Chewy Shares Soar More Than 10% After SEC Filing Reveals ‘Roaring Kitty’ Keith Gill Holds 6.6% Stake

Shares of Tough emerged in premarket trading Monday after a Securities and Exchange Commission filing revealed that meme stock trader “Roaring Kitty” had taken a stake in the e-commerce pet food retailer.

The submission showed that Roaring Kitty, whose legal name is Keith Gill, bought just over 9 million shares – representing a 6.6% stake in the company. That makes him Chewy’s third largest shareholder, according to FactSet. Based on Friday’s closing price, that stake is valued at more than $245 million.

Before the bell, the stock was up more than 10%.

The SEC filing also included a section that read: “Check the appropriate box to indicate if you are a cat.” There was an “x” next to a response that read, “I’m not a cat.” This phrase was included in Gill’s statement during a series of Congressional hearings on the 2021 GameStop trading mania.

Chewy’s shares took a wild ride last week after Gill posted a photo on social media platform X of a cartoon dog that resembled Chewy’s logo. Shares rose as much as 34% on Thursday, but ended the day on a low note.

CNBC emailed Chewy PR asking for comment on the new shareholder.

Gill is known as a champion of GameStop and has fueled trading for the video game company in recent months. In mid-June, he announced a stake of 9.001 million GameStop shares after exiting his huge call option position. It’s unclear whether he sold his GameStop bet to finance the purchase of Chewy.

GameStop shares fell more than 7% on Monday following the news.

There is a big connection between GameStop and Chewy. GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen was the founder and CEO of Chewy, who was instrumental in Chewy’s acquisition by PetSmart in 2017 and its subsequent initial public offering in 2019.

Cohen joined GameStop’s board of directors along with two other Chewy executives in January 2021, partially helping fuel the initial GameStop rally. He later took over as CEO of GameStop in 2023 and led a turnaround at the brick-and-mortar video game retailer.

In a recent YouTube livestream, Gill said that GameStop is in the second phase of a reinvention, and that it has become a bet on Cohen himself, who has led a turnaround and made the move into e-commerce.

Gill is a former marketer for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance. He came into the spotlight after successfully encouraging retail investors to buy GameStop stock and call options in 2021 to squeeze out short-selling hedge funds.