GameStop CEO Cohen spurns $35 billion pay plan to focus on eBay deal

June 23 : Ryan Cohen, the billionaire CEO of GameStop, will not receive a potential performance award from the videogame retailer and plans to unveil more details about his bid to take over eBay soon, the company said on Tuesday.

GameStop unveiled a compensation package worth roughly $35 billion for Cohen in January, hinging on a turnaround that requires him to lift the struggling company's market value more than tenfold and sharply boost its profit.

In May, Cohen surprised Wall Street with an unsolicited offer to buy eBay for roughly $56 billion in cash and stock to turn the e-commerce company into a bigger competitor to Amazon.

EBay's board rejected the proposal, calling the offer "neither credible nor attractive."

Cohen argued that he doesn't want the package so that GameStop's leadership can fully focus on its operating performance and the planned acquisition.

GameStop's short statement said it would release additional materials regarding its plans for eBay this week, including a detailed presentation of the strategic rationale and operational plan for the combined company. On Tuesday an eBay spokesman had no comment on GameStop's statement.

Speculation about how Cohen, who joined the GameStop board in January 2021 and became the CEO in September 2023, might move forward on trying to buy eBay has grown on Wall Street in recent weeks.

Cohen successfully steered GameStop's return to profitability through aggressive cost cutting, which included shuttering hundreds of stores.

Earlier this month, GameStop posted a 14 per cent rise in quarterly revenue, buoyed by strong collectibles demand, and said its board approved a new $2 billion share repurchase program.

Still, GameStop, which has a market value of nearly $10 billion, is trying to buy a company roughly five times its size, puzzling investors and analysts about where the money might come from, bankers and lawyers have said.

For the first quarter ended May 2, GameStop's net sales came in at $835.3 million, compared with $732.4 million a year ago.