Retailer GameStop has announced revenue, and last year was a challenging year for the company. The company posted a loss of $ 381 million in fiscal year 2021. GameStop CEO Matt Furlong said in a briefing that there were several factors that had a negative impact on GameStop’s performance over the past year, but the company still holds its commitment to be a hit. If that leads to greater results in the future.
“The combination of supply chain issues and Omicron variants has had a huge impact on the holiday season of the year,” Furlong said. “We have consciously decided to focus on higher costs and absorb to meet customer demand. We invest in customers and rebuild brand loyalty in the long run. I feel and continue to feel that it is the company’s greatest profit. “
Furlong also reiterated over the phone that GameStop is moving towards becoming a “technology” company rather than a strictly video game retailer. According to Farlong, GameStop is “a technology company that is crazy about customers, offering a wider range of services, more competitive pricing, faster shopping, stronger customer service, and easier shopping experiences. We aim to be a “provider company”.
GameStop has posted huge losses over the past year, but Furlong said GameStop has made some changes to improve profitability. One such method was to break the relationship with an external consultant. This cost the company “millions of dollars” a year, Furlong said without appointing these consultants.
Regarding plans for GameStop to turn things around, Furlong said GameStop will look to NFTs and crypto. “We see great potential in the long run for NFT’s $ 40 billion market,” Furlong said. “We will continue to take steps to create new products in blockchain games and cryptocurrencies and place targeted bets. Learn from the mistakes of the last decade when GameStop was unable to adapt to the future of the game. I was surprised. “
One of GameStop’s bets on NFT / crypto space is a $ 100 million partnership with ImmutableX for the NFT market.
GameStop lost a lot this year, but cash in fiscal year 2021 was $ 1.27 billion, about $ 760 million more than at the end of fiscal year 2020.
GameStop also announced that it has closed 174 stores in the United States, 22 stores in Canada and 47 stores in Europe. It was not closed in Australia, which continues to have 417 stores. In total, GameStop had 4,573 stores worldwide as of January 29, 2022. This is down from 4,816 stores on January 30, 2021.
You can read GameStop’s revenue filing here.
In other recent news, Reggie Fils-Aime, a former Nintendo U.S. president who served on GameStop’s board for a period of time, said that GameStop’s inability to attend a planning session to plan the future of GameStop. I criticized the management.
“The problem was that when the strategy started to be developed, I asked him to be part of a team to develop the strategy. I knew the business. I made it a consumer and a vendor. I knew as. I was pretty strong. Opinions on how the business needed to be transformed. But I was rejected. ” “The point of view is,’Reggie, we want to keep the team small … so it will be myself [Cohen] And some people I got on board. “
Fils-Aime said billionaire GameStop investor Ryan Cohen and the team around him “don’t know this business, they don’t understand the players.” When Fils-Aime was denied a spot on the strategic team on the road to GameStop’s progress, he saw it as a sign that it was time to go.
“I adopted it as a code.’Thank you, I really don’t need any other ideas.’ For me, it wasn’t accepted,” he said.
