Somewhat Positive Media Coverage Somewhat Unlikely to Affect eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) Share Price

News articles about eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) have been trending somewhat positive on Friday, according to Accern Sentiment Analysis. The research group ranks the sentiment of press coverage by monitoring more than twenty million blog and news sources. Accern ranks coverage of public companies on a scale of -1 to 1, with scores closest to one being the most favorable. eBay earned a coverage optimism score of 0.13 on Accern’s scale. Accern also assigned news headlines about the e-commerce company an impact score of 43.4276167521024 out of 100, meaning that recent press coverage is somewhat unlikely to have an impact on the stock’s share price in the next few days.

Here are some of the news headlines that may have impacted Accern Sentiment’s analysis:

• What doomed Gibraltar Trade Center? Online competitors, aging vendors (freep.com)
• Flipkart completes merger with eBay, despite the snapping of a Snapdeal merger (thedrum.com)
• JD.com says alliance can streamline imports to China (dcvelocity.com)
• Is This Hybrid Income Investment Too Good to Be True? (wealthyretirement.com)
• eBay Breaks the Mold in Tax Protest (finance.yahoo.com)

EBAY has been the subject of several recent research reports. Maxim Group restated a “buy” rating and issued a $36.00 price target on shares of eBay in a research note on Wednesday, April 12th. Benchmark Co. boosted their price target on eBay from $39.00 to $40.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, July 19th. Susquehanna Bancshares Inc restated a “positive” rating and issued a $41.00 price target (up from $40.00) on shares of eBay in a research note on Sunday, July 23rd. Morgan Stanley restated an “underweight” rating and issued a $28.00 price target on shares of eBay in a research note on Saturday, July 22nd. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada reiterated a “hold” rating and set a $34.00 target price on shares of eBay in a research report on Thursday, April 13th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, twenty-one have given a hold rating and seventeen have issued a buy rating to the company. The company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $36.91.

Shares of eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) traded down 0.25% on Friday, reaching $35.62. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 5,182,474 shares. The company has a market cap of $38.12 billion, a P/E ratio of 5.34 and a beta of 1.36. The company’s 50 day moving average price is $35.51 and its 200 day moving average price is $33.97. eBay has a 12-month low of $27.28 and a 12-month high of $37.48. eBay also was the recipient of unusually large options trading on Wednesday. Stock investors bought 2,194 put options on the company. This is an increase of 231% compared to the average volume of 663 put options.

eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, July 20th. The e-commerce company reported $0.45 EPS for the quarter, hitting analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.45. eBay had a return on equity of 17.50% and a net margin of 80.93%. The firm had revenue of $2.33 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.31 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $0.43 EPS. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 4.4% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts forecast that eBay will post $2.00 EPS for the current fiscal year.

eBay announced that its Board of Directors has approved a share repurchase program on Thursday, July 20th that authorizes the company to repurchase $3.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the e-commerce company to purchase up to 7.5% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are generally an indication that the company’s leadership believes its stock is undervalued.

In other news, SVP Harry A. Lawton III sold 13,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, July 27th. The stock was sold at an average price of $35.93, for a total value of $467,090.00. Following the sale, the senior vice president now directly owns 45,488 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,634,383.84. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, VP Brian J. Doerger sold 2,903 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, May 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $34.11, for a total value of $99,021.33. Following the completion of the sale, the vice president now directly owns 30,701 shares in the company, valued at $1,047,211.11. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last three months, insiders sold 75,206 shares of company stock worth $2,659,043. Insiders own 6.78% of the company’s stock.

eBay Company Profile

eBay Inc (eBay) is a commerce company, which operates through its Marketplace, StubHub and Classifieds platforms. The Company connects buyers and sellers around the world. Its platforms enable sellers around the world to organize and offer their inventory for sale, and buyers to find and purchase it.