The Third Pig

source: Flickr; Ryan Fanshaw Photography

eBay, Inc. reported yesterday and the market seems to have like what it heard. The stock is up over 8% day-over-day to $27. Paypal, the company’s online payment platform, continues to shine as its revenues grew 40% over the quarter-to-quarter. However the picture was not all rosey. The company’s main business, dubbed Marketplace, grew only 3%. If CEO John Donahue wants to meet his three year goals of turning this aspect of the business around, he has some work ahead of him.

With that, one quarter should not make or break a company. At least, we’d hope. So I thought I would check to see how eBay is performing compared to where I thought they’d be at this point. You may recall a post a few years back where I did a discounted cash flow analysis on eBay. At the time, the company was trading at about $30. I then said based on my projections of free cash flow, the company was actually worth $60. According to that analysis (here), eBay should have been producing free cash flow somewhere in the $2.2 to $2.7 billion range. Some three and half years later eBay reports free cash flow of $1.9 billion. This includes a one-time tax payment of $207.4 million related to a legal entity restructuring. If we were to add back the $207 million eBay would have a FCF of $2.2 billion.

So it seems my original analysis which had eBay at valued at approximately $60 in 2006 was a pretty decent estimation. The beauty is, eBay is cheaper than it was then, even after an 8% run up, at $27. If Paypal keeps chugging along and Donahue can get Marketplace on track, the analysis I did back in 2006 should remain valid.

Disclosure: I and the clients of Brick Financial Management, LLC owned shares in the companies or funds mentioned in this post at the time of this writing. But positions may change at any time.

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Posted by Ben Taylor at 04:30 PM |
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Ebay’s current price has sparked me to consider a few things. First, am I “correct” on eBay? My general thesis on the company is that it is an undervalued market leader. The other question that comes to mind stems from the first one. If I am correct, why am I correct and the market wrong? It certainly isn’t that I possess some supernatural intellect or clairvoyance. (Trust me.) All I know is that I have looked at eBay’s operating performance numbers and to me the numbers just don’t spell 30 bucks per share.

What numbers am I referring to? Well primarily I’m referring to eBay’s free-cash-flow (FCF) figures. Recognizing that there is a plethora of ways to arrive at FCF and keeping in mind that exact numbers give a false sense of preciseness, I estimate that eBay produces about $1.4 billion in FCF. And over the last few years the company has been able to grow those figures at extraordinary rates – by at least 40% and by as much as 90%.

Using the discounted cash flow (DCF) method, I arrived at an estimated intrinsic value for eBay of about $60 per share. Of course, this method of valuation is very sensitive to the assumptions made. To come up with my estimate, I assumed a discount rate of 9% which is my optimistic view of what the market itself will return over the next decade or so. I also assumed that eBay’s FCF growth rate would substantially decrease over the next 10 years - falling from 25% in the early years to 12.5% in the later years. And then I assumed a terminal growth rate of 3%, about the historic rate of inflation. With those factors, all of which I think are reasonable, I came up with an estimated value of $60. So the market must be missing something…possibly. Click chart for larger view.



But what if I’m wrong and the market is correct? Perhaps I’m missing something. One way or another the market is saying that eBay will not be able to perform in the future as it has in the past. The market seems to be saying that some external (or internal) force will do one or a combination of several things. The forces will depress eBay’s margins or retard its sales growth or cause it to have to substantially increase its capital expenditures.

I think one thing the market is saying is that it doesn’t like eBay’s purchase of Skype for $2.6 billion. I agree with the market here. I like the company, I just don’t like the price eBay paid for it. That said I doubt that any failure in Skype will be enough to sink eBay. The market may also be saying that the Google-monster will surely do eBay in. I doubt that pressure from competitors like Google or Yahoo will be significant enough to substantially hurt the company. Not in the long run anyway. And certainly not enough to justify the $30 price tag eBay now sports.

In my own analysis, I assume that eBay’s FCF growth falls off a proverbial cliff and I still came up with a value that is at least twice the current market price. In other words, I think eBay represents the dollar being sold by Mr. Market for 50¢. Yet exploring the reasons Mr. Market is selling eBay so cheaply are worth some thought.

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Posted by Ben Taylor at 03:35 PM |
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