Traders work at the center as GameStop trades on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, US, June 12, 2024.
Brendan McDiarmid | Reuters
GameStop The annual shareholders meeting was disrupted by computer problems on Thursday, as servers crashed due to overwhelming interest in the broadcast, a customer service representative at the company hosting the broadcast told CNBC.
The meeting, which was scheduled to start at 11 a.m. ET, was hosted on ComputerShare, but when people tried to access the event, many received error messages saying the page could not load, according to posts shared on the social networking site. Social X and CNBC's own attempts. To get to the event.
According to a YouTube broadcast from an unaffiliated user claiming to be reproducing the broadcast, the annual meeting was initiated at 11:48 a.m. ET and was “immediately postponed…due to technical difficulties that prevented shareholders from accessing the meeting.” GameStop said it would provide an update “as soon as possible” regarding when the event will be rescheduled, according to that feed.
GameStop could not immediately be reached for comment.
When reached by phone, a ComputerShare customer service representative told CNBC that he was seeing a “tremendous amount” of issues from people trying to get to the meeting.
The representative said ComputerShare's servers seemed unable to handle the volume of traffic the meeting received and were not accustomed to the volume of accounts. They added that ComputerShare's technical team was working to resolve the issue and advised interested parties to try logging in “every 5 to 10 minutes.”
The debacle comes amid a new craze for meme stocks that soared when Keith Gill – known as Roaring Kitty online – resumed posting on his social accounts after going dark for more than three years. Gill gained notoriety in the world of online trading for his big bets on stocks, sparking a frenzy among retail traders.
GameStop stock rose 14.4% on Thursday in another volatile session.
GameStop announced Tuesday that it raised more than $2 billion in a recent stock market selloff as the video game company benefited from the rise of the revived meme. GameStop said it intends to use the funds for general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions and investments.
Traders have been closely monitoring Roaring Kitty's position, as its active selling could send the stock price lower.
In late trading Wednesday afternoon, the sell-off in GameStop stock suddenly intensified just as trading volume in call options held by Roaring Kitty surged. Call options give the buyer the right to buy a stock at a specific price within a specific period. Its value increases if the stock rises above the so-called strike price.
GameStop calls, with a strike price of $20 and expiration on June 21, traded for a whopping 93,266 contracts on Wednesday, more than nine times their average 30-day volume of 10,233 contracts.
The prices of these contracts fell by more than 40% during the session, while the stock fell by 16.5%.
Roaring Kitty has 120,000 contracts of those calls, according to a screenshot he shared Monday evening.
It is unclear whether Roaring Kitty is actually behind the high volume, but options traders said he could be involved since he is the holder of a large number of those contracts.
Open interest on those calls, which is the total number of unsettled asset contracts, fell to 111,818 contracts as of Thursday morning, already below Roaring Kitty's original 120,000 contracts.
More than 47,000 such contracts were traded on Thursday.
