(Reuters) – GameStop said on Tuesday it had completed an equity offering of its shares against the market to raise about $2.14 billion in gross proceeds, days after meme stock influencer Keith Gill’s first livestream in three years.
Shares of the video game retailer at the center of the meme stock frenzy rose more than 5% on the news before reversing course and falling 1.6% in volatile extended trading.
During a livestream on Friday with more than 600,000 viewers, Gill, the key figure behind an eye-popping rally in the struggling company’s stock price in 2021, joked about memes and interspersed his discussion of GameStop with several disclaimers. The stock closed the session down almost 40%.
GameStop said it has sold the maximum number of 75 million shares registered under the program.
According to Reuters calculations, the average selling price of each GameStop share was about $28.50. The company’s shares closed at $30.49 after Tuesday’s trading.
The company said it plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions and investments.
GameStop surprised investors last week by reporting first-quarter results ahead of schedule, with revenue falling 28.7% to $881.8 million, and announcing a stock sale.
CEO Ryan Cohen held an 8.6% stake in the video game retailer as of June 10, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday, up from 10.5% on May 22.
In May, the company raised another $933.4 million by selling 45 million shares. It had announced its share sale plan earlier that month amid a retail buying frenzy fueled by Gill’s return to social media.
Bullish calls from Gill, known on YouTube as “Roaring Kitty,” on GameStop were a reason for the meme stock frenzy in 2021.
Gill has helped lure a flood of retail money to the beleaguered brick-and-mortar retailer with his bullish arguments on Reddit posts and YouTube streams.
(Reporting by Manya Saini, Sourasis Bose and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Vijay Kishore)
