GameStop Raises More Than $2 Billion After ‘Roaring Kitty’ Stock Rally

By Trisha Andrada

Jun 12, 2024 05:22 AM EDT

GameStop announced on Tuesday, June 11, that it raised about $2.14 billion in its second share offering in a month. The announcement comes just days after meme stock leader Keith Gill, known as "Roaring Kitty," made his first live stream on YouTube after three years on June 7 and talked up the firm's shares.

According to BBC, GameStop's shares surged by nearly 23% on Tuesday and have doubled in the past six months.

GameStop Raises $2.14 Billion by Selling 75 Million Shares

After selling all 75 million shares to investors, GameStop said on Tuesday that it had raised $2.137 billion. As the firm's stock market value increased over the past month, GameStop generated a total of over $3 billion through share sales.

That sum includes the $933.4 million that GameStop acquired last month via selling 45 million shares. Earlier this month, the company's stock rose after a screenshot was shared on a Reddit account tied to Keith Gill, and claimed he bought five million GameStop shares, an investment worth nearly $116 million.

What's Behind the Meme Stock Craze

Meme stocks, which gain traction on sites like Reddit, were initially proposed in response to GameStop's appeal to retail investors during the pandemic.

Popular stocks sometimes turned out to be those that professional investors, including hedge funds, had strongly bet against. That caused very turbulent trading, with the price of some of these shares rising and falling dramatically.

In 2021, Keith Gill inspired an army of online investors to back GameStop, which resulted in an extraordinary surge in the struggling company's stock and left professional Wall Street firms that had bet against the retailer scrambling.

That year, Gill reportedly had around 200,000 shares worth $30.9 million. Shares of other so-called meme stocks, such as technology company Blackberry and movie theater chain AMC, also enjoyed their share price increase during the pandemic.