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GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

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Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#111
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example from quite some time ago: Avast buying AVG. The value of AVG was around twice that of Avast.

AOL/TimeWarner, Kmart/Sears… lots of prominent examples.

Also when Capital Cities purchased ABC. A popular phrase coined by the media was "minnow swallows whale"

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/business/media/thomas-s-m...

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#112

A lot of the comments here seem to assume that a smaller public company can’t acquire a larger one, which just isn’t true. A quick search for how leveraged acquisitions, stock-for-stock deals, financing commitments, or tender offers work would answer most of the objections. Is it too much to ask the Hacker News commentariat to do one quick search before collectively declaring that something they don’t understand is i…

Speaking as someone who used to know absolutely nothing about the world of high finance, yes, it is too much to ask. Before I started paying attention to such things I wouldn't have known a single one of those terms to even begin googling. And let's be honest here. A smaller company saddled with big debt buying out an even larger company really doesn't make logical sense. It makes financial sense, which is subject to…

Agreed that Marvin would find this (and everything about Earth) ridiculous.

I propose this would make sense in the animal kingdom though; large, lumbering fatty walks along. It has big claws, but … it doesn’t look like it can be bothered to be dangerous anymore. Meanwhile a pack of hungry successful hunters walk alongside. To take this down, they will risk pretty much everything..

It’s the same story. The shareholders provide a sort of bet on if the big guy has still got it, or the risk-on hunters do.

That’s why the operational results got attention in Cohen’s letter — he’s telling Shareholders: “I turned around GameStop. I can turn this ship around, too.”

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, their shops arnt sized to do much more than UPS style package movement. I dont see it as a good value, but it's the only thing I see as a synergy. Otherwise it's just more garbage capitalism.

> garbage capitalism. How is this defined?

Slumlord owners of the network effect monopolies innovating ever lower investment in innovation and upkeep with ever higher increases in rent extraction, with a few nipple tassles slapped on the side to entice retail investor hype cycles.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, literally, nothing fishy about this offer. It’s a cash and stock offer from a public company to public company shareholders. We could call the financial or shareholder benefits to ebay dubious (I don’t hold any opinion about this) but this is a very aggressive offer, and allows the chance for GME to keep some cash - if enough shareholders of ebay opt for stock, then they’ll have cash available after. Plus t…

The end of your post negates the first line of it.

Its just financial engineering.

But his mention that it is a form of options is laughable. Thats not what is going on here.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#116
post #4
post #2

Important background: https://investor.gamestop.com/news-releases/news-details/202... CEO gets paid "only if GameStop achieves a market capitalization of $20 billion." Buying a $55bn company would certainly achieve that quickly. I'm not sure how they'd manage that (buy with what? Memes?), other than the should-be-illegal process of putting debt on the acquired company's balance sheet.

Wouldn’t that debt knock down the market cap as much as the value Otherwise take out a $20b loan and put it in the bank. Assets increase $20b, job done.

Depends on how market cap is defined for the purpose of the contract. Typical definition is just against floating shares in the market * share price. Debt doesn’t factor in at all except in so far as it will influence investor confidence -> share price.

That said: conceptually it’s not an awful fit for GameStop. In so far as video games discs and cartridges were the main disposable belonging i had as a kid and the main target for new purchases, Funcoland was (later to become GameStop), if you squint your eyes, a brick & mortar eBay scoped to only video games. If you’d been an SV startup at the time pitching the eBay concept you could have said “it’s like funcoland, but online and for anything and also lets people sell peer to peer “

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#117
post #7

GameStop doesn't have (even close to) $55.5B. Their offer from the letter is literally impossible: > Our offer is $125.00 per share, comprising 50% cash and 50% GameStop common stock Even if you magically included all existing GameStop stock in the offer, it still would not comprise 50% of $55.5B. EDIT: looks like it's not impossible and I misunderstood. It's a proposed change of leadership with a $25B injection of c…

Isn’t that just a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout ?

Yes. See [1] for an overview of how this works.

When the SEC filing is made, we'll get to see how the deal is structured. The $20 billion from TD Securities becomes a debt obligation of the combined company. There's a tax break in equity to debt conversion, and a second tax break for carried interest. [2] There may be a preferred stock deal or debt refinancing so that TD gets their $20 billion back. Usually, the private equity firm exits within a few years.

[1] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.23.1.121

[2] https://www.pgpf.org/article/what-is-the-carried-interest-lo...

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#118
post #65

If they can do some accounting trickery to pull this off then they deserve it. Makes zero sense to me but I did not think GameStop had even close to that in assets.

It's the leveraged buyout playbook. You buy a company and use its own assets to secure a loan. Then you "find efficiencies" (strip it for parts to pay yourself and the creditors).

In this case, if the deal goes through at the price given, eBay's liquid assets are untouched. The cash portion is paid out entirely through the loan and Gamestop's cash.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#120
post #7

GameStop doesn't have (even close to) $55.5B. Their offer from the letter is literally impossible: > Our offer is $125.00 per share, comprising 50% cash and 50% GameStop common stock Even if you magically included all existing GameStop stock in the offer, it still would not comprise 50% of $55.5B. EDIT: looks like it's not impossible and I misunderstood. It's a proposed change of leadership with a $25B injection of c…

why do i keep seeing comments of this sentiment? can't they just take loans? I thought there were serious consequences to making an offer, and then backing out , especially if the other party accepts your offer.
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