One of the Internet’s long-running success stories, global auction operator eBay, announced Monday that it is laying off 10 percent of its workforce in the coming weeks. Roughly 1,000 permanent employees and several hundred temporary employees will lose their jobs.
The company also announced that it expects its third-quarter revenues to be on the low end of previous estimates. Ebay’s report will be released on Oct. 15.
John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, tried to put the best face on the company’s planned firings: “While never an easy decision to make,” he said, “these reductions will help improve our operations and strengthen our ability to continue investing in growth.”
Over the balance of the year, eBay said, it will take a pretax restructuring charge, which it estimated at between $70 million and $80 million.
In the midst of the day’s heavy losses on Wall Street, eBay’s stock was down 6 percent, dropping to $16.70 and closing at $17.89 per share. That’s well off the company’s 52-week high of $40.73.
Not all of eBay’s financial news was about restructuring and workforce reduction. The company announced it is spending $1.34 billion to acquire two companies, online-payment company BillMeLater and the Dutch classified-ad Web sites Den Bla Avis and BilBasen.
eBay executives hope the acquisitions will enable the company to reverse slowing sales growth and augment its PayPal payment system. BillMeLater allows consumers to get a nearly instantaneous loan and purchase items online. It remains to be seen how that model will work in an increasingly challenging economy.
In a video for CNBC, Donahoe stressed the importance of the acquisitions for eBay’s long-term prospects.
“We are making aggressive moves to strengthen our leadership positions in e-commerce and payments to competitively position our company for long-term growth,” Donahoe said. “BillMeLater is a perfect complement to our portfolio, a company that…