Chewy Surges After Keith Gill Discloses $245 Million Stake

(Bloomberg) — Chewy Inc. shares spiked as much as 29% in premarket trading Monday after Keith Gill — known online as “Roaring Kitty” — disclosed a 6.6% passive stake in the online pet food and product retailer.

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The disclosure with the US Securities and Exchange Commission shows Gill owns roughly 9 million Class A shares, worth about $245 million based on Friday’s closing price. Shares of Chewy and Petco Health and Wellness Co. briefly soared last week after Gill posted a cartoon image of a dog on X.

A representative for Chewy didn’t immediately respond to a Bloomberg News request for comment outside of regular business hours.

Gill, who shot to fame in 2021 as he rallied retail traders around GameStop Corp., returned to social media earlier this year, setting off a volatile period for GameStop and other so-called meme stocks.

Both the video game retailer and the pet foods company have one thing in common — Ryan Cohen — who co-founded Chewy and is GameStop’s current chief executive officer. Shares of GameStop fell as much as 5.7% in premarket trading on Monday after Gill’s disclosure was released.

Monday’s filing lists June 24 as the date of event and contained a tongue-in-cheek reference to Gill’s Roaring Kitty persona. The document submitted to the SEC’s Edgar database of corporate filings includes a section for the reporting person to “designate whether you are a cat.” It’s followed by two check boxes, one that reads “I am a cat.” and the other — which is marked — reads “I am not a cat.”

(Updates with more detail from the filing.)