GameStop Converts Options Into Actual eBay Shares, Now Owns 9.8% With Voting Rights

Since eBay's board called GameStop's $125-per-share buyout offer "neither credible nor attractive" back in early May, Ryan Cohen hasn't backed off. He's bought more stock.

A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released late Friday shows GameStop now owns 43.39 million shares of eBay, or 9.8% of the company. At eBay's Friday closing price of $112.06, that stake is worth several billion dollars.

Most of GameStop's position used to sit in derivative contracts, financial instruments that gave GameStop the economic upside of owning eBay stock without any actual shares or voting rights attached.

On July 15, GameStop physically settled those contracts and took delivery of the real shares, according to the filing. The company also bought roughly 3.5 million eBay shares outright for cash in mid-June. Combined, that's how GameStop got to 9.8% ownership.

The filing states all of it was funded with GameStop's own cash reserves. No debt disclosed, no outside financing mentioned.

Why This Matters More Than the Last Filing

Owning derivatives is a bet. Owning shares is power.

With actual stock instead of contracts, GameStop now has real voting rights on nearly a tenth of eBay. That's a direct lever Cohen can pull, whether that means pushing board nominations, forcing shareholder votes, or laying groundwork for a proxy fight down the road.

Cohen made his intentions plain in a Bloomberg interview earlier this week. He said a combined GameStop and eBay could become a "$1 trillion business" and told Bloomberg "we're coming for eBay one way or another." He also said he plans to eventually take his offer directly to eBay's shareholders, bypassing the board that already rejected him once.

That's a notable escalation from a simple activist stake. Going around the board and appealing straight to shareholders is the kind of move that precedes a hostile takeover attempt, not a friendly merger conversation.

The Money Behind the Push

Last month, Cohen gave up a performance-based pay package that could have been worth up to $35 billion, according to GameStop's own statement. The company said the point was to keep leadership focused on operations and the eBay pursuit rather than personal compensation.

Whether it's genuine sacrifice or a calculated PR move to make the eBay pitch look more credible to skeptical shareholders is a fair question nobody outside GameStop's boardroom can answer definitively.

The Skeptic's Case

eBay's board has already said once that GameStop's offer isn't credible. That's a reasonable position for a company roughly the size eBay is to take when a smaller, more volatile retailer with a meme-stock history shows up with an unsolicited $55-56 billion bid.

eBay is a mature, profitable e-commerce platform. GameStop is a company whose core video game retail business has struggled for years and whose market value has been driven largely by retail trader enthusiasm and Cohen's personal following rather than fundamentals. A board weighing whether to hand over control to that kind of suitor has legitimate reasons for caution, regardless of how much cash GameStop is sitting on.

Investing.com and other outlets covering the filing framed this straightforwardly as GameStop building leverage after rejection, without speculating on eBay's next move. eBay itself hasn't issued a new statement responding to the increased stake, according to available filings and reporting.

What's Actually Different Today

Retail sentiment on Stocktwits stayed bullish on GameStop and bearish on eBay over the past 24 hours, per data cited in trading reports. Year-to-date, eBay stock is up 29% while GameStop has gained 9%, meaning the market has rewarded eBay's independence more than GameStop's pursuit so far.

None of that settles the underlying fight. GameStop crossing the 10% threshold on voting shares is a legal and structural marker, not a final answer. eBay's board can still refuse to negotiate, adopt takeover defenses, or wait Cohen out.

The open question is whether Cohen actually follows through on taking his offer to shareholders directly, and if he does, whether eBay investors who've watched their stock outperform GameStop's this year have any appetite to hand the company to him.