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eBay Sells Off Classifieds Business

eBay Sells Off Classifieds Business

Credit: Vicki Thompson/Silicon Valley Business Journal

Though unlike your old Beyblade collection, they got a pretty good deal for it.

With Amazon becoming a retail juggernaut and Google essentially owning the entire internet, it’s easy to forget another mainstay of the early internet years: eBay, the classic bidding site where you can sell an entire jar of toenails, and for some reason, people will still bid on it. Sadly, eBay has lost a good portion of its relevance over the last two decades, and has repeatedly been forced to sell off its sub-sites and assets to keep the books balanced. The next big thing to go will be eBay Classifieds.


eBay Classifieds went online around the same time as eBay itself, though back then it was known as AuctionWeb. Originally existing as an online version of a popular Danish classified ad service, it, along with several other services around the world, were purchased and consolidated into the eBay Classifieds Group. Of course, if you weren’t aware of this (and I wouldn’t blame you), it’s because the Classifieds only make up around 10% of eBay’s total revenue. It’s for this reason that eBay has decided to sell Classifieds to Adevinta, a company from Norway looking to create a massive online classifieds business of their own.

Credit: eBay Inc.

Adevinta, who beat out several other high profile investors for the bid on Classifieds, made the purchase for a $9.2 billion price tag, though not all up front. $2.5 billion in cash will go to eBay as part of the transaction, while the remainder will come from 540 million shares in Adevinta. That’s about 44% of the company’s total value. This way, eBay gets a nice little cash injection while still having access to the classified ad market.

“This sale creates short-term and long-term value for shareholders and customers, while allowing us to participate in the future potential of the Classifieds business,” said eBay CEO Jamie Iannone.

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