EBay’s enterprise unit commonly used by large retailers to run their online stores is up for sale for around $900 million. According to a report by a wall street journal a consortium under the leadership of a private-equity firm Permira, is among the buyers to whom the bid has been presented to.
The sale announcement comes a day before the expected completion of eBay’s spinoff of online payments company PayPal. It also happens to be the same day that the e-commerce company is doing its second-quarter earnings report.
The enterprise unit was purchased in 2011 for a total cost of $2.4billion. By then its brand name was GSI Commerce. However, it may be sold for a lesser price than it was initially bought leading to a loss of a billion dollars if Permira takes up the offer.
Another potential buyer Thomas H. Lee Partners LP has made a $1 billion offer for the same which is slightly above the $900 million price tag. Clearly the competition is pretty high with others buyers like Amazon lagging behind but still trying their luck.
EBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) made its first announcement of its willingness to unload the enterprise unit in January. This was as a result of piled pressure from Carl Icahn, who is an activist shareholder. Since then it has been at the forefront of streamlining its business.
Among the many services offered by eBay include e-commerce, order management and operations. Also, there is the marketing system that is used to reinforce its online auction business. The latest sell –off will be defined as the second major move to slender give more emphasis to its fundamental consumer online auction business. As it is now, it is just a matter of time before the deal is closed
Meanwhile, the Company made redundant 7% of its employees earlier in the year that represented close to 2,400 jobs. Also sometime last month, EBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) made a sale of 28.4% stake in Craigslist back to the classified site.
