While retail investors might base their trades on memes posted by Roaring Kitty, a leading Wall Street analyst is warning investors that the company’s plan to return to growth is hopeless.
Michael Pachter of Wedbush, in a note to investors, harshly criticized the meme stock and its management, calling it overvalued and aimless.
“GameStop has roughly $10 per share in cash now, but with no clear strategy to reasonably deploy capital, we don’t believe shares should trade at 3x cash,” Pachter wrote. “The company’s planned return to growth faces insurmountable barriers.”
Pachter’s comments come after GameStop shares soared 10% Thursday following the posting of an image to the X account of Keith Gill, the GameStop bull who occasionally broadcasts on YouTube under the name Roaring Kitty.
GameStop shares were down roughly 1% in early trading Friday.
The bump in share prices comes ahead of the company’s third-quarter earnings, which will be released on Dec. 10. The company will not host a conference call to discuss the results, nor issue guidance. Wedbush is expecting net sales to be down 16.5% year over year, with break-even earnings per share. (Consensus is a loss of three cents per share.)
Pachter added that GameStop shares “trade at a level that ignores the company’s many challenges ahead,” specifically detailing the continued shift from physical media to digital and a growing decline in overall game sales as publishers focus on extending the life of titles via microtransactions.
Subscription services, such as Xbox’s GamePass, represent another threat to the core business. And Pachter criticized GameStop’s “nonspecific strategy” to become a player in the trading card business, saying it has “virtually no competitive advantage against established participants.”
Investors aren’t paying any attention to the fundamentals, however. Year to date, GameStop shares are up about 70%.