SAN FRANCISCO ? EBay reported on Wednesday that net income grew sharply higher in the fourth quarter, helped by a gain from the sale of its remaining investment in Skype. Its results beat Wall Street's expectations, aided by strong holiday sales at its namesake website and growth at PayPal, its online payments business.
The company said it earned $1.98 billion, or $1.51 per share, in the October-December quarter. That's up from $559 million, or 42 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier. Excluding special items, eBay Inc. says it earned 60 cents per share in the latest quarter, above the 57 cents that analysts were expecting.
Revenue grew 35 percent to $3.38 billion from $2.5 billion.
On average, analysts polled by FactSet expected revenue of $3.32 billion.
The e-commerce and online payments company said its PayPal business continued to grow, ending the quarter with more than 106 million active accounts. That's up 13 percent from a year earlier. Revenue jumped 28 percent to $1.24 billion and the business processed $33.4 billion worth of payments during the quarter. That's up 24 percent from a year earlier.
As more people used their smartphones and tablets to buy things online, payments made through mobile devices accounted for $4 billion of the total payments processed through PayPal ? a more than fivefold increase from the prior year.
EBay has been working on expanding PayPal's reach beyond the Web. In addition to mobile payments, the company is testing a service that will let people use their PayPal accounts to shop in brick-and-mortar stores.
The company's marketplaces business, which includes eBay.com and other e-commerce sites and businesses, saw its revenue grow 16 percent to $1.77 billion.
San Jose, Calif.-based eBay is forecasting adjusted earnings of 50 cents to 51 cents per share in the first quarter. That's below Wall Street's expectations of 54 cents.
The company's stock climbed 24 cents to $30.58 in after-hours trading after closing down 19 cents at $30.34.
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