(Bloomberg)—Less than four years after eBay Inc. split from PayPal with a promise of reinventing itself to compete in the age of Amazon, investors are circling the online marketplace and pushing for it to break apart further and sell the pieces.
Elliott Management Corp. sent a letter Tuesday to the board of eBay outlining steps it says are “urgently needed” to boost the value of the online marketplace. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that another activist investor, Starboard Value LP, has built a position of less than 4% in eBay and has been talking with the company for months, urging it to consider separating some businesses, including Classifieds.
Elliott, which owns more than 4% of eBay, proposed a five-step plan that involves reviewing eBay’s portfolio of companies, including StubHub, revitalizing the company’s marketplace, which Elliott deems poorly managed, and returning capital to shareholders.
If the recommendations outlined by the activist investor run by billionaire Paul Singer are followed, Elliot sees eBay’s shares valued at $55 to $63 a share, potentially doubling their value from Friday’s close. EBay surged the most in almost a year, gaining as much as 12%to $34.75 Tuesday.
The letters are the latest sign of pressure on CEO Devin Wenig, who took over the company following its split with PayPal in 2015 and made bold promises of returning the marketplace to prominence. But the results have been slow going and eBay continues to watch Amazon.com Inc. grow at a much faster pace and gobble up more marketshare and customers. EBay has launched marketing campaigns to expand beyond its base of mostly 50-plus-year-old men, but investors want more.
“Despite its remarkable history as one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, eBay as a public-company investment has underperformed both its peers and the market for a prolonged period of time,” Elliott wrote in the letter.
In a response, eBay said it would “carefully review and evaluate Elliott’s proposals.”
Wenig has been trying to differentiate the online marketplace, which doesn’t charge membership fees, as a destination where shoppers can find deals and discover new products.
EBay and Amazon are fierce competitors that rely on independent merchants who sell on their sites. Amazon has more customers, sales and faster growth than eBay, but some sellers prefer the eBay platform since it’s a pure marketplace, meaning eBay doesn’t compete with its own merchants for sales like Seattle-based Amazon.
EBay sued Amazon last year, claiming the online retailer infiltrated eBay’s internal email system to recruit high-value sellers.
In the letter, Elliott says eBay management should focus on “growing and strengthening Marketplace,” which Elliott says has weathered “prolonged, self-inflicted misexecution.”
Investor pressure forced eBay to split from faster growing PayPal when the company was run by CEO John Donahoe. The concerns today are much the same: eBay is losing its relevance.
EBay has boosted advertising and changed the marketplace-shopping experience in an effort to lure new customers to the site. It tries to differentiate itself from Amazon, which charges yearly or monthly dues for shipping discounts, by emphasizing that eBay has no membership fees to access deals that often include free shipping.
Last June, eBay announced a reorganization that resulted in staff cuts of almost 300 employees. Software engineers and research scientists were among those let go in California. The company had 14,100 employees globally at the end of 2017.
In the letter, Elliott said eBay needs to increase “operational efficiency,” and also recommends eBay accelerate its share repurchase plan to $5 billion this year.
EBay is No. 4 in the Internet Retailer 2018 Online Marketplaces. Amazon is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2018 Top 500.
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