After a brutal start to the year, meme stocks are enjoying a three-day rally, with AMC Entertainment up 25%. The movie theater operator is up 13% Tuesday — having its best day since December — after announcing preliminary revenue for the fourth quarter that trounced analyst expectations.

But it was one year ago, value stocks were getting a wakeup call by an army of retail investors who would unleash their fledgling brokerage accounts on an array of largely consumer-facing stocks. The two original stalwarts were enjoying a "deep value" renaissance. But the story for GameStop (GME) and AMC Entertainment (AMC) hardly began there.

GameStop

Video game retailer GameStop traces its roots back to Babbage’s, a Texas-based software retailer that opened its doors in 1984. In 1999 Babbage’s launched its GameStop brand along with gamestop.com, allowing customers to buy video games online. Later in 1999 and 2000, Babbage’s and video game retailer Funco were both bought by Barnes and Noble who officially renamed Funco to GameStop Inc.

GameStop went public in 2002 with an IPO of $18 per share, and in 2004 it became an independent company when Barnes and Noble sold 59% of its stake in the company to stakeholders. The year set off a period of success for the company as GameStop would acquire EB Games in 2005 and Rhino Video Games in 2007.

At its height, before the meme craze, GameStop was trading just shy of $64 per share in 2007.

The late 2010s was a different story for GameStop, as the retailer suffered a similar fate as many brick and mortar brands. Sales dropped as consoles and PC sales moved to larger online spaces like Steam, Xbox Game Pass, and the PlayStation Store. By 2019, GameStop announced it was closing 180 to 200 underperforming stores.

A year after the announcement, four GameStop board members stepped down from their positions, prompting three new members to take their place in early 2021 — just before the meme stock takeoff. On Dec. 8, 2020 the stock took a hit after reporting dismal earnings as revenue for Q3 2020 dropped 30%, compared to 2019. By the time the markets closed the next day GameStop had fallen 20%, to $13.66 per share.

That brings GameStop to January 2021. The chain that seemed destined to fall into obscurity just two years ago became an overnight headline generator. Originating on Reddit's r/wallstreetbets the "GameStop to the moon" campaign undercut short-sellers, causing GameStop to rally 18,000% from the pandemic low of $2 and change – all the way to $483.

Since the meme stock frenzy a year ago, things have cooled down for GameStop, but the stock is still well above pre-2021 trading levels at over $100 per share in late January 2022. Aside from the final two days of January, excitement around meme stocks has faded, with the stock down 26% this year.

AMC Entertainment

Another banner meme stock name, AMC Entertainment, is a company that was limping into 2021 battered by COVID regulations and shutdowns.

AMC was founded all the way back in 1920 by a group of traveling performers who wanted to settle down and start their own theater in Kansas City, Missouri. Over the decades, AMC grew its footprint across the Midwest — eventually adopting the multiplex model in 1962. By the late 60’s, it had officially adopted the name “American Multi-Cinema” — or AMC.

AMC first went public in 1983, the same year it expanded its screen numbers from 200 to 700. After pioneering the movie theater industry in the U.S., the Kansas-based theater chain expanded into Asia and Europe in the 90s. By 1995 AMC had opened the largest multiplex in the world at the time in Ontario California, coining the term "megaplex".

After some back and forth going public, then-private, then-public again AMC had its most recent IPO in 2013 at $18 per share. This just one year after Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group bought the company for $2.6 billion. Wanda Group would own AMC Entertainment until February 2021, one week after the stock was swept up in the meme stock frenzy.

Swept up in the amateur trading movement, AMC surged over 800% into late January 2021 with the support of Wall Street Bets' forum members. This followed an announcement that the company had secured new funding that would allow it to outlast the woes brought on by coronavirus shutdowns.

One year later, AMC is still contending with coronavirus outbreaks and a movie industry that is also competing with the major streaming outfits — like Netflix and Disney+. The company still owes $5.5 billion as of last September as well as $376 million worth of lease payments it wasn’t paying during the shutdowns in 2020.

Despite the struggles that the pandemic has brought, AMC is still riding that wave afforded to it by the meme stock buying in January 2021. Currently shares of AMC are sitting around $15 per share.

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Jared Blikre is an anchor and reporter focused on the markets on Yahoo Finance Live. Follow him @SPYJared. Devan Burris is a producer for Yahoo Finance Live.

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