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Comment by pivoter | Hacker News Reader

you don't seem to understand what's going on. gamestop itself is just stuck in the middle of a battle created because of financial investment tools. It doesn't really matter which company it is, it just matters that the company is shorted at >100% of total issued shares.

if the gamestop is still shorted at 130-150% of total issued shares (finra report coming soon) that means the shorters are going to be paying interest and getting margin called as GME prices goes up. the fees for borrowing GME to short have been 30-60%. That is absolutely insane, if you can even find shares to short, which I haven't seen any for the past day.

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I understand very much what’s going on, I wasn’t asking why it isn’t worth today’s price, I was asking why it’s worth $5-$40.

GameStop did 6 billion in revenue 2020. At $5 per share that’s a ~348mm valuation.

Yes, but revenue peaked in 2017 and has been essentially declining since. They've been losing money since 2018, and their business is in terminal decline due to digital sales. They have about 300 million in net assets depending on what you count.

The value of a business with the same revenue as Gamestop, but with a normal profit margin and a stable or growing market is a very different beast. The only way Gamestop has any value is either to keep cutting the unprofitable stores until they just disappear as a company, like Sears did, or leverage the brand to pivot to digital. This is fairly difficult since the consoles are all locked to the console manufacturer's store, and Steam is already dominant on the PC.

Revenue != profit. That $6.5 billion in revenue cost them just over $6.5 billion, so net they lost a little bit of money in 2020. The three years prior, net profit was between 0.3 cents/share and 0.5 cents/share. Additionally, revenue decreased from about $8.5 billion last year. So if the past four years are representative of future prospects, the value of GME's business is $0. But the assets - liabilities (book value) is about $5/sh.

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