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GameStop store entrance at Rego Center shopping mall, Queens, New York
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GameStop says its stock went up for no good reason and it's trying to take advantage

We had to ask: What took them so long?

Luke Kawa
Updated 5/17/24 8:51AM

Shares of GameStop are down more than 20% in the pre-market as the company joins AMC in using this period of market exuberance to improve its financial position.

The company announced plans to work with Jefferies to sell up to 45 million shares on the open market to raise money. As part of the prospectus supplement, the firm comments on the recent frenzy (emphasis added):

During such period, we did not experience any material changes in our financial condition or results of operations that would explain such price volatility or trading volume. Furthermore, since January 2021 through the date hereof, the market price of our common stock has seen extreme price fluctuations that do not appear to be based on the underlying fundamentals of our business or results of operations. Investors that purchase shares of our common stock in this offering may lose a significant portion of their investments if the price of our common stock subsequently declines.

One question is, what took them so long? It’s the duty of management to obviously run the company well, be operationally sound, look for efficiencies on the cost side and drive growth on the revenue side, and all that. But it’s also their responsibility to make shrewd financing decisions and, perhaps in this case, to have been better prepared for lightning to strike twice.

Both AMC and GME enjoyed parabolic rises in their share prices to open this week; by Tuesday, AMC had taken advantage by issuing more equity to reduce debt. GME may be only able to get in on the game now because it was somewhat constrained by a so-called “blackout period” ahead of the release of its quarterly earnings report, which had been scheduled for June 7. During blackout periods, bringing offerings to market is generally a no-no. One way to get around this is to come forward with your results early.

As such, GameStop also released preliminary unaudited quarterly results for the three months ending May 4, 2024. Though net sales shrank roughly 30% year-on-year, the net loss actually slimmed by about 35% to an estimate of around $32 million for the quarter versus the prior year. Getting these figures together was likely the bottleneck delaying this offering from coming to market.

A second question revolves around whether GME will miss their window of opportunity. This type of frenzy doesn’t come around every day, and in the very short term, both price and volumes are not trending in the right direction.

We can infer that management didn’t necessarily feel an urgent need to sell shares at the start of the month, when the stock was trading around $11 and roughly 4 million shares changed hands, on average, during the month of April.

Just before this offering, shares were trading around $30 in the pre-market, and they’re now much closer to $20. Volumes traded peaked on Tuesday at more than 200 million shares, and dipped to 76 million by Thursday. Options traders who pre-positioned for massive gains in GameStop appear to have been much more nimble and successful in taking advantage of this rally than management.

UPDATE: Added details around “blackout period” constraints ahead of earnings reports.

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Robinhood Markets remained down in premarket trading after delivering Q4 results Tuesday that fell short of some of Wall Street’s expectations, partly due to a slide in crypto trading.

Here’s what analysts had to say about the print:

Barclays: “Q4 came in softer than expected as lower take rates in options and crypto impacted transaction revenues, and lower [securities] lending in particular impacted [net interest income].”

Mizuho: “Prediction Markets were strong, but overall mixed quarter.”

Piper Sandler: “Bottom line, despite these ST headwinds which we laid out in our note last week, our LT thesis remains intact. If you can stomach the volatility, HOOD is the best way to play secular growth in retail trading and the closest FinTech platform we’ve ever seen to achieving ‘super app’ status.”

Zack’s Investment Research: “Crypto trading revenue fell 38% year over year in Q4, and January data showed another 57% decline in app-based crypto volumes. Unfortunately, that’s not a seasonal blip, that’s a structural slowdown in one of Robinhood’s historically highest-margin engagement drivers.”

Citizens JMP: “Slight revenue shortfall for Robinhood Markets but better expense performance, broadening business contribution, and a full roadmap should support strong growth again in 2026; reiterate our Market Outperform rating.”

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The American labor market, ladies and gentlemen.

The January jobs report was a blockbuster, with nonfarm payrolls growth of 130,000.

Economists polled by Bloomberg expected nonfarm payroll growth of 65,000 for the month. Heading into this release, the event contracts trading closest to a coin flip were “above 50,000” and “above 60,000,” suggesting the masses were less optimistic than Wall Street.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

The unemployment rate dipped to 4.3%, while economists had anticipated it would hold steady at 4.4%.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF extended gains in premarket trading following this release.

The employment gains were very narrowly focused on an industry basis: healthcare accounted for a whopping 123,500, or 95%, of the net job growth.

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Shares of the gaming engine and ad tech company are off more than 20% in premarket trading. Its solid Q4 results were overshadowed by weak Q1 guidance, with management calling for revenues to range from $480 million to $490 million with adjusted EBITDA from $105 million to $110 million. Wall Street’s estimates were $494 million and $112 million, respectively.

The company’s outlook suggests “a slower than expected ramp-up in its AI-powered ad-technology tool, Vector,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and Nathan Naidu wrote. “Slow uptake of Unity 6 subscriptions, with guidance seeing flat growth in 1Q, could drag on top-line gains.”

Unity was among the stocks that cratered in late January after the release of Google’s Project Genie, which was able to recreate knockoffs of popular games.

Separately, Unity and peer AppLovin have suffered amid fears that their ad divisions will be disrupted by startups utilizing AI agents.

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AI infrastructure company Vertiv Holdings is spiking after posting sunny guidance and Q4 earnings that beat estimates.

For Q4, the major provider of power and cooling solutions for data centers reported:

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $1.36, vs. the $1.29 consensus expectation from analysts surveyed by FactSet.

  • Sales of $2.88 billion, in line with estimates.

For Q1, management said adjusted earnings would come in between $0.95 and $1.01; even the lower end of that range is higher than the $0.93 consensus estimate. Q1 guidance for net sales of $2.5 billion to $2.7 billion also outstripped Wall Street’s call for $2.54 billion.

For the full year, the lower end of Vertiv’s range of guidance for net sales ($13.25 billion to $13.75 billion) and adjusted earnings per share ($5.97 to $6.07) were both above the highest estimates from analysts polled by Bloomberg.

Vertiv has to be one of the more successful examples of SPAC-era financial engineering.

The company came out of the combination of GS Acquisition Holdings Corp., a so-called blank check company, and Vertiv Holdings — then owned by private equity company Platinum Equity — as part of a roughly $1.9 billion deal, including debt, first announced in late 2019.

The stock pretty much went nowhere for years after it listed as Vertiv on February 10, 2020. But as the AI data center boom began to roll, the shares exploded. Since the end of 2022, they’re up more than 1,300% and Vertiv has created roughly $70 billion in market value.

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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC.