
Adevinta wins auction to buy eBay's classified ads unit for nearly $9B: source - pseudolus
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ebay-classifieds-m-a/ebay-to-sell-classified-ads-unit-to-adevinta-for-nearly-9-billion-source-idUSKCN24L0ID
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nazgulsenpai
I've had the same eBay account since 2001 and used it countless times over the
years, and yet today I learned not only do they have a classified ads
division, but also that it's so prominent that it sold for $9b. Interesting.

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Scoundreller
It’s very région specific in terms of it being popular. Fairly popular in
Canada.

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rchaud
Kijiji is the go-to site for classifieds in Canada. Craigslist exists, but
it's nowhere near as popular.

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Scoundreller
Letgo and FB Marketplace are gaining momentum imo. Probably still depends a
lot on region and product.

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colmvp
Dang, Kijiji is actually really solid in Canada. For me, it was like
Craigslist except with some pretty good UI/features.

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vzidex
Indeed, I didn't think this was a good move until I found that eBay owns
Kijiji. I'm also Canadian and I'm pretty sure Kijiji is way more popular for
private buy/sell than Craigslist - at least anecdotally from the people I
know.

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simlevesque
Most of the things I own come from Kijiji, from my phone, bike, furnitures....

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jayparth
We do love Kijiji up here, don't we? I have no clue why it's so popular and
isn't really a thing anywhere else in the world.

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simlevesque
Network effect, it is fast and the UX is great.

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DanCarvajal
> Activist investors Elliott Management Corp and Starboard Value had been
> pushing eBay

Well there's your problem.

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rchaud
Problem for who exactly? This isn't a local newspaper being swallowed up and
then gutted by some faceless private equity group, which would be detrimental
to the public interest. It's a multi-billion dollar business changing hands
between two well-heeled megacorps.

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bigtones
Problem for Ebay, which is why they were forced to consider the sale at all.
Elliot and Starboard are two of the biggest agitator investors out there, and
together they’re formidable. You really don't want them owning a large
percentage of your stock unless you want problems.

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idoh
Another way to look at it is that Elliot & Co have a good track record of
raising stock prices, so as a shareholder you actually do want them on board.

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DanCarvajal
Gotta love them short term gains.

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ajzinsbwbs
What is the long term if not the sum of the short terms?

“Short term bad long term good” is a convenient argument for management in a
dispute with shareholders. It allows them to discard the objective measure of
their performance in favor of speculation. Ignore the years of stagnant growth
and keep paying each of us millions, says management! Our plan is a long-term
one, you see.

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TeMPOraL
Short term is greedy optimization. You get stuck in a local minimum, which may
- and often is - be a very bad one, compared to other minima you could reach
if you had a more long-term approach.

Short term in terms of certain private equity groups getting involved =
company gets strip-mined for all its worth and its empty husk is discarded.

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ajzinsbwbs
If this is true, why does the share price go up? Who is buying the stock after
the short-term play? Is the market just dumb, and the only people who know the
truth are the disgruntled-ex management who complain to the media about short-
termism?

My perspective is that activist actions do incur some risk but have positive
expected value in the long run. There are horror stories, but overall they
create value, which is why people continue to invest in them.

I agree it’s possible to get stuck in local optima, but it’s awfully
convenient for many CEOs to be in that situation. I suppose everyone who isn’t
already running a trillion dollar company is in a local optima, if you think
about it. It’s hard to blame shareholders for getting fed up after enough
years of that and saying enough is enough, maybe you aren’t ever going to
climb the mountain and should go to that local optima instead.

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ekr
Wow. This is very surprising for me. I only knew of the ebay-kleinanzeigen.de
sites in the German webspace, and those don't seem worth anywhere near that
much. Technology and design seem to be out of the 2000s and it should be
really easy to replicate.

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choperius
It's easy to replicate design and technology. It's extremely difficult to
achieve such a high equilibrium of sellers & buyers on the platform. These
businesses benefit extremely well of network effects, creating high barriers
of entry.

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solarkraft
IIRC eBay Kleinanzeigen was heavily marketed around 2010. As a consequence
it's virtually the only classifieds site in Germany.

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solarkraft
I hope this creates some incentive to make the website feel less abandoned.
The German version is a huge pain to use, presumably because they wanted to
push the main site (pay the commission, get better service).

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Irishsteve
Nope they have a large product and tech org looking after the German sites.
It’s just kinda what happens for some reason. Check out olx or other adevinta
destinations. Once you crack the buyer seller side of things life gets really
comfortable

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Scoundreller
I’ve always felt it was a strategic asset for eBay to be the most popular but
always marginal classified ad product to keep the eBay cash-cow going.

Only recently did they implement some mild feedback rating system.

Probably a good time to sell for eBay, since a lot of classified ads are
moving to FB Marketplace.

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totaldude87
wow, considering that ebay's valuation is ~$40, this unit alone is/was one
fourth of it

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sideshowb
Presumably they also kept 900million from the auction fees... Right? ;-)

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scared2
First time to hear about adevinta. And they can afford 9b, Quiet surprised.

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choperius
It's 60% owned by Schibsted, one of the largest media conglomerates hailing
from the Nordics. They recently spun out their non-Nordic classifieds into a
subsidiary and listed it onto the Oslo Stock Exchange.

[https://schibsted.com/about/who-we-are/adevinta-a-
schibsted-...](https://schibsted.com/about/who-we-are/adevinta-a-schibsted-
subsidiary/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schibsted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schibsted)

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popup21
Gives a new meaning to the unbundling of eBay

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avalys
My first reaction reading this headline: “What could possibly be classified
about eBay’s ads business?”

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bredren
Here is where craigslist would have been sold off if Meg Whitman had been
successful.

For all of its independence, I think craigslist missed a huge opportunity to
improve fairness and quality in housing across the US.

