WASHINGTON (AP) – Shares of Chewy dropped nearly 2% in overnight trading on Wednesday. This came after a regulatory filing revealed that the meme stock trader known as Roaring Kitty had sold his stake in the online pet store. A beneficial ownership filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, posted on Tuesday, showed that Keith Gill, whose legal name is Roaring Kitty, had sold all of his shares in Chewy. This amounted to a 6.6% stake. Chewy, based in Plantation, Florida, fell 1.9% after hours to $26.19 per share. Gill, an investor at the center of the meme stock craze, acquired more than 9 million shares of Chewy in July, making him the company’s third-biggest shareholder. Gill became famous in 2021 when he rallied retail investors around GameStop. At that time, the video game retailer was struggling to survive, and big Wall Street hedge funds and major investors were betting against it or shorting its stock.
Gill and those who agreed with him altered GameStop’s trajectory by purchasing thousands of shares despite almost all accepted metrics indicating the company was in serious trouble. This initiated what is known as a’short squeeze,’ where big investors who had bet against GameStop were compelled to buy its rapidly rising stock to offset massive losses. Gill has expressed faith in GameStop’s Chairman and CEO Ryan Cohen’s ability to modernize the company, as he did at Chewy. Cohen co-founded Chewy in 2011 and stepped down as its CEO in 2018.
