Eyes on eBay over plan to split with PayPal

Investors will be looking ahead to eBay’s third-quarter earnings this week, which will be reported after market close on Wednesday.

Plans to separate the e-commerce giant and PayPal into independent publicly traded companies were announced last month, a move that had been demanded by activist investor Carl Icahn earlier this year.

The two companies will go their separate ways in 2015 following a 12-year alliance. Ebay acquired then privately held PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion, and expects the spinoff, which is subject to regulatory approvals, to be completed by the second half of next year.

Ebay previously guided for revenue of between $4.3 billion and $4.4 billion and earnings of between 65 cents and 67 cents per share for the quarter.

The company last released earnings data in July, and beat analyst forecasts by reporting earnings per share of $0.69. The company had revenue of $4.37 billion during that quarter, and increase of 12.6 per cent on a year-over-year basis. Analysts expect that eBay will post $2.98 EPS for the current fiscal year.