eBay Scores Merrill Lynch Upgrade (EBAY)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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eBay, Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) shares are trading higher in pre-market activity this morning after Merrill Lynch issued an upgrade today.  The brokerage firm raised its rating from Neutral to Buy.

Merrill Lynch believes that eBay can post upside to estimates on what may be a conservative 2008 outlook.  The brokerage firm also believes that new management and a change mentality toward auctioneers will help as well.  The part that is somewhat surprising about this call is that Merrill Lynch sees the potential for some accelerated gross merchandise value, which if things slow further or remain slow won’t be an easy task. 

Who knows, maybe as people don’t want to go to pawn shops they will sell all their luxury goods and collectibles on eBay this year.  eBay shares are trading up about 2.5% at $32.55 in pre-market trading this morning, while its 52-week trading range is $25.10 to $40.73.

Jon C. Ogg
April 3, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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