Santa Barbara County News and Events

GameStop hace una audaz oferta de US$ 56.000 millones por eBay, con la esperanza de rivalizar con Amazon

Kraig Pakulski 0 28 Article rating: No rating

Por Hanna Ziady, CNN

GameStop ha ofrecido comprar al gigante del comercio electrónico eBay por US$ 55.500 millones, una unión que el jefe del minorista de videojuegos cree que podría producir un “competidor legítimo” de Amazon.

La oferta llega en medio de una especie de resurgimiento de eBay, que ha impulsado su reinvención frente al aumento de la competencia de empresas como Walmart, Amazon, Shein y Facebook Marketplace.

GameStop —que se convirtió en un nombre conocido durante la fiebre de las acciones meme de 2021— ha ofrecido US$ 125 por acción por eBay, la mitad en efectivo y la mitad en acciones, anunció la empresa el domingo. Eso representa una prima del 46 % sobre el precio de cierre de la acción de eBay el 4 de febrero, el día en que GameStop comenzó a construir una participación del 5 % en la empresa.

Es una oferta audaz, dirigida a un negocio casi cuatro veces más grande que el suyo.
Al viernes, GameStop valía US$ 11.900 millones, mientras que eBay estaba valorada en US$ 46.200 millones, según datos de FactSet. Las acciones de eBay subían 9 % en las operaciones previas a la apertura del mercado, mientras que las de GameStop apuntaban a una apertura marcadamente más débil tras ganar 6,3 % el viernes.

En una carta al presidente de eBay, el director ejecutivo de GameStop, Ryan Cohen, dijo que la empresa recortaría costos en eBay y la haría más rentable. También ve beneficios en combinar las tiendas físicas de GameStop con la presencia en línea de eBay. “Las ~1.600 ubicaciones de GameStop en EE.UU. le dan a eBay una red nacional para autenticación, recepción, cumplimiento y comercio en vivo”, señaló.

“Podría ser un competidor legítimo de Amazon”, dijo Cohen sobre eBay en una entrevista con el Wall Street Journal. Indicó que creía que eBay debería hacer más en torno al comercio en vivo, donde las marcas venden directamente a los compradores a través de transmisiones de video en tiempo real, informó el Journal.

En su carta, Cohen dijo que se desempeñaría como el director ejecutivo de la empresa combinada. GameStop planea financiar la compra mediante efectivo y deuda, lo que incluye un compromiso de TD Securities por hasta US$ 20.000 millones.

Lanzada en 1995, eBay sigue estando entre los principales sitios de comercio electrónico minorista de EE.UU., pero ha perdido cuota de mercado a medida que el campo se ha ampliado, según Emarketer, una empresa de investigación de mercado.

La empresa recibió un impulso de la pandemia de covid-19 y ha intentado aprovechar ese impulso invirtiendo en inteligencia artificial, una decisión que le ha granjeado el favor de los accionistas. El precio de la acción de eBay ha subido alrededor de 52 % en el último año, y el título ha ganado 188 % desde el inicio de 2020.

En febrero, la empresa acordó comprar la plataforma británica de reventa de ropa en línea Depop a Etsy por US$ 1.200 millones. Los reguladores de competencia del Reino Unido aún no han aprobado el acuerdo.

La semana pasada, eBay informó un aumento del 19 % en los ingresos del primer trimestre. Aseguró que su volumen bruto de mercancías, o el valor total de todas las transacciones entre usuarios, saltó 18 % hasta US$ 22.200 millones.

GameStop saltó a la fama hace cinco años durante la fiebre de las acciones meme, cuando un ejército de inversores minoristas se volcó a la acción, disparando su valor, en un intento

Supreme Court justices spar over Louisiana’s effort to speed up elimination of majority-Black congressional district

Kraig Pakulski 0 30 Article rating: No rating
The US Supreme Court is seen on April 7.

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for Louisiana to redraw a hotly contested congressional map that the court ruled days earlier was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, a highly technical decision that sparked a bitter back-and-forth between three conservatives and a member of the court’s liberal wing.

The brief order dealt with a question about when the Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act took effect in Louisiana. The state is quickly gearing up to redraw its maps ahead of this year’s midterm elections and suspended its US House primaries following the high court’s ruling Wednesday.

More notable than the decision itself, which was widely expected, was the tension it exposed in brief writings by Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal.

Writing in dissent, Jackson said the post-decision “developments have a strong political undercurrent.” And she suggested that the court should have stayed on the sidelines “to avoid the appearance of partiality.”

Alito snapped back at Jackson’s dissent, describing her points as “trivial at best” and “baseless and insulting.”

“The dissent goes on to claim that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power,” Alito wrote in a brief concurrence joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. “That is a ground­less and utterly irresponsible charge.”

In a flurry of briefing following last week’s decision, the state and two groups of voters who challenged various iterations of the map squared off over how quickly that decision would be finalized and sent back to a lower court. That normally unnoticed process usually takes about a month to give the losing side time to seek a rehearing — an avenue that is technically available but fruitless in virtually all cases.

Hours after a 6-3 majority struck down Louisiana’s map, a group of White voters who initially challenged it filed an emergency appeal asking the court to speed up that process to give the state as much time as needed to redraw. A group of Black voters who defended the map opposed that proposal on Thursday, urging the court instead to hold off on finalizing its decision until the general election in November — a long-shot request.

In the middle of that back-and-forth, Louisiana itself filed a brief asserting that it did not matter how the Supreme Court handled the technical question of its “judgment” because state lawmakers were prepared to plow ahead with redrawing its districts. That new map, whenever it is finished, will almost certainly mean the state will have one less Black and Democratic member of Congress than it does currently.

The court’s opinion on Wednesday was clear, but it was silent about the next steps Louisiana should take as it stared down a May 16 primary election. Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, announced last week that the state was suspending the primary for House races so that it has time to redraw its maps.

The question of whether the Supreme Court had finalized its decision last week has also come up in separate litigation over Landry’s effort to push back election dates for House seats this year.

A lower federal court had found the state’s map unconstitutional in 2024. In May of that ye

Falcon 9 launch of Starlink satellites scheduled from Vandenerg Space Force Base late Tuesday

Kraig Pakulski 0 33 Article rating: No rating

VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. (KEYT) – A Falcon 9 launch of Starlink satellites destined for low-Earth orbit is scheduled from Space Launch Complex 4 East Tuesday evening.

The designated launch window is between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. Pacific Time.

A live webcast of the launch will begin about five minutes before liftoff. You can tune in to watch here or on SpaceX's X/Twitter account.

Following first-stage separation, the Falcon 9 assigned to this mission will return to Earth to land on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship awaiting in the Pacific Ocean.

A depiction of that launch sequence is shown in the image below.

There is the potential for one or more sonic booms associated with the launch to be heard across the local region, but how far the sound travels will depend on weather and other conditions at the time.

This will be the 24th flight for the booster assigned to this mission which previously launched the following missions:  Crew-7CRS-29PACETransporter-10EarthCARENROL-186Transporter-13TRACERSNROL-48COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM3, and 13 prior Starlink launches.

The post Falcon 9 launch of Starlink satellites scheduled from Vandenerg Space Force Base late Tuesday appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

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