eBay Continues To Provide Others With Opportunities At Its Own Cost
Like the media industry, eBay is going through its own "great unbundling" on its path to be sold itself - as it sold its South Korea division.
We are witnessing nothing less than the complete dismantling of eBay right now. The company is shedding business units to simplify and streamline. But not to reinvest and grow. Instead, it's to be more easily acquired.
"South Korea represents the world's fourth-largest e-commerce market."
Apparently, eBay is not interested in a piece of that? eBay sold its South Korean unit to Shinsegae Group and Naver for almost $4B. Really pocket change in this environment for the market potential there.
Telling.
I think the Board made a calculation several years back that the sum of the parts wasn't working. The parts were completely undervalued in this environment, and better to sell it all off, value the "core" at its maximum as well, and then sell that too. Time will tell whether or not that happens, but I would not be surprised one bit.
I truly think Etsy (and others like TheRealReal) have a big opportunity here to continue to pickup the scraps from eBay's table. The thing is, eBay is now chucking the Thanksgiving turkey off the table.
