Meme stock favorites GameStop and AMC Entertainment were briefly halted from trading on the NYSE Tuesday as shares snapped one of the longest rallies on record for the video game retailer.
Updated at 10:43 am EST
GameStop (GME) – Get GameStop Corp. Class A Report shares extended declines Tuesday, after being halted by officials on the New York Stock Exchange, in a move that could snap the meme stock’s longest winning streak in more than a decade.
Both GameStop and AMC Entertainment (AMC) – Get AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. Class A Report names that defined last year’s meme-stock phenomenon, were halted in early Tuesday trading amid heighted volatility and larger-than-usual pre-market volumes.
GameStop was last seen trading 8.22% lower on the session at $174.00 each, a move that would still leave the stock up 41% over the past month, while AMC fell 6% to $27.58 each.
Last week, Securities and Exchange Commission filings late Tuesday showed that Cohen’s RC Ventures LLC, which has also built stakes in Bed Bath & Beyond BBBY, now owns around 9.1 million GameStop shares representing an 11.9% overall stake in the Grapevine, Texas-based group.
Short interest in the shares remains elevated, however, with data from S3 Partners showing just under $1.2 billion in bets against the group, a figure that represents around 12.66 million shares, or 20.1% of the stock’s outstanding float.
GameStop reported a wider-than-expected loss of $1.86 per share for its fiscal fourth quarter last week, and managed to record negative free cash flow of $131.6 million even as revenues rose 6.2% to $2.25 billion.
The group also confirmed reports that it plans to develop a market for so-called NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, related to its video game products, following a tie-up with Australian blockchain startup ImmutableX last month and the launch of a dedicated website last year, and plans to launch its NFT marketplace by the second quarter of the current fiscal year.
AMC, for its part, has renewed retail investor interest in part through its most-recent investment in a Nevada gold mine.
AMC Entertainment, along with noted commodity investor Eric Sprott, purchased a collective $56 million stake in Hycroft Mining Holding, the parent company of northern Nevada’s 71,000 acre Hycroft mine, which is estimated to have around 15 million ounces of gold.
AMC will own a 22% stake in the group, as well as the right to appoint a representative on the Hycroft board, in exchange for what it called a “nominal amount” of cash from AMC shareholders.
Earlier this month, AMC confirmed that revenues for the three months ending in December came in at $1.17 billion, while its net loss narrowed to $134.4 million, thanks in part to the huge success of “SpiderMan: No Way Home” and the James Bond epic “No Time To Die”.
CFO Sean Goodman said at the time, however, that while the group’s capital allocation would be “balanced and disciplined”, but noted that it could “opportunistically pursuing value-enhancing initiatives, including those that lead
