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

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

#41
post #33
post #10

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.

CNBC hard fumbled in that they didn't even understand what the offer was. The CEO put that on full display and embarrassed the hosts basic knowledge of finance. It was hard to watch.

I have absolutely no clue how you could watch the interview and come away with this conclusion. The purpose of an interview is to ask Socratic questions to allow the guest to talk about something of which they have intimate knowledge.

The CEO made it seem like he himself didn't know how the math for the offer worked, and even when presented multiple opportunities to correct that impression, he made no attempt to convince anyone otherwise.

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

#42
post #17
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still don’t have anywhere close to buying eBay.

Please see: Leveraged Buy Out. For the benefit of all the people on this thread not understanding what the proposal is for the acqusition: "A leveraged buyout (LBO) is the acquisition of a company (typically by a private equity firm) using a significant amount of borrowed money (debt) to meet the purchase price, often 60% to 90% of the total cost. The target company’s assets are used as collateral for the loans, whic…

Everybody understands the proposal. They also understand that an offer of $20 billion loan + $7.5b cash in hand + stock in Gamestop valued by the market at $11b = $37.5b, which is < $55b, a discrepancy Cohen has not been able to account for. Ebay also understands that leveraged buy-outs are a death sentence, and that saddling its operations with $20b of debt in exchange for gaining a dead business like Gamestop would eventually kill it.

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

#43
post #16

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.

Are you trading collectibles? I’m just genuinely curious what someone would buy with 2-3 transactions a month.

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

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Half stock, half cash": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxD-KGsvPI0 (I couldn't believe myself at first seeing things like these happening and this clip in particular, how does one get millions of dollars for such an disastrously wild interview to me feels quite off to me)

The fact that a guy like this can rise to the level of CEO making millions pretty much sums up everything wrong with the world. I don't think I would trust that guy to make a sandwich.

I would admit that when I had first heard the news (from hackernews) and read its comments, people gave multiple examples and convuluted examples on how this all makes sense and the financial aspects. I was left feeling impressed that perhaps gamestop might've been thinking something new.

Then I watched the video.

> I would trust that guy to make a sandwich.

Don't worry, we are just trusting him with around a measly 11 billion dollars.

This isn't even the worst part by the way, somehow the worst part to me feels like there are people who watched that interview and then somehow got even more convinced within this person/gamestop and publicly glaze him.

To them, I have a question like, are we watching the same interview? How can anyone watch that interview and then consider it in any way positively or anything like that, like huh, have we watched the same interview?

Perhaps some of us at first (like within that HN discussion) were/are trying to justify as if it is some massive brain effort by gamestop or anything and its a 5d chess move ,but to me, this interview showed me what the reality is actually.

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

#45
post #25
post #2

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.

The context this comment misses is Gamestop's secret weapon is their CEO Ryan Cohen who has been sitting around the hoop trying to figure out how to leverage Gamestop's fundraising capabilities to do something big Couple of highlights on Ryan - Built and sold Chewy from a startup to the largest ecomm acq of all time - Became #1 individual shareholder of Apple early on - Bought a 10% share of Gamespot in 2020 becoming…

> works for no salary

Working for no salary is almost never charitable and is almost always just part of a larger tax avoidance scheme.

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

#47
post #16

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.

Are you trading collectibles? I’m just genuinely curious what someone would buy with 2-3 transactions a month.

Probably Pokemon or sports cards.

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

#48
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context this comment misses is Gamestop's secret weapon is their CEO Ryan Cohen who has been sitting around the hoop trying to figure out how to leverage Gamestop's fundraising capabilities to do something big Couple of highlights on Ryan - Built and sold Chewy from a startup to the largest ecomm acq of all time - Became #1 individual shareholder of Apple early on - Bought a 10% share of Gamespot in 2020 becoming…

> works for no salary Working for no salary is almost never charitable and is almost always just part of a larger tax avoidance scheme.

Yeah I've never thought that that was the win that people seem to think it is. When you're that high up in the company, you have so much stock that you can pretty easily get loans against for however much you need, and write off the interest in the process.

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

#49
post #16

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.

As a seller I'm also relieved. Ebay has gotten bad but I can't even imagine how Gamestop would squeeze sellers.

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

#50
post #16

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.

Are you trading collectibles? I’m just genuinely curious what someone would buy with 2-3 transactions a month.

I use it for non collectible stuff. I’m always buying weird interesting things. Old computer stuff at least once a month.

I buy most of my physical games from eBay too

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