GameStop Corp.’s newest leader said the company has a lot of work to do to turn itself around but stopped short in revealing its strategy, according to people who attended the videogame retailer’s shareholder meeting Wednesday.
Ryan Cohen was named chairman at the meeting on GameStop’s Texas campus, cementing his oversight of a company that is searching for a chief executive and seeking to manage expectations of shareholders bullish on its turnaround potential.
Mr. Cohen spoke briefly at the event, saying the company doesn’t plan on making a bunch of lofty promises or telegraphing its strategy to the competition. “You won’t find us talking a big game,” he said. The event was closed to the media. The Wall Street Journal was told of his comments from those in attendance.
The 35-year-old Chewy Inc. co-founder takes the helm of a smaller, reshaped board of directors as a majority of incumbent members resigned from the panel. The company elected five others, including departing CEO George Sherman. Three have ties to Mr. Cohen from the online pet-supplies retailer he sold to PetSmart Inc. in 2017 for $3.35 billion.
GameStop, which reports its quarterly financial results after market close, has been at the center of a social-media-fueled trading frenzy for months. The company’s share price ballooned after Mr. Cohen joined the board in January, with some investors believing the entrepreneur’s past success with the online pet-supplies retailer could help GameStop. Shares crested that month at $483 in intraday trading, but later tumbled to around $40 in mid-February and have fluctuated since.
