(Reuters) – GameStop said on Tuesday it has completed an “at-market” offering of its shares to raise approximately $2.14 billion in gross proceeds, days after stock meme influencer Keith Gill’s first livestream in three years.
Shares of the video game retailer, which was at the heart of the meme stock craze, rose more than 5% on the news before reversing course to fall 1.6% in choppy extended trading.
In a live stream on Friday with more than 600,000 viewers, Gill, the main figure behind the staggering company’s stock’s stunning 2021 surge, joked about memes and interspersed his discussion of GameStop with several disclaimers. The stock ended the session down nearly 40%.
GameStop said it sold the maximum 75 million shares registered under the program.
According to Reuters calculations, the average selling price per GameStop share was about $28.50. The company’s shares closed at $30.49 after trading on Tuesday.
The company said it intends to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions and investments.
GameStop surprised investors last week by releasing first-quarter results ahead of schedule, showing a 28.7% drop in revenue to $881.8 million, and announcing a stock sale.
CEO Ryan Cohen owned an 8.6% stake in the video game retailer as of June 10, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday, down from 10.5% as of May 22.
In May, the company raised another $933.4 million by selling 45 million shares. It had revealed the plan to sell its shares earlier that month amid the retail buying frenzy sparked by Jill’s return on social media.
The bullish calls that Gill, known on YouTube as “Roaring Kitty,” made on GameStop were the reason for the meme stock craze of 2021.
Gill helped attract a torrent of retail money to the beleaguered brick-and-mortar retailer with his bullish case on Reddit posts and YouTube streams.
(Reporting by Manya Saini, Surasis Bose and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Vijay Kishore)
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