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    EBay to cut 2,400 jobs, spin off or sell enterprise unit

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments4730 Views
    This Jan. 14, 2015 photo shows an exterior view of eBay headquarters in San Jose, Calif. EBay reports quarterly financial results on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

    By Mae Anderson, Technology Writer

    NEW YORK (AP) --

    EBay plans to cut 2,400 jobs, or 7 percent of its staff, in the first quarter to simplify its structure and boost profit ahead of a planned separation of its business.

    The job cuts will fall across its marketplaces, PayPal and enterprise businesses.

    They come as the e-commerce company reported Wednesday that its fourth-quarter net income rose 10 percent on continued strength of its PayPal payments business, which it expects to spin off in the second half of the year.

    Other developments Wednesday: EBay said it may also spin off or sell its enterprise unit, which develops online shopping sites for brick-and-mortar retailers, and agreed to add an executive from activist investor Carl Icahn's firm to its board.

    The string of changes comes after a tough 2014. A cyberattack compromised eBay users' passwords, email addresses and phone numbers, although no financial information was stolen. And a change by Google also made it harder for eBay results to come up during Web searches.

    "We have some challenges," said CEO John Donahoe in a call with investors. "But overall, our focus and operating discipline delivered solid company performance in a year that quite frankly we're glad to see come to an end."

    Still, the company said it faces a difficult first half of 2015 as well, as it continues to deal with the search engine changes and a stronger dollar. But Donohoe said results would start improving in the second half of the year.

    The San Jose, California-based eBay has been under pressure to improve profitability from Icahn, one of its largest investors with a 3.7-percent stake in the company. He has pushed eBay to sell off PayPal, its best-performing unit.

    PayPal services $1 of every $6 dollars spent online. It collects fees from over 162 million users who use the online service to send money to other users and pay for goods and services in more than 200 markets.

    Now eBay is adding executive from Icahn's investment firm, Jonathan Christodoro, to its board, along with Wall Street executives Frank Yeary and Perry Traquina. That brings eBay's board to 15, including 13 independent directors.

    For the October-to-December quarter, net income came to $936 million, or 75 cents per share, from $850 million, or 65 cents per share in same quarter the year before.

    Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 90 cents per share, beating the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research of 89 cents per share.

    Revenue rose 9 percent, to $4.92 billion from $4.53 billion. Analysts expected $4.93 billion, according to Zacks.

    For PayPal, total payment volume grew 24 percent in the fourth quarter and revenue rose to $2.2 billion, about 45 percent of total revenue for the quarter.

    For the current quarter ending in March, eBay expects its per-share earnings to range from 68 cents to 71 cents and revenue of $4.35 billion to $4.45 billion.

    For the year, eBay expects earnings of $3.05 to $3.15 per share, with revenue ranging from $18.6 billion to $19.1 billion.

    Shares rose 33 cents to $53.71 in aftermarket trading. The stock has lost 1.4 percent over the past 12 months.

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    Tags:eBay



    OpenAI files confidential SEC paperwork for IPO, opening the door to a Wall Street debut

    Tuesday, June 9, 2026
    Sam Altman arrives at the U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, file)

    ChatGPT maker OpenAI filed preliminary paperwork that would open the door to it becoming a publicly traded company, the third in a powerhouse trio of artificial intelligence companies racing to Wall Street debuts.

    The San Francisco-based company said Monday it has filed confidential paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

    "We expect it to leak so we're just announcing it," the company said in a statement. "We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it's a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best."

    OpenAI's move follows its rival Anthropic's June 1 disclosure that it is also moving toward an initial public offering of shares. Both are now following Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX, which has started an IPO roadshow pitching itself as an AI-focused space company.

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman first publicly floated the possibility of an IPO last fall, describing it as the "most likely path" for the company given its size and the need for vast amounts of capital to advance its technology.

    OpenAI began in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI for the common good and is now a company valued at $852 billion.

    The filing comes at a "precarious moment" for OpenAI as it appears to be losing ChatGPT's strong early leads with consumers and businesses to Google and Anthropic, said Emarketer analyst Nate Elliott.

    "But OpenAI doesn't have a lot of other places to look for the enormous capital required to support its costs," Elliott said.

    Paving the way for going public was OpenAI's decision last year to reorganize its business structure and... Read More

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