NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
eBay reported third-quarter sales and earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street expectations.
The world's biggest online auction company posted net income of $182 million, or 27 cents a share, compared to $103 million or 16 cents a share a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, eBay reported earnings of 28 cents a share, a penny above average forecasts on Wall Street.
Sales jumped 52 percent to nearly $806 million, topping consensus estimates of $780 million.
eBay (Research)'s stock rose $1.20 to $92.56 in after-hours trading, according to INET, after falling about 1 percent during regular trading on Nasdaq.
eBay also boosted both its revenue and profit forecast for 2004, in line with Wall Street forecasts. The company now expects revenue for the year to be as high as $3.2 billion, up from its earlier guidance of $3.185 billion, and it sees profits of $1.20 a share for the full year, 3 cents higher than its earlier forecast.
For fiscal 2005, eBay said it expects revenue to be as high as $4.2 billion, in line with analysts' estimates.
However, full-year 2005 profits are forecast to be $1.50 a share, below analysts' estimates of a profit of $1.61 a share for the year.
"eBay's results were pretty good on the topline but not all the revenue growth translated to profit growth," said Safa Rashtchy, analyst with Piper Jaffray.
eBay's international operations posted strong numbers, with net transaction revenues increasing 82 percent from last year. U.S. net transaction revenues rose 29 percent year-over-year.
The number of people signed up to use eBay also showed strong growth. eBay had 125 million registered users at the end of the quarter, up 46 percent from a year ago. New listings in the quarter were up 48 percent from a year ago to 348 million.
Revenue from PayPal, eBay's online payment unit, rose 56 percent to $166.3 million.
During a conference call with analysts, eBay CEO Meg Whitman said the company was focused on maintaining the strong momentum heading into the fourth-quarter shopping season, adding that eBay was gearing up to launch a new holiday-themed ad campaign next month.
Whitman also addressed the issue of technical glitches that hindered PayPal operations last month. Whitman attributed the problem to complications in the rollout of a new program code designed to make PayPal processes more efficient.
"The matter were unacceptable and I apologize for it," Whitman said. "We're making sure PayPal works and is a robust system going forward."
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