Rohan’s view
eBay has been ripe for a takeover, and rightly targeted by angry investors, many times. Now is not one of them. It’s one of many things that remains perplexing about GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen’s bid for the company, which eBay this morning rejected as “neither credible nor attractive.”
Shares of eBay are up roughly 140% since CEO Jamie Iannone took over in 2020. Its profit margins are more than twice those of Etsy and have held steady around 20% in recent years, countering Cohen’s claims that eBay’s marketing budget is too high.
eBay’s AI strategy, which is applying 30 years of proprietary pricing and sales records across its 134 million active users, is at least as credible as anyone’s right now. And unlike the last time eBay tangled with an activist, Carl Icahn in 2014, there isn’t a PayPal-sized business waiting to be spun off. Icahn won the fight more than a decade ago — eBay eventually spun out the payments business — because he was right.
eBay has managed its debt down from roughly $8 billion to $6 billion under Iannone; billions in fresh debt would be needed for GameStop to swallow a company five times its size. The company would be anywhere from five to seven times levered, depending on whose math you believe. (Even if the combination made strategic sense, eBay could pull out the Pac-Man defense and adopt a poison pill. It has no plans as of yet to do that, according to people familiar with the company’s strategy.)
When pressed on eBay’s capital return plans, M&A strategy, and whether they anticipate any cost cuts as a result of Cohen’s pressure, the people said they aren’t changing anything for now. Cohen’s limp showing on CNBC last week — where he told viewers to just check his website, and offered little more detail than that — gives eBay all the ammunition it needs for now to stiff-arm.
Room for Disagreement
Cohen has a $10 billion cash hoard and billions more in squishy financing from TD Bank. People familiar with Cohen’s thinking say he’s still intent on going after eBay and will keep pressing his bid. He missed the window to nominate directors for eBay’s 2026 meeting, but he could push for a special meeting if he could rally another 15% of eBay’s shareholders (Cohen owns 5% of eBay).