FULL INTERVIEW: GameStop’s Ryan Cohen on Why He’s Buying eBay

This is our full conversation with Ryan Cohen, recorded live on TBPN. We discuss his $125/share bid to acquire eBay through a half cash, half stock deal and why he believes combining it with GameStop could unlock massive value, how he plans to cut billions in costs, operate with an owner mindset, and use GameStop’s physical store footprint to authenticate collectibles and drive growth, and why he sees eBay as a durable but under-optimized platform that can be rebuilt through live commerce, creator partnerships, and a faster, more focused operating model. Sign up for TBPN’s daily newsletter at TBPN.com Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John Coogan?

  Ryan Cohen, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time. How are you doing?

• 0:05Ryan Cohen?

  How are you guys? Great to see you.

• 0:06John Coogan?

  Fantastic. 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? What's happening?

• 0:21Ryan Cohen?

  Uh, we made an offer yesterday, um, 125 bucks a share. Um, Half cash, half stock?

• 0:33Ryan Cohen?

  That was funny, wasn't it?

• 0:36John Coogan?

  Have you considered 49% cash? Why did you get to half cash, half stock? Can you unpack that a little bit at least?

• 0:43Ryan Cohen?

  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, uh, half of their investment off the table and that would be us providing them with 28, uh, with $28 billion, which is like a 40% premium from when we started buying the stock. Uh, and then they would be getting roughly, uh, 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

• 1:27Ryan Cohen?

  eBay, I think that the company, the earnings power of the company is going to increase substantially, uh, as well as the ability to, to grow. The platform stagnated over the last decade and, uh, I could do a lot with eBay.

• 1:46John Coogan?

  I love it.

• 1:47Ryan Cohen?

  That's a very strong business and that's right up my alley.

• 1:51John Coogan?

  Take us through the big vision. Like in five years, you're at the helm. Like, 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?

• 2:06Ryan Cohen?

  So where we've had success at GameStop and where eBay has had success is in collectibles. Trading cards, uh, collectibles. The founder of your show was, uh, was talking about his Mont Blanc and like, that's a good example. That's a, a perfect item to go and buy on eBay, but you're always concerned. Uh, that isn't going to be real and the trust. 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.

• 2:48Ryan Cohen?

  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, you know, I can, uh, I wanna, I wanna own eBay forever. Like I, I love that business. It's run like a public utility. It should have been wiped out, but it hasn't been.

• 3:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's been remarkably resilient. How many, how many companies, how many startups have gone after a specific category on eBay, raised a hundred million plus dollars? And yet eBay has remained resilient. It shows that, that there's, um, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a really powerful platform.

• 3:53Ryan Cohen?

  Yeah, that's why I love it. And, you know, the website still looks the same as it did in 1995. But everyone's tried to kill this thing.

• 4:02Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 4:02Ryan Cohen?

  And it's still making over $2 billion a year. So that goes to show you the, the durability of the business.

• 4:10John Coogan?

  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? Like, how does that actually play out in a world where, uh, eBay and you are making a bigger push into live commerce? It makes a lot of sense, but I'm wondering like, how does it actually work?

• 4:35Ryan Cohen?

  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.

• 4:57John Coogan?

  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.

• 5:08Jordi Hays?

  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? Marketing is something that people gravitate towards, but I'm sure you're seeing other efficiencies as well.

• 5:40Ryan Cohen?

  So in terms of the competitive landscape on an acquisition, I think there was some people circling around a few years ago. Nothing happened. The strategics can't really do it because I don't think that they would be able to clear antitrust. So any of the large competitors wouldn't be able to acquire it. And, you know, I don't think that we would have any regulatory issues getting clearance on a merger. In terms of the efficiencies, GameStop is a good example.

• 6:21Ryan Cohen?

  Like, GameStop is a dog and it could have been dead. And we've breathed a lot of life into this thing.

• 6:32Ryan Cohen?

  Right, and you look at SG and A, we've pulled out, we've dropped SG and A by forty seven percent, eight hundred million dollars by making marketing more efficient, almost turning off marketing. I mean, everyone knows GameStop, everybody knows eBay. So you talk to the marketing people to tell you like it's gonna tank revenues and all of this. And the reality is, uh, most of that marketing spends isn't making money, but everyone's trying to protect their jobs and there's kickbacks, there's all kinds of perverse incentives. And so I'm running the business like a family business. You know, it's, it's really not that complicated.

• 7:14Ryan Cohen?

  And you look at eBay spending two and a half billion bucks to grow one million users, two billion in cost cuts between sales and marketing and corporate overhead. It's not a lot, uh, and it's not something that's gonna take a few years. Like it's something that is gonna happen fast, fast, fast because I'm putting leverage on this thing and I don't wanna run a leveraged business. So I'm not gonna run it hot, I'm gonna pay down the leverage and I'm gonna increase earnings. Uh, they're spending five and a half billion dollars on operating expenses, on eleven billion dollar business that has no inventory and it's asset light.

• 7:57Ryan Cohen?

  So it just, there's eleven and a half thousand employees and it doesn't make sense. It, it doesn't, you don't need, I could run that business, I could run that business from my house. Like it's, it's eBay, it looks the same as it did in nineteen ninety five. They need eleven and a half thousand.

• 8:14Jordi Hays?

  So, so i- is, is the Elon Twitter take private somewhat of an inspiration here? There's been a number after that happened, in many ways the business suffered, but maybe it wasn't because of the deep cuts that he did to, to the team and.

• 8:29John Coogan?

  The service kept working.

• 8:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the service kept working, it's still a great product. Uh, I, we've been surprised that more CEOs and management teams haven't done something like that with businesses that are household names, but somewhat stagnated. Uh, is that an inspiration at all?

• 8:46Ryan Cohen?

  Yeah, and Twitter is a good example. I mean, what really happened at Twitter was that the advertisers, you know, I don't know what the situation is now, but they pretty much conspired against him. And, you know, it had nothing to do, my understanding is it really had nothing to do with the cost cuts, more of just the advertisers conspiring against him because of the demented political landscape and the fact that people apparently are against freedom of speech. And so, like, you look at the usability of the platform and the teams, the engineering teams are much smaller and they're innovating a lot faster. So, it's actually the opposite. The more people you add, the more you slow things down. And the

• 9:30Ryan Cohen?

  fewer people you have, the more, it's like a startup. You've got to always be in startup mode. And you build the big teams and nothing gets done anymore.

• 9:40Jordi Hays?

  Do you think L L Ms 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 L L Ms and people doing research in these products could be catalysts 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, maybe I have a higher likelihood of purchasing something.

• 10:12Ryan Cohen?

  Yeah, I mean, I think about all of the things that can disrupt the business in the future. And, you know, I think that eBay is the kind of business where the, the future of the business model is more certain than most tech businesses. And that's why it's done so well. And, you know, 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.

• 10:46John Coogan?

  If it doesn't materialize as an M and A, are you looking at a board seat? You have a position. Will you be more active in a non-M and A scenario?

• 10:58Ryan Cohen?

  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 the goal here isn't to be an activist. The goal is, I want to own eBay. I want to run eBay. Like, I want that to be my baby. I want to build something much larger. And cost cutting, frankly, is the way to make the business more efficient, to pay down the debt and innovate. But when I think about what I can do with eBay in the future, like,

• 11:32Ryan Cohen?

  look at Chewy. You know, eBay is like Chewy on steroids. And so, um, there's so much more runway, and it's global.

• 11:41John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, it seems like a huge opportunity. How do you want to be comped?

• 11:47Ryan Cohen?

  Based on performance, a hundred percent.

• 11:49John Coogan?

  Is there any tension between you and the shareholders? How do you actually create alignment there?

• 11:56Ryan Cohen?

  It would be, my current compensation plan is tied to really lofty metrics, and it's based on the the first tranche I've got to double market cap, as an example, just to hit the first tranche and the 10x it in order for it to fully vest. So, I'm not interested in, yeah, I I haven't taken a dollar of salary or any bonuses. And, 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.

• 12:34Jordi Hays?

  The GameStop, this is the GameStop team?

• 12:36Ryan Cohen?

  eBay, no, eBay is not happy. Yeah, after this interview, they're they're really not gonna like me. But because they're gonna 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, there is a, there's a, they're calling out your personal assistant. I said, what are you talking about? And they said, they went on your, 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 CEO benefit. And, you know, it's basically not, you're using company resources personally. I pay for my personal assistant personally. I don't even pay for, the the company doesn't pay

• 13:20Ryan Cohen?

  for my personal assistant. So they're already starting to get, um, their

• 13:27Ryan Cohen?

  They're doing whatever they can. They want to fight.

• 13:30Jordi Hays?

  Have you, has any major eBay shareholders reached out to you? Have you had, you know, what is the general sentiment? You know, how do you think, what do you think it'll look like if you take this directly to the shareholders?

• 13:47Ryan Cohen?

  I don't know. I mean, I would want to, I want to own eBay at $125 a share. We're propose, there's tax advantages to rolling it, but when I think about what eBay could be worth, if I'm running this business, I believe it's a heck of a lot more than $125 a share. And so,

• 14:07Ryan Cohen?

  I would roll 100% of the, of the equity, but you know, we'll, we'll see, we'll, we'll see what happens.

• 14:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Jordi Hays?

  What do you think of Michael Burry's critiques? A lot of people were, you know, talking about him exiting yesterday. He doesn't believe. Have you guys chatted?

• 14:28Ryan Cohen?

  I haven't chatted with Michael in a long time. I've seen he's more active than he says his investing philosophy. So I figured the, you know, his risk appetite and, you know, the leverage we're putting on just it, it didn't make sense for him, but it seemed as though it was more of a trade more so than, than anything.

• 14:58John Coogan?

  Yeah. Looking at the price action yesterday, is that reflective of sort of like a shakeout of nonbelievers? And you feel like you have the right people around the table now?

• 15:09Ryan Cohen?

  I am. When I think back to Chewy, every single day was a shakeout.

• 15:18Ryan Cohen?

  Yeah. So, um, I don't know. It's hard to diagnose the shareholder base and I'm, I'm focused on what I could build over a long period of time. And if I got my hands on eBay, I can build something worth a lot and much larger than it is. So.

• 15:39Jordi Hays?

  Was Paramount at all an inspiration?

• 15:41John Coogan?

  Just gonna ask.

• 15:43Ryan Cohen?

  I've looked at it. Um, I, you know, what they did is really interesting too.

• 15:51John Coogan?

  Just because smaller company buying a much larger company, but the deal still went through. The capital was was marshaled. That was something that I think was unclear yesterday for some people was, you know, 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, you know, pools of capital or financiers to to actually put together the final package. Do you have a date that you want this to like be done by?

• 16:23Ryan Cohen?

  Um, I mean, we have the cash. 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. So, uh, and the rest would be them rolling the equity into the combined company.

• 16:44John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 16:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think that was the that was the the rolling of the equity was the thing that if it had got into the viral clip from CNBC yesterday would have made a lot more sense. So I'm glad we're I'm glad we're getting it in now.

• 16:59John Coogan?

  Yep. Is there, uh, I guess, uh, how much of your critique of eBay is specifically around the current management team?

• 17:10Ryan Cohen?

  They've done a decent job. It's look, it's anyone when you've got perverse financial and they're they're not operating like owner. Uh, it just, you know, when 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. And when when equity is given out to you like candy, I mean, it's it's it's all companies. So, you know, the directors, uh, board of directors make $4 million, like 350 to 450,000 per director. There's been no insider buying at the company. I mean, like, it's not a surprise. They're not going to light the money on fire. They're not going to light the world on fire.

• 17:52Ryan Cohen?

  But you've got a bunch of professionals in the board and a professional management.

• 17:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Jordi Hays?

  So. If this deal goes through roughly, what percentage of your personal net worth will be tied to it?

• 18:06Ryan Cohen?

  Well, um, I, I haven't done the math, but if things go correctly, then it better be the majority, otherwise I'm wasting my time.

• 18:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Jordi Hays?

  What was your first memory using eBay?

• 18:19John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 18:20Jordi Hays?

  Were you a power seller back in the day?

• 18:23Ryan Cohen?

  Very good question.

• 18:27John Coogan?

  I bought and sold DJ equipment on eBay back in like 2003. It was amazing.

• 18:33Ryan Cohen?

  I don't remember my first transaction, but uh, I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one.

• 18:39John Coogan?

  Okay, uh, with GameStop, last time we talked, you were mentioning a little bit of expansion into uh, digital goods, less physical material and, and, and stuff. Like, do you think that there's an opportunity for eBay to play in a digital marketplace or in a world where uh, certain collectibles or certain uh, goods become digital or, or, or the market shifts towards more uh, digital goods and, and would you like to see eBay expand into that?

• 19:10Ryan Cohen?

  Yes and yes, uh, in terms of a digital marketplace and they're already doing it to a certain extent. I mean, like all kinds of Roblox digital items are bought and sold, but uh, and I've actually bought them for my kids. And there's so much fraud on the platform. Like we're buying stuff, it's not a real item, end up having to do a chargeback, but then it ended up getting delivered. So you can't do a chargeback. So like they've got the basics of it, but it's not being done well. So like digital gaming, totally. That's a huge opportunity to, to dig into. Um, there's so much potential.

• 19:54John Coogan?

  On, on uh, digital stuff, I guess, um, you're obviously interested in cutting costs. Are you optimistic that stable coins might be a path to reducing costs? It's a high volume transaction business, obviously a lot of credit card fees. Maybe there's a way around that with stable coins. We hear that from a lot of stable coin founders. Haven't heard it from as many operators. What do you think?

• 20:21Ryan Cohen?

  I don't have a point of view on that. Um, I haven't looked into it, so.

• 20:26Jordi Hays?

  I think the sellers would would probably be eating the the the cost, but but um, potential option.

• 20:33John Coogan?

  Yeah. I don't know. Jordy?

• 20:35Jordi Hays?

  Uh, do you have any sense of how eBay is using AI internally today? Have they have they spoken about it much? Do you do you believe they're getting very much leverage out of the models? Do you think there there could be quite a bit more?

• 20:52Ryan Cohen?

  I've seen that they've made uh, listings easier in terms of just generating product descriptions and stuff like that. So I think they're kind of like doing the super easy stuff. Um, still, there's a lot of friction to sell a product on eBay. Like, it's uh, it just, it's not easy. So the benefit of our sixteen hundred stores is we have the ability to increase intake. But I would go through it and I would make it as simple as possible to have a real item for sale as a seller.

• 21:33Ryan Cohen?

  And there's a it's, there's a lot of steps. It's just, it's a pain in the ass. It's too difficult.

• 21:39John Coogan?

  Yeah. Sixteen hundred stores

• 21:44John Coogan?

  in the world where you combined eBay and GameStop, do you expect that number to increase, decrease, stay the same?

• 21:52Ryan Cohen?

  Uh, it's a good question. I mean, our footprint is a moving target. We have this was part of what appealed to me originally when I went into GameStop was the leases were short term. So they're like two to three year leases. And as we see how the business performs, you know, we decide whether or not it makes sense to renew the store. So I mean, it's it's going to be dependent on. Utility of the stores, like if there's traffic and if profitability is increasing, we'll keep the stores open and if it's not the case, then we'll shrink the store base.

• 22:31John Coogan?

  Okay, a couple other scenarios. In a world where an M and A doesn't happen, is there a business partnership to be done where verification of rare collectibles can happen at GameStop physical retail stores for a price and eBay is paying GameStop for that service? Is that something you've explored? Is that something that's at all likely to happen?

• 22:56Ryan Cohen?

  Well, that would, so yes, and it would basically take zero dollars in CapEx in order to do something like that, and it's a good idea. Um, I hope that doesn't want to, that doesn't happen because I want to, I want to run the entire thing, but if it doesn't, then there, I mean, there's, there's a partnership option. I reached out to eBay, like, I don't know, maybe a year or two years ago to talk to them about partnering and they didn't engage seriously. Like everyone that, everyone's on vacation. Everyone's always on vacation, like they're not available. They have assistants. I'll get back to you next week. And it's like, let's go, let's get it done now. So then they never get back to you, then you're following

• 23:39Ryan Cohen?

  up. It's like, there's, there's, there's no sense of urgency.

• 23:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 23:45Ryan Cohen?

  At, at that company, there's no sense of urgency frankly at, at most companies. So it never gained any traction.

• 23:54John Coogan?

  Okay, Etsy is trading at six billion. Is that a target if the eBay plan doesn't come together?

• 24:00Jordi Hays?

  No collectibles action there.

• 24:03John Coogan?

  It was in the chat, I gotta ask.

• 24:05Ryan Cohen?

  Um, eBay is just such a natural fit for the, the collectibles, leveraging our store print, footprint, but then also like my ability to cut costs and build something much larger at the company. So, uh, every, everything else is, if it doesn't work out, we could find something else, but, um.

• 24:31Ryan Cohen?

  I like eBay. It brings me back to my roots.

• 24:36Jordi Hays?

  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?

• 24:52Ryan Cohen?

  Live commerce.

• 24:53Jordi Hays?

  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.

• 25:00Ryan Cohen?

  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, in luxury, trading cards, there's, there's a lot of runway there.

• 25:21John Coogan?

  Do you have a position on international capital providers? A lot of these big deals, the, you know, 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?

• 25:44Ryan Cohen?

  We're, we're looking at a variety of different options currently.

• 25:50John Coogan?

  Mm hmm. Makes sense.

• 25:52Jordi Hays?

  A mutual friend of the, of the show and GameStop mod retro. They've been pretty aggressively pushing into this retro gaming category. How do you see that growing? Our team at the office recently got, got an old Xbox 360, fired it up. I can see retro gaming just getting more and more popular. But what's your view on the category right now? And where do you think it's going?

• 26:20Ryan Cohen?

  Uh, we are, we've, we have, the, the return rates are kind of high, but we're, we're building out the retro business in our stores currently. So that's a, that's a, it's a, it's, it's still small, but it's a growing category for us.

• 26:40Jordi Hays?

  Uh, what do you want to see the rest of this week? How do you, how do you, how do you see it playing out?

• 26:47Jordi Hays?

  Uh, I don't know. It's a good question. Balls in their, balls in their court? Pretty much, yeah.

• 26:57John Coogan?

  Balls in their court.

• 26:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 27:00John Coogan?

  Well, we'll let you get to it. I'm sure you have more calls.

• 27:02Jordi Hays?

  Thanks for jumping on.

• 27:02John Coogan?

  Thanks for jumping on.

• 27:03Jordi Hays?

  You're welcome to join anytime. Let's do it again as, as the story progresses, but we're enjoying following along. And if anybody out there wants more information, it's on the website.

• 27:13John Coogan?

  Yeah. It's on the website.

• 27:15Jordi Hays?

  Exactly.

• 27:16John Coogan?

  If anybody asks you how he's paying for it, just tell them half cash, half stock. You got the beginning and the end of the interview. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 27:25Jordi Hays?

  Great to see you, Ryan.

• 27:25John Coogan?

  Have a great rest of the week. Good luck out there.

• 27:27Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 27:28John Coogan?

  Goodbye.