Prof G Markets - GameStop’s $56 Billion eBay Bid Is Already Falling Apart
Episode Date: May 5, 2026Ed Elson speaks with Rohan Goswami about whether or not GameStop can afford to buy eBay. Then, Charles Elson joins the show to assess the strength of Elon Musk’s claims against OpenAI in the ongoing... trial. Finally, Ed breaks down what today’s hottest stocks have in common. Rohan Goswami is a Business Reporter at Semafor. Charles Elson is the Founding Director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. Get your tickets to the Prof G Markets tour Subscribe to the Prof G Markets Youtube Channel Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Follow Scott on Instagram Send us your questions or comments by emailing Markets@profgmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Welcome to ProfiMarkets. I'm Ed Elson, kicking off with a terrible joke to start the week. It is May 5th. Let's check in on yesterday's Market Vitals.
The major indices all fell as tensions continued to escalate in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. and Iran exchanged fire as the U.S. escorted two ships through the strait. That new sent Brent crude sharply higher, and the yield on 10-year treasuries climb.
on the prospect of higher for longer energy prices.
Meanwhile, logistics companies fell after Amazon announced it was launching its own supply chain services.
FedEx fell 9% while UPS dropped 10%.
Okay, what else is happening?
GameStop has offered to acquire eBay a company four times its size for $56 billion.
CEO Ryan Cohen says the goal is to build a real competitive.
to Amazon. But the big question is, how does GameStop plan to pay for this? The company has around
$9 billion in cash and claims TD Bank will provide $20 billion in debt financing. Cohen says
the rest of the money will come from GameStop stock, despite the fact that the company is worth
less than $11 billion. GameStop fell 10% on the news while eBay gained 5%. So a lot of questions here.
It is striking that GameStop is deciding to buy eBay,
and it is more striking how much larger eBay is as a company.
So here to discuss this acquisition,
we are speaking with our friend Rohan Goswami, business reporter at Semaphore.
Rohan, great to have you on the show.
So GameStop wants to buy eBay.
It's four times the size.
Just take us through how this can make sense,
because it's something that's kind of confusing
when we think about corporate M&A.
How does this actually work?
Yeah.
So GameStop has an enterprise value that's the market cap plus debt of around $14 billion.
And eBay's, as you said, is around $55 billion.
It's a much bigger company.
And so there are two ways that Ryan Cohen, who, of course, is the chairman of GameStop,
the CEO of GameStop and also GameStop's largest shareholder.
There are a few ways that he's proposing to do this, right?
So half of that deal, he says, as you pointed out, would come from about $9.5 billion
of GameStop's cash on hand, another $20 billion in what,
financiers call highly confident financing. That's TD Bank, his bankers, haven't actually raised the money,
but they feel, quote, unquote, highly confident that they can raise that money. And there is, like,
a beautiful poeticism to this deal happening right now. Several of my colleagues, including my co-host
and colleague Liz Hoffman, are at, in Los Angeles at the Milken Conference, sort of like the pioneering
corporate raider, who in many ways pioneered this highly confident letter. So there's $9.5 billion
of his cash, $20 billion of his story.
stock that brings us to around 30 billion.
And the remaining 20 billion that he proposes would come from a massive dilution.
He avoided using that word in his, frankly, disastrous CNBC interview this morning, but a
dilution of existing GameStop shareholders.
They would issue new shares that would then be handed over to eBay's existing shareholders,
and that is how Ryan Cohen proposes to pay for this deal to take over a company that is,
as you said, four times the size of GameStop.
There are a lot of problems there.
we can sort of unpack all of them. The thing I would just highlight for you out the gate, Ed,
is that this is not business as usual for Ryan Cohen. Ryan Cohen is used to dealing with
retail investors who are obsessed with him, who live and die by his every word. He's used to moving
stocks 10 or 15 percent up, just posting a little meme image of him leaning forward in a gaming
chair. That's what he's used to. And frankly, he's dealing with in the big leagues right now.
And I know he likes to call himself the dumb money, and he says that the smart money is out to get him,
but the fact of the matter is,
he needs the smart money here.
They're the guys who actually own eBay.
And a lot of them went into this weekend.
You saw how the stock moved on Friday
when rumors first broke of this deal.
The stock moved up 10, 15%.
Investors said,
whoa, okay, there's a real chance
that this guy can pull this off.
The second this guy started talking on CNBC today,
the stock went from 10% up, 9% up, 8% up,
6% up, 5% up.
Investors just don't believe what he has to say.
And that's going to be his real problem.
You're not paying for it
or dealing with the structure.
Okay, so you mentioned his disastrous appearance on CNBC.
We have a clip of that. Let's watch that.
And then let's get your reaction.
Arguably, if you're providing effectively all of your stock and then the cash that gets you to 20,
you have this letter from TD.
That's another 20.
We're now at 40, but we're still off by, call it 16.
And the 20, as far as I understand, while it's,
considered a highly confident letter, meaning TD saying they're highly confident that they would
provide the financing. It's not locked financing.
Yeah, we'll see what happens.
I hear you. I understand that. I'm just trying to understand where the rest of the money would come
from. It's half cash, half stock.
I hear you. I'm just saying that that math doesn't get you to the
to the price that you're offering.
That's a pretty straightforward question.
I don't get it.
Where's the rest of the money coming from?
Andrew laid it out pretty clearly.
I don't understand your question.
We're offering half cash, half stock,
and we have the ability to issue stock
in order to get the deal done.
So, I mean, there's so much to unpack in this moment.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, at first it seems as though maybe he's just confused about what they're actually asking him.
But then he seems to kind of like admit the thing that I guess he doesn't want to say,
which is that they have to issue new stock, i.e. dilute the shareholders.
I mean, what do you make of this?
Yeah, he's got two problems here.
One, he doesn't want his retail shareholders to hear the word dilution because that's a scary word,
and it's not a great word.
And two, he knows on some base level.
I mean, he's an incredibly brilliant guy.
and he's a great businessman.
He knows that eBay's existing shareholders are going to go,
well, why do we want to trade our eBay stock,
which just hit all-time highs,
for potentially worthless GameStop shares
that, you know, you could dump out of,
retail could dump out of,
that we don't really have any certainty in
because we're hitching ourselves to this really unknown
and still somewhat scary shareholder base.
That's problem number one.
Problem number two is, look, Andrew's a former colleague.
He's one of the best interviews of all time.
generally when you have the opportunity
to make your case to the market
and you're given
25 minutes on CNBC
to talk about your long shot case
your response isn't well
I don't know and this wasn't in the clip
but look at our website and
you know you're you're praying on our downfall
yeah but I think that's that's part
look I spent a lot of this morning and this afternoon
talking to advisors on both sides
of the aisle here whether that's the GameStop side
or the eBay side I talk to folks who have known Ryan
for a long time I talk to institution and shareholders
trying to get a sense of what the market thinks.
And there was a perception,
a very real perception, reaffirmed by this CNBC interview,
that Ryan is a little bitter about the way that CNBC
and the legacy press treated him in the 2021-2020 run-up,
where GameStop was on top of the world,
where it was the meme-stop frenzy,
and where he felt fairly unfairly,
like Andrew Ross Horkin and folks at CNBC,
had a target on his back and were kind of out to get him.
And you could see that shine through
in the passive-aggressive nature of the interview.
The problem, as we sort of talked about just now,
is it doesn't really matter what Ryan Cohen thinks.
It doesn't matter what its retail shareholder thinks.
It doesn't, as much as I respect, Andrew,
matter what Andrew Ross-Warkin thinks.
There was one job that Ryan Cohen had
when he got on CNBC's air.
And it was to convince institutional shareholders,
Vanguard, BlackRock,
any of these big, really sophisticated money managers
that, hey, maybe I stand to make a chance
at, you know, a buck 50 instead of a buck
by going with Ryan Cohen's deal
as opposed to sticking with eBay's deal
or sticking with eBay's stock.
That was his only job.
To get those guys on the phone,
get him setting meetings. None of them, at least the ones that I've spoken to,
have any interest engaging with him, right? And that's his, I'm, like, it's not like the last
time we talked like a Paramount Skydance where you had a smaller company, going after a bigger
company. There, David Ellison was working the phones. He had sovereign wealth funds backing him.
He had his dad's wallet backing him. At least there's real money here. And there was a reason
for those guys to come to the table. Ryan here had kind of one shot to make his case to the
street and blew it, and blew it brutally by seeming kind of pompous and standoffish.
Well, I was wondering, I was wondering if the pompousness and the standoffishness was intentional,
if he thought that by coming off as this kind of like rude, kind of crass, cold individual,
that he looked strong in some way.
But what you're saying is, you've pulled the room, it did not work.
No one likes it.
Well, Ryan is working, I should be more, but he's working two different rooms.
You're absolutely right that it was intentional and that if you go on Twitter now,
his fans and his retail fan base are loving it.
they were talking about CNBC getting mugged.
They're doing the whole like,
Andrew Ross Sorkin's spine is curved.
And Ryan Cohen is sitting upright
because he's, you know,
mauging to ape clavicular here.
He's mocking Andrew Ross-orcan.
And that's great.
Ryan is very used to playing that base.
Ryan has no experience whatsoever
dealing with institutional investors
in a deal context.
Obviously, he ran chewy.
He's a public company CEO.
So there were two different rooms he was going for.
You're right.
That it was absolutely intentional
his standoffishness, I think.
this guy does is by mistake. Unfortunately, that's not the room he needs to be winning over. He's
got retail in the bag. They love him. They'll fall into the ends of the earth. Right.
The institutional guys are going, dude, this is like hostile M&A. You've got to take this seriously.
It's not a joke. And he failed to win any of those guys over, not a single one.
So we always love getting a prediction from you. Do you think this goes through?
No, no. It's not even like 50-50. No. Unless Ryan A gets actual some sort of really durable financing.
And I know the journal in their report talked about some sovereign wealth funds getting involved.
And to be clear, I've heard nothing about that.
But every bit of reporting that I've done on the sovereigns the last few weeks, obviously,
given the conflict of the Middle East, suggests they're not interested in cutting really big checks and sort of getting involved in another messy bit of M&A.
So unless he firms up his financing, unless the sovereigns come in, and unless he manages to sort of get in a time machine and undo the damage he did to himself this morning, no, there's no chance in hell.
I would actually bet if I was allowed to bet and you were allowed to take the other side of that bet, then, that by Wednesday, not even by Friday, by Wednesday, eBay's board will have said, thanks, no thanks. And Ryan will sell his shares in a handsome profit and walk away.
I love it. Ron Gosswami, business reporter at Samafour, really appreciate it. Thank you for joining us.
Ed, always a pleasure. After the break, Elon and Sam face off in court. And by the way, we are heading out on.
tour at the end of the month. So for more info and to get tickets to a show near you, head to
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I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough.
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So we are 250 years into this American experiment, and I'd say it's going okay.
I'd give us like a C plus.
There is no perfect past, but there is also no exclusively negative past, because humans are
going to human. That's what we do. I think the story of America
is the struggle of people
who have not been included
in the promise of America
to expand those principles
to include more people.
What's going to determine
the next 250 years of America?
And how do we write a new social contract
that can give us the democracy we deserve?
Okay, so I'm just going to be a jerk here
because I'm a historian.
So we have to have a prologue
explaining, you know, we the people.
Okay.
You know, I do still remember it from Schoolhouse Rock.
We the people,
in order to perform a more perfect year.
Union, established justice. What is it? Ensured domestic tranquility?
So you're talking about a foundational document. So I'm building a document that will protect
American democracy. That's this week on America Actually.
We're back with Profi Markets. The Elon Musk versus Open AI trial is heading into its second week.
Last week, Elon Musk spent three days on the stand testifying that Sam Altman and opened AI's
President Greg Brockman conspired to, quote, steal a charity. Musk told the jury he would never have
donated $38 million, had he known it would be used to build an $800 billion for-profit company.
Opening eyes, attorneys pushed back, arguing that Musk was never committed to the non-profit mission
and is only suing to destroy a competitor. Greg Brockman is expected to testify this week.
Sam Altman will take the stand later this month. So lots to get.
into here. Here to discuss this trial, we are speaking with our resident corporate governance expert
Charles Elson, founding director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University
of Delaware. And yes, a relative of mine, my uncle, Uncle Charles, good to have you back on the show.
Well, it's good to be back. There was an old 60s show that had a character called Uncle Charlie.
As long as I'm Uncle Charles, Uncle Charlie.
Uncle Charles.
He was a crotchety guy, by the way.
Hopefully I'm not.
So we wanted to get your reaction to this
because this really is a corporate governance issue,
the likes of which we've never really seen,
where you had this non-profit,
supposedly a charity to Elon's point,
and then suddenly you turn around a few years later,
and it's planning to go public at a roughly
trillion dollar valuation. And so in a lot of ways, it seems like Elon Musk kind of has a point,
but I'm not sure what the legal standing is exactly. And I wanted to get your views from the
corporate governance perspective. It's a great question. Well, you know, first of all,
I've never known, you know, Elon Musk's reputation as such that he is a very much a profit-oriented
guy. Certainly his compensation at Tesla and his, and obviously proposed compensation.
at space, that kind of bears that app.
It's not, I'm working to give all this money to charity.
It's usually I'm working to give it to me, who earned it, he will argue.
So I think it's rather interesting to see him now on the side of the charitable giving
nonprofit.
I think that's kind of interesting.
But, you know, I think you've got to look at this.
It's kind of a battle between two egos, if you will, or one very large ego, certainly.
and, you know, I don't want to say grudge match,
but someone has taken this idea, run with it, and done very well.
The other likes the idea, too, and is running with it as well.
Suddenly you have two individuals who are in the same business effectively competing with each other.
And oftentimes litigation is used as a tool, one way or the other to slow down the competitor
or the competitor to slow you down.
And this has sort of all the marks of something like that, I guess you could argue.
Or it's something rather personal between the two.
But as a championing a charity, it doesn't feel like that from my standpoint.
Because remember, Microsoft invested quite a bit in this.
And this debate did not occur at the time that Microsoft made the investment.
You think about it, Microsoft is a for-profit company.
They didn't give this who their charitable arm.
It was an investment for them.
And I guess you have to ask yourself, well, why wasn't this point raised then?
Why is it being raised now?
And obviously, the ventures become so successful.
You've got a competing venture who you expect will be successful.
That was you created a company that you had your Tesla shareholders invest in,
even though they thought when they bought into Tesla they were buying into AI.
And, you know, it kind of leaves you scratching your head a little bit as to what is really going on.
Is there really a non-profit purpose in this or something else?
It was interesting.
Many, many years ago, there's a very famous corporate law case involving Henry Ford.
And Henry Ford stopped paying dividends in his company, four motor company, or reduced to special dividends, large dividends,
claiming that he thought he had made too much money and that instead the country itself
should enjoy the prosperity that he created through lower car prices, greater employee salaries,
things like that.
And the court said, no, a business is a business to make a profit, and your investors expected
that from you.
Well, that was the surface story.
The underlying story, as it turns out, was that the investors who complained whose
dividends he cut off, well, it cut off everyone's, but it was one particular group with
two brothers named Dodge.
And they were using the money to create the Dodge Motor Company, eight.
competitor to Ford. And so it was argued that this really wasn't a case about the purpose of the
corporation. It really was effectively an antitrust case. In other words, there was more to the
tail. And on this one, there may be more to this tale, too. Again, that's what the jury is supposed to
figure out, what the judge is supposed to help the jury figure out. We'll have to see.
It's an odd one in that respect. I agree with Mr. Must that the thing started as a nonprofit.
and it's sort of morphed into a profit.
But it'd be very hard to keep it as a nonprofit, given what it's involved in.
And it would argue that from a governance standpoint, it probably should move into for-profit status as it creates greater accountability.
But, you know, this is sort of uncharted waters.
Rarely do you have nonprofits in these kinds of ventures.
They're fair for the good of society.
This one obviously had a significant profit potential, which is, I guess, going to be realized or they hope they'll realize it.
He's created his own vehicle, which is not a nonprofit by the way,
and effectively is in the same space.
So one really has to wonder what is really going on here,
and that's what the jury's going to figure out.
Does the intent matter here?
It sounds, I mean, because it seems as though,
clearly part of the intent on Elon's part
is that he doesn't like Sam Altman, he doesn't like OpenAI,
he wants them to lose in some way,
And that's kind of the case that Open Eye has made, and that's what they've publicly said.
This is about jealousy.
This is about ego, etc.
At the same time, it also seems like the intent isn't to necessarily write or wrong, but it's to literally disintegrate the company.
Like, he does, he no longer wants this company to survive.
And I wonder, to what extent does the intent of that matter?
similar along those same lines as you know if he decided to to file this lawsuit now versus a long time ago
what does that say about the intent of the lawsuit does that matter in front of a jury does that matter
in terms of the law sure sure it will you know the timing is something and what again that was the
story of henry ford you know why did you decide to do this now well there was there was it
turned out a different reason for it.
And certainly a jury can consider that.
Is this a meritorious suit in the sense that does he really want it,
is he doing this to benefit the public, which the nonprofit supposedly does,
or it ultimately is about benefiting he and his own investors?
And that's something I'm sure that they will consider.
You know, what's the motive here?
What's the solution to this thing?
If it ends up in the end, he's complaining about the for nonprofit status of becoming a for-profit.
If it disappears, let's say, who benefits a for-profit?
He is company.
Well, obviously, you knock out a competitor.
And that's the, or you employ the competitors and employees.
I mean, that's the, you know, what is the real story here?
Paul Harvey was a radio commentator in the 60s and 70s.
And he always on his newscast had a, is something in the end.
he called it the rest of the story.
He'd tell a story.
And they said, well, that's not really the real story.
And I think the jury is going to have to figure out here,
and with the help of the judge, what's the real tale here?
If you objected to it being a not-for-profit,
why, when Microsoft contributed,
why instead didn't you contribute from a charitable foundation?
Why did that occur?
You certainly aware of it.
Everyone was.
Why now, when it looks to be extremely successful,
and you happen to have a business competing with it in the same space.
And obviously he'll argue, as he will, that no, he never expected this and et cetera, et cetera.
And they'll argue as you spoke at the beginning of the segment that they say, no, this has nothing to do for-profit, non-for-profit.
It's concerned about a competition and an ego match.
And obviously, you know, he is not someone who, Mr. Musk, who people believe, is a shrinking vial.
it just isn't. And Mr. Altman obviously has a well-known public persona as well. So the Battle of the Titans,
it's an odd one. But, you know, it may have some impact on the future of AI, or at least who makes
the money in AI, ultimately. Who do you think will win at the end of this? It sounds like you think
Elon won't win. You know, I'd never like to predict stuff like that because it's hard to figure out.
I mean, look, we're not in that courtroom.
We haven't listened and heard what has been said or was going to be said.
And that's why it's really tough to handicap anything.
I mean, based on the argument itself and based on the history here, I think it would, to me,
be a rather tough argument to make.
I think they've got some very strong defenses, which they've obviously raised.
But, you know, who knows?
Both parties are ably represented, and the jury will have to sort this out.
Like I said, it's interesting to have these two titans.
I mean, Elon Musk was never considered an AI titan.
You know, obviously electric cars and payment systems and things like that.
And he got interested in robot cars and whatnot.
And then AI.
And here you have it.
It's a business he wants to be in.
And, you know, these folks that he helped, he argued, created, are in it too.
Yeah.
Now, if they go public, obviously, you'll have other investors who would like to make some money on this business.
As his investors and Tesla want to make money in the business against the investment.
You know, look, I think this all goes back on a governance angle to the difficulty of companies really dominate, if you will, by one individual, controlling the shareholder, if you will.
And when you lose accountability to everyone else, which controlling shareholders have, particularly,
under certain states law, you know, you create problems like this where you don't have a board
that, you know, representing other investors to say, hey, do we really want to be in this right now?
How does this look? How does this feel? Is this a good use of your time? I mean, having to take off a
week and, you know, end up on the stand and getting beaten up, you know, through cross-examination
is not a great way to be spending your time on something like this. What is the benefit to,
his investors for this.
And Mr. Altman obviously has to defend himself.
So, you know, obviously, I'm sure he doesn't want to be there either.
But of course, he's defended.
He's not the plaintiff, and he has to respond.
I have one final question before you go.
We just learned that SpaceX's board has approved a pay package that would give Musk
200 million supervoting restricted shares,
but only if the company establishes one, a permanent human colony on Mars
with at least one million residents.
And two, if it hits a $7.5 trillion valuation, just before you go, I just wanted to get your reactions to that compensation package.
Well, not very, well, it's to the moon, to Mars. How about to Pluto? Or Galaxy X. You know, look, you have to remember, it's his company. He controls it. No matter what the board says, he has the right to appoint directors and control it. So basically, which you're hearing,
is what he wanted from them.
Was there a pushback?
I don't know.
But that's the danger of investing in a controlled company.
You have absolutely zero control over what happens.
Under Texas law, if it ends up in Texas, as Tesla did,
your legal recourse is pretty slim.
So before you invest, do you really trust ultimately that your interests will be protected?
And that's a tough question given obviously this past history and controversy,
particularly over compensation and obviously over, you know, Tesla and AI.
Yeah.
All right.
Charles Elson, founding director of the John Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance
at the University of Delaware.
Uncle Charles always love having you.
Thank you for joining us.
And thank you, nephew, Ed.
I hear more about you than your grandfather.
That's the same name.
Pretty good.
We love that.
We love that.
Okay.
Thank you, Charles.
Take care.
Thank you.
Some of the sexiest stocks in the market right now are some of the unsexiest names.
Companies like Generac, which makes HVAC equipment, and Caterpillar, which makes tractors,
are absolutely ripping in the stock market right now.
Caterpillar stock is up 170% in the past year alone.
So why are these boring businesses on such a crazy run?
Well, two words.
Data centers.
Big Tech is planning to spend.
$700 billion on data centers in the next year, and that means that the companies that build
the equipment that make those data centers are in high demand. That includes Caterpillar and
Generac, and also five other major players, specifically, Cummins, Vertive, Comfort Systems, Quanta,
and Emcore. They are the seven hottest companies in the stock market right now, and our friends
over at Unhedged have coined a new term for them. They are calling them the Data Center 7. The
Data Center 7 are up an average of over 170% in the past year.
They're also trading at an average of 38 times forward earnings.
For context, that is almost double the multiple of Meta,
which is trading at 20 times forward earnings,
despite the fact that Meta's business is growing twice as fast as, say, Generac.
In other words, this is becoming a frenzy.
But it is possible that the markets are missing something,
because while data centers are in high demand right now,
we should also acknowledge that there are a lot of obstacles in their way, too.
Last week, we discussed with Jigah Shah and John Porella
how energy constraints are making it increasingly difficult to power these data centers.
There are also supply chain issues and labor shortages,
and, of course, public opposition.
Last month, the state of Maine passed a moratorium on all new data centers,
and similar proposals have now been introduced in 13 other states.
And we're already seeing the effects of this.
Data center capacity dropped 50% at the end of last year.
And despite all of these new plans that we keep seeing,
roughly 40% of this year's data centers are expected to be either delayed or simply cancelled.
In other words, this gigantic data center build-out isn't a given.
It's a question.
And at 38 times forward earnings, it's hard to argue that investors are really acknowledging.
that fact. Will the data center seven stocks go down anytime soon? I doubt it, as it's a very hot
sector right now. But if these data centers don't start physically materializing in the real
world in the way Wall Street hopes they will, well, then this story is going to change very,
very rapidly. In sum, look out below. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by
Claire Miller and Alison Weiss, edited by Joel Patterson, and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.
Our video editor is Brad Williams, our research team is Dan Chalon, Isabella Kinsel,
Kristen O'Donohue, and Mia Silverio, and our social producer is Jake McPherson.
Thanks for listening to ProfG Markets from Profg Media.
If you liked what you heard, give us a follow.
I'm Ed Elson.
I will see you tomorrow.
