PayPal积极物色收购目标

PayPal eyes foreign targets as it considers life after eBay
PayPal is on the hunt for international acquisitions to drive growth and fend off predators, as it prepares to separate from eBay and become an independent company in the first of several big technology split-ups this year. PayPal正在物色国际收购目标以推动增长并防止自己被收购。该公司眼下正准备脱离eBay成为一家独立的公司——这将拉开今年数家大型科技公司分拆的序幕。

Chief executive Dan Schulmantold the Financial Times that acquisitions would be a priority, as PayPal uses the $6bn war chest that is a legacy of the split. PayPal首席执行官丹?舒尔曼(Dan Schulman)向英国《金融时报》表示，收购将会是公司的优先考虑事项，因为此次分拆给它带来60亿美元的现金储备。

“The balance sheet affords us the opportunity to look opportunistically where it makes sense to acquire,” he said. “I think there is a tremendous opportunity to look across the world.” 他说：“当前的财务状况给我们带来了物色有价值的收购标的的机会。纵观全球，我们有着巨大的收购机遇。”

The strong balance sheet would also support PayPal’s lending programmes, he noted. 舒尔曼指出，强劲的资产负债表也将支持PayPal的贷款项目。

PayPal will pass a milestone towards independence today as pricing begins for its shares. Shareholders of eBay will get one share in PayPal per share they hold when the formal split takes place on July 17. 今日PayPal将会启动股票定价，从而向成为一家独立公司跨出里程碑意义的一步。7月17日正式分拆时，eBay的股东每持有1股eBay股票将获得1股PayPal股票。

The company’s enterprise value could be about $40bn, roughly two-thirds of eBay’s valuation, analysts at Wedbush estimated. Wedbush的分析师估计，PayPal的企业价值大约为400亿美元，大约是eBay估值的三分之二。

PayPal’s rapid growth — revenues were up 19 per cent last year, with customers rising 13 per cent — has come increasingly from outside the eBay empire. PayPal的迅速增长——去年收入增长19%，客户增长13%——越来越来自eBay帝国的外部。

Last week PayPal announced it would spend nearly $1bn to purchase Xoom, a growing international remittances company, which will leave about $5bn in net cash on its balance sheet. PayPal上周宣布，将斥资近10亿美元收购Xoom，这将让公司资产负债表上剩下约50亿美元现金。Xoom是一家正在成长中的国际汇兑公司。

Other recent acquisitions include Braintree, which bolstered PayPal’s presence in processing software used in mobile apps. That deal included Venmo, a money transfer app for splitting the cost of meals or paying rent, which has seen total payment volumes quadruple in the past year. PayPal最近的收购还包括Braintree公司，后者让PayPal加大进军移动应用中的处理软件。该交易包括了Braintree旗下转账应用Venmo，该应用可用于分担餐费或者支付租金。Venmo在过去一年里的支付总额增长了3倍。

Even as PayPal looks for acquisitions, it is considered a takeover target itself, particularly when cashed-up companies such as Apple and Google are trying to bolster their own payments businesses. 就在PayPal寻求收购目标之际，它本身也被视为收购目标，尤其是在苹果(Apple)和谷歌(Google)等资金充沛的公司努力提升自己的支付业务之际。

Activist investor Carl Icahn, who owns a 4 per cent stake in the company and has been one of the most vocal proponents of the split, has said he believed PayPal could be a target. 持有PayPal 4%股份的维权投资者卡尔?伊卡恩(Carl Icahn)一直是最强烈呼吁分拆的投资者之一。他表示，自己相信PayPal可能会成为收购目标。