EBay Downgraded To Underweight On PayPal Competition

eBay was downgraded to underweight from neutral at PiperJaffray Thursday morning due to its negative exposure to the burgeoning mobile payments market. Rapidly emerging competition in the space from the likes of Google Wallet , Apple Pay , and now Facebook and Samsung [kr:005930], threaten to weigh on PayPal's valuation and market share over the next one to three years, analyst Gene Munster said. PiperJaffray lowered its price target on PayPal parent eBay to $49 from $55. Shares of eBay fell 2.6% to $56.90 in premarket trade, though they are up 12% since the beginning of February. While there is optimism about PayPal's planned spinoff from eBay, and while PayPal sales have remained strong at $8 billion last year, Munster said PayPal's lack of a point-of-sale product could impact the company if Apple, Google, Facebook and Samsung take their existing in-store and in-app wallets and migrate them to mobile browsers, peer-to-peer transfers and eventually desktop browsers.