GameStop Preparing Offer for eBay

(wsj.com)

55 points | by voisin 4 hours ago ago

34 comments

  • applfanboysbgon 3 hours ago

    > GameStop, which had a market value of around $11 billion [...] EBay is several times GameStop’s size, with a market value around $45 billion as of Friday’s close.

    > Details of the potential offer for eBay couldn’t be learned.

    This appears to be an attention stunt, of which Cohen has done a few since GME became a meme stock.

    • Esophagus4 2 hours ago

      I’ve searched the net to find the example, but I remember this happening during the dot com era too…

      Some unknown tiny company made an offer to takeover Yahoo (or some similar company)… the tiny company made headlines for a moment then disappeared again.

      It was an example of dot com silliness.

      Can’t for the life of me remember, and Google can’t seem to either.

      • c-c-c-c-c 2 hours ago

        Similar to when koenigsegg attempted to purchase saab, it can be a great way to get publicity.

    • iknowSFR 2 hours ago

      Maybe but we have a recent sample of Paramount ($12b) acquiring WB ($62b).

      • applfanboysbgon 2 hours ago

        That would be more accurately described as Larry Ellison (~$200b) acquiring WB.

      • sanswork 2 hours ago

        In that case though Paramount offloaded 25% to foreign wealth funds and had Larry Ellison willing to provide guarantee on(according to google) almost $50b of debt.

        Ryan Cohen is rich but he's not that rich.

      • CSMastermind 2 hours ago

        KMart famously aquired the much larger Sears (and then destroyed it)

      • aurareturn 2 hours ago

        Besides the Larry Ellison, Trump, and Middle East backing, Paramount and WB's businesses have synergy.

        Gamestop and eBay have no synergy. Gamestop can't possibly run eBay better than eBay's current management. It's a meme stock looking to make noise so they can get a higher stock price, and then unload their shares onto the public market to raise cash.

        GME has 3x'ed their shares outstanding since Covid.

        https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GME/gamestop/share...

        • qingcharles 29 minutes ago

          If they promised to revert eBay's search to how it worked in 1997 I'd throw them a few dollars to bolster their "takeover."

        • mattmaroon 2 hours ago

          Yeah I don’t blame them. They didn’t create the meme but once it happened, any responsible leader would start doing secondary offerings to raise money. I sure would. If morons want to keep investing in the stock of a company that has no other chance of survival, great. Now they’ve got $9 billion on hand and they’ve had time to find a niche, right-size, and the interest on the cash pile is great too.

        • kotaKat 32 minutes ago

          > Gamestop can't possibly run eBay better than eBay's current management.

          I meaaaaaaan...

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

          "Deferred Prosecution Agreement with District of Massachusetts" still sits in the eBay footer. ;)

          • applfanboysbgon 21 minutes ago

            What in the actual fuck? I can't believe I never heard about this before, this is batshit insane.

    • weard_beard an hour ago

      The attention stunts were a strategy toward finding profitability for the core GME business model.

      This is significantly different, in line with a strategy that seems to have been in place since he became CEO of Gamestop.

      This appears to be an attempt to take over eBay the same way he took over Gamestop by acquiring a 51% controlling interest with capital he will raise by further diluting the value of Gamestop shares.

      It appears long term he is trying to build the, "Amazon of the secondhand market".

    • v4dm 2 hours ago

      > an attention stunt, of which Cohen has done a few since GME became a meme stock

      What would be these few attention stunts he did?

      • Forgeties79 2 hours ago

        NFT’s and crypto nonsense, for starters. Go look him up and what he has done at GameStop. He’s not exactly shy about his plans and likes to make dramatic statements.

  • neilv an hour ago

    Whatever you do, don't break eBay.

    I love eBay, for both buying and selling used items that are viable to ship.

    We let CraigsList get broken, with seemingly much fewer sellers and buyers than it used to have.

    I tried Facebook Marketplace, which is where most local buyers&sellers seemed to move to. But I won't install their app, and the notification emails only sometimes came through. (One buyer became very irate when I didn't respond promptly.) Also, their pretend E2E encryption for messages on their Web site was just annoying (like a dark pattern intended to make people hate E2E, while not actually providing any significant security).

    • sethops1 an hour ago

      eBay has been a savior for me buying for buying old / replacement parts. No idea where some of these sellers get their inventory but I'm so glad they exist and we can both use eBay to transact.

  • satvikpendem 26 minutes ago

    I wonder how those bagholders are feeling now, still diamond hands holding to the moon? Hell, there are still Bed Bath and Beyond and even Sears bagholders somehow thinking they'll get back money from a bankrupt and dissolved company, so I can't be too surprised.

    https://reddit.com/gallery/1t1aeky

  • v4dm 2 hours ago

    Ryan Cohen rarely does interviews & Lauren Thomas is one of the few journalists he agreed to speak to, they had an interview earlier this year - https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/gamestop-ceo-plans-e8440c...

    If you check eBay & GME's stock prices after the announcement, the market seems to think there are at least serious discussions here if not more.

    • afavour 2 hours ago

      Does “the market” not mean meme stock investors in this instance though?

      • matt_s an hour ago

        If you want to look at facts (these come from yahoo finance): 36% of their stock is held by institutions, another ~9% by insiders. Ebay is 95% held by institutions (that sounds insane but I don't follow markets, maybe its normal) and it went up 11% yesterday. That sounds like institutional traders think this is real, right? Ebay is at or near an all time high so why would anyone want to buy at an all time high? Maybe this is a pump and dump on ebay by Wall St? Get retail traders hyped, your stock bumps 10% or more, then dump shares.

        I don't understand how a smaller publicly traded company can buy a larger publicly traded company. Don't they need to have a majority of shares or enough to demand a board seat? A deal like that probably needs to have outside investors and/or some leverage of some kind.

      • v4dm 2 hours ago

        Headline-driven market is a thing, not sure why meme stock investors are part of this? How are they connected to this news?

        Also, what's a meme stock? How would you define that?

    • surgical_fire 2 hours ago

      GME stock price is not really a reliable metric for measuring the seriousness of anything.

  • huhkerrf 3 hours ago

    Time ticks for everyone... One day some company will be buying the remains of Amazon.

  • xiphmont an hour ago

    Oh no. Please, please don't let eBay get Boeing'd.

  • SMAAART 2 hours ago

    History rhymes, same playbook as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_Inc.

  • estimator7292 2 hours ago

    Best I can do is three dollars

  • lofaszvanitt 2 hours ago

    so price manipulation

  • phplovesong an hour ago

    LOL. Ebay is like 50-100x bigger than memestock. This is fake news, or just some bs some ceo said drunk.

  • love2read 3 hours ago

    Bed Bath and Beyond preparing offer for Costco /s