Chewy founder Ryan Cohen has reaped a 1,700% return from a $76 million GameStop investment he made last year

Chewy.com co-founder Ryan Cohen acquired a 12.9% stake in GameStop last year for $76 million.
At Monday’s high of $159.18, Cohen’s stake in the video game retailer had swelled to $1.4 billion, good for a roughly 1,700% return.
Cohen recently gained three board seats and is pushing the company to transform into a specialized e-commerce retailer.
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Activist investor Ryan Cohen’s investment into GameStop last year proved to be good timing on Monday after shares exploded higher by as much as 145%.

An epic short squeeze rally, combined with pockets of investor euphoria found on popular trading forums like Reddit’s WallStreetBets, helped propel shares of GameStop to an all-time high of $159.18 in Tuesday trades.

Cohen amassed a 9 million-share stake in GameStop last year at an average price of $8.43, worth $76 million at the time. At it’s intra-day high today, that stake was worth as much as $1.4 billion, representing a return of more than 1,700%.

But Cohen seems to be playing the long-game on GameStop. Through his firm RC Ventures, Cohen had petitioned the board of GameStop to adopt a strategy that would transform the company into a specialized e-commerce retailer of gaming products.

Cohen utilized a similar strategy for his previous company, Chewy.com, which is a specialized e-commerce retailer of pet products. After being acquired by PetSmart for $3.5 billion, Chewy went public and is now trading at a valuation of more than $43 billion.

GameStop seems to have been receptive to Cohen’s proposal, granting him three seats on the board of directors, including one for himself.

Since Cohen’s first purchase of shares of GameStop on September 14, shares are up as much as 2,317%.