Ebay Inc. (EBAY) is expected to talk up its portfolio of businesses at its Analysts Day meeting on Wednesday, but Wall Street is hoping to hear more about the steps the e-commerce company is taking to jump start it troubled marketplaces operation.

In particular, Chief Executive John Donohoe is expected to highlight eBay's PayPal payments unit, through which consumers can pay for products without having to expose their credit-card information to online merchants.

Donohoe, who will appear at the company's first analysts days since he was appointed CEO last year, recently argued that Wall Street is not fully appreciating the value of the company's portfolio, which also includes Internet telephony service Skype.

But analysts were most likely to focus on steps the company is taking to stabilize its marketplaces business and re-accelerate growth.

"We continue to believe that eBay is structurally challenged as it fights a shifting e-commerce landscape that has increasingly moved away from auctions & demands a superior user experience," said Barclay Capital analyst Doug Anmuth in a note this week.

The Internet auction pioneer has struggled to regain its footing ever since online shopping habits began shifting away from auctions to fixed-price purchases on sites such as market leader Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN). Investors have fled in droves, driving eBay shares down 69% from their 52-week high.

Ebay last year launched a series of initiatives to promote fixed-price transactions aimed at attracting top quality sellers and creating a shopping experience that is more similar to Amazon's. But the company has so far failed to reverse the erosion in its auction business, which accounts for 51% of the value of all products sold on eBay's trading platforms.

Ebay's core marketplace transaction revenue, which accounted for about 55% of the company's total sales in 2008, grew just 1% last year and actually fell 18% year over year in the fourth quarter. Citigroup is expecting marketplace revenues to fall 18% in 2009, compared with an industry-wide low single-digit decline.

Citi analyst Mark Mahaney questioned in a recent note whether the plummeting value of sales on eBay's auction site has become an anchor weighing down the company's growth potential.

Ebay in January reported its first-ever quarterly revenue decline, while Amazon said fourth quarter sales surged 18%. Ebay shares are down more than 26% since the beginning of the year after plunging 58% in 2008.

On Monday, eBay shares fell 1.5% to $10.27.

Barclay's Anmuth said eBay must address the company's controversial sellers rating system, which makes it harder for sellers to list their products unless they have an extraordinarily high rating from shoppers. Sellers have also complained that the opaque rating system grades them on shipping, over which they have little control.

In addition, Anmuth worried that the preferential rates given to large retailers could drive lower volume sellers off eBay to other competitors or to their own Web sites.

In a move highlighting that concern, a software company that helps vendors sell goods on eBay this week said it was rolling out a new platform to help those merchants also sell their products on rival Amazon.com and other sites.

Vendio Service Inc., a Silicon Valley ecommerce software maker, said the move reflects widespread discontent among eBay sellers with the changes the company has introduced.

"We listen to our customers and they are saying: "We want to get off eBay'," said Vendio Executive Vice President Michael Levit.

Anmuth also argued that eBay's new search algorithm is still far from optimal, with a number of unrelated listings still showing up even after the roll-out of the new search.

Sandeep Aggarwal, analyst at Collins Stewart, said he hopes eBay might reveal what metrics it is using to measure the progress of its marketplaces transformation and provide an update on how successful it has been in reaching its internal targets.

Aggarwal and other analysts are also looking for signs as to whether Donohoe intends to spin off Skype, which he said in January has not generated synergies with the rest of the business.

-By Scott Morrison; Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-6118; scott.morrison@dowjones.com