Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 731 posts

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#571

Post by trollbridge »

sanswork wrote: post #533
ball_of_lint wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating two things here. Yes, in 2021 GameStop did sell shares to raise cash in a dilutive way. [1] No, that is not being treated as profit or revenue. Gamestop had ~418 million in profit in 2025. [2] A fraction of that profit does come from interest income. Ignoring that (say to value the business separate from the cash) they still made ~110 million in profit. In my personal opinion (not financial advice)…

>A fraction of that profit does come from interest income. More than half of it came from interest income. Gamestop has been unable to grow revenue since Cohen took over, failed initiative after failed initiative. The only thing saving them is their meme stock nature and a legion of people willing to throw good money after bad allowing them to dilute shareholders to build a warchest. They have increased profit by clo…

Not growing revenue yet being profitable seems far preferable to growing revenue yet having bigger and bigger net losses.

Shareholders seem to agree, as the stock went from formerly around $2.50 to present day about $92 (accounting for splits), dispute the dilution.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#572

Post by crowcroft »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #240

The original shorting of GameStop back in 2021 gave them a bit of a boost back into the green. While people were doing the GME to the moon, GameStop made more shares to sell, and paid off a bit of its debts, I think it made about a billion dollars in profit, they're still struggling, but it helped prolong their life. A friend of mine also pointed out and this made it click for me that it makes 100% sense, GameStop is…

Mergers between public companies are almost entirely negative outcomes for shareholders and positive outcomes for the executive team.

Any possible 'synergy' is wiped out by.

- Having to pay a premium on the public market.

- Organisational complexities/moving slowly.

- Culture clashes and bad vibes between teams.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#573

Post by trollbridge »

Barbing wrote: post #380
iwontberude wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It disgusts me how eBay sellers abuse the US Post Office by stealing supplies. It’s one way to guarantee I never buy from someone again.

Then have to waste time to politely educate the sellers… They wrap up the free priority mail flat rate boxes to obscure markings to send them with a cheaper service. So they know should they’re naughty but might not realize it’s reached the level of a crime, perhaps. Definitely didn’t realize they’d have customers who don’t like stealing from themselves (taxpayers)

It’s a federal crime the the post office periodically investigates. You get offered to pay USPS’s estimate of the amount of postage you stole, or else face a criminal trial.

FedEx and UPS will report priority Mail boxes to USPS as well.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#574

Post by trollbridge »

avemg wrote: post #548
thefounder wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But eBay is just bad company with a bad reputation. Why would they buy it instead something like Etsy or make their own thing? If you would ask me what are the worst companies from the “old guard” I would name eBay and PayPal as prime suspects.

Because Etsy is not a general second-hand marketplace. Its niche is artisans making small batch items. And making your own thing at the scale of ebay is not exactly a small feat.

If by “artisans” you mean “people ordering stuff off Alibaba”.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#575

Post by crazygringo »

shaftway wrote: post #564
crazygringo wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GameStop is setup as a legal pawnshop in every state. So a pawnshop buying out eBay makes insane sense. It doesn't though. eBay could easily set itself up as a legal pawnshop in every state if it wanted to. It doesn't because there's no advantage to doing so. There are already third-party sellers in many areas who will take your physical merchandise and sell it on eBay in exchange for a cut. eBay doesn't need to en…

You're right that there's no real advantage to eBay buying a pawnshop conglomerate, but a pawnshop conglomerate buying eBay gets a massive advantage. They're already sitting on a mountain of used inventory, and at some point a lot of it will be thrown away because there are no local buyers for it. Having a commission-free way to offload that inventory would be huge for them.

Ebay commissions are not that high, 13.25% for most items.

The barrier to listing huge amounts of merchandise is not the commission, but rather the amount of labor it takes to list and price everything and pack and ship it and deal with refunds and returns for items that turn out to have problems. And how a lot of items are only economical to sell locally, because when you add in shipping costs it approaches the value of buying something new.

Buying eBay doesn't provide any kind of easy way to help offload inventory at all. The way inventory is offloaded in bulk is in bulk pallets sold at auction, where people bid on them and then do all of the grunt work involved in photographing and listing and packing and shipping. Which is a significant proportion of sales on eBay today. GameStop can easily auction off pallets of their merchandise if they want, today. In fact, there's a good chance they already do.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#576

Post by greycol »

gruez wrote: post #430
HillRat wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you take out a mortgage, then rent the house to a series of meth dealers to extract the rent while devaluing the property, and then default: you're still personally on the hook for any post-foreclosure deficiency judgment. One issue with LBOs is that, after extracting cash and fees, PE funds have various ways to extinguish liabilities that individuals don't, both by shielding the PE fund from debts and the use of…

>you're still personally on the hook for any post-foreclosure deficiency judgment Depends on the state: https://www.financialsamurai.com/non-recourse-states-walk-aw... >both by shielding the PE fund from debts and the use of bankruptcy and restructuring of the acquired company to discharge liabilities, including those from litigation. Who's extending credit to these companies? Individuals can do something similar by…

The people doing the lending can still make a profit. They get their interest payments and have a secured debt against the company. I.e. If interest and repayments until time of bankruptcy + liquidation of assets at bankruptcy is more than you'd get investing elsewhere at lower risk it's still a good investment. It's the other stakeholders (employees/community/unsecured debtors) that lose out.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#577

Post by noprocrasted »

hnav wrote: post #439
delfinom wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not exactly, the biggest annoyance with eBay (in my experience) is dealing with shipping, disputes and returns. If I could recover even 50% of the value of unused items without dealing with the ridiculousness of p2p transactions (flakes, tire-kickers, scammers) I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Don't pawn shops already solve this problem? Make your way there, dump your stuff, get peanuts for it in exchange (but might still be worth it if you truly don't need said stuff).

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#578

Post by coffeebeqn »

shaftway wrote: post #564
crazygringo wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GameStop is setup as a legal pawnshop in every state. So a pawnshop buying out eBay makes insane sense. It doesn't though. eBay could easily set itself up as a legal pawnshop in every state if it wanted to. It doesn't because there's no advantage to doing so. There are already third-party sellers in many areas who will take your physical merchandise and sell it on eBay in exchange for a cut. eBay doesn't need to en…

You're right that there's no real advantage to eBay buying a pawnshop conglomerate, but a pawnshop conglomerate buying eBay gets a massive advantage. They're already sitting on a mountain of used inventory, and at some point a lot of it will be thrown away because there are no local buyers for it. Having a commission-free way to offload that inventory would be huge for them.

Neat - Setting up a eBay account for your company doesn’t cost $55B. I’m available as a part time CFO from now on

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#579

Post by coffeebeqn »

noprocrasted wrote: post #577
hnav wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly, the biggest annoyance with eBay (in my experience) is dealing with shipping, disputes and returns. If I could recover even 50% of the value of unused items without dealing with the ridiculousness of p2p transactions (flakes, tire-kickers, scammers) I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Don't pawn shops already solve this problem? Make your way there, dump your stuff, get peanuts for it in exchange (but might still be worth it if you truly don't need said stuff).

When your bright new business-saving idea is to be a pawn shop I might wonder is this the most efficient place for me to keep my capital in

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#580

Post by fragmede »

ball_of_lint wrote: post #566
fragmede wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Normal" for M&A, and if you drink enough finance kool-aid it even makes sense, but then you step back, and go wait, no it doesn't!

Does it make more sense to you phrased as "GameStop offers to purchase controlling 50% of eBay for $28B" ?

The problem is it does!
Post reply on HN