What happened
Shares of GameStop (GME 6.16%) are continuing on their tumultuous path of the past two weeks. After the Reddit-inspired short squeeze drove shares up more than 750% in just a week, the trading has been unwinding this week, with shares dropping more than 70% over the last two days.
But buyers are back today, with the stock jumping 26% before giving back much of those gains. The volatile shares were up 5% as of 10 a.m. EST.
So what
The retail traders participating in the remarkable rise may have taken profits this week, but GameStop announced a new executive position today. This gives supporters hope that the underlying business itself may indeed be able to transform in the digital era.
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
GameStop announced today it has created a new chief technology officer (CTO) position and hired Matt Francis for the job. Mr. Francis was most recently engineering leader at Amazon's web-services business, AWS. The company says the new role will be responsible for "overseeing e-commerce and technology functions."
Investors who have been bullish on a GameStop business turnaround are relying on the potential to transform the company from brick-and-mortar stores to a digital channel. As part of the executive announcement today, GameStop also hired Josh Krueger as vice president of fulfillment. Mr. Krueger previously held senior fulfillment roles at Amazon and Walmart.
The company may be able to transform its business, but investors today still need to decide if the more than $6 billion market capitalization makes sense, compared to about $1.2 billion at the start of 2021.
