E-commerce and auction giant eBay agreed to sell part of its Adevinta stake to private-equity firm Permira for $2.25 billion.
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Continuing its recent flurry of asset sales, eBay has announced a deal to sell a portion of its stake in the Norway-based classified-ads company Adevinta to the private-equity firm Permira, raising $2.25 billion in cash. With this transaction, eBay will reduce its stake in Adevinta to 34% from 44%.
According to eBay (ticker: EBAY), the transaction includes 125 million Adevinta shares, and the price comes at a 7% discount to the 10-day weighted average price of the stock, and a 5% discount to the 30-day weighted average price. Terms give Permira the right to buy another 10 million Adevinta shares for another $180 million. If that option is exercised, eBay’s stake will drop to 33%.
Last month, eBay completed the sale of its classified-ads business to Adevinta for $2.5 billion in cash and a 44% stake in Adevinta, equal to about 540 million shares. In announcing the closure of the deal, eBay had agreed to reduce its stake in Adevinta to 33% within 18 months in order to secure approval of the deal from Austrian regulators. The company says that the Permira transaction “provides a clear path to satisfying this commitment.”
When it closed the classified sale, eBay boosted its 2021 stock-buyback program to $5 billion from $2 billion, and said that proceeds from the planned reduction of its Adevinta stake would be deployed “in a manner consistent with eBay’s capital allocation tenets and targets.”
EBay stock on Wednesday is up 1.5% to $69.75. In Oslo trading, Adevinta shares have rallied 5% to 184.45 Norwegian krona, making eBay’s remaining stake in Adevinta worth about $5 billion.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at [email protected]
