GameStop Pursues $56B eBay Bid Despite Board Rejection, Debt Concerns

Published by James Harris on June 27, 2026June 27, 2026

GameStop is still chasing eBay. Despite a flat rejection from eBay’s board in May, Ryan Cohen’s company confirmed this week it intends to press forward with its unsolicited $56 billion cash and stock bid, with additional materials on the deal’s strategic rationale described as forthcoming, according to Reuters.

The original $125-per-share offer was dismissed by eBay Chairman Paul Pressler as “unappealing,” with the board also questioning whether GameStop, which carried a market cap of roughly $10.3 billion at the time of the bid, could realistically finance a transaction nearly six times its own size. GameStop’s response has been to lean on earnings momentum: the company is projecting adjusted EBITDA above $600 million for fiscal 2026, nearly double the $345.4 million it posted in 2025, a figure that pushed shares up 2% in after-hours trading Friday. The logic is transparent. A company generating that kind of cash flow has a more credible claim to acquisition debt than the market cap alone suggests, and Cohen appears to be building a public case for financing capacity before any formal tender offer is filed. No tender offer has been filed yet.

The synergy math Cohen is pitching, roughly $2 billion annually within a year of closing, is the kind of number that sounds precise until you stress-test the assumptions.

Moody’s did exactly that. The agency flagged that eBay ended 2025 carrying approximately $7.2 billion in adjusted debt at a gross leverage ratio of about 2.3x, and warned that a debt-financed merger could meaningfully worsen those credit metrics. Moody’s acknowledged that Cohen’s synergy projections imply around 3.25x in deleveraging potential, but noted the analysis excludes any revenue disruption or integration costs, which in large e-commerce mergers are rarely zero. The financing gap and the absence of a concrete integration plan are the two things the promised presentation will need to address if it is to shift institutional sentiment rather than simply extend the public negotiation.

The promised strategic presentation had not been published by Friday’s close, which means the deal remains more of a declared intention than a structured offer. If and when that document arrives, the specifics on debt structure and revenue assumptions will determine whether this stays a high-profile standoff or becomes a transaction that eBay’s board is forced to take seriously.