Month: April 2021

Ryan Cohen Tweets Talking Piece of Shit

Posted on by Joe Fonicello

Ryan Cohen really loves his comedies.

At 1:35PM, the incoming GameStop Chairman has tweeted a gif of Mr. Hankey, a talking poo, from South Park.

In the gif, the character simply blinks, without any closed captions. This meant GMEdd had to dig deeper.

We found that the clip originates from Episode 110 of South Park, the ninth episode of the first season, titled “Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo.”

In the episode, the  Jewish character Kyle feels excluded from the town’s celebrations during Christmas , and is comforted by  Mr. Hankey, a talking and singing lump of feces wearing a red hat. Mr. Hankey does not come alive in the presence of other characters, so they think that Kyle is delusional. In another plot strand, the townspeople remove all religious aspects of Christmas from South Park to remain politically correct and inoffensive.

The segment of the episode that Cohen’s gif originates from is a scene where Mr. Hankey tries to convince the town of South Park to all work together, and stop focusing on all of the bad.

Source: Ryan Cohen on Twitter

Jim Grube: Excited for the Opportunity to Deliver Ryan Cohen’s Vision

Posted on by Joe Fonicello

GameStop’s latest board members and executive hires have done a great job ignoring the noise and focusing on their vision.

When Cohen took a board seat in January, he brought along Alan Attal and Jim Grube as fellow directors. Attal, a longtime friend and business partner, helped found Chewy and oversaw operations and marketing. Grube worked on Chewy’s customer acquisition model, which paved the way for its rapid growth. 

Amidst the rapid price-action in early 2021, Ryan Cohen responded to a request to speak to his local publication Miami Herald. Similarly, Jim Grube has taken the opportunity to publicly respond to a Dallas Morning News article, likely because they are a publication local to Grapevine, Texas.

The article, headlined: Ryan Cohen brings vision to struggling GameStop. Now, he must deliver., starts out by stating that perhaps no one, not even the day-trading hero they call Roaring Kitty, is more responsible for the improbable 700% rally in GameStop Corp. this year than Ryan Cohen.

The article concluded that the Grapevine-based video game company is in a strong position financially to execute Cohen’s plan.

In response, Jim Grube has stated:

A lot of work to do and challenges to overcome, but excited for the opportunity.

“The stock speculation aside, there is a great deal of potential for GameStop,” DFC Intelligence’s Cole said. “Someone like Cohen may be able to help unlock that.”

Source: Dallas Morning News, Jim Grube on Twitter

April 29th 2021 Editorial Update: Jim Grube has since posted the story on his LinkedIn, with the caption “Buckle-up!”

Source: Jim Grube on LinkedIn

GameStop Completes Offering, Raises $551M for Transformation

Posted on by Joe Fonicello

GameStop Corp. today announced that the company has completed its previously announced “at-the-market” equity offering program.

GameStop disclosed on April 5, 2021 that it had filed a prospectus supplement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to offer and sell up to a maximum of 3,500,000 shares of its common stock from time to time through the ATM Offering. 

GameStop ultimately sold 3,500,000 shares of common stock and generated aggregate gross proceeds before commissions and offering expenses of approximately $551,000,000. Net proceeds will be used to continue accelerating GameStop’s transformation as well as for general corporate purposes and further strengthening the Company’s balance sheet.

Earlier this month, GameStop disclosed that it issued an irrevocable notice of redemption to redeem $216.4 million in principal amount of its 10.0% Senior Notes due 2023 on April 30, 2021. This voluntary early redemption will cover the entire amount of the outstanding 10% Senior Notes, which represents all of the Company’s long-term debt.

Source: GameStop Newsroom

Bloomberg: A Billionaire Entrepreneur with a Midas Touch

Posted on by Joe Fonicello

This morning, Olga Kharif  and Anders Melin of Bloomberg have published an article that details Ryan Cohen‘s past success with Chewy and the talent he, along with his team, bring to GameStop.

The article mentions how Cohen, who takes over as chairman in June, has brought in several of his old Chewy cohorts to help execute his plan, including the mastermind of the customer-service program, Kelli Durkin.

Cohen’s goal is to push the company rapidly into e-commerce, and according to people familiar with his thinking, he plans to borrow heavily from the model he implemented at Chewy to pull off that transition.

The piece also mentions Cohen’s personal background, regarding his lack of a college education and the path of his father inspiring his demeanor.

Cohen, who was born in Montreal, never went to college. He has credited much of his success building Chewy to his father, who ran a glassware business and died in 2019. In person, Cohen has a soft-spoken demeanor, revealing little of his shrewd business instincts and ability to drive bargains with suppliers, former colleagues say.

Kharif and Melin also delve into Cohen’s mischievous Twitter usage, something we have spent hours speculating on.

Cohen has embraced the mischievous spirit of Elon Musk as he pursues a GameStop comeback. Like Tesla Inc. ’s prankster-king, he posts goofy and sometimes mysterious images on social media (a poop emoji over a picture of a Blockbuster store or the stuffed bear from the movie “Ted” using a bong ). That’s helped him win over the Reddit crowd, which turned GameStop into a so-called meme stock.

While none of this is news to GMEdd readers, it is bullish to see the press picking up on the real story behind the  GameStop investment thesis.

Check out the article to read more

Source: Bloomberg

Ryan Cohen Tweets Incoming Train Warning

Posted on by Joe Fonicello

Seems like it was just yesterday that Ryan Cohen, GameStop’s incoming Chairman, last tweeted. Oh, that’s because it was.

At 9:02 PM on April 25th, Ryan Cohen has shared a gif from South Park where a character named Ryan “Tim Tebows” on train tracks while his friends shout, warning him of an incoming train.

Joe Fonicello of GMEdd was fast to track down the scene behind this gif, which is from Season 16 Episode 3.

In the episode, a memetic trend emerges called “Faith Hilling”, a derivative of planking. After the boys perform this prank on stage at a 2012 Colorado Republican Presidential Debate, the entire fourth grade class of South Park Elementary is required to take a safety education class in which they are taught the dangers of memetic trends with a graphic educational video showing people dying gruesome deaths when they are hit by trains while “Tebowing”.

Ryan Cohen could be using this clip as a nod to the shorts who had more than enough time to react to RC’s GameStop takeover. 

The train was coming, all they had to do was stop ignoring the warnings and look for it and turn around.

Source: Ryan Cohen on Twitter

Ryan Cohen Tweets Flag at Half Mast

Posted on by Joe Fonicello

Ryan Cohen has tweeted an American flag at half mast, a patriotic symbol of respect for the fallen.

The organization halfstaff.org states that the Americans should fly the United States Flag at Half-Staff immediately in Honor of Former Vice President Walter Frederick Mondale. Vice President Mondale served under President Jimmy Carter from 1977–1981.

The incoming GameStop chairman could also be referencing the Indonesian submarine that sunk, leaving 53 sailors presumed dead earlier today.

Tineye.com’s reverse image search did not return any prior results for this photo on the internet, so it is possible that Ryan Cohen took it himself.

Some GameStop investors also speculate that the half staff flag could symbolize GameStop’s former board being left behind for the new transformation team, as proxy voting has just began.

Source: Ryan Cohen on Twitter

GameStop Releases 2021 Proxy Statement

Posted on by Joe Fonicello

GameStop has released their anticipated 2021 Proxy Statement, revealing several noteworthy insights into the company’s strategic imperatives, the annual meeting, and voting.

GameStop has announced that for the June 9th, 2021 annual meeting, stockholders will be voting on:

  1. To elect the six nominees identified in the Proxy Statement (Sherman, Attal, Cheng, Cohen, Grube, and Xu) to serve as directors.
  2. To approve, on an advisory, non-binding basis, the executive compensation
  3. To ratify the Audit Committee’s appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for our fiscal year ending January 29, 2022

In GameStop’s April 5th filing, the company revealed that shares of company stock outstanding immediately after this offering is based on 70,031,650 shares as of April 1st. 

As of the Schedule 14-A filing, GameStop states that 70,771,778 shares of common stock are issued, outstanding and entitled to vote. This indicates that the company has begun deploying their Up-To-$1B offering.

Revealed through Corporate Governance Highlights, GameStop states that the Chair of the Board shall be independent, indicating that Ryan Cohen may not be considered for CEO.

GameStop also announced that the company’s Chief Executive Officer is required to hold common stock equivalent to 5 times base salary, and the Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice Presidents are required to hold common stock equivalent to 3 times base salary. Alongside this, non-employee directors are required to hold common stock equivalent to $275,000.

The letter also indicates some of Ryan Cohen’s incoming jobs as chairman of GameStop, including but not limited to,

  • Presides at meetings of the Board and meetings of stockholders
  • Has authority to establish the agenda for each Board meeting; 
  • Serves as the presiding director to lead executive sessions at each meeting of the Board in which only independent directors participate; 
  • Has authority to call special meetings of the Board and special meetings of stockholders;
  • Advises the Chief Executive Officer and other members of our executive team on such matters as strategic direction, corporate governance and overall risk assessment.

GameStop also touched on their claw-back policy, indicating that the company is permitted to “recoup certain compensation payments in the event of a significant restatement of our financial results.”

Rod Alzmann of GMEdd.com has noted that he found the disclosed 17 board meetings in fiscal 2020 impressive.

Source: GameStop Schedule 14-A