EBay’s profit up; outlook disappoints

EBay Inc. said Wednesday that its second-quarter profit jumped 22%, as the online auction company enjoyed strong growth in its e-commerce sites and its PayPal payments service.

But EBay’s outlook for the current quarter was softer than analysts had been forecasting, and the auction company’s shares fell more than 6% in after-hours trading. The stock had gained $1.21, or 4.5%, in regular trading to $28.10.

The San Jose company reported earnings of $460 million, or 35 cents a share, compared with $376 million, or 27 cents, a year earlier. Excluding certain items, EBay earned 43 cents a share.

That beat Wall Street’s forecast for 41 cents.

EBay’s revenue rose 20% to $2.20 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had been looking for $2.17 billion in revenue.

Revenue from EBay’s marketplaces segment, which includes EBay, Shopping.com, StubHub and other e-commerce websites, increased 13% to $1.46 billion.

Sharper growth came from PayPal, whose revenue rose 32% to $602 million. Revenue from its online telecommunications service, Skype, rose 51% to $130 million.

Listings on EBay’s site climbed 19% to 667 million during the quarter, but the company’s number of active users -- an important measure of how well the company is attracting new buyers and sellers -- rose only 1.4% to 84.5 million.

EBay expects third-quarter earnings of 30 cents to 32 cents a share, or 39 cents to 41 cents a share on an adjusted basis, and $2.10 billion to $2.15 billion in revenue.

Analysts were expecting better: adjusted earnings of 41 cents a share on $2.18 billion in revenue.