The one number
39.7%.
That is how much of GameStop's own market value is sitting in another company's stock. GameStop ($GME) owns 43,390,383 shares of eBay ($EBAY). At eBay's Friday close of $107.90 that stake is worth $4.68 billion. GameStop itself is worth $11.80 billion at Friday's $23.39 (504,500,990 shares, from the cover of its latest 10-Q).
Almost every popular way of describing GME is now out of date, and this is the number that shows it. It is not a bitcoin company, not a cash pile with a store attached, and not a dying retailer. Just under two-fifths of it is a non-controlling 9.8% stake in eBay.
What GameStop actually owns now
Bitcoin: one coin. GameStop bought 4,710 bitcoin in the second quarter of fiscal 2025 and has bought or sold none since. It then pledged 4,709 of them to Coinbase ($COIN) Credit and took them off its balance sheet, holding a receivable instead, and it sold covered calls on about 2,000 of them at a $70,000 strike, which matured on 25 September. It directly holds 1.0 bitcoin. The whole digital-asset line is $294.1 million, about 2.5% of the company.
Cash: less of it, because it was spent. Cash and securities fell from $8.69 billion to $5.06 billion. Most of the difference went into eBay.
eBay: a stake built for a deal that was refused. The shares were accumulated as the opening move in a takeover bid. eBay's board rejected it on 12 May 2026 as "neither credible nor attractive." There has been no merger filing (Form 425) since 20 July. Bloomberg reported on 10 August that Ryan Cohen was weighing pulling the offer. As far as the filings show, the bid has been neither withdrawn nor advanced. On paper the position is up 6.7% on its $4.39 billion cost, and it is marked to market through earnings every quarter.
Debt: $2.8 billion at 0%. What remains of the zero-coupon convertible notes after a September exchange. Holders can put the first tranche back at par in April 2028.
Strip it out and the stores cost $4.9 billion
The old argument for GME was that the balance sheet covered the whole share price and the retail business came free. Here is that arithmetic with Friday's prices:
| $ millions | |
|---|---|
| Cash, after the 3 September note exchange | 4,495.9 |
| Marketable securities | 206.0 |
| Digital assets and receivables | 294.1 |
| eBay stake at $107.90 | 4,681.8 |
| Financial assets | 9,677.8 |
| Less convertible notes | (2,800.0) |
| Net financial assets | 6,877.8 |
| Market value at $23.39 | 11,800.3 |
| What the market is paying for the stores | 4,922.5 |
That is about $9.75 of the $23.39 share price, or about 7.5 times the company's own guidance of more than $650 million of adjusted EBITDA. Treat the convertibles as shares instead of debt and the figure is $4.36 billion, about 6.7 times. Either way it is positive. The stores are not free anymore.
One caveat carries most of the weight in that table. $4.68 billion of the $9.68 billion is one stock position, with no control and no board seat. A 20% fall in eBay takes about $936 million out of it, around $1.85 a GameStop share.
The stores are working
This is the part almost nobody talks about.
- Operating income went from a $34.5 million loss in fiscal 2023 to $303.5 million in the first half of fiscal 2026 alone.
- First-half free cash flow was $393.6 million on $6.2 million of capital spending.
- Gross margin went from 24.5% in fiscal 2023 to 43.7% in the latest quarter, and gross profit dollars rose 21.9% in the second quarter while revenue fell 18.7%.
- US revenue was flat while US operating income tripled. The revenue decline is concentrated in countries being sold or wound down.
- The store count has gone from 4,169 to roughly 1,900, and management says it does not expect to close a significant number more in fiscal 2026.
The margin needs a caveat. The collectibles category includes fees GameStop earns for facilitating card grading that someone else performs, which is revenue with almost no cost attached. The filings don't say how much of the category that is, so 43.7% is a blended number, not a merchandise margin.
The part that isn't the stores
In the first half, 46.7% of pre-tax income came from marking investments to market, mostly $434.7 million of gains on the eBay position. The stores contributed 32.8%. Interest income on the cash pile was another meaningful slice, and it will shrink, because much of the cash that earned it now sits in eBay stock.
The September note exchange is the other line worth reading. GameStop retired $1.4 billion of zero-coupon debt, not due until 2030 and 2032, for about 55.5 million new shares plus $358.4 million in cash. At Friday's price that is about 118% of face to retire debt that cost nothing. The fully diluted share count went up by about 7.4 million shares. A non-cash charge from the exchange is still to be booked, and its size has not been disclosed.
Where it sits
GameStop closed Friday at 23.39, down 6.51% on 13.2 million shares. We found no filing and no company news behind the fall. It came after a 10.5% run from 18 September to 24 September that began the day Ryan Cohen's purchase of 1,150,680 shares at $22.94 was disclosed. Friday gave back part of that run and still closed above where the previous week ended.
On the chart the stock is above all three daily averages (the 50-day at 22.21, the 100-day at 21.20, the 200-day at 20.27) and above the weekly support band at 21.05 to 21.32. The weekly 100-period average at 24.05 is the one sitting overhead. RSI eased to 65 from above 80 earlier in the week. The 52-week high at 28.10 is 20% above and the 52-week low at 17.79 is 24% below.
The date on the calendar
59.1 million warrants expire on 30 October at 5pm ET. Their strike is $32.00, which is 13.9% above the highest price of the past year and would need a 36.8% rise in about a month. They have never been in the money. If they lapse, about $1.89 billion of potential proceeds disappears with them. Nobody should be counting that money as available.
The question
GameStop is now a profitable, cash-generating retailer attached to a $4.68 billion bet on another company's share price. Neither of the old stories fits it anymore.
What we still don't know:
- What happens to the eBay stake if the bid is formally dropped? Sell it, hold it as a passive investment, or keep it as leverage for something else. The filings don't say.
- How much of the margin is grading fees? Until that split is disclosed, nobody outside the company can say how much of the improvement is the stores.
- How large is the charge from the note exchange? It lands with third-quarter results, which have not been dated. On past timing, late November or December.
Next checkpoint: 30 October, when the warrants either matter or quietly expire.