Amid pandemic closures, GameStop says it’s seeing increased business

Enlarge / Ah, for the carefree days when you could wander into a GameStop and not worry about keeping six feet from other shoppers...

You might think that GameStop being forced to close a majority of its global retail storefronts due to concerns about the novel coronavirus would be bad for business. But CEO George Sherman said in an earnings call last night that the retailer has "seen an increase in store and online traffic over the past few weeks" that might actually help its bottom line.

"Despite having most of our European stores closed for the last few weeks, the increased demand for our products across the world has led to a positive 2% comparable sales results for the March month-to-date period through Saturday," GameStop CFO Jim Bell said during the call. "As millions of consumers adapt to remote work, play, and learning, we're pleased to be able to serve their needs," Sherman added.

Though that's an impressive statistic at first blush, it looks a bit weaker when you put it in context. "Through Saturday," for instance, doesn't cover the time since GameStop finally decided to close all of its US stores (which make up the vast majority of its worldwide retail space) to regular foot traffic. "I think when this all began, there was a pretty good level of demand that we saw while our stores were fully opened and that is the sales period that Jim talks about when you talk about through Saturday of last week," Sherman noted.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments