Big billion-dollar funds increased their stakes in GameStop Corp. GME during the fourth quarter of 2024, following a third quarter in which it held $4.616 billion in cash and cash equivalents. This comes as recent reports suggest the video game retailer is planning to buy Bitcoin BTC/USD and other cryptocurrencies.
What Happened: GameStop, which has $4.616 billion in cash and cash equivalents, according to its third quarter 10-Q filing was added to the portfolios of many large funds.
- As of the fourth quarter 13F filings, about 143 million shares of GME valued at $4.5 billion were held by 356 funds.
- UBS Group AG increased its stake in the company by 1635% during the fourth quarter.
- Ken Griffin‘s Citadel Advisors added 52%, whereas BlackRock just added 8%, valuing its total stake in the company at $1.091 billion
- Renaissance Technologies and JPMorgan Chase reduced their stakes by 57% and 56%, respectively.
| Funds | Holdings (as of Sept. 30) | Holdings (as of Dec. 31) | Change (in %) | Value As Of Dec. 31 |
| UBS Group AG | 183,949 | 3,190,980 | 1635% | $100 million |
| Citadel Advisors LLC | 2,400,543 | 3,658,769 | 52% | $114.665 million |
| BlackRock Inc | 32,241,728 | 34,821,144 | 8% | $1.091 billion |
| Morgan Stanley | 1,272,904 | 1,626,720 | 28% | $50.981 million |
| Goldman Sachs Group Inc | 165,434 | 196,818 | 19% | $6.168 million |
| Renaissance Technologies LLC | 1,896,464 | 817,848 | -57% | $25.631 million |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co. | 1,548,192 | 678,433 | -56% | $21.262 million |
Why It Matters: The chairman and CEO of GME, Ryan Cohen sparked controversy following the Feb. 8 X post where he posed with Strategy Inc. MSTR, formerly MicroStrategy’s founder and CEO, Michael Saylor. The following week CNBC reported that GameStop is likely to invest in cryptocurrencies.
Saylor has positioned Strategy as a treasury or a levered play on Bitcoin as it purchases BTC by issuing 0% convertible debt and preferred shares STRK. GME’s Cohen is likely to follow in MSTR’s path and possibly purchase other coins too.
Economist Peter Schiff criticized GameStop‘s potential Bitcoin investment as a “Hail Mary” move by a company lacking a “viable business plan”. He argues that Bitcoin is even more overvalued than GameStop stock, and compared the move to Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury strategy.
Price Action: GME rose by 2.62% on Friday and advanced further by 0.26% in the after-hours, whereas the exchange-traded fun tracking Russell 200 index, iShares Russell 2000 ETF IWM fell 0.075%.
GME shares have fallen 11.94% on a year-to-date basis, whereas it was up by 100.15% over the last year.
The price target of one analyst covering GME, Wedbush, is $10 with an ‘underperform' rating issued on Sept. 11, 2024. The average of three recent rating changes by the same analyst represents a 65.52% downside for the stock.
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