GameStop rallies as Ryan Cohen’s M&A media blitz spurs buying
GameStop is trading higher again on Monday, up 2% in the premarket, as CEO Ryan Cohen continues his media blitz to tease potential M&A.
Late Friday afternoon, CNBC reported that Cohen wants GameStop to buy a company much bigger than itself, and that if his play works, it has the “potential to make [GameStop] worth several hundreds of billions of dollars.”
That came on the heels of Cohen telling The Wall Street Journal that he was on the hunt for a “big” acquisition that would either “be genius or totally, totally foolish.” Shares rose nearly 5% on Friday.
The CEO was slated to appear on Fox Business for a TV interview at 2 p.m. ET on Monday. Michael Burry — of “The Big Short” fame, who recently revealed that he’s long GameStop — said he’d be publishing a list of suggested targets that the company could potentially acquire ahead of this appearance. However, per Fox Business anchor Charles Payne, the appearance has been canceled because “Ryan is working on something moneumental, and he would not be able to say much.”
Gamestop Development
— Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) February 2, 2026
I'm not going to interview Ryan Cohen today. Ryan is working on something monumental, and he would not be able to say much. We both agreed that "I cannot answer that on advice of counsel" is the last thing anyone wants to hear. I'm on pins and needles… pic.twitter.com/zP5wurGya7
This press push marks a big shift for the executive, whose media appearances have been scarce during his time running the retailer. But Cohen needs both GameStop’s market value and EBITDA to rise significantly if he’s going to make any money from running the company. He recently agreed to a package that would tie his pay completely to those metrics and only see him start to receive stock options in the event that GameStop’s market capitalization exceeds $20 billion while also booking $2 billion in cumulative EBITDA from Q1 2026 onward.
On a closing basis, GameStop has exceeded this $20 billion threshold only during its 2021 meme stock mania. And, due to heavy losses from 2019 through early 2022, it’s taken GameStop a full decade to generate its latest $2 billion in cumulative EBITDA.
