Over the course of the pandemic, GameStop (NYSE: GME) became the poster child for meme stock activity, surging up to $400 per share last year as Redditors carried out a short squeeze on the company. Now, GameStop stock is on the rise once again, but the story isn't the same.
Throughout March, GameStop stock prices have ranged between $78 and more than twice that, $189. On April 1, the stock opened at $188.90 before falling to $165.43 by the afternoon.
"It's hard to make this argument that the price is worth more than $80," Kevin Mullally, a University of Central Florida professor of finance, told NPR.
Experts say that the increase is coming from two sources: first, a recent regulatory filing showed that GameStop chairman and activist investor Ryan Cohen has increased his holding in the company by 100,000 shares, bringing his stake in GameStop to 11.9%.
Cohen's purchase "is seen as an indicator of the insider sentiment of their own company. It's a valuable metric," Christopher Kardatzke, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Quiver Quantitative Inc., told NPR. "This likely caused more people to have more confidence in investing in GameStop."
Second, according to Kardatzke, movements on stocks like GameStop that have a close investor and fan following usually bring with them "a lot of discussion" that "gets a lot of people interested in what it's going to do next." Basically, when Cohen's purchase bumped stock prices, it attracted more attention to the company.
Based on recent announcements from the company, it too recognizes the potential of this heightened attention. GameStop has announced that it hopes to carry out a stock split to take the number of total shares in the company from 300 million to one billion.
Splitting the stock doesn't necessarily affect the value, but it does lower the price, potentially attracting back more meme-stock enthusiasts. With the stock currently sitting at double its price from two weeks ago, a considerable number of smaller inventors could be drawn back to the company if a split is carried out.
Stock splits have been increasingly popular in recent years. Since 2020, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA), and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) have each carried out stock splits, and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) both plan on carrying splits sometime this year. Tesla also has mentioned plans for another split.
Investopedia reports that companies that split their stocks "outperformed the S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) by an average of 7.8% after three months, 13.9% after six months, and 25.4% and 12 months."