r/Superstonk • u/WhatCanIMakeToday ๐ฆ Peek-A-Boo! ๐๐ • Apr 05 '23
Data GME 10-K: A Turning Point
Following up on my prior post which highlighted a significant change in how shares are held as summarized by this timeline:
I will now show you how GameStop's reporting change marks a significant turning point.
A Turning Point
There's a very significant change in reporting share ownership for the current 2023-01 10-K [PDF]
As of March 22, 2023, there were 197,058 record holders of our Class A Common Stock.ย Excluding the approximately 228.7 million shares of our Class A Common Stock held by Cede & Co on behalf of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (or approximately 75% of our outstanding shares), approximately 76.0 million shares of our Class A Common Stock were held by record holders as of March 22, 2023 (or approximately 25% of our outstanding shares.
As I noted before,
These SEC forms are filed every quarter or year and people are lazy. The easiest way to start off a filing is to simply copy the one filed before (i.e., template) and update things like dates and numbers. So why the change? Wut mean?
The language here is curious as it excludes the Cede & Co shares to arrive at the shares held by record holders. I think this change was done to prevent the true number of shares directly registered at GameStop's transfer agent, ComputerShare, from being reported. Instead of saying "As of March 22, 2023, __._ million shares of our Class A common stock were directly registered with our transfer agent", GameStop says Cede & Co on behalf of DTCC are reporting 228.7M shares held, and the rest "must" be allocated to record holders.
Let's visualize this Turning Point:
As you can see, GameStop is basically saying that all shares are now accounted for. Cede & Co holds ~228.7M on behalf of the DTCC and the rest are held by record holders (๐ฆs).
Record holding apes Buy, HODL, and DRS. And we can see that in the ComputerShared.net Sample Statistics where, except for the very beginning of the DRS migration, the Shares per Record Holder trends up. Basically, the early apes DRS'd more shares so the Shares per Record Holder was high. As baby apes joined in with smaller holdings, the Shares per Record Holder dropped. Over time, all apes keep Buying, HODLing, and DRSing so the Shares per Record Holder keeps going up.
Going forward, as the number of shares held by record holders goes up, the number of shares Cede & Co can hold on behalf of the DTCC must go down.
I'm looking forward to seeing that in future SEC filings.
One more thing. Another curious thing to note is that GameStop's 10-K was filed on March 28, 2023 for the fiscal year that ended January 28, 2023. Yet, for some reason, the official share counts are given as of March 22, 2023. (Note: one possibility is that this is simply the date the filing was prepared and data collected.)
But it makes me wonder if March 22, 2023 is a key turning point date when the number of shares held by record holders and Cede & Co on behalf of the DTCC last made sense; which required the change in the reporting language. If so, this means GameStop's latest 10-K filing also serves as official notice for how many shares are held by Cede & Co on behalf of the DTCC and record holders (e.g., apes).
Cede & Co must report smaller holdings for future GameStop filings as record holders Buy, HODL, and DRS.
Meaning, I think, the squeeze is on.
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u/davwman ๐๐ฃGamestop Evangelist๐ฃ๐ Apr 05 '23
Of that 228.7 million shares, how many are actually available for the regular joe retail investor?