sell 10% of his Tesla stock based on the results.
I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.
Elon asked his followers if they supported him selling 10% of his stock.
Elon followed up this tweet with some clarification,
I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes
While many expected Tesla’s stock price to plummet on the news, the stock only fell 4.8% on Monday.
Instead of sharing a poll on his own, Ryan Cohen has decided to poke fun, stating that he is deciding between the two options for his GME shares, HOLD or HODL.
Ryan Cohen tweeted on November 8th at 9:45 PM.
Without even offering selling as an option, the Chairman has expressed no interest in parting with his GME shares, which he acquired as early as April 2019. In late 2020, Ryan added to his position twice more until reaching a 9.98% stake, disclosed September 21.
One month later, in November, Cohen increased his stake to 12.9% and filed an amendment to his 13D with his iconic letter to the GameStop board urging the company to share a credible plan for seizing opportunities in the rapidly growing gaming sector.
GMEdd.com has gone ahead and shared our own poll, asking investors whether Ryan Cohen should HOLD or HODL, visit our twitter profile to leave your own vote.