GameStop boss Ryan Cohen is finally gearing up for a PR blitz with the meme craze fading

Chewy founder Ryan Cohen has achieved a cult-like following in the meme-stock community for his efforts to save video game retailer GameStop, a frequent target of short sellers who had climbed to massive heights after defying expectations. of smart money for it. stay out of bankruptcy. And yet Cohen has one of the lowest public profiles in corporate America, outside of the occasional witty social media post.

This may change. On The Money has learned that GameStop representatives have been shopping around for a publicist whose main job will be to improve Cohen’s media profile and presumably sell GameStop’s growth story, which has fallen off of late.

The trading power of GameStop (listed under the symbol GME), you may recall, was made famous in the movie “Dumb Money,” starring Paul Dano as meme icon Keith Gill, aka “Roaring Kitty,” then . a mid-level financial services executive who started pumping up shares on social media during the COVID lockdown.

In the somewhat fictionalized account of the meme stock phenomenon, high-flying hedge fund traders who were ‘shorting’ the company, betting it would blow up, were hijacked by Gill and his legions of small investors who threw in their money. them in the company. and “squeezed the shorts” – all in an effort to save the company.

When shares soared in early 2021 to $80 after trading at 95 cents just a few months earlier, shorts in the big hedge funds suffered massive losses. One, in fact, was closed.

The meme craze saved Cohen’s company and investment. He was in the stock since 2020. He then began to increase his position and eventually became the CEO of GameStop. The company’s prospects are still very poor; GME sells video games in malls and people prefer to buy these things online.

But Cohen has used the meme craze to woo shareholders. GME now has nearly $5 billion in cash, even as its stock is down 60% from its peak in January 2021.

For those who don’t know him, Cohen is somewhat of an oddity in the CEO space. He has an estimated net worth of around $4 billion, mostly from his sale of Chewy, an e-commerce pet supply company, to PetSmart in 2017. However, I don’t recall a single instance of him appearing on financial TV, apparently content to let his status as leader of the meme cult speak to shareholders.

But relying on the meme craze has its limits, many analysts tell me, and perhaps Cohen is beginning to agree. A potential candidate for the GME PR gig tells On The Money that the job will mostly involve getting Cohen on podcasts to raise his profile and possibly the company’s.

“They say they don’t want to do traditional financial TV yet, but want to focus on podcasts,” this person said.

One reason: perhaps that’s where they see more retail buyers of the stock since big investors don’t see the long-term value in a company that sells video games to malls.

A press representative for GME and Cohen did not return phone calls and emails for comment.