eBay Delivers Good Enough Earnings, With Many Shares Repurchased

July 16, 2014 by Jon C. Ogg

ebay logo
Source: courtesy of ebay
eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) has now reported its second-quarter earnings, with the report coming in at $0.69 earnings per share (EPS) on an adjusted basis. Revenue was $4.37 billion. The online auction and payment systems giant was expected to report earnings of $0.68 EPS (up from $0.63 a year ago) on a 13% sales gain to $4.38 billion in revenue.

For the third quarter, eBay is forecasting earnings of $0.65 to $0.67 per share on revenues of $4.3 to $4.4 billion. Thomson Reuters was projecting $0.70 EPS (versus $0.64 a year ago) and a 13.5% revenue jump to $4.42 billion. For all of 2014, eBay is targeting $ 2.95 to $3.00 in EPS and $18.0 to $18.3 billion in revenue. The estimate for 2014 was $2.98 EPS (versus $2.71 EPS in 2013) and a 13.7% revenue gain to $18.24 billion.

eBay’s operating margin was 24.4% in the second quarter. The company spent $1.7 billion in stock buybacks. PayPal generated another strong quarter, adding 4 million users, but eBay’s growth was hampered by its global password reset for all users — and a search algorithm change may be to blame as well.

Now that it has reached a settlement with Carl Icahn, eBay shares have backed off from the post-Icahn pop. Despite the Icahn accord, eBay shares were down almost 8% so far in 2014, coming into this week.

Other data is as follows:

  • eBay commerce ecosystem continued to gain share, with total company enabled commerce volume (ECV) increasing 26% in the second quarter to $62 billion.
  • PayPal net total payment volume (TPV) grew 29% with Merchant Services volume up 35% and on-eBay volume up 13%.
  • eBay Marketplaces gross merchandise volume (GMV) grew 12%, with the U.S. up 10% and International up 14%.
  • eBay Enterprise gross merchandise sales (GMS) grew 15%, and revenue grew to $267 million.

Shares of eBay were not priced as though the company would have to knock the cover off of the ball to please investors. Shares closed down 11 cents at $50.70, against a 52-week range of $48.06 to $59.70.

The after-hours reaction had shares up 1.2% at $51.35, and the consensus analyst price target was $60.56 before analysts got to make their post-earnings assessments.

ALSO READ: Top Internet Stocks to Buy That May Deliver Solid Earnings

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