eBay Drops After Earnings Beat, Weak Guidance

eBay EBAY came out on top this afternoon, reporting a third-quarter EPS of $0.64 versus the Street estimate of $0.63. Revenue came in at $3.9 billion versus the Street estimate of $3.9 billion. Despite the beat on earnings per share (which were up 16 percent from the year-ago period) and matched revenue, investors still bailed on eBay in after hours trading. The company is currently down more than four percent, likely due to the online auction's fourth-quarter expectations. eBay anticipates a Q4 EPS of $0.79 to $0.81 versus the Street estimate of $0.83. Wall Street seems to have been disappointed by this revelation. "We delivered strong third quarter results, with mobile driving a significant portion of our new user growth and continuing to transform how consumers shop and pay around the world," John Donahoe, President and CEO of eBay, said in a company release. "Our scale and experience, the strength of our global commerce platforms, our technology assets and our mobile commerce capabilities strongly position us to be a leader in the commerce revolution under way. In the past 12 months we have enabled $200 billion of commerce volume, a 20 percent increase in a fairly lackluster macro environment. That growth demonstrates the strength of our core businesses and our power as a partner, not a competitor, to merchants, brands and retailers." Year-to-date, eBay's stock performance has proved to be a more exciting roller coaster than any ride available at a Cedar Fair FUN amusement park. The stock is up less than one percent this year, but only after rebounding from a number of plunges. Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report. Louis Bedigian is the Senior Tech Analyst and Features Writer of Benzinga. You can reach him at louis(at)benzingapro(dot)com. Follow him @LouisBedigianBZ