Business GameStop is preparing offer for eBay, WSJ reports - EBay stocks soars 13% on report that GameStop is preparing a takeover bid

https://www.reuters.com/technology/gamestop-preparing-offer-ebay-wsj-reports-2026-05-01/
May 1 (Reuters) - GameStop (GME.N), is preparing an offer for eBay (EBAY.O), as CEO Ryan Cohen pursues plans to boost the struggling videogame retailer's market value more than tenfold, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Shares of eBay, which has a market ‌capitalization of about $46 billion, soared about 14% in extended trading. GameStop gained 4%. The company has a market value of nearly $12 billion. GameStop has been quietly building a stake in eBay's shares ahead of a potential offer, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. If eBay is not receptive, Cohen could decide to take the offer directly to the e-commerce company's shareholders, the ⁠Journal said.

Details of the potential offer, which could be submitted as soon as later this month, could not be learned, the report added. Cohen, the largest investor in GameStop, and the companies did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. A potential deal would upend the usual M&A playbook. It's rare for a public company to target one nearly four times its size; such deals typically rely on heavy debt, stock issuance, or both - banking on future earnings of the combined company to justify the cost.

The billionaire investor, who joined the GameStop board in January 2021 and became the CEO in September ‌2023, ⁠has steered the company through a period that saw its return to profitability through aggressive cost cutting. For years, GameStop has grappled with disruptions from a pivot to online shopping and digital purchases, forcing it to shutter many of its brick-and-mortar stores and focus on a web-based reinvention.

It reported a 14% drop in revenue to $1.10 billion for ⁠the holiday quarter.

GameStop in January unveiled a compensation package worth roughly $35 billion for Cohen, hinging on a turnaround that requires him to lift the company's market value to $100 billion and hit $10 billion in cumulative performance EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, ⁠depreciation and amortization).

The company's shares have slumped from the all-time highs hit in 2021, when it became a retail investor darling during the pandemic-era meme-stock rally.

EBay, whose shares have risen over 19% this ⁠year, forecast second-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, betting on listings of collectibles and motor accessories as well as live-streamed auctions on its e-commerce platform.

Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City, additional reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Editing by Tasim Zahid and Sriraj Kalluvila

 

[Maggots on a Train v2]

EBay is garbage now, and they don’t even take American Express anymore. They are a sinking ship.

The site is buggy and hell to sell on. Data gets corrupted, listings just vanish, random paid options you never selected somehow get turned on, and my very favorite, the shipping data gets "corrupted" and defaults to a 1x1x1 inch 1 oz box, but you don't know that shit until after somebody has paid for their order. It's a Something Awful tier slipshod website.

 

[Most Wanted Banana]

An update; GameStop makes $55.5bn takeover offer for eBay / [A].

GameStop has made a $55.5bn (£40.9bn) unsolicited offer to take over e-commerce firm eBay, the video game retail chain said on Sunday.

The cash and stock offer values eBay at $125 a share, $20 more than the shares were valued at the close of New York trading on Friday, GameStop said in a statement / [A].

In a letter to eBay, GameStop's chief executive Ryan Cohen said he planned to make $2bn of cost savings at the firm within a year of the deal being completed.

The BBC has contacted eBay for comment.

GameStop said Cohen would be the chief executive of the combined company.

He would "receive no salary, no cash bonuses, and no golden parachute" and "be compensated solely based on the performance of the combined company."

GameStop, which currently has a stock market valuation of around $11.9bn, said it has a commitment letter from TD Securities to provide around $20bn in debt to help finance the deal.

The majority of the proposed cost cuts would be in eBay's sales and marketing operation, where Cohen said he planned to lower spending by $1.2bn.

Higher spending by that area of the business had not produced more users for the "marketplace with near-universal brand recognition," GameStop said.

Shares in eBay jumped by more than 13% in after-hours trading when news of the potential offer emerged on Friday.

Though many of GameStop has closed many of its stores in recent years, it still has around 1,600 outlets in the US.

Those shops would give eBay a national network for its "live commerce" and other business operations, Cohen said.

Cohen, who became the GameStop boss in 2023, has criticised its slow shift into e-commerce.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, GameStop was at the centre of one of the wildest stock market tales in recent years as the investment influencer Keith Gill, known as Roaring Kitty, helped boost its value.

GameStop's popularity among retail investors during the pandemic helped coin the idea of meme stocks - those that gain attention through sites like Reddit.
Stocks that often became popular were ones that had been heavily bet against by professional investors, such as hedge funds.

As a result some of these shares - which also included cinema chain AMC Entertainment and phonemaker BlackBerry - saw their prices rise and fall sharply in hugely volatile trade.

 

[Blewberry Nausea]

Huh, guess the world of big business works in some different way where smaller businesses can just buy bigger ones.

 

[tehpope]

This is retarded. If ebay was bought by gamestop, it would just accelerate the crash of both companies into the dirt. And some tech bro / venture capitalist comes along and buys the ips of both for pennies on the dollar.

 

[SCV]

GameStop said Cohen would be the chief executive of the combined company.

He would "receive no salary, no cash bonuses, and no golden parachute" and "be compensated solely based on the performance of the combined company."

GameStop, which currently has a stock market valuation of around $11.9bn, said it has a commitment letter from TD Securities to provide around $20bn in debt to help finance the deal.

The majority of the proposed cost cuts would be in eBay's sales and marketing operation, where Cohen said he planned to lower spending by $1.2bn.

Higher spending by that area of the business had not produced more users for the "marketplace with near-universal brand recognition," GameStop said.

Shares in eBay jumped by more than 13% in after-hours trading when news of the potential offer emerged on Friday.

Though many of GameStop has closed many of its stores in recent years, it still has around 1,600 outlets in the US.

I'm sure there's some (((scam))) here but this is maybe the first corporate statement that on the surface seems reasonable.

 

[Gandhi's Left Hook]

and they don’t even take American Express anymore.

Implying American Express didn't drop them because it has actually good coverage?

 

[reactionary]

55 billion? Fifty-five billion? Billion? With a B? Do they even have that much money? What the fuck are they even hoping to achieve here? Am I missing something? So many questions.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

So the way I heard it during the whole Diamond Hands bullshit, when people realized that Gamestop was the victim of some stock manipulation by the big Jews who were counterfeiting stock (because unlike counterfeiting money, that's not regulated as strongly) and did counter manipulation to fuck them over, well, the GameStop execs weren't exactly idle during that. And they probably had a shitload of stock to play around with. (I know least one other company apparently was basically saved because they were invested in Gamestop and rode that wave -- Stardock, I believe?)

So does GameStop have 55 billion to play with? Maybe. It wouldn't surprise me.

 

[Bonesjones]

55 billion? Fifty-five billion? Billion? With a B? Do they even have that much money? What the fuck are they even hoping to achieve here? Am I missing something? So many questions.

They got a shit ton of cash from the reddit gamestop thing, and they were a dying brand before it started. Their only hope is pivoting into e-commerce which is already a saturated industry, so they probably want to use the gamestop stores for ebay, much like UPS stores do for Amazon.

 

[Nonconsentual Pronouns]

But genuinely, how much worse off could Ebay possibly get? Months ago, a line was crossed into the territory of over half of my purchases being pure nigger shit; having undisclosed damage or being outright fake. That's a lot of filing for returns, waiting for the process, waiting for the return label, printing the label, managing to get to the post office during their office-only hours, waiting for tracking to show the item was returned, and waiting while checking to make sure the refund went through. There are user-only websites with zero buyer or seller protection that I've had no problems with so far. I almost never have to file a return for any purchase from fucking AliExpress, and I buy embarrassing amounts of Chink bullshit for my crafts and hobbies there. Ebay has chased off almost all of its honest sellers by scamming them every which way with secret fees, hoping you don't notice a missing deposit, and not charging the buyer for the entire "buyer pays shipping" label.

As much as I need Ebay for shit like discontinued American goods and niche European goods, I'm at the point where something, anything, needs to happen. Something big. There's not much room left for the platform to get any worse, so throw those dice, assholes. I don't want to lose what's left of Ebay, but I can't stand for it to stay the way it is now.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

This is just an leveraged buyout of eBay using Gamestop as a cover.

Fuck it, let's roll. We can all end up buying old electronics on poshmark or something,

 

[moocow]

GameStop, which currently has a stock market valuation of around $11.9bn, said it has a commitment letter from TD Securities to provide around $20bn in debt to help finance the deal.

$20 billion in new debt to "finance" the deal. In other words, create a new combined corporate entity with a fuckton of new debt. Keep it alive just long enough to strip meaningful assets out then steer the carcass into the ground. Classic Mitt Romney-style gutting.

And the "no salary, no golden parachute" claim is hilarious, since he's undoubtedly already got juicy examples of both from Gamestop that wouldn't be affected by a buyout (it's being positioned as an acquisition, not a merger).

This is absolutely a scam. Gamestop was a shit company before the reddit thing, and that hasn't changed since.

Will be fun to see eBay eat shit though.

 

[Cybertonia]

The site is buggy and hell to sell on. Data gets corrupted, listings just vanish, random paid options you never selected somehow get turned on, and my very favorite, the shipping data gets "corrupted" and defaults to a 1x1x1 inch 1 oz box, but you don't know that shit until after somebody has paid for their order. It's a Something Awful tier slipshod website.

Don't forget the bullshit where they now force you to allow international sales. I am a racist and I don't want stinky browns to have the ability to buy some of my listings.

 

[Curry Teafag]

Will this make eBay better, though? Will it get functional search?

 

[oh no its pipkun]

Don't forget the bullshit where they now force you to allow international sales. I am a racist and I don't want stinky browns to have the ability to buy some of my listings.

being forced into international trade? how does that work?

 

[Cybertonia]

being forced into international trade? how does that work?

You as the seller ship it to an export warehouse in the US, then ebay is responsible for doing the rest. On the one hand, if you do it you're immune from negative feedback and the thirdie on the other end is only allowed to leave you positive feedback, and also if there's a return and you don't want it back then ebay eats the loss. But on the other hand there's certain things I sell from time-to-time that I just don't believe foreigners should ever be given the privilege to own if you can help it. Nope, no way to turn it off! Or at least set it per-listing, but listen that kind of feature is like 95 IQ-level thinking which means the jeets who currently work at ebay won't ever figure that shit out. It's like asking a monkey to finger-paint Monet with his own shit.

I've been way less motivated to sell on ebay lately because of this, along with all the other jeet-coded fuckery they've done to the selling UI

 

[Strix454]

Fake company with bad fundamentals buys larger real company.

GameStop in January unveiled a compensation package worth roughly $35 billion for Cohen, hinging on a turnaround that requires him to lift the company's market value to $100 billion and hit $10 billion in cumulative performance EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, ⁠depreciation and amortization).

This is nothing new. Its happened in the past that a CEO presented with a great compensation plan and a company whose core business can't really grow at all.....will buy another company as a means to get the compensation. Even if the deal to purchase the new company wrecks both companies.

And what will happen after Gamestop takes over ebay is that ebay will make a rational decision to spin off gamestop into a new company. In the long run, all that will happen is that Cohen will collect his $35 billion dollars which will be paid for with debt on the balance sheet of ebay.

 

[oh no its pipkun]

But on the other hand there's certain things I sell from time-to-time that I just don't believe foreigners should ever be given the privilege to own if you can help it

yeah this is what i was concerned with i cant believe its legal making people sell useful stuff to thirdies.

 

[Smar Mijou]

I can't for the life of me remember a single time a more lopsided buyout has ever been proposed. Even if the financial standings of both companies were more closely aligned, they're in drastically different types of industry. It doesn't make any logical sense as to why Gamestop would ever be interested in ebay. It kinda reminds me of the older mid-centurey conglomerates where you'd have something like Gulf+Western oil company end up owning disparate companies like Paramount, Madison Square Garden, multiple sports teams, a casket company, etc.

Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City, additional reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Editing by Tasim Zahid and Sriraj Kalluvila

These can't be real names. How many turd-worlders in globe-spanning areas need to rub their brain cells together to shit out this article???

just this week i bought a tool kit from ebay.

The tracking number was though some weird company.

Turns out that tracking company was just a wrap around for usps.

Because this ebay seller was just placing an order from amazon.

I got fucking played by a mother fucking drop shipper, and it still pisses me off.

I've had that experience too recently. The weird thing is it seems like unless you're going for something specific and/or used, ebay has just been selling the same shit as Amazon for the last couple of years. Sometimes it's a couple of bucks cheaper through ebay, but the generous refund policy from Amazon usually wins out for me.

 

[Barry Williams]

Nope, no way to turn it off!

Everything I've ever listed on eBay I have had the option to disable the "opt in to International Shipping Program" checkbox. It's buried under a million esoteric options and conditional logic for combined shipping and bulk order discounts.