eBay Acquires GSI Commerce For $2.4 Billion, Will Only Keep a Minority Stake In RueLaLa

eBay’s announced their acquisition of GSI commerce, an e-commerce logistics and marketing company, for $2.4 billion. The price represents a price per share of $29.25, a 51% premium on GSI’s March 25th closing price. On news of the acquisition, shares in GSI have climbed 50% (as of 12:15pm EST today).

One of the more interesting parts of the deal is that eBay is going to divest 100% of GSI’s licensed sports merchandise business, and 70% of ShopRunner (an AmazonPrime style program where customers can pay an annual fee for free 2-day shipping at various merchants) and sample sale site RueLaLa.

Those companies will be sold to a holding company led by GSI founder and CEO Michael Rubin, and eBay will loan the holding company $467 million while Rubin puts in $31 million of his own.

That leaves GSI’s e-commerce technology, fulfillment services, SmartBargains.com and a number of marketing companies including the Pepperjam affiliate network and ad re-targeter Fetchback under eBay’s fold.

It’s easy to understand why eBay wouldn’t want to be in the sports merchandising business if they’re trying to reinvent themselves as an e-commerce platform, but what’s less clear is what the divestment values RueLala and ShopRunner at. Though eBay will own 30%, those two businesses seem like they’re a perfect fit for some of eBay’s recent initiatives. eBay’s been putting muscle behind their fashion branding efforts for a while now, and RueLaLa would certainly help there. Under GSI’s ownership, the site is second only to Gilt’s sites when it comes to the US private/sample sale market. Clearly, the acquisition is an effort to compete with Amazon, and it’s hard to imagine extending the ShopRunner program to eBay merchants wouldn’t help them compete with the Amazon Prime program.

By keeping 30% of those companies and putting Rubin in charge, it’s clear that eBay also sees the value there. We have to wonder if the bigger story is what eBay values the 30% of those companies at.





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