EBay profit falls on weak economy but beats expectations
NEW YORK -- The first-quarter results helped eBay shares shoot up $1.03, or 6.9%, in after-hours trading, after rising 49 cents, or 3.4%, to finish regular trading at $14.78.
They show the San Jose, Calif.-based company still struggling, though — both with the recession and its efforts to improve its online marketplace.
EBay earned $357.1 million, or 28 cents a share, in the first quarter, down 22% from $459.7 million, or 34 cents a share, in the year-ago period.
When excluding items, eBay said it earned 39 cents a share; analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected 33 cents a share.
Revenue fell 8% to $2.02 billion, just above analysts expectations of $1.94 billion.
Revenue from eBay's marketplaces segment — which includes eBay itself and e-commerce sites such as StubHub and Shopping.com — fell almost 18% to $1.22 billion. The company blamed the drop on the difficult economy and the strengthened dollar. EBay got about 54% of its marketplaces revenue from outside the United States, and deals done in other currencies translate into fewer dollars when the dollar is strong.
For eBay's payments segment, which is the second-largest business behind marketplaces and includes online payments service PayPal, revenue climbed nearly 11% to $643 million.
The company's number of active marketplace users grew 2% to 88.3 million in a sign of the company's success in attracting new buyers and sellers.
But eBay's gross merchandise volume — a key metric that measures the total amount of money that flows from transactions on the site, excluding those involving vehicles — fell 16% to $10.8 billion. This metric also declined in the previous quarter.
As in the previous quarter, 51% of the eBay's gross merchandise volume came from auctions in the first three months of 2009. The remainder came from sale of products at fixed prices.
