Roaring Kitty has bigger plans than simply making a lot of money with her GameStop business? Could he be trying to exert real influence over the traditional retailer’s ongoing transformation by demanding a board seat?
On Thursday, meme stockbroker extraordinaire, aka Keith Gill, posted a to update to Reddit showing that he has earned $58 million so far since first revealing his position in the company earlier this month.
But Gill’s loyal group of small GameStop shareholders, whose business selling physical copies of video games threatens to be destroyed by the shift to cloud gaming, saw a hidden message.
A week ago, Gill was about to become a billionaire on paper during his first live broadcast in three years, just one day before his 38th birthday.
GameStop Chairman and CEO Ryan Cohen foiled their plans that same day, flooding the market with 75 million newly issued shares – a 20% capital increase – to raise US$2 billionrunning out of stock in the process.
In jest, Gill later appeared at the creek with his right arm in a sling and a bandage wrapped around his head, laughing at his misfortune and drinking a beer to celebrate his birthday. But with his latest exchange, the jokester known for communicating through pop culture memes may now have sent a very serious message to Cohen.
In a screenshot posted to Reddit, where he goes by the name DeepFu—ingValue, Gill finally revealed the answer to the biggest question everyone wanted to know: what he would do with the 120,000 call options that would expire if not exercised by June 21.
Judging by the evidence he wanted everyone to see, it appeared that Gill had closed his entire position by the end of yesterday’s trading, liquidating 79,990 contracts and receiving the rest in stock.
Either way, his holdings went from precisely 5 million shares, where they had been since his first Reddit post earlier this month, to 9,001,000 shares – no more, no less.
Gamestop investors were quick to point out that this was no accident, nor was it a coincidence. This seemingly random number exactly equates to the number of shares owned by GameStop CEO Cohen when he announced in a December 2020 SEC filing that he increased his stake in GameStop to 12.9%.
A month later, the Chewy co-founder was in the board from the company. That same year, George Sherman not busy his position as CEO and late last year, activist investor Cohen was named president and CEO.
Some believe this indirect reference to Cohen may explain a meme Gill posted earlier this week on The office, in which the fictional Michael Scott wears a short-sleeved shirt from which a kitten comes out of the pocket. In it, a younger, odd-looking Scott meets his boss – potentially a sly homage to GameStop’s chairman and chief executive (who is actually the same age as Gill).
While Gill may have the same number of shares as Cohen did at that time, he doesn’t have the same influence. That’s because the retailer has since executed a 4-for-1 stock split, along with two recent market offerings that, combined, inflated shares outstanding by nearly 40%, or 120 million.
According to a filing this week, Cohen allowed his 12% stake from April to be diluted to just 8.6% as of June 10. In comparison, Gill’s screenshot suggests he controls 2.1% of the shares.
GameStop is scheduled to hold its annual shareholder meeting on Friday. It was scheduled for yesterday, but was postponed as soon as it started due to technical difficulties.
The company did not respond to the request for Fortune to comment.
This story was originally featured in Fortune.com
