Can GameStop buy eBay?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Unhedged – “Can GameStop buy eBay?”

Date: May 12, 2026
Hosts: Rob Armstrong (Financial Times), John Foley (FT Lex Column)

Main Theme

This episode delves into the shocking news that GameStop—once a brick-and-mortar video game retailer and now a meme-stock-fueled cash pile—has made an unsolicited bid to acquire eBay, a much larger and thriving e-commerce company. Hosts Rob Armstrong and John Foley break down whether this David-vs-Goliath deal could or should happen, how it would work financially, and what it says about corporate governance, meme stocks, and modern finance.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Deal: GameStop’s Bid for eBay

• Premise: GameStop ($11B) is seeking to acquire eBay ($46B) via a mix of cash and stock.
• GameStop’s Position: No longer just a shrink video game retailer; now holds $9.5B in cash largely thanks to convertible bonds fueled by meme stock mania.
• eBay’s Status: Booming business, up ~50% in share price over the past year; robust growth in collectibles and trading cards.

“The idea that GameStop... could buy eBay, which is like a $46 billion company. And eBay, a company that's doing really well... it's about 50% up in a year.”
—John Foley [02:00]

2. Hostile Takeover and Ryan Cohen’s Tactics

• Ryan Cohen: CEO of GameStop, public face of meme stock investors, known for his iconoclastic disregard for traditional governance.
• Tactics: Made public, hostile, and somewhat “trolling” offer. Willing to go hostile if eBay doesn’t engage.

“He’s kind of trolling eBay at the same time as trying to buy it. He’s just gone out with it in public... ‘If you’re not interested, eBay board, I’ll do it anyway by going hostile.’”
—John Foley [02:56]

3. Industrial Logic: Why Would This Combination Make Sense?

• Synergies: Both moving into collectibles and trading cards; idea is to merge GameStop’s physical footprint with eBay’s online strengths and grow live streaming sales.
• Cohen’s Argument: Claims expertise in cost-cutting and retail, sees potential to accelerate eBay’s growth.

“There is a fig leaf of industrial logic to this … GameStop as well as selling video games... is also doing a lot of collectibles like trading cards. eBay is also doing a lot more of that.”
—John Foley [04:21]

4. Financing the Deal: Pragmatics and Pitfalls

• Sources of Funds: GameStop has cash, aims to raise more (up to $28B) via Canadian TD Bank, and plans to issue vast quantities of new GameStop shares.
• Dilution and Debt: eBay shareholders would receive both cash (approx. $62.50 per share) and a controlling stake (~70%) in the newly combined company—but also inherit high debt (~5x EBITDA) and potential dilution.
• Risks: Excessive leverage, unstable equity structure due to share printing, and questionable management.

“What he’s really doing, and what’s kind of interesting… is saying to eBay: we’ll take your company and put it in my wrapping paper... but eBay shareholders will still own about 70% of the new company.”
—John Foley [06:31]

• eBay’s Immediate Response: Rejected the offer as of that morning.

5. Corporate Governance: Weak Boards and the ‘Post-Governance World’

• Cohen’s Stance: Disregard for strong, independent boards; likely to continue this approach in the combined entity.
• Host Concerns: Lack of a robust board leaves companies effectively “ownerless,” increasing risk for shareholders.

“He has absolute contempt for the concept of corporate boards... if I were eBay ... it’s easy to say: ‘Why would we subject shareholders to ... a weak board structure?’”
—John Foley [08:24]
“I just want to flag the idea of what is essentially an ownerless company... It’s like nobody owns the company except the people running it.” —Rob Armstrong [10:04]

6. Leveraged Buyouts and eBay’s Defensive Options

• GameStop Plan: Leverage eBay’s business to fund acquisition—an unattractive proposition to eBay shareholders.
• eBay’s Defensive Playbook: Could itself take on debt to pay out a special dividend or buy back shares, neutralizing GameStop’s main appeal.

“You’re leveraging our balance sheet to pay us a dividend. We can do that ourselves, and they can. So eBay’s defense would likely be to take on some debt.”
—John Foley [10:41]

7. Pac-Man Defense and M&A Lessons

• Pac-Man Defense: When a takeover target turns around and bids to acquire the would-be acquirer, likened to the video game.
• Precedents: Few real-life examples (e.g., Men’s Wearhouse/Joseph A. Banks).
• Humorous Interlude: Pac-Man metaphor discussed in the context of GameStop’s video game roots.

“Let’s pause for a moment on this outstanding metaphor... it’s very appropriate by the way. We’re using this image for a video game company.”
—Rob Armstrong [14:31] “Hard to do and stupid is no obstacle, that is for sure.”
—Rob Armstrong [15:28]

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8. Market Tangent: Cerebras vs Nvidia

• Cerebras: Maker of AI chips; after failed IPO, now surging with a $50B valuation and OpenAI as a client.
• Implications: Nvidia’s margins (75% gross) and market dominance attracting new competitors (Google, Amazon, Cerebras).
• Takeaway: Nvidia’s moat may shrink over time, but incumbency is powerful; software compatibility and ecosystem inertia matter.

“We should not be surprised by that [competition] ... for every dollar of chips [Nvidia] sells, it keeps 75 cents... that’s really high. That’s like luxury goods on steroids.”
—John Foley [17:42]

• Incumbency Examples: ARM and ASML’s continued dominance referenced.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Rob on Meme Stock Era:
  “If the market, for reasons unknown, decides to massively overvalue your shares, for goodness sake, sell the market more of the shares.” [03:59]

• Foley on Corporate Boards:
  “I think we are living in a post-governance world to some degree where people don’t really care about that stuff anymore... but the value of a board, a strong board, is that you, the shareholder, don’t have to think about it...” [09:17]

• Armstrong on American Finance:
  “Hard to do and stupid is no obstacle, that is for sure.” [15:28]

• Metaphorical Highlight:
  “Pac-Man defense... very appropriate... we’re using this image for a video game company.” [14:31]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• GameStop’s bid revealed and “trolling” angle: [02:56]
• Financing breakdown—how GameStop plans to buy eBay: [05:25–07:09]
• Risks for eBay shareholders (debt, board, leadership): [07:46–09:17]
• Pac-Man Defense and M&A strategies: [13:39–15:28]
• Nvidia, Cerebras, and the AI chip market: [16:09–19:38]

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Long and Short Segment

[20:30]

• John Foley: Short Hyrox
  • New competitive exercise race, trending fad—he’s shorting it for being “horrible” (too hard) and fad-prone.
• Rob Armstrong: Long Inflation
  • Predicts inflation will remain a key economic challenge in the coming year, driven by a range of factors.

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Overall Tone and Conclusion

The hosts take a wry, skeptical look at the financial spectacle of the week, blending technical analysis with dry wit, memorable metaphors, and pointed warnings about governance, leverage, and market excess. Underneath the entertaining banter, they deliver a sobering reminder of the risks inherent when meme-stock era enthusiasm collides with traditional corporate structures.

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For Listeners in a Hurry

This episode presents a skeptical but thorough breakdown of GameStop’s audacious (and possibly reckless) bid to acquire eBay, highlighting the financial gymnastics involved, the key risks for both sets of shareholders, and what it says about the state of corporate governance today. The show ends with an engaging tangent into AI chip rivalries and their enduring moats.

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Most Memorable Quote:
“Hard to do and stupid is no obstacle, that is for sure.” – Rob Armstrong [15:28]

Transcript

[A]

From globalization to innovation sustainability to market volatility, there's always more than one side to a story. Explore different perspectives on today's most important business and economic issues with the Flipside podcast from Barclays Investment Bank. Hear two research analysts in a lively debate and get insights from every angle. To further inform your view, listen to the Flipside on your favorite platform,

[B]

GameStop, the meme stock that listeners will remember was destined to go to the moon, has decided to stay on Earth instead, where it will attempt to buy a much larger company, ebay. Today on the show, can the Mouse Eat the Lion? This is Unhedged, the Markets and Finance podcast from the Financial Times and Pushkin. I am Rob Armstrong, coming to you from an unseasonably chilly New York City. And joining me in the studio is the head of the FT's Lex column, John Foley. Hi, John.

[C]

I'm here to announce that Lex is performing a hostile takeover of Unhedged.

[B]

Oh man. I'm calling my.

[C]

I don't think I want that.

[B]

My initial temptation on hearing that GameStop, which we last heard of when it was chased to unrealistic highs by adrenaline addled retail investors, is trying to buy mighty eBay, was to dismiss it as a gag that would soon go away. But you've written that maybe this is something that deserves to be taken seriously. Can, can you walk us through that?

[C]

Well, for full disclosure, I always like it when people in finance try and do silly things.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Because it's interesting and I think creativity should be praised. So I was thinking about not, not dismissing this out of hand when it happened. But it is, on the face of it, completely wild. The idea that GameStop, which is about an $11 billion company, could buy eBay, which is like a $46 billion company.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And ebay, a company that's doing really well. I mean, I haven't.

[B]

EBay's doing well.

[C]

Yeah. I will admit. Also, second piece of full disclosure is that I haven't actually used ebay in about 15 years, but the share price has been rocketing. It's about 50% in a year.

[B]

I have a disclosure to make too, which is that this pair of shoes, which I am showing to John right now from ebay, are from ebay. These are a pair of wingtips that are from back when Alden and Brooks Brothers made shoes together. This is a prized item. They're a kind of burgundy color. I got a great price.

[C]

I wonder who owned them before, though. Do you not find yourself every day wondering who walked in those shoes?

[B]

They're like a dead guy's shoes and his ghost.

[C]

Did they die in the shoes?

[B]

They were stolen off a corpse after a shootout.

[C]

So, right. GameStop wants to buy eBay. It's an unsolicited offer. The CEO of GameStop is this guy called Ryan Cohen who is a sort of like an icon in the meme stock world. But he's very, very hostile towards traditional corporate governance and big, you know, America Inc. Yeah. So he's launched this. There's something very. He's kind of trolling ebay at the same time as trying to buy it. He's just gone, gone out with it in public. Said, here's what I want. If you don't, if you're not interested, ebay bored. I'm going to try and do it anyway by going hostile. It's fascinating.

[B]

So is it a massive PR stunt or do you think he means it?

[C]

Well, GameStop is so GameStop was once a chain of video game stores and it still is kind of, but it's a much shrunken version of that. What it really is now is a pile of cash. So Cohen has been using the meme stockiness of it to issue convertible bonds and raise cash. So he now has about nine and a half billion dollars of cash. And the idea is that at some point he would invest it in something that would make lots of money.

[B]

And by the way, I've often said this about the meme stocks, like if the market, for reasons unknown, decides to massively overvalue your shares, for goodness sake, sell the market more of the shares.

[C]

Yeah, which they did. Right. That's exactly what it is.

[B]

That is the rational thing to do. That is the best thing you can do for shareholders.

[C]

So he has this cash, right. And he, and the idea is he'll spend it on something and he's decided that ebay is the thing. And there is a, there is a fig leaf of industrial logic to this because of ebay. So. So GameStop as well as selling video games and secondhand video games, is also doing a lot of collectibles like trading cards and things like that. Ebay is also doing a lot more of that. One of the fastest growing parts of ebay is now collectibles and also trading cards. So his theory is that if you put them together, you turn his stores into kind of ebay real world outlets and you focus on more live streaming sales and you also sell more kind of expensive trinkets. So think like really expensive luxury fountain pre owned fountain pens. He thinks this is going to make eBay. EBay grow even faster. And he also thinks that he's really good at retail, cutting costs, so he's going to cut ebay's costs. Whether any of that is true is. Is the big question that is going to have to be answered later.

[B]

But before we get to management competence, let's just talk about the hard finances.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

What do eBay shareholders own now? And if they accept this deal, what will they own after the deal is done?

[C]

That's. And that's the way that we're trying to encourage people to think about this, because there's a lot of. It's very confusing. Often when a small company buys a big company and, and people start saying, well, how can it afford this? Where will it get the money from? So what actually is happening here is that GameStop has some cash and it's borrowing some cash from a Canadian bank called td. There's a very like, Canada, Canada first angle to this because Cohen is Canadian, TD bank is Canadian.

[B]

So we can blame Canada if it all goes terribly wrong.

[C]

So they're raising some cash that way. $28 billion. The cash isn't like in the bag, but TD reckons that it could pull that together and then the rest of it is going to be funded by just printing new GameStop shares. Like a billion new games GameStop shares.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So what you're doing is you're giving ebay and you can do this ad infinitum. Right. GameStop can just print shares, print shares, print shares. The risk that it has when it does this is that it's like the bank of Zimbabwe printing currency.

[B]

And if you're an eBay shareholder, the risk is that you print shares. Print shares, print shares. And this leads to an unsustainable financial structure for the company.

[C]

Yeah. Along with lots of debts.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

As well. So what he's really doing, and what's kind of interesting about this is what he's saying to ebay is we will take your company and put it in my wrapping paper. So this will be GameStop, but you eBay, you shareholders will still own, by my reckoning, about 70% of the new company. But I, Ryan Cohen, will be in charge. I'll be running it, it'll be my board, it'll be called GameStop. Presumably it'll have a different stock ticker, but eBay shareholders will still have. They'll have a bunch of cash they'll take away and they'll also have collectively probably majority of the new enlarged company.

[B]

How much cash do they each take away?

[C]

So it's $28 billion in total. And so the offer, the headline offer is half cash, half shares. It's $125 per share, which is half cash, half shares. That is actually not quite right because the shares go up and down in value, obviously.

[B]

So I take $56 or something in cash or.

[C]

Yeah, you get like 62 and a half dollars in cash.

[B]

62 and a half. That's a terrible math.

[C]

Terrible, awful.

[B]

62 and a half dollars in cash. I still own ebay.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

Plus I own GameStop now.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And I have how much more debt on that? How much more loans for debt?

[C]

So this is why. This is why an ebay shareholder would want to think very carefully about this and may not like what they see because this company would have a lot of debt. The debt would be about. Net debt would be about five times ebitda, which in real speak means a lot of debt. And it would have Ryan Cohen in charge of it. And you either like him or you don't. They'd probably have to do something like GameStop's board, which is like super flimsy in my opinion. It's not a strong board, it's not an independent board very much.

[B]

And is Cohen's aspiration to have an equally flimsy board at the combined company?

[C]

Well, he has absolute contempt for the concept of corporate boards, so he may need some persuading to do that. But I think if I, if I were ebay, and ebay, by the way, has rejected this offer this morning, as I think everyone thought it would. Yes, but if you tick through the things that they will want to object over, one of them will be the, the board. So, you know, they'll. It's easy for ebay to say, why would we subject shareholders to this? Very imperfect is a bit of an understatement. But like a weak board structure.

[B]

Yeah, I like strong board structures because investors directly exert so little control influence of companies at this point of history, we're kind of left with boards to be muscular and often they stink too. But just giving up on having a strong board in a modern publicly traded company just seems bonkers to me.

[C]

I agree with you. I think we are. I do think we're living in a post governance world to some degree where people don't really care about that stuff anymore. But I think value of a board, a strong board, is that you, the shareholder, don't have to think about it, you don't have to worry about governance. It's just someone is taking care of Stuff and you know, it's a board like all the other companies boards. It's kind of standardized, a bit like accounting rules so that you can focus on what does the company do and is it doing a good job. But like GameStop is not that like the lead independent director who's I guess the chief, what you, what British people might think of as either the chairman or the senior independent director used to work for Ryan Cohen for many years at his previous company, which I would argue is not the strongest kind of independence. So I think that's going to be a one of the many problems. I guess what I'm saying is the problem is not that GameStop is small, the problem is all the other stuff.

[B]

Yes, which is a fair point. And I just want to flag the idea of what is essentially an ownerless company, which is what you have when you don't have an activist, you don't have activist investors, you don't have a strong board. It's like nobody owns the company except the people running.

[C]

Yeah, that's true.

[B]

I think this is a bad idea. What do you think about leveraging this, these combined businesses up? Are these good businesses for carrying leverage and presumably eventually paying it down?

[C]

Well, ebay at the moment has almost no debt. It has a little bit, which is

[B]

what got it into this problem in the first place. They'd been sensible. Well, so took on a little debt

[C]

and I'm sure they never would have showed up. I'm sure they absolutely will now because. Because if I were an ebay shareholder, so I can devil's advocate this, I can see myself on sides. But if I'm on the ebay side, I say, well, you're going to pay for this bid by taking out debt which is actually secured against our business. Like you're leveraging our balance sheet to pay us a dividend. We can do that ourselves and they can. So eBay's defense would likely be to take on some debt, take on some

[B]

debt and either pay a special dividend or buy back some shares.

[C]

Exactly. And maybe not five times net debt to ebitda, which is a lot of debt. So the question for GameStop would be, can you bring down that debt very quickly? And of course, because the guy who runs this company has boundless self belief, he thinks that he can cut costs, grow the company, pay down the debt in no time.

[B]

You and I have both listened to many promises in our career as financial journalists about cost cutting campaigns and especially after mergers. They do disappoint probably a bit more than they Appear in my experience, I

[C]

can think of examples of companies that have cut costs very effectively, and especially in industries like consumer goods, it's actually not that hard to cut costs. And often you end up with cutting more costs than you thought you would. Banks also, that's the case. But in this situation, but obviously that doesn't always happen. And you can still get a company that ends up being worth less because it's just harder to run. But I think in this case, there isn't obviously much overlap. This is this guy, Ryan Cohen, saying, I'd be better at running this business than ebay. I will cut costs. Because they're just not very good at managing the business efficiently. Which is why the other way to think about this is that this is an attempt by Ryan Cohen to insert himself as the CEO of eBay through a sort of convoluted version of a takeover. So ebay shareholders are basically going to be asking themselves, do we want a different CEO, and do we want that CEO to be this guy who runs GameStop?

[B]

And what is your answer?

[C]

Well, he has to. So right now they've said no. And I can see why. If his challenge is now to prove or convince them that he has a plan and would be really good at creating value and cutting costs, and if he is, then actually the maths of the deal that look pretty could look pretty good for ebay. Ebay is going to get a premium even if he doesn't manage to cut any costs. On paper, he would be paying ebay shareholders about three or four billion dollars for the privilege of becoming CEO of the company.

[B]

But that all reappears as debt in a more rational world, go like this. Ebay looks at this offer, says, hmm, this is a good idea. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to buy GameStop using our shares as currency and our balance sheet as a more solid balance sheet on which to borrow. And that might save a lot of trouble.

[C]

Totally. I mean, you'd end up with a similar result. The problem there as an ebay shareholder is that you would be paying the premium. You'd have less leverage, but you'd be put. I think that's called a pacman defense. Is it?

[B]

Yeah. Let us pause for a moment on this outstanding metaphor, John. So those of us who. Who were playing video games in the early 1980s will remember the crucial moment in the game Pac man in. In which you're this creature who goes around a maze trying to eat dots chased by ghosts. Tell me when I'm getting this wrong as you remember it. But there are these special big dots you can eat and when you eat one of those, there is a period in which you can eat the ghosts that are chasing you.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And that is the image that we're. And it's very appropriate by the way. We're using this image for a video game company.

[C]

So true.

[B]

Right. So an ebay could eat the big power dot and turn around and consume the ghost. Gamestop. Has anybody ever done this before? We quickly consulted the Internet about this. What did we find?

[C]

So, so I. And by the way, as a friend, as a journalist who's been covering M and a for like 20 odd years, I've. The Pacman defense comes up frequently as I. Oh, what if they Pac man defense.

[B]

Yeah, but it rarely happened.

[C]

I can't think of it actually happening. Like there was Porsche and Volkswagen Men's

[B]

Wearhouse and Joseph A. Banks Men's Warehouse did a Pac man on Joseph A. Banks. These are both kind of affordable menswear companies.

[C]

More examples in the US I think also the Rio Tinto and BHP billets in the minors, although it didn't happen. It was on the table. I think it was something that Rio Tinto thought about doing to bhp.

[B]

So sometimes Pac man eats the ghost.

[C]

But it's hard to do and it's stupid. Like, let's face it, like that never

[B]

stops us in American finance. Hard to do and stupid is no obstacle, that is for sure. I want to quickly pivot to get your view of another story that came out this week, which is the story of Cerebrus. Did I pronounce that correct, John?

[C]

I think so.

[B]

I didn't. I don't know which syllable to emphasize really, but that's what I'm going with, like cerebral.

[C]

But we're back on the this is

[B]

a company that makes chips for AI. Are we watching as Nvidia's monopoly on chips for AI is being broken up in real time?

[C]

That's a great question. So Nvidia, so this company Cerebras tried to go public a year ago, a year and a half ago, and it didn't really manage it. And it would have had a valuation probably of about maybe $10 billion. And now it's got a valuation of nearly $50 billion. And it's got OpenAI as a customer, which it didn't have before. And it's doing by all accounts pretty well. And part of that is because Nvidia is kind of a victim of its own success. Everyone wants Nvidia's AI chips, but it can't make enough of them. And maybe it doesn't really want to because obviously scarcity has value. But because everyone is desperate to get these chips, they're now starting to consider alternatives. So Google is making its own chips, Amazon is making its own chips, and Cerebras is increasingly a serious alternative.

[B]

Of course, there's something else of Nvidia's that everyone wants, which is not just chips, but it's profits. And I've been sitting here in this very booth for some time now saying, yeah, Nvidia is amazing and it's the most valuable company in the world and it's so profitable. But capitalism works, which means somebody is going to look at those margins and that growth and come in and try to reproduce the product or compete or get their share. What I'm getting at is if Cerebras works, should we be worried about the valuation of Nvidia, which is the largest company in the world and the cornerstone of the S&P 500, or do these things take a long time? I guess would be the answer to that.

[C]

I think we should be alert to the idea that Nvidia has competition that didn't seem to be there before. And we should not be surprised by that because as you say, Nvidia has what, 75% ish gross margin. So for every dollar of chips it sells, it keeps 75 cents after paying for like the ingredients, as it were. That's really high. That's like luxury goods on steroids. So it makes sense that other people try and come in and take some of that. And that's exactly what Google is doing, right? Google and Amazon, they want to make money while they're investing in all this AI and selling chips is quite a good way of doing it. So the thing is though, Nvidia is still the go to. Everyone understands that it works. It has its own kind of software platform that makes it easy to use. It's just that I think people are trying to get capacity where they can. And also I would imagine if you're OpenAI, you don't want to be totally dependent on Nvidia because you're thinking about your own bargaining power. And if you have alternatives, you can then go back to Nvidia and say, oh, we might use these Cerebras chips in our next.

[B]

What this brings to mind for me a little bit is arm, which is the UK chip designer that basically designed the low power chips that people use in smartphones. And for years everybody looked at their profits and said, you know, Intel's going to make a mobile chip or whoever is going to come in and get a chunk of this market. But ARM's incumbency turned out to be incredibly hard to break for the reasons you just described. Once the industry is kind of running on your Rails and your software, it's an enormous pain to switch over, even if you're paying through the nose for the product.

[C]

Totally. ASML is the other example of that in chips. It's that Dutch company that makes the machines that make the chips, and it's the only one that does. So it's kind of a monopoly and no one's coming close to getting rid of it. Nvidia doesn't have quite that kind of moat.

[B]

Unfortunately, we do not have a monopoly on listeners time. So we will be back in just a moment with Long and Short.

[A]

From globalization to innovation sustainability to market volatility, there's always more than one side to a story. Explore different perspectives on today's most important business and economic issues with the Flipside podcast from Barclays Investment Bank. Hear two research analysts in a lively debate and get insights from every angle to further inform your view. Listen to the Flip side on your favorite platform

[B]

listeners. Welcome back. This is Long and Short, that portion of the show where we go long things we like and short things we don't like. John, what do you have?

[C]

For me, I'm gonna go short Hyrox.

[B]

I don't know what that is.

[C]

So Hyrox is like a sort of sport race thing. That kind of look is a bit like CrossFit, where you have to like run around and throw things and push things. And it's become incredibly popular among type A personalities and is now trying to get into the Olympics. And there's a big race coming up in New York at the end of this month. Well, so I'm shorting it because I've been trying to do it and it's horrible. It's so hard that I'm gonna short

[B]

it but also stop doing it.

[C]

No, of course not. I'm gonna keep doing it. You are Silence the voice.

[B]

You're having a moment of conflict.

[C]

I'm also shorting it because I think that all exercise things like out to be fads.

[B]

It's true. Tough mudder, all of that stuff. Yes, I'm going to go long. Inflation, by which I mean I think it continues to be a problem we have to reckon with, and not just because of the war in Iran and not just because of tariffs. The inflation report was out this morning and I think underlying inflation is creeping up and we have not killed that dragon yet. And it's going to be a story that we're following for the next 12 months at least. Listeners, we will be back in your feed on Thursday. Tune in then. Unhedged is produced by Jake Harper and edited by Bryant Urstadt. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. We had additional help from Topher for his Cheryl Brumley is the FT's global head of Audio. Special thanks to Laura Clark, Greta Cohn and Natalie Sadler. FT Premium subscribers can get the Unhedged newsletter for free. A 30 day free trial is available to everyone else. Just go to ft.com unhedged offer I'm Rob Armstrong. Thanks for listening.