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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

#501
post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's friction though, if the process is under one roof end-to-end, ebay can take 30-40% (15-20% today) of every transaction by just letting you dump your old stuff. Might even eat FB marketplace and CL.

People trying to sell their used junk aren't going to accept a 30-40% cut. It's why they aren't using eBay these days in the first place.

Speak for yourself. There's a reason places like Once Upon a Child and their parent stores exist. There's even other entirely digital stores on the sell for pennies instead of donating market.

People are broke. Just not everyone.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you work at a tech startup then you probably hope your company raises an additional round of funding, i.e. you hope you get diluted.

Isn’t that done with already existing shares (from the founders)? Then it wouldn’t be dilution.

No.

The main purpose of a funding round is for the company to sell shares and receive cash (e.g. to spend on marketing), not for founders to sell shares and receive cash (e.g. to spend on Ferraris).

(Sometimes, at the same time as a funding round, founders may also sell some existing shares to the new investors.)

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the brick and mortar distribution is hard to build and gives a structural advantage. As another poster pointed out, you could sell your items locally and not need to deal with shipping, communication with buyers and other stuff. It would reduce friction which might actually expand the marketplace significantly. I personally have multiple family members that throw stuff away because listing on eBay is too hard and…

Why does it give structural advantage to own a bunch of dead mall and strip mall brick and mortar stores that have been on the verge of bankruptcy for well over a decade?

GameStop in Canada owns stores in active malls and in standalone locations. Hard to see the store empty, even at 1030am on a weekday in November.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#504
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe eBay survives as an international site I don't really know what alternative there is to eBay as an 'everything shop'. I can get specific screws there, or diff fluid, or a customised motorhome name sticker, or an old baseball cap for an airshow I attended in 2008. And if I bought the wrong diff fluid I can sell it. The main value over Amazon, though, is that the search works.

Facebook marketplace is an everything shop, though a bit more local in nature. Also, it's much easier for small businesses that ship to have an online store thanks to Shopify, etc. The last few times I've used EBay is to get parts for old garden tractors, and even for that I've found cheaper options with small retailers that specialize in that stuff. Most ebay shipping pushes the cost up too much, and with the small…

FB Marketplace is full of scammers too. Every time we've tried to sell something, we've had people try to steal our phone number and register it with their Google Voice account.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#505

This is just a leverage buyout and it will likely result in the slow death of both parties while there is value extraction for those in control. Think Sears, Toys R US and similar. The CEO has a very specific deal where he gets paid significant compensation for specific valuations, which this is likely to achieve. That is value extraction at the cost of shareholders who will be on the hook for the leveraged loan and…

Gets paid compensation in stock. So if shareholders lose value, he does too.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#508
post #3

The Gamestop CEO is an interesting character, he grew Chewy and sold it, did a massive play on Apple stock during the pandemic and used that to buy a 9% stake in Gamestop over time, rode the hype to accumulate $9B while turning the company around and closing stores that weren't profitable and making it a money making budiness again. And now they already own 5% of eBay on top. Along the way he says some ridiculous Tru…

> turning the company around The revenue for Gamestop continues to decline, even if they are "profitable". The annual decrease in revenue continues. It's a dying business, it hasn't been turned around. The most charitable comment you can make about the company is that they've shrunk the business to align with their revenue decline. https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/gme/revenue/

What about the company's profitability? Did that continue to decline as well?

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the brick and mortar distribution is hard to build and gives a structural advantage. As another poster pointed out, you could sell your items locally and not need to deal with shipping, communication with buyers and other stuff. It would reduce friction which might actually expand the marketplace significantly. I personally have multiple family members that throw stuff away because listing on eBay is too hard and…

Why does it give structural advantage to own a bunch of dead mall and strip mall brick and mortar stores that have been on the verge of bankruptcy for well over a decade?

They haven't been on the verge of bankruptcy since they paid off their own loans. This deal will actually be the closest they've been to bankruptcy since like 2022, because they'll actually have interest payments to make.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but I don't need to go to my nearest fulfillment center if they ship everything to my house, that's why I don't know where it is. What do you think people need to visit fulfillment centers to do?

Buyers? Sure. (Unless you're like me and paranoid after getting porch-pirated.) Sellers...?

Sellers what? You generally don't just drop stuff off at a fulfillment center, when you get to that size you're dealing with large amounts of inventory and you ship it to them.

If you're saying sellers could come into a GameStop to have their individual items packed and shipped out, I suppose, but:

1. They don't really have the space for much shipping volume at any of their stores.

2. You can walk into any USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. store and do that already, you don't need an 'EBay' store. GameStop would presumably get the packages picked up by one of those carriers so it's not saving any shipping time or expense.

For buyers, in many cases there's already alternative drop-off locations similar to GameStop Ex. For UPS deliveries I can get them shipped to a bunch of different convenience stores near me. GameStop stores might be a nice addition to that list but it's not enabling something you couldn't do before, and I would think for most people they already have a closer location than a GameStop.

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