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Discussion Sentiment

79% Positive

Analyzed from 1022 words in the discussion.

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#ebay#gamestop#stock#market#company#gme#meme#https#don#few

Discussion (35 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

applfanboysbgonabout 3 hours ago
> GameStop, which had a market value of around $11 billion [...] EBay is several times GameStop’s size, with a market value around $45 billion as of Friday’s close.

> Details of the potential offer for eBay couldn’t be learned.

This appears to be an attention stunt, of which Cohen has done a few since GME became a meme stock.

Esophagus4about 3 hours ago
I’ve searched the net to find the example, but I remember this happening during the dot com era too…

Some unknown tiny company made an offer to takeover Yahoo (or some similar company)… the tiny company made headlines for a moment then disappeared again.

It was an example of dot com silliness.

Can’t for the life of me remember, and Google can’t seem to either.

c-c-c-c-cabout 2 hours ago
Similar to when koenigsegg attempted to purchase saab, it can be a great way to get publicity.
iknowSFRabout 3 hours ago
Maybe but we have a recent sample of Paramount ($12b) acquiring WB ($62b).
applfanboysbgonabout 3 hours ago
That would be more accurately described as Larry Ellison (~$200b) acquiring WB.
sansworkabout 2 hours ago
In that case though Paramount offloaded 25% to foreign wealth funds and had Larry Ellison willing to provide guarantee on(according to google) almost $50b of debt.

Ryan Cohen is rich but he's not that rich.

CSMastermindabout 2 hours ago
KMart famously aquired the much larger Sears (and then destroyed it)
aurareturnabout 2 hours ago
Besides the Larry Ellison, Trump, and Middle East backing, Paramount and WB's businesses have synergy.

Gamestop and eBay have no synergy. Gamestop can't possibly run eBay better than eBay's current management. It's a meme stock looking to make noise so they can get a higher stock price, and then unload their shares onto the public market to raise cash.

GME has 3x'ed their shares outstanding since Covid.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GME/gamestop/share...

coke125 minutes ago
They have deep synergies in the collectibles market. There's a Venn diagram with eBay on one side and Gamestop on the other, and cultural characters like Logan Paul with his $16m Pokemon card right in the intersection.

This is a big market getting bigger. Americans have more spending money than ever before, especially at the top end, and the collectibles market is expected to grow as much as 7% y/y for a long time.

I think this is smart. Gamestop is a vibes company, everyone knows it, and this is an opportunity to acquire a real business with strong tailwinds. Everyone knows eBay has been poorly run for 20 years. Even in 2010/2011 when I worked there it was running on empty so to speak. Some opportunity to take control of that narrative and grow the business in demographics with deep pockets would be huge.

qingcharles38 minutes ago
If they promised to revert eBay's search to how it worked in 1997 I'd throw them a few dollars to bolster their "takeover."
mattmaroonabout 2 hours ago
Yeah I don’t blame them. They didn’t create the meme but once it happened, any responsible leader would start doing secondary offerings to raise money. I sure would. If morons want to keep investing in the stock of a company that has no other chance of survival, great. Now they’ve got $9 billion on hand and they’ve had time to find a niche, right-size, and the interest on the cash pile is great too.
kotaKat41 minutes ago
> Gamestop can't possibly run eBay better than eBay's current management.

I meaaaaaaan...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

"Deferred Prosecution Agreement with District of Massachusetts" still sits in the eBay footer. ;)

weard_beardabout 2 hours ago
The attention stunts were a strategy toward finding profitability for the core GME business model.

This is significantly different, in line with a strategy that seems to have been in place since he became CEO of Gamestop.

This appears to be an attempt to take over eBay the same way he took over Gamestop by acquiring a 51% controlling interest with capital he will raise by further diluting the value of Gamestop shares.

It appears long term he is trying to build the, "Amazon of the secondhand market".

v4dmabout 3 hours ago
> an attention stunt, of which Cohen has done a few since GME became a meme stock

What would be these few attention stunts he did?

Forgeties79about 2 hours ago
NFT’s and crypto nonsense, for starters. Go look him up and what he has done at GameStop. He’s not exactly shy about his plans and likes to make dramatic statements.
v4dmabout 2 hours ago
GameStop has no crypto, are you trolling?

They did have an NFT marketplace but it was shut.

What dramatic statements are you on about? Have you read/listened to him at all?

neilvabout 1 hour ago
Whatever you do, don't break eBay.

I love eBay, for both buying and selling used items that are viable to ship.

We let CraigsList get broken, with seemingly much fewer sellers and buyers than it used to have.

I tried Facebook Marketplace, which is where most local buyers&sellers seemed to move to. But I won't install their app, and the notification emails only sometimes came through. (One buyer became very irate when I didn't respond promptly.) Also, their pretend E2E encryption for messages on their Web site was just annoying (like a dark pattern intended to make people hate E2E, while not actually providing any significant security).

sethops1about 1 hour ago
eBay has been a savior for me buying for buying old / replacement parts. No idea where some of these sellers get their inventory but I'm so glad they exist and we can both use eBay to transact.
v4dmabout 2 hours ago
Ryan Cohen rarely does interviews & Lauren Thomas is one of the few journalists he agreed to speak to, they had an interview earlier this year - https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/gamestop-ceo-plans-e8440c...

If you check eBay & GME's stock prices after the announcement, the market seems to think there are at least serious discussions here if not more.

afavourabout 2 hours ago
Does “the market” not mean meme stock investors in this instance though?
matt_sabout 1 hour ago
If you want to look at facts (these come from yahoo finance): 36% of their stock is held by institutions, another ~9% by insiders. Ebay is 95% held by institutions (that sounds insane but I don't follow markets, maybe its normal) and it went up 11% yesterday. That sounds like institutional traders think this is real, right? Ebay is at or near an all time high so why would anyone want to buy at an all time high? Maybe this is a pump and dump on ebay by Wall St? Get retail traders hyped, your stock bumps 10% or more, then dump shares.

I don't understand how a smaller publicly traded company can buy a larger publicly traded company. Don't they need to have a majority of shares or enough to demand a board seat? A deal like that probably needs to have outside investors and/or some leverage of some kind.

v4dmabout 2 hours ago
Headline-driven market is a thing, not sure why meme stock investors are part of this? How are they connected to this news?

Also, what's a meme stock? How would you define that?

surgical_fireabout 2 hours ago
GME stock price is not really a reliable metric for measuring the seriousness of anything.
v4dmabout 2 hours ago
...because you decided so?
surgical_fireabout 2 hours ago
Apologies. Maybe you just came out of a coma that spans half a decade and is unaware of the events surrounding GME stock.

It's a bit of a rabbit hole, but this is a good place to start: https://youtu.be/5pYeoZaoWrA?si=3YZ1SpRxOB9sglVG

satvikpendem35 minutes ago
I wonder how those bagholders are feeling now, still diamond hands holding to the moon? Hell, there are still Bed Bath and Beyond and even Sears bagholders somehow thinking they'll get back money from a bankrupt and dissolved company, so I can't be too surprised.

https://reddit.com/gallery/1t1aeky

huhkerrfabout 3 hours ago
Time ticks for everyone... One day some company will be buying the remains of Amazon.
xiphmontabout 1 hour ago
Oh no. Please, please don't let eBay get Boeing'd.
SMAAARTabout 2 hours ago
History rhymes, same playbook as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_Inc.
estimator7292about 2 hours ago
Best I can do is three dollars
lofaszvanittabout 2 hours ago
so price manipulation
phplovesongabout 2 hours ago
LOL. Ebay is like 50-100x bigger than memestock. This is fake news, or just some bs some ceo said drunk.
love2readabout 3 hours ago
Bed Bath and Beyond preparing offer for Costco /s
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