EBay profit tops estimates, but sales miss

EBay Inc. on Wednesday reported better-than-expected earnings for the third quarter but cut its sales forecast for the year. Shares dropped 3 percent after-hours.

The company’s PayPal business had another strong quarter. Revenue grew 20 percent to $1.95 billion and mobile payment volume jumped 72 percent to $12 billion. PayPal remains on track to process 1 billion mobile transactions this year. Earlier this month eBay said it would split off the payment processor, its fastest growing unit, late next year.

The marketplaces business grew revenue 6 percent to $2.16 billion, and gained 3.4 million new buyers to end the quarter with 152 million active buyers, up 13 percent.

The San Jose, California-based company said it had profit of 54 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were 68 cents per share. The results surpassed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 67 cents per share.

EBay posted total revenue of $4.35 billion in the period, falling short of Street forecasts. Analysts expected $4.37 billion, according to Zacks.

For the current quarter ending in December, eBay expects its per-share earnings to range from 88 cents to 91 cents on revenue of $4.85 billion to $4.95 billion. Analysts surveyed by Zacks had expected higher revenue of $5.17 billion.

The company cut its forecast for full-year revenue to a range of $17.85 billion to $17.95 billion, from a prior range in July of $18 billion to $18.3 billion.

EBay shares have declined slightly more than 8 percent since the beginning of the year, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has climbed nearly 1 percent. Shares fell 35 cents to close at $50.24, a fall of almost 7 percent in the last 12 months.