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eBay Rejects GameStop's $56B Takeover as Not Credible

197 pointsby voisintoday at 3:49 PM193 commentsview on HN

Comments

bstsbtoday at 4:27 PM

alternate link: https://archive.ph/rsC6e

qrushtoday at 4:22 PM

As a avid eBay customer I am pretty relieved. I buy 2-3 items a month and was selling for the last 2 years on the platform. It's come such a long way and is really a great, streamlined experience. Of course I'm sure folks that make their living off their stores & sales will have different opinions, but I'd say as a routine customer and seller it doesn't need an external company's takeover pressure on it.

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tomberttoday at 4:06 PM

I really thought it was going to be the other way around.

I am quite confident that if GameStop bought eBay, they would ruin it in the same way that K-Mart buying Sears ruined that company.

I could be wrong, I'm not a business person, but it seems kind of obvious that a company like GameStop, whose current existence appears to be due to a weird short squeeze anomaly, is not a sustainable business.

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avonmachtoday at 4:42 PM

Seems like a no brainer for people who want to go into a physical store without dealing with the hassle of waiting for the item to sell along with packaging and shipping.

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pluctoday at 4:54 PM

GameStop forgot to pivot to AI-first before making the offer.

cestithtoday at 8:17 PM

If eBay really wanted to sell itself, I’d propose a no reserve auction with the bids starting at $420.

xnxtoday at 4:46 PM

A marketing stunt just like when (and I'm reluctant to use their name) Perplexity said it would buy Chrome.

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taffydavidtoday at 5:53 PM

I thought gamestop was in financial trouble a few years back, how can they afford 56 billion?

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echelontoday at 4:28 PM

Here's the biggest reason why -

GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen gets a performance pay if the market cap goes up:

> The total award consists of stock options to purchase 171,537,327 shares of the Company's Class A common stock at a price of $20.66 per share.

  Tranche  Award%  Market Cap Hurdle  EBITDA Hurdle
   
  1  10%   $20 Billion    $2.0 Billion
  2  10%   $30 Billion    $3.0 Billion
  3  10%   $40 Billion    $4.0 Billion
  4  10%   $50 Billion    $5.0 Billion
  5  10%   $60 Billion    $6.0 Billion
  6  10%   $70 Billion    $7.0 Billion
  7  10%   $80 Billion    $8.0 Billion
  8  15%   $90 Billion    $9.0 Billion
  9  15%   $100 Billion   $10.0 Billion
Swallowing a new company, even if it takes on debt, can bump this up.

eBay market cap is $48B.

https://investor.gamestop.com/news-releases/news-details/202...

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Topgamer7today at 8:28 PM

The eBay AstroTurf in this thread is real. eBay is a hot piece of garbage, just go watch testimonials of sellers getting ripped off with no recourse.

That being said I don't really care whether either end of the sale goes through.

SwellJoetoday at 4:07 PM

Any reasonable person could see this was a ridiculous clown show, put on by the ridiculous clown show meme stock company.

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cmiles8today at 4:16 PM

Well if you’ve seen the CNBC interview with the GameStop CEO he couldn’t answer basic questions about the deal so the outcome here isn’t surprising.

The interview was so bad the first time I saw it I thought it was some sort of satire bit. No, it was real and the commentators were literally speechless.

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Imustaskforhelptoday at 4:51 PM

alternative link on archive.org using htmlpipe[0] :https://web.archive.org/web/20260512164713/http://serjaimela...

Kind reminder to donate to archive.org: https://archive.org/donate

This helps because google captcha now sometimes require android phone qr code scanning etc. so I have uploaded the article on archive.org

[0]: I am creator of htmlpipe which archives archive.is pages on archive.org

(I was gonna add it as a comment below bstsb but it seems to have been detached now so can't comment on it)

gedytoday at 4:13 PM

I'm pretty sure this was just a stunt to manipulate both stock prices for some short term play.

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gigatexaltoday at 6:55 PM

.... and the sky is blue, news at 11.

of course the offer wasn't serious. did anyone see the interview GameStop CEO did with Andrew Ross Sorkin? he clearly didn't have the money and was trying to gaslight the world.

arealaccounttoday at 5:02 PM

> Cohen last week offered $125 a share — consisting of 50% cash and 50% GameStop stock

So he's basically looking to launder his freshly minted meme stonks into legitimate real company stock. It's shocking they don't want it.