The Next GameStop Is a Faded Brand in the Metaverse

tech.hindustantimes.com:

It’s becoming a familiar story: A once-famous brand, beloved by fans but unable to keep up with changing times, loses money hand over fist and its shares get beaten down. Suddenly, retail investors decide it’s worth another look, and off the stock goes — to the moon. 

Back in January, GameStop Corp. became the cause celebre for underdogs and small shareholders seeking to inject some democracy back into equities markets. Now, shares of Taiwan’s HTC Corp. are enjoying a return to glory after a decline of 97% from the heyday when the brand was synonymous with leading-edge handsets. Its story is strikingly similar to the U.S. games and software retailer. 

Shares of the Taoyuan-based company climbed the daily 10% limit Monday, taking its rise since early October to 127%. The meteoric rebound to the price’s highest level in four years has drawn comparisons to GameStop. The latter rose 1,500% in a matter of weeks thanks to a coordinated effort by fans on social-media site Reddit to boost the stock following the pronouncement by short-sellers like Citron Research that it was a dog.

Both GameStop and HTC naysayers have had good reason to be bearish. The U.S. company hasn’t posted an operating profit since 2018 and sales continue to fall, a fact the Redditor-led revolt hasn’t managed to reverse. Meanwhile, the handset maker has been in the red since 2015 amid revenue plunging 99% over 10 years to less than $200 million in 2020. Even with this renewed investor interest, neither firm has shown any indication that a turnaround is imminent.

A decade ago, HTC was the biggest name in smartphones — it pipped Apple Inc. for U.S. market share back in the third quarter of 2011 — having earlier made history as the first company to produce an