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GameStop has confirmed it is closing 320 “or more” stores over the next 12 months.
The news comes just months after the retailer closed 320 stores at the end of the last fiscal year. Now, at least another 320 of its 5,500 global stores are also at risk of closure, too, despite the company reporting a net income of $21 million (£16.8 million) at the end of the last financial period in February 2020.
“[We] anticipate store closures to be equal to or more than 320 net closures we saw in fiscal 2019 on a global basis,” GameStop executive vice president and CFO Jim Bell told investors in an earnings call this week (thanks, Gamasutra, via Eurogamer).
“Importantly, we want to emphasise that these store closures are a very specific and proactive part of our de-densification plan and they are not related to recent business trends”, Bell added, suggesting the decision does not come in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The company has stores in 14 different countries, including Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, and Sweden.
As part of a “workforce reduction”, GameStop laid off more than 120 people at the end of last year, including almost half the editorial team employed at its subsidiary magazine, Game Informer. The cuts affect staff working at the company’s corporate headquarters in Grapevine, Texas and Game Informer’s HQ in Minnesota, and equate to almost 14 per cent of its global workforce.
“As part of the previously announced GameStop Reboot initiative to transform our business for the future and improve our financial performance, we can confirm a workforce reduction was implemented impacting more than 120 corporate staff positions, representing approximately 14 per cent of our total associate base at our company headquarters as well as at some other offices,” a GameStop spokesperson said at the time.
