Saturday, September 26, 2026

@leevalueroach Sep 21

Lee Roach on X

GameStop $GME is one of the most misunderstood companies in the entire market. Wall Street has left the company for dead. Every sell side firm has dropped coverage and zero hedge funds will own this because of the former meme stock hair. Now the stock trades dirt cheap with $5 billion of cash, $5 billion of ebay stock (10% of the entire company), $300 million of bitcoin and $2.8 billion of zero percent convertible debt. You are buying the core business for $4.1 billion. The core business that has completely transformed itself into a highly cash generative card store. Management has turned around the entire company and it is not a dying retailer anymore. It is a cash generative cash machine flipping Pokemon, Magic The Gathering and One Piece cards. Cards are one of the hottest markets in the entire world right now and Wall Street is asleep at the wheel. Unit economics are stunning. There are 1,600 stores in the U.S. $1.9 million sales per store. 45% gross margins at the store level. Four wall EBITDA per store of $580k. This is a four wall margin of 30.6%. There is very little capex and inventory is mostly financed by vendors and there is a float business with the trade-ins with in-store credit zero percent debt. Management is guiding to $650 million of EBITDA for the full year. They are sandbagging the number HARD. I am pulling data from ebay and GemRate and total Pokemon sales in August were up 30% m/m. The highest monthly sales ever recorded. In addition, the 30th anniversary for Pokemon occurred on September 16th. It was the biggest coordinated Pokemon event in history. I went to a dozen of GameStop's and local card shops and they were all sold out. Lines out the door. The phone ringing off the hook. Wall Street is completely unaware that GameStop is flipping cards in size and has transformed their business model. Finally, Q4 is the company's biggest quarter and there are more events for the 30th anniversary landing in the quarter. For the full year, I am modeling in excess of $850 million of EBITDA, $200 million ahead of management's sandbagged guide. Management likely knows this. Ryan Cohen bought $20 million in the open market, and other C-Suite executives followed along with numerous buys, just days ago. And then the company announced they will be reopening stores, for the first time in many years. The payback on reopens should be less than a year. I see the company trading at 4.7x EV/EBITDA, and over 90% of that EBITDA should convert into free cash flow, or a 20% free cash flow yield on the enterprise value. Wall Street is completely missing the story and asleep at the wheel with drool running down their big fat bellies. There will likely be push back on the ebay acquisition, but I encourage everyone to actually dig into the deal. It could be transformative and there are many synergies that Wall Street idiots are missing. Wall Street suits have no idea how the card market has been gamified and turned into a lottery ticket system that has become extremely addicting on apps like Whatnot. In addition, Ryan Cohen is an All Star capital allocator and operator, an extremely rare combination, and a platform like eBay is right up his wheel house. I built a website below that has a 34-deck slide, highlighting the thesis. Have fun and check out my analysis and website. I am long $GME and find the thesis asymmetric. https://t.co/Re7vRQ6uHG