GameStop's CEO is annoyed you don't understand how he's buying eBay

The story

Ryan Cohen gives CNBC one of the worst interviews of the year by refusing to answer any questions, even as hosts push him to say more.

From the source

The overwhelming response to the news that video game retailer GameStop intends to buy e-commerce website eBay has been a resounding "huh??" GameStop has billions of dollars in cash reserves, sure. It's true that a potential acquisition of eBay makes sense for GameStop, given its shift toward Pokémon cards and collectibles . Yet it doesn't take a genius to see that eBay is already a much bigger company than GameStop. So what's going on here?

As far as GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen is concerned, though, the situation is straightforward — so straightforward that, in a recent interview with CNBC, the meme stock king seemed outright annoyed to be answering any questions about the deal. The interview seems fine at first. Around two minutes in, when the CNBC host started asking follow-up questions, Cohen's media training seemed to turn off.

"Invariably ... a lot of people are going to ask, how does the math, math, for you?" host Andrew Ross Sorkin says. "Given the price tag, 56 billion dollars, given the market cap of GameStop, which is a fraction of that." The host goes acknowledges that GameStop has a $20 billion financing letter from a bank, but that even with GameStop's existing cash reserves, the company would still be far off from affording eBay.

Who and what

Key names and topics in this story: GameStop.

Where to follow next

• Read the full piece at www.polygon.com
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