Game$top again Cohen great guns

GameStop’s stock price soared 41 percent Monday as the struggling video-game retailer revealed that activist investor Ryan Cohen had taken charge of its turnaround.

Shares in the Texas-based chain climbed $56.76, to a closing price of $194.50, after the announcement that Cohen was leading a new committee to transform GameStop into an e-commerce business.

The Chewy.com co-founder is viewed as GameStop’s savior by some investors on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, whose efforts to pump up the stock thrust the chain into the center of the recent market revolution.

Cohen joined GameStop’s board of directors in January after amassing a 13 percent stake and pressing executives to transform the business from an outdated brickand-mortar retailer into a digitally focused gaming company.

GameStop now appears to have given Cohen the reins to guide that transformation, by making him the chair of a threeperson “Strategic Planning and Capital Allocation Committee.”

“It is responsible for evaluating areas that include GameStop’s current operational objectives, capital structure and allocation priorities, digital capabilities, organizational footprint, and personnel,” the company said in a news release.

The panel has hired executives to oversee GameStop’s e-commerce and customer-care operations and is looking for ways to “transform GameStop into a technology business and help create enduring value for stockholders,” the company said.

That was the focus of a November letter Cohen sent GameStop’s board, which said the chain had failed to keep up with the industry’s “transition from physical hardware to digital streaming.”

His view that the chain was primed for a turnaround led amateur traders on Reddit to push the stock as high as $483 in January.

Cohen appeared to set off another surge in late February with a cryptic tweet featuring a photo of a McDonald’s ice-cream cone, which spurred wild speculation about what it could mean for GameStop.