Ryan Cohen, GameStop Traders Celebrate Anniversary Of January 2021 Meme Stock Frenzy

GameStop Corp. GME shares lost ground Wednesday as meme stock traders marked the one-year anniversary of the wild short squeeze in GameStop that occurred after Chewy Inc CHWY co-founder Ryan Cohen joined GameStop's board of directors.

Happy Anniversary: Cohen himself acknowledged the event in a tweet on Tuesday that simply read "Happy Anniversary" along with a pile of poo emoji.

GameStop, which was one of the most heavily shorted stocks in the market entering 2021, skyrocketed from under $20 to as high as $483 in a matter of weeks in January 2021.

Since that initial mania, GameStop continued to be volatile throughout the remainder of 2021. Unfortunately, the stock is now well off its $483 highs and is down 33.3% overall in the last six months.

GameStop's turnaround strategy has so far failed to change the company's underlying fundamental business metrics. In the most recent quarter, GameStop reported a $105-million net loss and revenue that was down 9.8% from 2019 levels and nearly 38.4% from peak levels back in 2013.

See Also: Wall Street Vet Charles Gradante On GameStop Stock, Naked Shorting and His Support For Retail Traders

Alzmann Still Bullish: Rod Alzmann, founder of GMEdd.com, joined Benzinga Live on Wednesday to discuss GameStop's wild year.

Alzmann has been bullish on GameStop since well before the 2021 short squeeze, and said he remains bullish heading into 2022.

"I've been in this for years and I've done my DD, so I'm not worried about it," Alzmann said.

He did admit that things got a bit crazy in January 2021.

"That last week in January, it morphed into a mania when Chamath [Palihapitiya] was tweeting about buying call options on GameStop, then Elon [Musk] famously tweeted 'Gamestonk' ...That literally added over $10 billion in market cap at the click of a tweet," Alzmann said.

He said the market mania that fueled GameStop's historic move in January 2021 was driven by one of the most aggressive shifts in retail investor sentiment from negative to positive that he has ever seen.

"I think our research enabled that because they could see these are people who have worked on this for years," Alzmann said.

Not A Meme: Throughout the past year, several Wall Street analysts dropped coverage of GameStop shares after the huge run, but the three analysts that still cover the stock have an extreme range of price targets from $23 to $145.

Alzmann said the difference between the Wall Street bears and the Wall Street bulls is that some analysts are looking at the company's numbers today and some are looking ahead to the future and see value in the ongoing turnaround efforts.

"It still does trade like a meme, it still does trade heavily correlated with AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc AMC, with other companies that don't actually have any fundamental transformation going on or any connection to the underlying fair market value, in my opinion. It's still trading like a meme, even though I don't think it actually is a meme."

Benzinga's Take: The disconnect between the price targets of GameStop bulls and GameStop bears represents the wide range of long-term outcomes for the company if it continues down its current path versus if its turnaround efforts ultimately change the company into something completely different.

At some point, GameStop will need to show Wall Street that it is more than just a story stock and that its transformation efforts have changed the company from a shrinking mall retailer to a tech and gaming growth stock.