Technology

Big eBay Downgrade Tied to Risk Around Growth and Market Share

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) has been a big name at the forefront of Internet e-commerce for a while now, but it is starting to face some stiff competition and could lose some market share. The company may be in the process of splitting up, but at least one more analyst is far from positive about the e-commerce and auction giant. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray is souring on the stock due to this increased competition and risks ahead.

Piper Jaffray downgraded eBay to an Underweight rating from an already cautious Neutral rating. The price target was also lowered to $49 from $55. This downgrade was based on the belief that Apple Pay will become an increasing threat to PayPal.

This valuation could be turned on its head if the new chief executive officer, Dan Schulman, energizes the product line, which could move PayPal back to the front of payments innovation, or if Google could acquire PayPal for its 160 million user base.

Munster explained the valuation in the report:

Today, we are downgrading shares to Underweight based on a belief that over the next 1-3 years Google Wallet, Apple Pay, Facebook, Samsung and traditional banks will weigh on PayPal valuation and market share. Shares of eBay are up 12% since the beginning of February based on optimism around the PayPal spin-out.

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Piper Jaffray adjusted its full-year earnings estimates to $3.07 from $3.06 per share in 2015, and to $3.26 from $3.27 per share in 2016. Munster highlighted that these threats to PayPal are very real. Google, Apple and to a lesser extent Facebook, Samsung, Snapchat and other app-based companies, are poised to take advantage of their own user bases in a way that will detract from PayPal’s business.

So, are there any other sides of the coin to this downgrade? To balance out the call from Piper Jaffray, the independent research firm Argus actually made the nearly an exact opposite call earlier in March.

Argus said in its March 6 call that it was reiterating its Buy rating on eBay. Its 12-month target price was left at $65. The firm further said:

We are lowering our 2015 EPS estimate to $3.08 from $3.50, reflecting management’s guidance. Our estimate is close to consensus and assumes growth of 4% from 2014. We are establishing a 2016 EPS forecast of $3.26. Our estimates are subject to substantial change given the planned spinoff of PayPal in the second half of 2015. … In addition, we believe that the competitive threat to PayPal’s dominance in online payments is overstated, at least in the near term. PayPal has built a thriving business because both eBay and PayPal simply enable commerce; they do not compete against merchants. Their revenue model takes a share of transaction volume, while the model in payments processing for players like Google, Amazon, and Facebook is far from clear.

Shares of eBay were down 0.5% at $58.16 in the second half of Thursday’s trading session. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $59.67 and a 52-week trading range of $46.34 to $60.93.

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