TD
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I've seen some asking why eBay? I can see how that may be an actual question vs just the nonstop, unfounded and easily disproven bot FUD about dilution and gaming compensation so I will give a quick, light overview.
Instead of stalking about the incompetence of the eBay board and misaligned incentives, or bots hating on RC to foster contempt, let's talk about this great company.
The secondary market has a massive TAM and is underutilized, often due to high shipping overheads.
It's a market that Amazon also does not have absolute dominance in, and in fact, completely neglects. Just like how RC created <doggycompany> and took a (small) slice of the market (pets) from Amazon, he's now going for round 2 with a much much larger market.
Just like RC said, eCommerce is his competency. Not only that, he has the connections, the hard-earned learnings you can only get from failures, and everything else from creating <doggycompany> as his first go around. Now we add in GameStop with its collectibles and physical presence for taking in and verifying goods, you unlock many new growth levers ((as well as significant margins) previously not accessible to eBay.
Quick recap for any investors not up to date with recent progress on the GameStop front:
* PowerPacks (for more info on that look at DD from others) have significant margins built in on the fully digital flow of opening the packs, putting them in the vault, and reselling them. More clearly: FAT margins.
* An infinite number of resales can occur, all without any shipping costs which are traditionally massive overheads.
* GameStop gets margin from every single pack opening, and every single sale.
* The ease and convenience greatly increases the transactions, on which GameStop gets a slice.
* This same concept can be applied to quite literally any good or merchandise, with the caveat that cards are much more valuable and take much less physical space than other merch and makes more sense to not need to take physical ownership of.
* The retail footprint allows shipping costs to be either eliminated or significantly reduced both on the consumer and GameStop ends.
* For the trading cards, there is no lack of supply despite the more frequent transactions, due to the "recycling" incentives built into the system.
Blockchain or not, tokenization or not, I don't see much talk about the fact that this is, in essence, a whole new category which can be applied to *ANY AND ALL COLLECTIBLES* on the aforementioned FAT margins.
eBay has 2 significant problems that are impossible to solve as they currently exist: large amounts of fraud between buyers and sellers which is well documented, as well as massive shipping overheads, twice on each transaction.
GameStop solves both of these:
* The physical presence allows for authentication and verification, which will cut down on the most obvious/blatant fraud of packing a completely different item than was advertised. Fraud will never be solved, but this puts a huge dent in it, increasing consumer confidence, and in turn, profits.
* The eliminated shipping costs for sellers also increase the TAM of the secondary market as many items did not previously make sense to sell after shipping costs. These items can now transact and find fair market pricing, increasing their values and overall to the margins eBay receives.
So anyone who tries to peddle that there are no synergies and it makes no sense is plain and flat out wrong (and likely has an ulterior motive \*cough\*). The synergies are plenty, the profit potential and margin increase is significant, even beyond the most obvious ones.
The nice part is there is hardly a better suitor for eBay than GameStop, hence few others can make enough sense of purchasing eBay to make it worth their time, aside from preventing GameStop from taking it.
Common arguments/counterpoints and perceived risks:
* $20B TD debt. Assuming a ballpark 5.5% corporate interest rate, annual carry is $1.1B. eBay spits out more than that, and GameStop leadership has already said large costs cuts are planned in the first 12 months. Debt carry likely drops by \~$300M by year 2, and faster as less cash flow goes to interest.
* Debt pay down. GameStop leadership has already said aggressive debt pay down is the priority. Cost cuts
* Dividends. I believe this will be the first thing to go, probably within 1st quarter post acquisition. That capital will go towards aggressive debt pay down.
* Reduced revenue from cost cuts. This should be expected to some degree. Obviously leadership isn't going to kill the golden goose, but cuts will invariably cause a short term revenue drop. Many growth levers to be pulled will dampen the impact and increase margins.
* Burry exit shortly after purchasing millions of dollars in shares. Burry is a value investor, he built his whole net worth and acquired his fund customers doing value investing. $20B in debt doesn't align with that methodology, no matter how brief, so he's out. Maybe one day he'll buy back, I don't care and neither should you. Your capital, you decide.
RC and GameStop leadership bringing GameStop from losing hundreds of millions a year to positive cashflow is not simply a talking point, it is key to the prospects and expectations of this acquisition. A successful and dare I say *accretive* acquisition of eBay involves 3 major things:
* Costs reduction
* Margin expansion
* Debt reduction (a necessary but previously non-existent pain)
All 3 have been done, successfully despite much hate and pushback from the mass media, and massive short selling, over the last 5 years.
Is this largely speculative? Sure, but the lego blocks are all there and the gains are obvious. This same leadership also has a proven track record of executing the exact same playbook on the GME turnaround. Also much of what I've covered isn't wild speculation, they're either facts or recent statements from GME/RC with a small sprinkle of forward looking projection. Certainly an infinitely more likely outcome than the narratives being painted by malicious actors.
Both GameStop and eBay investors have a LOT to gain and little to lose and would greatly benefit from a successful acquisition.
I am voting YES with my x,xxx,xxx shares purchased in Nov 2020 and encourage any other eBay and GameStop investors to do the same. Godspeed and god bless, let's get on with it!

The 20 billion financing from TD is 'highly confident' based on ebay being investment grade with that kind of debt after the merger. Which isn't that likely anyway.
gamestop alone could never get a loan like that.

My post got deleted due to karma requirements so I’ll just put it in here and flesh it out with you daily degens 
Howdy everybody, DuboisLaGrange checking in. Bought my first shares for $343/share pre split and haven’t stopped buying, holding, and superstonking ever since (I did delete my acct in an effort to ditch my Reddit/screen addiction but look who has no self control after all)! 
I, like I’m sure many of you, have been using the one sole crevice in my otherwise bowling ball-esque brain to its maximum capacity thinking about this eBay acquisition. On its surface the offer that we made to buy eBay is so fucking smooth, so nonsensical, so idiotic that I almost have to give a pass to the legacy financial news media for questioning its credibility and seriousness. 
The deal is to buy eBay for $56b, $28b in cash, and $28b in gme stock. The problem is we only have $9b cash in hand, and only enough stock to provide another ≈ $11b of value if we dilute to the 1B pre authorized shares. Our current mkt cap of $10b is derived almost entirely from our cash reserve so I’m not even going to bother adding that into the “proposed bid”. Just to summarize the assets we actually have in our possession to try and make a deal: $9b cash + $11b stock to offer + $20b pledge from TD (aka incoming debt). Thats only $40b of the proposed 56b valuation and 20 of that is debt. Why on earth would eBay except that?
To continue: maybe a hostile takeover is the only way RC saw this playing out. Well I don’t think he’s as smoth as me so I would assume he did his homework. He probably already knows that only 7% of eBay is owned by individual investors. So why would the large Wall Street institutions who overwhelmingly own eBay vote to overthrow a board of hollow men so that RC and the apes could come in and takeover? When I started thinking like this im like, “damn, maybe RC is regarded, he like me frfr”.
At this point in my train of thought there was a potential reality that was settling in, “have I wasted five years of my investing timeline on some fuckin regard?“ This is the closest Ive ever succumbed to the FUD. But honestly the offer was so fucking stupid, and weak that instead of wanting to sell it has somehow backfired and gone the opposite way (I eat crayons wtf you expect?). The offer is so weak, and so shitty that I cannot accept that RC doesn’t have a part B to the move. But what is it?
So after taking a shit, and jacking off a couple dozen times to try and receive clarity I think I spunked out a theory and here it is:
We own over 5% of eBay based off of a mix of call options, and holding shares. RC began building the position some time in February which means that, conservatively, in three months this investment has made almost $600m in unrealized gains. Ill insert my elementary-level math in a moment. 
After accumulating the position RC made the incredibly ridiculous offer to acquire the company which obviously was going to be shut down. But I don’t think he was simply Sabre rattling because tbh he ended up looking like a fool, and he doesn’t strike me as a fool. 
He has stated he wants to become the next Berkshire. Buffett is famously known for taking a large stake in a company then joining their board to advise. Perhaps RC is taking a more aggressive approach and threatening to acquire a company like eBay but really he’s laying out a playbook for eBay to improve their business without him. After all, what’s good for eBay is now good for us too. RC has the ability to put pressure on the board and drum up support from individual shareholders, and the eBay community to enact positive change. 
RC laid it out in his hollow man manifesto, America is laden with companies who have sleepy management. He can move on to the next target once he’s done hassling eBay board and opening their eyes to the inefficiencies and their unfulfilled potential. Speaking of Targets… tgt is primed for a similar shakeup. $54b mkt cap, down over 50% from ATH. Only .93% of tgt is owned by insiders, and 86% of the company is owned by tutes. Seems like a good company to buy a stake in and then tell them to wake tf up. On and on down the line he can go, acquiring 5% stakes in these companies, holding when they go up based on his own premium valuation (I.e. eBay being worth 56b in his eyes) then collecting profits off of the initial investment. “RC buys all the stocks” member that? Pepperidge Farm members. 

Since diversification is the name of the game, I'm contemplating to trade NVDA for SMH to cover the broader AI hardware industry that I'm ignorant about (too bad SMH does not cover Samsung and SK Hynix).

Is there a SMH alternative that covers a larger semiconductor industry instead of the limiting 26 companies listed on US market?

Also any shortcoming about this trade?
Current setup:
72% core index (VOO/VFV, QQQM, VIU, cash), 19% Canadian aristocrats as dividend machine (RY, BNS, ENB, CNQ, FTS, CNR), 9% play satellite (GOOG, NVDA, TD)

I love Canadian banks but be careful: historically these are moderate growing businesses and have a PE of around 8-10. Currently a bunch of the Canadian banks are at around 17 PE (aside from TD because of the US regulation issues) and even if you accept the premise that PE ratios are likely to remain inflated going forward that is still very high. One way or another I think we are likely to see a major correction at some point with Canadian banks.

Not to mention our regarded CEO could have added pressure on shorts to squeeze them and do a share offering at a much higher price where he can just buy eBay outright with no TD help needed….but no…we need to go through hoops and drag our balls through broken glass. Thanks.

The 20b loan it to buy the company outright not to buy shares. I doubt TD bank would allow for the money to used for that.

I’m just started to get into TD where do you get your news from specifically for trading?

I believe it's known one of TD's requirements is that the combined company holds an investment grade credit rating, which makes it highly unlikely that it would be 0%. Again, I'm not saying this WILL happen, I'm speculating on what I THINK will happen.

for a starting framework on evaluating a stock, look at revenue growth over 3-5 years, profit margins, debt levels, and whether the business model makes sense to you in plain language. if you can't explain what the company does and how it makes money in two sentences, that's a signal to keep researching before buying. some stable names that come up consistently for beginners: Apple, Microsoft, Canadian banks like TD or RBC for Wealthsimple users.

the billion shares is there to be used, theyre not all getting used at once. you dont just go "oh 2.5 billion shares accepted, and theyre gone." no.
also, im sorry but how would ebay shareholders get gme shares without this? they get half shares potentially right? does that magically just come out of thin air?
Now i see your point, and again, dilution is bad if the company is doing bad. this is not the case here for both companies. Sure hes biting off what you think is more than he can chew but TD, gamestop board, many retailers, holders of the 0% convertible notes, warrant holders, and so forth, seem to think otherwise and are willing to back him to no end. Im gonna go hang out with those guys.
Oh one more thing, go look at those companies debt structures . the ones i mentioned that are some of the largest companies in the world. tell me they dont have debt.
The debt ryan would accumulate is a drop in the water in comparison.

Accretive!!! With the $27B debts ($20B from TD and $7B from ebay), the merged company is susceptible to any changes in economy. However, GME currently with $9B is very solid again recession.

Idk any other big ones other than TD and RBC correct me if I'm wrong.
But honestly any ET desk input could be helpful

Ah yeah. Forgot what "T" in TD is. 

Why doesn't Gamestock use the $9B cash to buy at the current price, off the radar, instead of offering the $125/share in a takeover? GS already owns >5% per RC. Just keep building at a lower price until they own a larger chunk, then buy the remaining with the TD loan.
What am I missing?

If it's all cash offer then ebay shareholders walk away with cash so they shouldn't care about what happens to the dividend or anything else....they are out.
On the other hand, even the TD 20B letter was not real because it required the resulting merged entity to have an investment grade debt rating which it wouldn't have, so the idea that RC is going to drum up even more cash is laughable

Bay street is where all the crooks are...RBC (Treiber), Canaccord, TD, Baird, etc...

A large chunk of my roth ira was invested in ITOT from the TD Ameritrade days. Glad there are cheap alternatives in Schwab

TD Diirect investing carries it. You are still early to the party. Buy on,  hold, and wait for wife changing money.

I sent them another email, which nobody should have to do to chase their orders, and directly let them know they'll either hear from my lawyer or CBC News with some questions. I received an email the next day and a phone call. While on the phone, I was told the back log is because of the order volume and we all know that is BS. They're not the largest bullion dealer in Canada and they are definitely not the most popular. I told them my experiences and expectations when ordering anything and the woman apologized and agreed. I also advised that I want a full refund or my product as 74 days is a bit long for an order. This morning I received an email that both orders are waiting at the bank.
Finally an end to this and an end to any further transactions I will have with TD in the future. Wow.