Fueled by r/WallStreetBets, meme stock trading began in 2020 with GameStop and continued with AMC and Blackberry. The latest target of the meme market: Tupperware.
The company warned in April that it is on the road to bankruptcy, blaming "challenging internal and external economics," including higher costs of borrowing. But the memesters don't care about the core business -- the meme-fueled rally around Tupperware's stock has pushed the company's shares up more than 700% in the past two weeks. Short sellers have lost nearly $40 million.
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"Tupperware the stock no longer has anything to do with Tupperware (TUP) -) the company. The stock might be worthless, but you could say the same thing about the Mega Millions tickets that you have in your hand," Jim Cramer, host of "Mad Money" on CNBC said. "Obviously, people are going to speculate. Nearly 150 million shares changed hands; today, Tupperware only has 44 million shares outstanding.
"There's the tell. The stock's controlled by the memesters, not the fundamentals."
Despite this, Cramer sees a way that Tupperware can actually use the meme investors to get back on its feet.
"Until they got involved, it seemed that Tupperware was a goner," Cramer said, adding that "if the memesters can push the stock high enough then the story suddenly becomes a good one. The company can issue more shares to raise much-needed cash. Then it becomes a circle upward where they can create new shares and sell them to the memesters to raise capital."
That, Cramer said, in addition to bringing on better management, is the only road to Tupperware's resurgence. But he added that it is not very likely.
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"The odds don't favor it, though," Cramer said. "The odds still favor bankruptcy."
Tupperware stock was trading below $1 from May 5 through the first half of July. It spiked to $5.38 on Aug. 1.
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