After Attempting To Declare Itself An "Essential Business," Gamestop Is Permanently Closing 300 Stores

GameStop, which recently came under fire for attempting to declare itself an essential business during Coronavirus-related business closures, has announced that it will be permanently closing over 300 of its stores.

The move is part of an ongoing strategy for the company to remain profitable despite dramatic sales decreases. Last year, Gamestop closed 320 of its stores.

On a conference call discussing fourth fiscal quarter earnings, CEO Jim Bell said, "In 2020, we will continue our work to de-densify our global store fleet and anticipate store closures to be equal to or more than 320 net closures we saw in fiscal 2019 on a global basis." This means that Gamestop stores that are in close proximity to are the most likely to be closed.

Despite seeing a 26% decrease in sales in the fourth quarter of 2019, Gamestop managed to be profitable, turning a $109 million profit. This is in part due to the large number of store closures which had lowered the company's operating costs.

March 2020 also saw a small bump in GameStop sales, a likely result of the releases of Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing. The company also hopes it will see a revenue bump in the fourth quarter of 2020, with the upcoming releases of the new Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X.