- GameStop plans to lay off some corporate employees, per an internal memo obtained by CNBC.
- The company announced Thursday it fired its CFO, Mike Recupero.
- On Wednesday after the bell, the "meme stock" company confirmed its plan to conduct a 4-for-1 stock split
It's possible the fun, games, and memes are over: Gamestop is laying off corporate employees and fired its CFO, Mike Recupero, CNBC reported Thursday.
Gamestop announced the CFO change in a press release Thursday. The CFO was booted "because he was not the right culture fit" and "too hands off," a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. Diana Saadeh-Jajeh will replace him as CFO.
CNBC obtained and cited an internal memo from CEO Matt Furlong on the layoffs.
"After investing heavily in personnel, technology, inventory and supply chain infrastructure over the past 18 months, our focus is on achieving sustained profitability. This means eliminating excess costs and operating with an intense owner's mentality," Furlong reportedly wrote.
He added the company had hired over 600 people in corporate in 2021 and the first half of 2022.
"Today, we're making a number of reductions to help us keep things simple and operate nimbly with the right talent in place," Furlong's memo reportedly added without immediately making it clear how many jobs will be eliminated.
The memo obtained by the outlet added the company would make some sort of investment in "store leaders," and retail employees to be announced later, touched on Recupero's departure, and pushed for the slightly embattled video games retailer's shift into digital.
The personnel announcements come on the heels of Wednesday's announcement that GameStop would continue with its plan to conducting a 4-for-1 stock split, which means it increased the number of shares. That makes it cheaper to buy a share of the company, but it doesn't diminish its total value.
Still, GameStop is a "meme stock" — a target in Redditors anti-Wall-Street efforts to buy theoretically low-performing stocks and confound hedge funds — so the company's performance isn't always pegged to traditional moves like stock splitting.
Despite that, shares of Gamestop were off 4.7% in recent after-hours trading on Thursday.
Being a target of the meme-ers won't save you from every tough economic headwind, apparently. Gamestop is the latest in a series of companies to announce layoffs amid recession anxiety and stock market rout, from Twitter, per the Wall Street Journal, to startups to Tesla. Even companies as big as Meta have announced hiring freezes.
Gamestop did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
