OREANDA-NEWS. Fitch Ratings believes the ratings for eBay, Inc. (eBay) are unaffected by PayPal's, its payments business, all-cash acquisition of Xoom, which facilitates the digital transfer of money internationally, for $890 million, or $25 per share. eBay's 'A-/F2' Long-Term and Short-Term Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) remain on Negative Watch in anticipation of the company's separation of PayPal Inc. (PayPal) from eBay's Marketplaces business (Marketplaces) scheduled for the second half of this month. A full list of current ratings follows at the end of this press release.

The acquisition of Xoom should strengthen PayPal's international, particularly mobile, business by giving it access to Xoom's 1.3 million active U.S. customers who sent roughly $7 billion to recipients in 37 countries, adding to PayPal's 68 million actives users. In particular, Xoom will expand PayPal's capabilities in large and rapidly growing key emerging markets, including India, China and the Philippines.

Xoom is primarily a cash based system of sending money abroad. PayPal believes the acquisition will disrupt the nearly $600 billion international remittances industry, enabling more efficient international remittance transactions. For Xoom, the deal should accelerate the company's time to market in currently unserved target geographies.

Fitch expects PayPal will use available cash for the acquisition, which the company expects to close in the fourth quarter of 2015. Fitch believes PayPal will use available domestic cash to fund the acquisition and that liquidity, pro forma for PayPal's separation from Marketplaces will be solid and supported by $6 billion of net cash, a substantial portion of which will be located in the U.S.

Xoom should add $168 million (for the latest 12 months (LTM) ended March 31, 2015) of annual revenues growing in the high teens to low 20s and at operating EBITDA margins in the low teens. Leveraging PayPal's scale and footprint should drive some profit margin expansion, given PayPal's Fitch estimated operating EBITDA margin in the low to mid-20s.

Fitch maintains the following ratings for eBay Inc. on Rating Watch Negative:

--Long-term IDR 'A-';
--Senior unsecured revolving credit facility 'A-';
--Senior unsecured notes 'A-';

Fitch affirms the following ratings:

--Short-term IDR at 'F2';
--$2 billion CP program at 'F2'.