GameStop Stock Falls After Bitcoin Holdings Lose Value, Firm Says It Could Sell BTC

Video game retailer GameStop‘s stock has fallen more than 3% so far on Wednesday after the company revealed that its quarterly sales and profits were stagnant—and that its Bitcoin treasury has dropped in value alongside BTC’s sinking price.

GameStop bought $512 million worth of Bitcoin in May, making it one of the many publicly traded U.S. companies adopting digital asset treasuries. GME shares had been on a gradual 30% decline since that moment until its late Tuesday earnings call, from $33 to $23.35.

The third-quarter earnings report revealed that the value of its Bitcoin treasury has fallen by $9.2 million over the past three months. That said, the company reported that it remains $19.4 million in the green since its first purchase. It added that GameStop has not purchased or sold any Bitcoin during the third quarter of the fiscal year.

Its treasury valuation dip comes as Bitcoin has suffered a 19% drop from $115,500 to $92,280 over the past three months, according to CoinGecko.

Partially, this decline was prompted by the largest single liquidation cascade in crypto history, with $19 billion worth of positions being liquidated in one day, according to CoinGlass. Since then, several market analysts have started to slash their Bitcoin price targets as the market potentially looks to turn more bearish.

Leading Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, has seen its stock drop as not only the firm’s $61 billion BTC stash has fallen in recent months, but it also faces the potential of being removed from stock indices.

Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor then later acknowledged that the firm might have to sell its Bitcoin to meet financial obligations, after years of telling investors to “never sell your Bitcoin.” The firm has since created a $1.44 billion cash reserve to pay dividends to investors and hopefully prevent the need to sell its BTC.

GameStop similarly acknowledged in its earnings report that it may have to sell its Bitcoin as “part of treasury management operations.” However, that disclaimer isn’t new—it was also included in the company’s previous quarterly earnings report.

The report also showed that the retailer’s three-month sales have declined 4.5% from $860.3 million to $821 million compared to last year. Meanwhile, its nine-month sales dropped less than a percentage point from $2.54 billion to $2.52 billion. That said, its three-month and nine-month gross profits have increased 6.2% and 7.8% respectively.

Regardless of the slight boost in profits, according to Yahoo Finance, it appears investors haven’t reacted favorably to the earnings report as the stock has slipped more than 3% on the day to $22.40 per share—that’s a 32% decline from before its Bitcoin bet.