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Tat bazaar eBay confirms: THOUSANDS of workers will be AXED

Mulling over sales, flotation of enterprise arm as losses mount

Loss-making online tat bazaar eBay finally confirmed it will throw thousands of workers overboard and review options to sell or float the Enterprise side of the business.

The developments were made public as eBay rolled out calendar Q4 financials with revenues up nine per cent to $4.9bn, and net income rising ten per cent to $936m.

It was a good end to the 12 months but still couldn’t save the company from reporting losses of $41m, compared to a profit of $2.85m a year ago. Sales grew 12 per cent to $16bn.

CEO and president John Donahoe described 2014 as a year of “unexpected events and distractions” on a conference call with financial analysts last night.

Could the exec be referring to the cyber attack that led to the leakage of 145 million users’ data? And possibly the numerous humiliating outages experienced in the year? Yes.

The solution is to chop 2,400 jobs, representing around seven per cent of the global workforce. Donahoe said:

“Eliminating jobs is never easy. But these decisions were necessary at eBay, PayPal and eBay Enterprise to simplify these organisations, reduce complexity, speed decision making and create competitive cost structures.”

The e-commerce playa is already separating PayPal from the rest of the organisation this year, and confirmed it is “also exploring strategic options for eBay Enterprise, including a sale or IPO”.

“Until this process is complete, we do not anticipate commenting further,” said the CEO.

In Q4, the Payments division grew 18 per cent to $2.16bn, Marketplaces grew one per cent to $2.3bn and Enterprise was up nine per cent to $433m.

For the year, the Payments business unit bounced 19 per cent to $7.9bn, Marketplaces edged up six per cent to $8.8bn and Enterprise was up six per cent to $1.23bn.

A divisional profit break-down was not provided.

The company estimates net revenues of $4.35bn to $4.45bn in Q1. ®

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