GoPro just ripped after Markiplier became its largest shareholder

GoPro just ripped after Markiplier became its largest shareholder

GPRO surged as much as 46% today after reports that YouTuber Markiplier built an 8.5% stake, making him GoPro’s largest individual shareholder. The stock closed around $0.88 on huge volume, roughly 148M shares versus a \\\~6M 50-day average.

The interesting part here isn’t just speculating on a random microcap. Markiplier has been using GoPro products in his filmmaking work and said he thought the company looked undervalued. GoPro is still down heavily from its highs and was down roughly 57% YTD before today’s move, so the market is clearly treating this as a potential turnaround signal rather than just another celebrity investment.

At a market cap still around the low hundreds of millions, the upside can get silly fast if the business actually turns around. The flip side is that the fundamentals are still rough, and one famous shareholder doesn’t fix the balance sheet.

Is this a legitimate deep-value turnaround setup now, or just meme stock energy around a famous name?

EDIT: getting some fair criticism in the comments, I should’ve included the balance sheet side.

Yes the risks are very real: $27M cash, $87M debt, negative operating cash flow, covenant issues, and a going-concern warning. Management is also reviewing strategic alternatives, including a possible sale or merger.

But there is a real distressed value case here. GoPro did $105M of Q2 revenue, subscription/service revenue grew 11% to $29M, attach rate hit 69%, ARPU rose 9%, and GoPro.com revenue grew 13%. Even after today’s move, the market cap is only around $110M, or 0.24x.

So I wouldn’t call it classic value investing. It’s more of a distressed turnaround/special situation where the upside depends on stabilization, or restructuring, or a strategic value add exceeding the current equity value.