NEW YORK, May 28, 2026, 17:04 (EDT)
eBay Inc. shares climbed 1.6% to $112.13 on Thursday, breaking a four-day losing streak. Traders are watching to see if GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen will push forward after eBay rejected his $56 billion takeover offer.
eBay shares are still trading well under GameStop’s $125-a-share cash-and-stock offer. The gap, known as the deal spread, is the difference between what GameStop is offering and where eBay trades now, and it signals investors have doubts the deal will close as pitched.
Wall Street is tracking what Cohen will do next after Reuters said Wednesday that bankers, lawyers, and analysts see possible moves like a tender offer—taking the bid right to shareholders—or launching a push for a special meeting. Cohen told Reuters he was ready to do “whatever we need to do” to take over eBay after the board turned him down. Reuters
GameStop said May 3 it has offered to buy eBay for $125 a share, half in cash and half in GameStop stock, valuing eBay at about $55.5 billion undiluted. The company said it would use about $9.4 billion in cash and liquid investments, plus as much as $20 billion in third-party funding from TD Securities for the cash part.
eBay’s board turned down the bid on May 12. In a letter to Cohen, chairman Paul S. Pressler called the offer “neither credible nor attractive” and pointed to questions about financing, leverage, operational risks, as well as GameStop’s governance and executive pay. eBay Investors
Ownership questions keep hanging over the trade. In a filing from May 19, GameStop reported direct ownership of 25,000 eBay shares and said it had economic exposure to roughly 29.1 million more via put and call pairs. These are derivatives that track the stock, but they don’t always grant voting rights unless physically settled.
Some deal pros did not mince words. Don Bilson, who leads event-driven research at Gordon Haskett, told Reuters, “There is zero chance that a tender offer works.” Mark Cohen, ex-director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, said Cohen did “not have enough money to make his claim stick.” Reuters
S&P 500 and Nasdaq both finished at record highs on Thursday, with the S&P 500 gaining 0.58% and the Nasdaq Composite climbing 0.91%. Reports of a possible U.S.-Iran ceasefire extension helped risk appetite. The broader tape was firm.
Amazon was up 0.8%. Etsy added 4.6%. eBay is set to buy Depop from Etsy for roughly $1.2 billion in cash. eBay said the deal should close by the end of the third quarter if it gets the needed approvals.
eBay’s board gets some breathing room with the stand-alone case. The company pulled in first-quarter revenue of $3.1 billion, up 19%. Gross merchandise volume came in at $22.2 billion, an 18% gain. CEO Jamie Iannone said it was a “strong start to the year.” eBay Investors
eBay gave back $639 million to shareholders last quarter, with $500 million going to buybacks, and declared a second-quarter dividend of 31 cents a share. That gets paid June 12 to shareholders on record as of May 29. For the second quarter, eBay is looking for revenue between $2.97 billion and $3.03 billion.
The trade could still move in either direction. GameStop might get solid financing, convert more exposure into votes, or convince bigger holders, which would keep the heat on eBay. On the other hand, if funding questions get sharper or most of the derivatives don’t count for votes, the takeover premium could slip and the stock might end up depending more on eBay’s growth, margins and how it handles the Depop deal.
