US video game retailer GameStop says it has raised more than $2bn (£1.57bn) in its second share sale in a month after a rally led by the investment influencer Keith Gill, known as Roaring Kitty.
The announcement comes just days after Mr Gill's first YouTube livestream in three years. The company's shares jumped by almost 23% on Tuesday and have doubled in the last six months.
GameStop's popularity among retail investors during the pandemic helped coin the idea of meme stocks – those that gain popularity through sites like Reddit. Stocks that often became popular were ones that had been heavily bet against by professional investors, such as hedge funds.
As a result some of these shares saw their prices rise and fall sharply in hugely volatile trade. In an announcement to the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, the company said it had sold all 75 million shares it had offered to investors, raising $2.137bn.
Over the last month, the firm has raised a total of more than $3bn through share sales as its stock market value jumped. That includes $933.4m GameStop raised by selling 45 million shares last month.
Shares in the firm earlier this month after a screenshot was shared on 2 June by a Reddit account tied to Mr Gill, claiming he owned 5 million GameStop shares – a holding worth more than $100m.
Mr Gill became famous in 2021 for inspiring an army of online investors to back GameStop. It led to an unexpected surge in the struggling firm's shares, creating a financial squeeze on professional Wall Street firms that had bet against the retailer.
A post from that year showed Mr Gill held about 200,000 shares, worth $30.9m. Other so-called meme stocks, including cinema chain AMC and technology firm Blackberry, also saw their shares prices jump during the pandemic.
GameStop is currently trading at around $30 a share, well below the record high of $48 they reached earlier in June.
— CutC by bbc.com
