GameStop fired CEO Matt Furlong two years after hiring him and appointed billionaire Ryan Cohen as executive chairman, sending the corporate’s shares down 20% in prolonged trading.
A former executive at Amazon, Furlong joined GameStop in 2021, just months after the corporate was at the middle of a “meme-stock” trading frenzy where a bunch of social media-armed traders talked up the worth of the stock.
The corporate didn’t say why Furlong was terminated and didn’t immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment looking for details. The videogame retailer also said it will 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 can be a majority shareholder of the Texas-based company.
Cohen has been on the forefront of driving the corporate’s transition into e-commerce and has been answerable for the shakeup in its top management, including the hiring of some former Amazon employees.
“It reflects the utter lack of strategy. They desired 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 previous chief operating officer and left the corporate in October 2021, just seven months after joining. Michael Recupero was terminated as chief financial officer last yr.
Pachter added Cohen “is incapable of running a retail operation….It’s kind of like Elon Musk running Twitter.”
Cohen and representatives didn’t immediately reply 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, based on Refinitiv.
The corporate also posted a lack of 14 cents per share, compared with analysts’ estimates of a lack of 12 cents per share for the quarter.