GameStop makes heads turn with surprising treasury move
GameStop (NYSE: GME), the American gaming merchandise retailer, made a surprising move by acquiring 4,710 Bitcoin to add to its corporate balance sheet on May 28.
It was exactly two months earlier that the gaming company announced on March 28 that it had realigned its investment policy to hold certain cryptocurrency assets, including Bitcoin and U.S. dollar–pegged stablecoins.
The move was widely understood to be an imitation of the Bitcoin acquisition playbook of Michael Saylor's Strategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), formerly MicroStrategy.
Following the announcement of its first Bitcoin acquisition, the GME stock immediately jumped 7% and was exchanging hands at $36.67 in pre-market hours. In fact, the stock is up more than 68% since its March 28 announcement.
Since Bitcoin was trading at $108,897.86 at the time of writing, GameStop holds $512.9 million in BTC on its balance sheet. However, the company did not specify the price at which it made the purchase.
This isn't the first time that the Texas-based gaming chain has explored the possibility of expanding into the crypto industry. It launched a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace in July 2022 but wound down the operations in February 2024 due to turbulence in the digital asset market.
Earlier, GameStop reported net income of $131.3 million for the fiscal year 2024, up from $6.7 million the previous year, even as net sales declined from $5.27 billion to $3.82 billion.
This article has been published in thestreet.com via Yahoo News.
