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Author: OrmontUS   😊 😞
Number: of 3940 
Subject: Pricing the impossible
Date: 05/09/26 1:44 PM
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https://humbledollar.com/2026/05/pricing-the-impos...

AN UNUSUAL STORY hit the news this week. GameStop, the struggling video game retailer, announced a bid to buy eBay. The offer was unexpected, but what surprised investors more was the economics of the proposed deal. eBay is many times larger than GameStop, making it difficult to understand how GameStop would be able to finance the acquisition.

GameStop has offered $56 billion for eBay, comprised of cash and stock. For the cash portion, according to its May 3 press release, GameStop would use the $9 billion it has in the bank and borrow the remainder from TD Bank, which has committed up to $20 billion to the deal. But that, in a sense, is the easy part. The stock portion is what left investors with many more questions. That’s because GameStop’s total market value is in the neighborhood of just $11 billion, so it isn’t clear how it would be able to hand over $28 billion of shares. Its share price would somehow have to multiply for this to work.

Jeff
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Author: jerryab   😊 😞
Number: of 3940 
Subject: Re: Pricing the impossible
Date: 05/09/26 2:39 PM
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GameStop’s total market value is in the neighborhood of just $11 billion, so it isn’t clear how it would be able to hand over $28 billion of shares. Its share price would somehow have to multiply for this to work.

New class of stock arbitrarily valued at (say $250/share) for the deal--which is ONLY issued to eBay stock sellers for the transaction (not a public issue stock). This happens all the time. Then it depends what the eBay stock holders decide. Do they sell? If yes, to whom? Open market or Game Stop or someone else? Or not sell? Short the stock? Short which stock? The existing eBay stock or Game Stop stock (expecting a flop)?
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Author: Goofyhoofy 🐝 HONORARY
SHREWD
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Number: of 3940 
Subject: Re: Pricing the impossible
Date: 05/09/26 3:26 PM
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GameStop would use the $9 billion it has in the bank and borrow the remainder from TD Bank, which has committed up to $20 billion to the deal.

TD has not guaranteed the $20m. They have provided a letter of “confidence” for the proposal. This is not unusual in these sorts of things, and if the deal wobbles at all the letter will be withdrawn. There is no contract, and no liability on TD’s part until such a deal comes to pass, which it may never. At this point TD can withdraw without penalty, except for pissing off a customer.
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Author: ajm101   😊 😞
Number: of 3940 
Subject: Re: Pricing the impossible
Date: 05/09/26 3:42 PM
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> GameStop’s total market value is in the neighborhood of just $11 billion, so it isn’t clear how it would be able to hand over $28 billion of shares. Its share price would somehow have to multiply for this to work.

This isn't mysterious. GME doesn't look like much more than a meme stock with a mediocre business and a MAGA-friendly CEO with a large stock target based compensation target. The proposed merger is not because it is a good combination of businesses, it's because of https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gamestop-unveils-35...

He stands to make $35B if GME market cap hits $100B and the entirety of his comp is based on stock.

GME is a stupid stock (superstonk?). One could consider the bulk of its value as essentially an NFT. GME has low single digit billion dollar revenue with low consumer retailer margins. Share ownership is a conspicuous social identifier for a group of future bagholders being used by more sophisticated shareholders.

There is almost no possibility of the CEO getting to his comp target minus some sequence of poorly conceived LBOs based on the inflated share price (and cash on hand from secondaries, based on the same). There is no sense in this proposed eBay merger. It is corrupt and bad business. But he stands a chance of getting extremely wealthy, and the SEC has been mostly put out of business, aside from selective enforcement based on political reasons.

My prediction is this merger succeeds following roughly the same path as Paramount / WB Discovery.

Everyone should remember that an election was influenced in 2016 by social media manipulation. It looks like we are about to see the same thing happen, but with financial markets, in the upcoming SpaceX and OpenAI IPOs and this deal, among others (see O'Leary's ridiculous UT data center). The window is closing on the opportunity to scam the population of the US and there are some people will act in extreme desperation because of their degree of leverage and/or opportunity. https://electrek.co/2026/05/06/musk-obsession-cont... is and interest read.

Something seems rotten in AI funding, the elmo-verse, crypto, algorithmic manipulation of new investors, and manipulation of money flow from index based investing. Caveat emptor.
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