Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Ryan Cohen, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time. How are you doing?
How are you guys? Great to see you.
You're doing fantastically. I would love an update. What can you share with us on the situation as things have developed since yesterday, just to sort of set the, obviously this is moving very quickly. Where are we right now?
Chapter 2: What is Ryan Cohen's bid to acquire eBay about?
What's happening?
We made an offer yesterday. 125 bucks a share. Half cash, half stock. That was funny, wasn't it?
Have you considered 49% cash? Why did you get to half cash, half stock? Can you unpack that a little bit at least?
Well, I mean, frankly, when you think about me going and running the eBay business... What we're proposing is for existing shareholders to take half of their investment off the table. And that would be us providing them with $28 billion, which is like a 40% premium from when we started buying the stock. And then they would be getting roughly...
I mean, it depends on ultimately when the transaction closes, but they would be rolling the rest into the combined company of GameStop and eBay. Frankly, with me running eBay, I think that The company, the earnings power of the company is going to increase substantially as well as the ability to grow. The platform stagnated over the last decade and I could do a lot with eBay. I love it.
That's a very strong business and that's right up my alley.
Take us through the big vision. In five years, you're at the helm. How big can this business be? Are you expanding it? Obviously, there's an operational efficiency point, but what is the big picture? What's the blue sky, pie in the sky vision for the combined entity?
So where we've had success at GameStop and where eBay has had success is in collectibles, trading cards, collectibles. The founder of your show was was talking about his Mont Blanc. And I'm like, that's a good example. That's interesting. a perfect item to go and buy on eBay, but you're always concerned that is it going to be real in the trust?
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Chapter 3: How does Ryan Cohen plan to structure the acquisition deal?
And that's something that using GameStop 1600 stores, we can immediately authenticate that item. The seller can ship it or we can ship it, but we've got 1600 access points that we can do live authentication. So we can go deep in collectibles, leveraging our physical infrastructure. We can increase, uh, intake by bringing a lot more product onto the platform.
And then there's a lot of other categories that I can, I can grow in. And, uh, you know, you look at live commerce as an example. I mean, eBay has 130 million users and they're getting crushed by competitors in live commerce. So, uh, an owner's mentality. I want to own eBay forever. I love that business. It's run like a public utility. It should have been wiped out, but it hasn't been.
It's been remarkably resilient. How many startups have gone after a specific category on eBay, raised $100 million plus, and yet eBay has remained resilient? It shows that that it's a really powerful platform.
That's why I love it. The website still looks the same as it did in 1995, but everyone's tried to kill this thing, and it's still making over $2 billion a year. That goes to show you the durability of the business.
Talk about live commerce more. Would that be just a better integration with TikTok, Instagram streaming, Twitch streaming? Do you need to go and partner with big creators? Do you need to find your own platform for that? How does that actually play out in a world where eBay and you are making a bigger push into live commerce? It makes a lot of sense, but I'm wondering, how does it actually work?
Yeah, it would be partnering with creators. I mean, they've got the platform. We would improve the platform so it looks better and more consistent with the kind of UI that you have at competitors. But there's the user base. And so it's not something you have to market. It's building out better tech. and partnering with creators.
Yeah, and the correct incentive structure for those creators, because I bet you right now, you could probably go get some referral code or something, but it's not deeply integrated in a way that you can really accelerate on a social platform.
Why do you think eBay, has eBay been a target of any type of deal like this in the past? I'm not familiar with any off the top of my head, but Why do you think maybe it hasn't been more of a target? And I guess, like, why do you think you can get more efficiency out of it than maybe some other potential buyers who I'm sure see their costs?
You know, marketing is something that people gravitate towards, but I'm sure you're seeing other efficiencies as well.
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Chapter 4: What is the big vision for eBay under Ryan Cohen's leadership?
It's like a startup. You've got to always be in startup mode and you build big teams and nothing gets done anymore.
Do you think LLMs will be a tailwind for eBay over the next decade? It feels like for the long tail of commerce, you're trying to find really specific items. It feels like LLMs and people doing research in these products could be a catalyst for the business. Maybe there's things on eBay that would be tough to find, but if I'm really getting
precise around prompting or running these sort of agentic searches, maybe I have a higher likelihood of purchasing something?
Yeah. I mean, I think about all of the things that can disrupt the business in the future and I think that eBay is the kind of business where the future of the business model is more certain than most tech businesses. And that's why it's done so well. And there's been such a lack of innovation, yet it hasn't been able to be disrupted. So I would expect that to continue to be the case.
If it doesn't materialize as an M&A, are you looking at a board seat? You have a position?
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Chapter 5: How will GameStop's stores enhance eBay's collectibles market?
Will you be more active in a non M&A scenario?
Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do whatever we need to do to protect our investment and to improve the business. But the goal here isn't to be an activist. The goal is I want to own eBay. I want to run eBay. I want that to be my baby. I want to build something much larger. Cost cutting, frankly, is the way to make the business more efficient, to pay down the debt and innovate.
When I think about what I can do with eBay in the future, look at Chewy. eBay is like Chewy on steroids. There's so much more runway and it's global.
Yeah. I mean, it seems like a huge opportunity. How do you want to be comped?
Based on performance 100%.
Is there any tension between you and the shareholders? How do you actually create alignment there?
It would be, my current compensation plan is tied to really lofty metrics and it's based on the first tranche I've got to double market cap, as an example, just to hit the first tranche and the 10X in order for it to fully vest. So I'm not interested in, I haven't taken a dollar of salary or any bonuses.
You know, it's funny, actually, I just got a call from my team today that said, this is how I know they hate me. They're not happy about this, by the way. The GameStop, this is the GameStop team? eBay, no, eBay is not happy. Oh, the eBay team, okay. Yeah, after this interview, they're really not going to like me. by it because they're going to find out I'm cutting marketing spend.
And the board already isn't like me because I'm calling out all the board fees. But I get a call and I say, they're calling out your personal assistant. I said, what are you talking about? And they said they went on the GameStop's career page and they saw that there's a listing for the personal assistant. And it's all kinds of personal stuff. And that's basically a, a CEO benefit.
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Chapter 6: What strategies does Ryan Cohen have for improving eBay's operations?
I've looked at it. What they did is really interesting, too.
just because a smaller company buying a much larger company, but the deal still went through, the capital was marshaled. That was something that I think was unclear yesterday for some people, was half cash, half stock, where is it coming from?
How much of this is just an ongoing conversation, and as you work through this process, you'll engage with other pools of capital or financiers to actually put together the final package? Do you have a date that you want this to be done by?
We have the cash accounted for today in terms of a highly confident letter from our bank for the $20 billion, plus we've got $9 billion of cash. And the rest would be them rolling the equity into the combined company.
Sure. Yeah, I think that was the rolling of the equity was the thing that if it had got into the viral clip from CNBC yesterday, it would have made a lot more sense. I'm glad we're getting it in now.
Yep. Is there, I guess, how much of your critique of eBay is specifically around the current management team?
They've done a decent job. Look, it's anyone. When you've got perverse financial, they're not operating like owner. When you've got it all on the line, you're going to do whatever it's going to take. 20-hour days, seven days a week, you're not going to stop. When equity is given out to you like candy, it's all companies. The board of directors make $4 million.
It's like $350,000 to $450,000 per director. There's been no insider buying at the company. It's not a surprise. They're not going to light the world on fire. We've got a bunch of professionals in the board and a professional management.
If this deal goes through, roughly what percentage of your personal net worth will be tied to it?
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Chapter 7: How does Ryan Cohen view the competitive landscape for eBay?
It brings me back to my roots.
What's something that eBay is not doing today that you think they could expand into, or is that even the right question? Do you think the core business is just so great and they're so dominant in many of these categories that you just want to pour fuel on the fire?
Live commerce.
Yeah.
But to me, to me, that's an extension, right? Because they have a lot of inventory. It's just a new selling channel. Yeah.
Yeah. But I mean, in terms of doing that well, accelerating revenue growth, you know, I think that that is that's big. And so going much deeper into collectibles and luxury trading cards, there's there's a lot of runway there.
Do you have a position on international capital providers? A lot of these big deals, maybe they start at 50, at half cash, half stock. They wind up being more leaning cash. That's what we saw with the Paramount Warner Brothers deal. Are you interested in talking to international sovereign wealth funds, that type of capital provider?
We're looking at a variety of different options currently.
Makes sense.
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