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EBay stock was down 8% in midday trading Thursday, a day after the e-commerce platform reported sales growth that fell short of Wall Street’s forecasts.

The company exceeded analysts’ estimates for its earnings per share, but that was mostly driven by a higher-than-expected volume of share buybacks. Its fourth-quarter sales forecasts fell short of analyst estimates, and the 2020 growth outlook was “underwhelming,” J.P. Morgan analysts said.

EBay (ticker: EBAY ) also didn’t give many details about its review of two businesses that Wall Street wants it to sell or spin out: StubHub, a ticket reseller, and Classifieds, a Craigslist competitor. It expects to provide an update about StubHub by the end of this year, and give guidance about its options for Classifieds later in 2020. The businesses could be worth $4 per share and $13 per share, respectively, says Susquehanna.

Executives highlighted the impact of states’ decisions to tax internet sales, and said taxes would cut into sales growth by 2 percentage points next year. Analysts have been anticipating some sales-tax drag, however, as the company has been warning about the effects of the tax for several quarters.

In the third quarter, 14 states introduced internet sales taxes, and 11 more states have rolled it out in October, said interim CFO Andrew Cring. Most states require online marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon.com (AMZN), and Etsy (ETSY) to collect the tax.

The e-commerce platform is seeing more “cart abandonment,” said interim CEO executive Scott Schenkel on the company’s quarterly call. Schenkel attributed that trend to the tax rollout.

“Buyers are seeing higher prices at checkout and are purchasing less, particularly large-dollar items,” he said. “It’s just in that flow, particularly for higher dollar items, is where we see buyers abandon the cart at checkout.”

Still, it seems reasonable to think there could be other reasons for would-be buyers to abandon their online purchases. In addition, it isn’t clear that eBay’s marketplace-retailing competitors are experiencing similar tax effects, either. Etsy’s management cited shipping costs, not tax, as a main reason for abandoned carts in its second-quarter earnings call.

Raymond James downgraded eBay stock to “Market Perform” from “Outperform,” citing weakness in its core U.S. marketplace sales. The company’s stock is “likely to remain rangebound until we see stronger marketplace growth,” the analysts wrote. They don’t expect that to happen until 2021.

Write to Alexandra Scaggs at alexandra.scaggs@barrons.com