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GameStop Reports Earnings Today. What to Expect.

GameStop is expected to report a fiscal third-quarter adjusted net loss of 52 cents a share with sales of $1.19 billion, according to FactSet.

David ‘Dee’ Delgado/Bloomberg

GameStop is set to report fiscal third-quarter results after the market closes on Wednesday. For the fourth earnings call since Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen joined GameStop’s board, analysts are still waiting for a substantial update on management’s turnaround efforts.

Since shares exploded in January, GameStop (ticker: GME) executives have kept earnings calls limited to prepared to remarks, with no question and answer session with analysts. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter told Barron’s he expects the company to hold another brief earnings call.

Analysts—well, the remaining four still providing FactSet with GameStop estimates—expect the company to report a fiscal third-quarter adjusted net loss of 52 cents a share with sales of $1.19 billion. That’s compared to a net loss of 76 cents a share and sales of $1.18 billion in the second quarter.

“Until supply of consoles improves, it’s going to be hard to see a marked improvement in their business,” Pachter says.

GameStop stock closed down 3.1% to $167.12 on Monday but rebounded on Tuesday to close up 6.2% to $177.81. Shares, supported by retail investors who organize on social media sites like Reddit, have traded rangebound for much of this year. The stock’s highest close in six months was $302.56 on June 9, just before the company reported fiscal first-quarter results. Its lowest close in that period was $146.80 on Aug. 4.

The company has announced plans to invest in e-commerce fulfillment capabilities and customer care efforts. Chewy (CHWY), the pet supply firm Cohen co-founded, outmaneuvered Amazon.com (AMZN) in that niche, in part because of its stellar customer care.

Cohen has kept mostly mum, aside from cryptic posts on Twitter and a shareholder address in June after becoming the board’s chairman.

“I think it probably is important to the Reddit crowd, but he doesn’t seem to experience any sense of urgency to let them know what his strategy is,” Pachter said. “There is a rational explanation, which is that there is no strategy.”

Users on Reddit have speculated, pointing to GameStop job postings and other online breadcrumbs, that the company is planning a major play in the non-fungible token space. A GameStop NFT launch could inspire renewed optimism for the stock, but extrapolating any impact on the company’s fundamental prospects would be highly speculative.

Still, shares aren’t primed for a short squeeze in the same way they were in January. Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director at short-selling analytics firm S3 Partners, estimates that as of Friday, GameStop’s short interest was $1.18 billion, or 6.8 million shares shorted. That’s roughly 10.9% of shares available for trading.

Most traditional buy and hold investors penciled out GameStop, and other meme stocks, months ago. That doesn’t make the earnings report, and the potential stock reaction, any less interesting.

Write to Connor Smith at [email protected]

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