GameStop Corporation GME could be pushing deeper into its bets on trading cards and grading services with a new board appointment.
What Happened: Nat Turner officially joined the video game retailer’s board of directors. The decision expands the number of board members from five to six.
Turner is well-known in the trading card community and is the CEO and chairman of Collectors.
Turner, whose role as director will expire at the company's 2025 annual stockholder meeting, will receive no compensation for his role as a director.
The appointment comes about a month after GameStop entered into a collaboration with Collectors Holdings as an authorized PSA dealer.
Turner bought out the former publicly-traded Collectors Universe for $700 million in 2020 with a group that included Cohen Private Ventures. He serves as CEO and owns up to a 10% equity interest in its Profession Sports Authenticator.
GameStop said the collaboration with PSA has resulted in around $1.53 million in dollar value of transactions since the beginning of the agreement.
Point72 Asset Management, the investment company that also owns the Point72 hedge fund ran by Steve Cohen, owns Cohen Private Ventures.
Point72 provided financing to Melvin Capital, a company that shorted GameStop, during the short squeeze. While the hedge fund didn't directly short GameStop, the Cohen-led firm helped provide a lifeline to one of the biggest bettors against the video game retailer.
Why It's Important: GameStop is expanding its reach beyond video games.
Adding Turner to the board could signal a continued expansion into collectibles and grading services. Turner has one of the most valuable sports card collections in the world.
Collectors owns several grading services including PSA (trading cards), PCGS (coins) and Wata (video games). The ownership of a video game grading service could be something to watch in the future with Turner on the board.
GameStop's collectibles revenue of $139.4 million in the second quarter was down 17.9% year-over-year. The segment saw the lowest year-over-year decline in the quarter, outpacing sharp losses from the hardware (-24.4%) and software (-47.7%) segments.
For GameStop investors who can remember the short squeeze of 2021, it's worth pointing out that the new board member is connected to a figure once viewed as an enemy of the company.
Price Action: GameStop stock is up 1% to $26.71 on Monday versus a 52-week trading range of $9.95 to $64.83. GameStop stock is up over 60% year-to-date in 2024.
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