Eyes on eBay over plan to split with PayPal

Two companies will go their separate ways next year following 12-year alliance

Investors will be looking ahead to eBay’s third-quarter earnings this week, which will be reported after market close on Wednesday.

Plans to separate the e-commerce giant and PayPal into independent publicly traded companies were announced last month, a move that had been demanded by activist investor Carl Icahn earlier this year.

The two companies will go their separate ways in 2015 following a 12-year alliance. Ebay acquired then privately held PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion, and expects the spinoff, which is subject to regulatory approvals, to be completed by the second half of next year.

Ebay previously guided for revenue of between $4.3 billion and $4.4 billion and earnings of between 65 cents and 67 cents per share for the quarter.

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The company last released earnings data in July, and beat analyst forecasts by reporting earnings per share of $0.69. The company had revenue of $4.37 billion during that quarter, and increase of 12.6 per cent on a year-over-year basis. Analysts expect that eBay will post $2.98 EPS for the current fiscal year.