eBay Firing 1000 (Finally), Needs To Fire More

eBay (EBAY) is finally acknowledging its new reality and cutting its global workforce by 10% (1000 employees plus temps and open job reqs). The company got fat during its salad days, and now that buyers and sellers are fleeing to Amazon, Google, et al, these cuts are long overdue.  Unless the company can rapidly begin to reaccelerate gross merchandise sales, moreover, more cuts should follow.

On the positive side, eBay is now trading at an extraordinarily cheap 10X trailing free cash flow.  This is a multiple assigned to companies whose growth prospects are minimal. In eBay's case, moreover, the company owns one rip-roaring healthy business--PayPal--and an unrelated VOIP phone business (Skype) that could also be sold for at least a couple of billion. So the implied valuation of eBay's core marketplace business is even lower.

Will eBay turn itself around? No guarantees. But at this price, the market's answer is a resounding "no." (So if you believe otherwise, you have an opportunity.)

See Also: eBay: Death By a Thousand Fee Cuts