Ryan Cohen's statement at GameStop's (GME) 2023 annual shareholders meeting

GameStop’s (GME) annual shareholders meeting, one of the company’s largest events every year, is going down today. The call kicked off with a statement from Ryan Cohen, executive chairman and acting CEO. We’ve transcribed his full statement below.

Here is the full statement from Ryan Cohen at GameStop’s 2023 shareholders meeting:

Thanks Mark, and hi everyone. I will speak briefly. My father always told me: ‘talk is cheap, actions speak louder than words.’ My responsibility is to make sure GameStop is run by managers who treat company money like their own. In corporate America, the people in charge, the professional directors and management teams, are not aligned with shareholders. They are always the recipients of stock grants, however they rarely purchase company shares with their own savings. There is a big difference between risk-free compensation for showing up, and putting a meaningful amount of your own money at risk. As a result, money is wasted, work is relegated, and a lot of time is spent managing to short expectations and pandering to Wall Street. I like people who roll up their sleeves and do real work. People guided by principles. Not robots who seek to rest and invest. In corporate America, there’s no shortage of overpaid executives, bad capital allocation and chronic waste, and serial delegators. Much of this behavior is both predictable and reprehensible. It is precisely what creates opportunities. Thank you for being a shareholder.

The call itself was pretty brief, and didn’t cover some of the more pressing topics in the world of GameStop. Last week was a pretty wild week for the company, given it fired its former CEO after missing revenue expectations, and canceled its earnings call. As of now, Ryan Cohen is temporarily serving as GameStop’s CEO.