Online retailer Amazon.com , criticized for not acting quickly enough to curb sellers who charged hundreds of dollars for high-demand hand sanitizer during the early phase of the new coronavirus pandemic, urged Congress on Wednesday to pass a law against price gouging during times of national emergency. Price-gouging is not usually illegal but can be in certain states if there is an emergency, like during a hurricane or the current pandemic. In a blog post, Brian Huseman, a vice president of public policy at Amazon, noted that different states had different definitions of gouging and that some fight gouging using consumer-protection statutes.
Almost 20 years since he stopped bouncing a basketball professionally, Michael Jordan is still the hottest name in the sports memorabilia business.
In this article we will check out the progression of hedge fund sentiment towards eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) and determine whether it is a good investment right now. We at Insider Monkey like to examine what billionaires and hedge funds think of a company before spending days of research on it. Given their 2 and 20 […]
PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) is poised to benefit from new trends spurred by both the novel coronavirus pandemic and the e-commerce revolution. Moreover, PYPL stock is far more attractive at this point than rivals Square (NYSE:SQ) and Shopify (NYSE:SHOP).Source: JHVEPhoto / Shutterstock.com With e-commerce exploding, PayPal should get a lift as millions more customers utilize it to pay for their online purchases. And importantly, PayPal has heavy exposure to many of the large e-commerce businesses whose sales are currently booming. eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), Walmart (NYSE:WMT) and Home Depot (NYSE:HD) are among the companies with huge e-commerce revenues that accept PayPal.While PayPal still can't be used as a payment method on Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), the biggest e-commerce player of them all, I think Jeff Bezos could decide to accept PayPal within a year or two. PayPal continues to expand. Soon, Bezos won't want to lose sales by continuing to refuse a partnership.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading TipsThis exposure to huge companies should largely insulate PYPL stock from the bankruptcies of smaller businesses during the recession. That isn't the case for Square and Shopify, which earn a majority of their revenue from small and medium businesses. PYPL Stock Will Benefit From Market Share GainsPayPal looks poised to take significant market share from the large credit card networks, including Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA). Of course, the e-commerce boom will contribute to that phenomenon. But I believe that, as the pandemic continues, many smaller businesses will start accepting PayPal payments alongside credit cards. * 7 Stocks to Buy That Have Nothing But Upside In Their Future When customers pay for products or services with credit cards, they often have to come fairly close to cashiers or whoever is carrying Square's payment machine. And to use credit cards, consumers have to press buttons on the same machine that many other people have touched.Of course, PayPal allows users to pay for products and services without touching a shared machine. Therefore, I believe that many businesses will look to accommodate consumers who are very worried about the virus by accepting PayPal as a payment method. Strong April ResultsAs most of the U.S. and Europe went into lockdown in April, PayPal's business soared. In conjunction with its first-quarter results, PayPal reported that its net new active users had jumped 140% in April versus January and February.It also added 7.4 million net new customers in April, and CEO Dan Schulman provided guidance for "15 million to 20 million net new active accounts [that] we anticipate adding in Q2."As the company continues to add new users, a virtuous cycle should be created. Specifically, as more users are added, more businesses will accept PayPal. And as consumers see that more businesses are accepting PayPal, more of them will sign up for the service. That cycle should accelerate over time. PayPal's Honey CatalystHoney, an app which PayPal acquired last year, automatically provides users with discounts and notifies them when the prices of items they're interested in drops by a certain percentage. Schulman believes that the data that Honey generates will be lucrative for merchants, and he thinks that the app will eventually be able to automatically purchase products for consumers when items fall to a certain price.Honey is already quite valuable for consumers because of its ability to automatically apply coupons. As a result, the app will likely spur many more users to join PayPal.If Honey can make automatic purchases at certain price points, PayPal will become even more valuable to consumers. And PayPal may be able to generate meaningful revenue by selling the data that Honey collects to merchants. Valuation and the Bottom Line on PayPalPayPal is trading at a forward price-earnings ratio, based on analysts' average 2020 earnings per share estimates, of 43. That's a bargain for a rapidly growing tech name like PayPal.Moreover, the company's actual forward P/E ratio may be meaningfully lower because, given its rapid growth recently, many analysts are probably underestimating its 2020 EPS. Square, by contrast, trades at a forward P/E ratio of 133.PayPal's shares trade at a trailing price-sales ratio of 9.4. In comparison, Shopify stock trades at a trailing P/S ratio of 48.Given PayPal's positive catalysts and relatively low valuation, investors should buy PYPL stock now.Larry Ramer has conducted research and written articles on U.S. stocks for 13 years. He has been employed by The Fly and Israel's largest business newspaper, Globes. Larry began writing columns for InvestorPlace in 2015. Among his highly successful, contrarian picks have been Lyft, solar stocks and Snap. You can reach him on StockTwits at @larryramer. As of this writing, he did not own any shares of the aforementioned companies. More From InvestorPlace * America's 1 Stock Picker Reveals Next 1,000% Winner * 25 Stocks You Should Sell Immediately * 1 Under-the-Radar 5G Stock to Buy Now * The 1 Stock All Retirees Must Own The post Buy PayPal Stock for Contactless Payment and E-Commerce Trends appeared first on InvestorPlace.
One catalyst for eBay shares could be the sale or spinoff of its classified-advertising business, which the company has been shopping around, notes Baird’s Colin Sebastian.
By Yasin Ebrahim
These are the consumer discretionary stocks with the best value, fastest growth, and most momentum for June 2020.
(Bloomberg) -- With online shopping increasing amid Covid-19 lockdowns, the U.K.’s competition regulator is clamping down on fake and misleading reviews on popular shopping websites.The Competition and Markets Authority said Friday it’s probing several major websites to see if they are doing enough to protect shoppers. It will examine how these sites detect, investigate and respond to suspicious reviews.So far, the CMA has not singled any companies out and isn’t alleging that any website has acted illegally. The watchdog said it may resort to legal action if online platforms don’t do what’s required to protect consumers.With consumers stuck at home amid the coronavirus pandemic, retail websites have been the go-to for most products. Amazon.com Inc. has seen a spike in sales since lockdowns began and has had to hire 175,000 people to cope with demand. Last year it responded to criticism by changing how it displays feedback by prioritizing ratings from customers rather than reviews.Amazon said in an e-mailed statement it’s “happy to assist the CMA” with its inquiries.“Customer trust has always been at the heart of our approach and we want to ensure you can shop with confidence knowing that reviews are authentic and relevant,” it said. “We welcome the fact that the CMA shares our view on the importance of robust mechanisms to tackle attempted abuse of customer reviews.”EBay Inc. said it’s “committed to cooperating with the CMA on any investigation to tackle fake reviews.”Instagram CommitmentsThe CMA’s probe comes the same day it secured commitments from Facebook Inc.-owned Instagram to tackle the risk that users can buy and sell fake reviews through the social media platform. Instagram has committed to providing more robust systems to detect and remove such material, the regulator said. Facebook and EBay have also previously assured the regulator it would put measures in place to tackle the issue.“During lockdown, we’re more dependent than ever on online shopping, so it’s really important that the online reviews we read are genuine opinions,” said Andrea Coscelli, chief executive officer of the CMA.(Updates with Amazon, EBay responses starting in fifth paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s Naspers Ltd. and an investor group backed by German publisher Axel Springer SE are among suitors that submitted bids for EBay Inc.’s classified-advertising business, according to people familiar with the matter.Axel Springer teamed up with KKR & Co. for its offer, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Online classifieds company Adevinta ASA also made a bid for the unit by this week’s deadline, the people said. A consortium of Blackstone Group Inc., Permira and Hellman & Friedman has also been pursuing the business, the people said.The unit could fetch $8 billion to $10 billion, according to one of the people. EBay could decide as soon as next week which suitors advance to the next round, the people said.EBay shares rose 2.3% in New York Friday, valuing the company at about $30.5 billion.A potential sale of EBay’s classifieds unit could rank among the largest deals in Europe involving private equity firms this year. EBay is seeking a sale of the business at a time when market turmoil has hampered financing for leveraged buyouts, forcing companies to put a number of bidding processes on hold. Walmart Inc. paused the sale of a majority stake in its U.K. grocery chain Asda to focus management’s attention on running the business amid unprecedented spikes in demand driven by the coronavirus.Representatives for EBay, Adevinta, Axel Springer, Blackstone, KKR, Naspers and Permira declined to comment. A spokesperson for Hellman & Friedman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.EBay said in February it was in talks with multiple parties about a sale of the business and expected to update investors by the end of the first half. While the San Jose, California-based company reported better-than-expected sales in the first quarter, the classifieds unit dragged on results as the Covid-19 pandemic forced the closure of car dealerships.EBay’s classified business has attracted interest from several strategic and private equity firms, Dealreporter and The Wall Street Journal have previously reported, citing unidentified people. Permira partially owns Polish online auction site Allegro. Hellman & Friedman is a backer of digital car marketplace Autoscout24 GmbH.E-commerce group Naspers, Africa’s largest company by market value, is seeking to boost its portfolios in classifieds, food delivery and digital-payments businesses as well as education, Chief Executive Officer Bob Van Dijk said in an interview this month. The company acquires online companies around the world through Amsterdam-listed Prosus NV, which the company spun off in September last year.German publisher Axel Springer has ramped up its hunt for deals to accelerate a shift into digital media since agreeing to go private with the help of KKR last year.Norway’s Adevinta was spun off of Scandinavian media conglomerate Schibsted ASA last year with the goal of expanding in the global online classified market.(Updates with details on Axel Springer and Adevinta in last two paragraphs)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
The number of deaths from the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 rose above 353,000 on Wednesday, as the World Health Organization said the Americas are at the center of the pandemic following surges in infections in Brazil, Peru, Chile and others in the past few days.
Investors reacted strongly to the company’s announcement of a new e-commerce platform called Facebook Shops, and a similar program to launch later this year called Instagram Shops.
The eBay Foundation is announcing this week $10 million in grants to support COVID-19 relief worldwide, increasing its efforts to a total of nearly $15 million in COVID-19 related grants to date. So far in 2020, the Foundation has tripled grantmaking from 2019; this week's additional funding round is the largest in its history and comes at a vital time for communities and small businesses adversely impacted by the pandemic.