Cowboy oversees Roaring Kitty stream (Rachel Pick/Sherwood News)

Meow’s the time

There’s a surge in demand for GameStop call options that need a Roaring Kitty Redux

A 300%+ rally in a month?!?

12/17/24 1:05PM

GameStop 3.0 in the works? Well, there’s some options-market activity hinting at that possibility.

Most notably, near the close on Monday, we saw a massive flurry of trades in GameStop calls with a strike price of $125 (that is, about 315% above its current price) that expire on January 17. These all appear to be new positions (based on the corresponding increase in open interest) and most took place on the ask, suggesting the buyer was the more motivated party than the seller in these transactions.

Thirty-one days to expiry for a rally in excess of 300%? That’s something that’s only happened to GameStop during two periods: the first half of 2021 — the initial meme-stock mania and its echo booms — and the sequel that took place in the second quarter of this year.

Of course, you don’t need options to be in the money to profit from an options position; there are many scenarios where these calls could potentially be flipped for a tidy profit in the near-term even with the stock still well shy of even the $100 mark.

But it’s certainly noteworthy that there’s clear interest in exposure to another GameStop mania in the near term. That particular strike has more open interest than any other GameStop option for that expiry. And this kind of buying activity to set the table, so to speak, is what we saw from Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, in late April before the Q2 spike in the stock kicked into high gear.

Luke Kawa & Tom Jones1h

Crocs surges as Q4 results and 2026 earnings guidance exceed every analyst’s projections

Shares of Crocs are up double digits in premarket trading after the footwear maker posted Q4 sales and adjusted earnings per share that exceeded every analyst’s estimates.

The company reported revenues of $957.6 million and adjusted EPS of $2.29 in Q4, trouncing expectations for $916.9 million and $1.92, respectively.

Guidance was similarly stellar:

Management called for adjusted EPS to come in between $12.88 and $13.35; the highest estimate from the 13 analysts polled by Bloomberg was just $12.62, and the average was $12.02.

Full-year sales are projected to be down about 1% to up slightly, while Wall Street had also penciled in a bigger decline.

Crocs will struggle to be in s̶p̶o̶r̶t̶ growth mode this year on the top line because it’s carrying around the anchor that is the HeyDude brand.

Even a fresh marketing effort with Sydney Sweeney unveiled in late September didn’t boost HeyDude, in stark contrast to what American Eagle’s partnership with the actress has done to demand for its denim.

The brand’s quarterly sales were down 17% year on year. All of the drop came from wholesale demand, which tumbled 40.5%, while direct-to-consumer sales were flat.

Management expects HeyDude revenues to be down another 7% to 9% this year.

Matt Phillips2h

Cisco slumps as memory price spike weighs on margins

Cisco is falling Thursday, despite delivering a beat-and-raise Q2 result after the previous close. Analysts think surging costs of memory chips are the culprit. Here’s some of what they’re saying.

William Blair: “On the margin front, Cisco guided a contraction in non-GAAP gross margins to 66% in the third quarter (down 150 basis points sequentially), citing elevated memory price inflation and higher mix of hardware.”

Barclays: “While the revenue outlook has improved, and AI orders accelerated, we are not seeing enough translation to EPS growth, particularly given the [gross margin] concerns that recently popped up.”

Citi: “CSCO indicated that memory price increases hit the company with [zero] lead time. That said, the company is working to add more flexibility around their terms & conditions framework in order to pass along memory pricing increases faster.”

Evercore ISI: “Though the guide does imply gross margins will be down ~150bps [quarter over quarter] due to a combination of Mix and Memory inflation, CSCO expects to recover some of these headwinds via price increases and other levers.”

Luke Kawa3h

Nebius tumbles after Q4 results trail estimates

Nebius is down in premarket trading after reporting underwhelming Q4 results.

In the final three months of the year, revenues of $227.7 million were shy of the $247.5 million consensus estimate. Adjusted EBITDA of $15 million also trailed expectations for $22.55 million.

Founder and CEO Arkady Volozh indicated that the neocloud ended 2025 with roughly 170 megawatts of active power capacity, ahead of its 100-megawatt target, and “is on track to end the year with annualized run-rate revenue of $7 billion to $9 billion.”

Luke Kawa3h

Memory stocks jump after Japanese chipmaker posts robust guidance

Memory stocks have their mojo back after Japanese chipmaker Kioxia gave strong forecasts along with positive color on AI-driven demand.

The company, which specializes in NAND flash memory, provided guidance for full-year operating income and sales that exceeded analysts’ expectations.

While Kioxia normally signs agreements for customers on a 12-month basis, management indicated that some now want to lock in supply for 2027 and 2028, a testament to the seeming longevity of the supply/demand imbalance in memory. That imbalance is also prompting the company to enjoy “a very sharp increase in selling price,” per CFO Hideki Hanazawa.

Sandisk, a NAND seller that recently extended its joint venture with Kioxia for manufacturing, is the biggest premarket gainer in the memory chip space. Micron, Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings are also trading to the upside.

Memory stocks had previously seen some of the steam come out of their terrific start to 2026, after popular momentum trades came under pressure and investors tried catching a falling knife in beaten-down parts of the market, eroding some enthusiasm for the cohort. But they’ve rebounded smartly in the past couple of sessions, thanks to fresh bad news for software companies; Micron indicating that shipments of next-gen, high-bandwidth chips have started ahead of schedule; and now this positive read-through from Kioxia.

Claire Yubin Oh4h

SoftBank’s OpenAI investment gains drive fourth consecutive profitable quarter

SoftBank is up 4% in premarket trading on Thursday after the Japanese conglomerate announced a net profit of 248.6 billion yen ($1.6 billion) in its fiscal third quarter, buoyed by a $4.2 billion valuation gain in its OpenAI investment.

SoftBank marked its fourth consecutive quarter of profits, swinging from a loss of 369 billion yen ($2.4 billion) in the same quarter the year before.

The Masayoshi Son-led firm has invested a total of $34.6 billion in OpenAI so far, amounting to an ~11% stake in the startup, per its earnings presentation. The company is also reportedly looking to invest as much as $30 billion more in the ChatGPT maker in a funding round that would value it at up to $830 billion.

SoftBank is accumulating more dry powder to fund its investments in OpenAI and other AI-adjacent ventures. Management shared on Thursday that they sold $12.7 billion worth of T-Mobile shares between June and December 2025, offloading an additional $2.3 billion in January of this year. In addition, they borrowed another $400 billion via a margin loan that uses SoftBank Corp. shares in December.

Since SoftBank started investing in OpenAI through the end of 2025, the company has enjoyed a $19.8 billion investment gain in total. The OpenAI investment, alongside other investments in its second tech-heavy Vision Fund, drove a $6.5 billion increase in fair value for the quarter — helping to outweigh a $4.1 billion loss in its first Vision Fund, “primarily due to share price declines of Coupang and DiDi.”

BTIG analyst Jesse Sobelson estimates that the ChatGPT maker now represents 30% of SoftBank’s net asset value. The company’s stock has also almost doubled in the past year as retail investors piled into SoftBank to get pseudo-exposure to the now private OpenAI.