Dive Brief:
- GameStop on Tuesday announced that its board voted unanimously to add bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset.
- The company is also preparing to close a “significant number” of stores this year, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
- The retailer on Wednesday reported Q4 earnings. With one week less in the period compared to last year, net sales fell 28.5% to $1.3 billion, while net income more than doubled to $131 million.
Dive Insight:
GameStop is getting ready to reduce its store footprint again after closing nearly 600 U.S. locations last year. The retailer has not yet identified a specific set of stores it will shutter in the upcoming round.
As of February, the company had around 2,300 stores in the United States. Last fall, the retailer said a store optimization review was underway and warned that closures may accelerate.
GameStop has been exiting some of its international ventures as well. In 2023, it exited operations in Ireland, Switzerland and Austria, and in 2024 it closed down store operations in Germany and sold its Italian subsidiary. This year the company said it was pursuing a sale of operations in France and Canada.
Meanwhile, the company said a portion of its cash or future debt and equity issuances may be invested in bitcoin. The company has not set a maximum amount of bitcoin it may accumulate and it may sell any of the cryptocurrency it may acquire, according to a filing with the SEC.
Later in the same document the company outlined potential risks related to the investment, stating that bitcoin is “a highly volatile asset and has experienced significant price fluctuations over time. Our Bitcoin strategy has not been tested and may prove unsuccessful.”
Welcome to Team Bitcoin, @RyanCohen. $GME ???? pic.twitter.com/ldGh7my9WM
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) March 25, 2025
At the start of February, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen posted a picture of himself on the X platform standing next to former CEO of MicroStrategy and bitcoin advocate Michael Saylor. Saylor on Tuesday posted a picture of the same moment with the message “Welcome to Team Bitcoin” and tagged Cohen.
