eBay CEO Devin Wenig On Growth Opportunities, Acquisitions And Buybacks

With its payment arm Paypal Holdings Inc PYPL debuting as a seperating entity on the stock markets on Monday, eBay Inc EBAY is now free to focus on its core business. Devin Wenig, eBay CEO, was on CNBC to discuss where he sees opportunities for the company from here on and its plans for acquisitions and buybacks.

Helping Artisans And Niche Content Creator Might Be An Oppurtunity

"I don't think the world needs another streaming music service or another movie service," Wenig began... "I don't think that's the only digital content that's relevant and eBay started down the tail and eBay aggregated a long fragmented set of goods."

He continued, "I now look at what's happening in digital content away from big movies and music and I say how do we get small artisans and creators of niche content to better monetize in an advertising dominated world, that might be an opportunity for us."

May Do Acquisitions And Return Capital

Wenig was asked if the company's finance have constrained it in any way to not have acquisitions. He replied, "I think, a hallmark of our company has been discipline in capital allocation. We are acquisitive, but we are tough on ourselves. We don't buy things just for the sake of buying them to get bigger. And this is a company that has an incredibly strong free cash flow position, it's a great business model."

"This year we have said, we will generate between $2.1 and $2.3 billion of free cash and more next year. So, even with a balance sheet that has $1 billion of net debt, this company generates billions of free cash-flow a year."

"How we'll use that? will be we'll allow that capital to compete for the best use for our shareholders. Undoubtedly we will do acquisitions, we may also return capital to shareholders and our first use always is to invest organically in our business and to innovate," Wenig concluded.