GameStop Still Wants eBay, and Its CEO Is Betting Big on Himself
Ryan Cohen just wrote a personal check for a million shares of his own struggling company, and three directors bought the same week. When a CEO puts tens of millions of his own money in while quarterly sales crater, the…
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Ryan Cohen wrote a personal check for a million shares of his own company. The filing dated September 10, 2026 shows the purchase at $20.3759 per share, and a director bought the same day. The stock settled the most recent session at $24.04, up 5.62%.
GameStop (NYSE:GME | GME Price Prediction) sales keep sliding while a proposed takeover of eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), a business several times its size, sits on the risk-factor page of the last 8-K. Open-market purchases with personal money are the most informative signal any insider can send. A chief executive writing a check for tens of millions while quarterly revenue falls almost 19% is likely seeing something the market hasn’t priced in yet.
Three directors bought in the same window: Lawrence Cheng, 55,000 shares at $18.7992 on September 8, James Grube, 10,255 at $19.12 on September 9, and Alain Attal, 5,000 at $20.00 on September 10.
Insider sells have a dozen reasons. Insider buys have one. A purchase at a higher price than the last one carries even more information.
GameStop’s eBay Situation
The Q2 FY2027 8-K, filed September 8, 2026, discloses approximately 43.4 million shares of eBay common stock valued at approximately $4.9 billion and continues to reference the proposed acquisition of eBay in forward-looking risk factors.
The word that matters is proposed. The bid has never been formally withdrawn, and the company still flags that it may not be completed.
Revenue in the most recent quarter came in at $790.2 million, down 18.7% year over year, yet operating income jumped to $160.2 million, up 141.27%. Gross margin expanded to 43.7% from 29.1%.
Collectibles hit $356.3 million, up 57%, and now make up 45.1% of net sales. Video games fell to $263.2 million from $494.6 million.
However, I’d ignore the headline net income. It was flattered by a $166.3 million derivative gain tied to eBay and dinged by a $75 million loss on digital assets.
Balance Sheet, Guidance, and the Trigger
Against a market cap of $12.13 billion, GameStop carries $4.85 billion in cash and a $4.9 billion eBay position. A meaningful share of the equity value sits in marketable securities rather than in store operations.
Management raised the fiscal 2026 Adjusted EBITDA outlook to in excess of $650 million from in excess of $600 million. The trigger is a formal withdrawal of the eBay bid, a definitive agreement, or another Cohen buy at a price above $20.3759.
Bull and Bear Case for GME Stock
Bull: a chief executive spending real money on his own stock in a coordinated cluster with directors, a collectibles category growing fast enough to reshape the mix, record operating income for the period, and an investment portfolio no other specialty retailer can match.
Bear: total sales are still falling, the crypto position introduces volatility unrelated to the business, and the eBay bid may quietly evaporate into a passive stake that never becomes a deal.
The deciding variable is whether collectibles growth can outrun the legacy business’s decline before the market decides the eBay stake is just an expensive hedge fund position wrapped in a retailer.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Omor Ibne Ehsan is a writer at 24/7 Wall St. He is a self-taught investor with a focus on growth, cyclical, and dividend equities that have strong fundamentals, value, and long-term potential. He also has an interest in high-risk, high-reward investments such as penny stocks.
