In his monthslong battle with eBay, Carl C. Icahn accused the online commerce site of failing to generate bigger returns for shareholders.
But the feud itself appears to have done little for the company’s shares.
Since the day before eBay announced that Mr. Icahn had acquired a stake and planned to nominate two directors for the board, the company’s stock has risen about 2 percent. (It was down about 3 percent for the day by Thursday afternoon, after Mr. Icahn and eBay announced a settlement that added an independent director, David W. Dorman, a former chief executive at AT&T.)
To be fair, eBay’s performance during that period exceeded those of the three major stock indexes, the Dow Jones industrial average, the Nasdaq composite index and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.
It’s not quite clear what Mr. Icahn paid for his shares, making it difficult to calculate whether he has made a profit on his bet. In eBay’s announcement on Jan. 22, the company said that the activist investor had an economic interest of about 0.82 percent, including both shares and derivatives.
In a subsequent regulatory filing, Mr. Icahn said that his firm controlled about 2.15 percent of eBay’s shares.
But in an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Mr. Icahn â€" who presented the settlement as a “win-win†for shareholders on Twitter â€" said that he saw great value in eBay, suggesting that he planned to hold the stock for some time.
“I think this company has tremendous potential,†he said.
