Intercontinental Exchange Inc., which owns the New York Stock Exchange, is reportedly considering a multibillion-dollar bid to take over eBay Inc. in a move that could value the company at more than $30 billion.

The Wall Street Journal said today that ICE has been discussing a potential offer with eBay executives for quite a while, though there have been no formal talks and there’s no guarantee an offer will be made. The Journal noted that ICE would likely have to pay a considerable premium for any deal to go forward.

The report added that ICE is strictly interested in eBay’s main marketplace business, not its classified listings unit, which the company has reportedly considered selling in the past. According to analysts, the classifieds business alone could be worth up to $10 billion.

Much of the pressure to sell the classifieds business comes from the activist investor Starboard Value LP, which took a significant stake in eBay last year. In a letter to shareholders today, Starboard reportedly once again called on the classifieds business to be sold, saying it has not made enough progress to improve shareholder value.

Starboard had previously been instrumental in pushing eBay to sell its StubHub ticketing business to Viagogo Entertainment Inc. in December in a deal valued at $4.05 billion. The activist investor is also said to have agitated for the departure of eBay’s former Chief Executive Officer Devin Wenig, who left the company in September.

“To achieve the optimal outcome, we believe Classifieds must be separated, and a more comprehensive and aggressive operating plan must be put in place to drive profitable growth in the core Marketplace business,” Starboard said in its letter to eBay’s board.

eBay responded by saying it would review both the letter and Starboard’s perspectives.

The company reportedly came close to selling the classifieds business in September to German publishing house Axel Springer SE, though the deal ultimately fell apart.

Analyst Charles King of Pund-IT Inc. told SiliconANGLE he wasn’t sure what would come of the talks since ICE is seemingly only interested in eBay’s marketplace unit, and not the classifieds unit.

“You can understand why that’s the case since eBay’s classifieds have never made much of an impact on local market sales by craigslist.org, Amazon, Wal-Mart and other retailers,” King said. “In other words, it’s a weak business unit that’s also well outside ICE’s interests and expertise. We may be witnessing simple posturing between the players before they get down to formal negotiations, but at this point it’s difficult to tell how serious discussions will be.”

Others felt that the discussions could be serious however, perhaps even a sign of ICE’s ambitions to branch out from operating financial exchanges into areas such as sourcing and procurement.

“It’s a massive market to enter, but it requires similar marketplace platform processes and algorithms,” said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. “It will be interesting if Intercontinental Exchange will manage to get eBay and then operate it successfully. For eBay it’s an evolution away from its consumer roots to more of a business to business marketplace. Exciting times.”

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