The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 58 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Cohen: Advertisers Conspired Against Twitter Due to Politics, Not Cuts
“What really happened at Twitter was that the advertisers, you know, I don't know what the situation is now, but they pretty much conspired against him, and, you know, it had nothing to do, my understanding is it really had nothing to do with the cost cuts, mor…”
Cohen says GameStop will issue stock to fund half-cash eBay takeover
“We're offering half cash, half stock, and we have the ability to issue stock in order to get the deal done.”
Cohen: GameStop offered $125 per share half-cash, half-stock for eBay
“We made an offer yesterday. 125 bucks a share. Half cash, half stock.”
Cohen: eBay's $5.5B opex and 11,500 headcount make no sense
“They're spending five and a half billion dollars on operating expenses on eleven billion dollar business that Has no inventory in its asset lights. So, it just, there's 11 and a half thousand employees, and it doesn't make sense.”
Ryan Cohen: GameStop Has $20B Bank Letter and $9B Cash for Bid
“We have the cash accounted for today in terms of, ah, a highly confident letter from our bank for the twenty billion, plus we've got nine billion of cash, so.”
GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen calls the Meta Quest a joke
“When I think about the MetaQuest, I mean, it's a joke.”
Cohen predicts computers and AI will go after humans soon
“At some point, the computers are going after the humans, and I don't think it's that far away.”
Cohen: eBay has 130M users but gets crushed in live commerce
“EBay has a hundred and thirty million users and they're getting crushed by competitors in live commerce.”
Ryan Cohen intends to permanently run eBay, not act as an activist.
“The goal here isn't to be an activist. The goal is I want to own eBay. I want to run eBay. Like, I want that to be my baby.”
Cohen: eBay has more runway than Chewy and is 'Chewy on steroids'
“EBay is like Chewy on steroids. And so there's so much more runway, and it's global.”
Cohen: eBay is worth far more than $125/share under his leadership
“When I think about what eBay could be worth, if I'm running this business, I believe it's a heck of a lot more than a 125 dollars a share.”
Cohen: eBay directors make $350K-$450K each with zero insider buying
“You know, the directors board of directors make four million dollars. It's like 350 to 450,000 per director. There's been no insider buying at the company.”
Cohen: eBay Ignored Partnership Outreach One to Two Years Ago
“I reached out to eBay, like, I don't know, maybe a year or two years ago to talk to them about partnering, and They didn't engage seriously.”
Ryan Cohen: Corporate Leaders Without Personal Financial Stakes Disregard Shareholders
“Ultimately, what you see is that when people don't have their own money on the line, they don't give a shit, and they're focused on all kinds of other stuff that ultimately doesn't matter to shareholders”
Cohen: Copying Chewy's expanded catalog failed and cost GameStop shareholders heavily
“I hired a bunch of fancy people from both Amazon and Chewy, and we expanded the catalog, and we added a bunch of product, and most of that product didn't sell, and we ended up marking it down and taking a big hit, and it cost shareholders a lot of money, becau…”
Cohen: CEOs will choose AI over humans to cut short-term costs
“One thing I know for certain is that the CEOs, if they can reduce their cost structure in the short term, They're gonna replace, they're gonna take computers over humans.”
Cohen: Large tech competitors cannot acquire eBay due to antitrust
“The strategics can't really do it because I don't think that they would be able to clear antitrust. So any of the large competitors wouldn't be able to acquire it.”
Cohen: GameStop cut SG&A by 47% and $800M
“And if you look at SG&A, we've pulled out, we've dropped SG&A by 47%, eight hundred million dollars, by making marketing more efficient, almost turning off marketing.”
Cohen: Twitter's Smaller Engineering Teams Are Innovating Faster
“And so like you look at the usability of the platform and the teams, the engineering teams are much smaller and they're innovating a lot faster.”
Cohen: eBay's Business Model Future Is More Certain Than Most Tech Businesses
“You know, I think that eBay is the kind of business where the future of the business model is more certain than most tech businesses, and that's why it's done so well. And, you know, there's been such a lack of innovation, yet it hasn't been able to be disrupt…”
Cohen's compensation requires doubling GameStop's market cap to start vesting.
“My current compensation plan is tied to really lofty metrics, and it's based on the first tranche I've got to double market cap, as an example, just to hit the first tranche, and the 10 exit in order for it to fully invest.”
Cohen: Majority of personal net worth will be tied to eBay deal
“Well I haven't done the math, but if things go correctly, then it better be the majority. Otherwise I'm wasting my time.”
Cohen: eBay Sells Digital Goods but Handles Delivery and Fraud Poorly
“In terms of the digital marketplace, and they are already doing it to a certain extent. I mean, like, all kinds of Roblox digital items are bought and sold, but and I've actually bought them for my kids, and there's so much fraud on the platform. Like, we're b…”
Ryan Cohen: GameStop's Legacy Board and Management Had Perverse Incentives
“A board of directors that had perverse incentives, a management team that had perverse incentives.”
Ryan Cohen: Mainstream media should focus on business results over commentary
“The mainstream media thinks they know I'm running the business and they seem to have greater visibility into the business than I do. So everyone has an opinion as opposed to actually just focusing on the results. And in general, the news should just focus on t…”
GameStop cut corporate headcount from over 1,400 to roughly 400
“In twenty-twenty-one, there were 14, over 1400 people in corporate. Wow. Today, there's, like, 400 people.”
Cohen: expanding corporate teams creates unsustainable cost structures once growth halts
“People build teams, they hire people, ultimately what that means is they delegate their work to someone else, you end up taking on this crazy cost structure, and it works when the business is growing, but it doesn't work well once you the business stops growin…”
Cohen: PE and VC are incentivized to deploy capital for fees
“That's a different calculus than the world of private equity, or venture capital, or any money managers, where They're incentivized to deploy capital because they get management fees.”
Cohen: GameStop will only invest cash where downside is strictly limited
“A fancy way of saying is that it's risk adjusted, and I don't want to lose money, and I want a situation where there's a good chance of making money and a really low chance of losing money, so it needs to be a pitch that is pretty much down the middle.”
Cohen: GameStop's ability to compete in digital gaming is limited
“So, our ability to play in the digital world is limited.”
Cohen: GameStop is pursuing no moonshots, focusing on real returns
“So, there's no moonshots that are being done. Like, we're focused on real returns.”
Cohen: GameStop is not investing in VR or metaverse
“We're not investing in in, in virtual reality or in, in the metaverse, unless there's a clear path to being able to deliver results for shareholders.”
Cohen: GameStop favors biannual over quarterly reporting if it cuts costs
“I like reducing costs, so if it costs us less money than to report biannually, then by all means.”
Cohen: AI will benefit only industry investors, leaving many behind
“It's definitely gonna benefit the few that are invested in the industry, but there's gonna be a lot of people that are not gonna benefit from artificial intelligence, so.”
Ryan Cohen: AI industry figures have perverse incentives to over-promote AI
“Everyone has perverse incentives, so someone who's in the AI industry is going to tell us how AI is the best thing since sliced bread”
Ryan Cohen: Four-year US political cycles lack long-term incentives for AI stewardship
“It's governments and it's ones who are, who have a long tenure. You look at America, You know, the presidential cycle is four years. So, I don't know if that's necessarily long-term incentives.”
Cohen: Social media is one of humanity's worst developments
“Social media. Is one of the worst things to happen to humanity.”
Ryan Cohen: eBay live commerce strategy relies on creator partnerships and UI
“Yeah, it would be partnering with creators. I mean, they've got the platform, We would improve the platform so it looks better and more consistent with the kind of UI that you have at competitors, but there's the user base. And so it's not something you have t…”
Cohen: Authenticating eBay Collectibles at GameStop Stores Would Cost Zero Capex
“Well, that would, so yes, and it would basically take zero dollars in capex in order to something like that, and it's a good idea.”
Cohen: Live commerce and luxury collectibles offer massive revenue runway for eBay
“But I mean, in terms of doing that well, accelerating revenue growth you know, I think that that is, that's big. And so going much deeper into collectibles and luxury trading cards, there's a lot of runway there.”
Cohen: GameStop is holding cash to deploy during sudden market downturns
“They can go from green to red, and they don't flash yellow. So when that happens, we'll be in a position.”
Cohen: Collectibles will likely account for close to a third of GameStop sales
“We've gone from, like, 10% of our sales to over, close to a third, probably, for the full year is gonna come from collectibles”
Cohen: GameStop adopts a capex-light approach to digital gaming
“There's a lot of money that's being spent, and we've taken a capex light approach, like a pretty risk light approach to the digital world.”
Cohen: High audit fees hurt Chewy and GameStop
“So it costs a lot of money to be a public company. We spend a lot of money on audit fees. So that hurt me at Chewy, that hurts me at GameStop. They charge us a lot of money.”
Cohen: Vertical category focus beats broad tech giants without first-mover advantage
“You don't necessarily have to be first to the game in order to be successful. Amazon was first to the game, but we focused on the category, and we were successful, and so it's kind of what's interesting in technology in general, is like, you have these technol…”
Cohen: Physical Retailers Must Run Lean and Hold Less Inventory
“Within physical retail, what I've learned is, like, you want to, you have to run lean, and you're better off having less inventory than more inventory.”
Cohen: GameStop ignores high margins unless scalable to billions in value
“Like, if we can make 80% margins but the upside is limited and it's not gonna move the needle, then I don't care. If it's able to translate into billions of dollars of shareholder value and it's scalable, then we're talking.”