GameStop fires CEO, names Ryan Cohen executive chairman

GameStop fired CEO Matt Furlong two years after hiring him and appointed billionaire Ryan Cohen as executive chairman, sending the company’s shares down 20% in extended trading.

A former executive at Amazon, Furlong joined GameStop in 2021, just months after the company was at the center of a “meme-stock” trading frenzy where a bunch of social media-armed traders talked up the value of the stock.

The company did not say why Furlong was terminated and did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment seeking details. The videogame retailer also said it would not be holding an earnings call.

Billionaire investor Cohen, who co-founded online pet products retailer Chewy, has been serving as chairman of GameStop since 2021 and is also a majority shareholder of the Texas-based company.

Cohen has been at the forefront of driving the company’s transition into e-commerce and has been responsible for the shakeup in its top management, including the hiring of some former Amazon employees.

“It reflects the utter lack of strategy. They wanted to ‘be like Amazon’ and hired Jenna Owens, Mike Recupero and Matt Furlong from Amazon in 2021,” said Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities.

Jenna Owens was the former chief operating officer and left the company in October 2021, just seven months after joining. Michael Recupero was terminated as chief financial officer last year.

Pachter added Cohen “is incapable of running a retail operation….It’s sort of like Elon Musk running Twitter.”

Cohen and representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

GameStop posted its fourth consecutive fall in quarterly revenue and missed market estimates, as consumers dialed back non-essential spending in an uncertain economy.

The videogame retailer reported revenue of $1.24 billion for the quarter ended April 29, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $1.36 billion, according to Refinitiv.

The company also posted a loss of 14 cents per share, compared with analysts’ estimates of a loss of 12 cents per share for the quarter.