EBAY INC. $29 (Nasdaq symbol EBAY; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.2 billion; Market cap: $34.8 billion; Priceto- sales ratio: 1.9; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.ebay.com) launched its online auction site in September 1995 and now has 157 million users worldwide. Sellers pay fees to list and sell their goods through eBay’s websites.
In addition to used goods, the company continues to sell more merchandise from retailers, which is helping it compete with Amazon.com. Right now, over 60% of eBay’s total transactions are sales of new items at fixed prices.
The company also operates several other popular websites, including StubHub (ticket sales for live events), Shopping. com (comparison shopping) and Rent.com (apartment and house rentals). These services are in addition to its local websites, which sell classified ads in over 1,000 cities.
eBay recently finished setting up its PayPal online-payment division as a separate firm (see right).
Now it plans to sell its Enterprise division, which helps companies process online orders, to a group of private investors for $925 million. eBay paid $2.4 billion for this business in June 2011, but it failed to live up to expectations. The company expects to close the deal by the end of 2015. Without the Enterprise division but including Pay- Pal, eBay earned $931 million in the three months ended June 30, 2015, up 5.4% from $883 million a year earlier. Earnings per share rose 8.6%, to $0.76 from $0.70, on fewer shares outstanding. Revenue gained 6.7%, to $4.4 billion from $4.1 billion. PayPal’s revenue (52% of the total) rose 16.1%, offsetting a 2.7% sales decline at the auction websites (48%).
As a separate firm, eBay expects to earn $1.72 to $1.77 a share in 2015, and the stock trades at a moderate 16.6 times the midpoint of that range. The company has also added $1 billion to its share repurchase plan; it can now buy back up to $3 billion worth of its stock. There are no time limits to these purchases.
eBay is still a hold.