NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Ebay Wednesday reported fourth-quarter earnings that missed Wall Street forecasts and announced a two-for-one stock split.

The world's biggest online auction company posted net income of $205.4 million, or 30 cents a share.

Excluding one-time items, eBay (Research) reported earnings of $226 million, or 33 cents a share, compared with $157 million, or 24 cents a share, a year ago.

Analysts had estimated a profit of 34 cents for the quarter, according to Thomson Financial.

Ebay's stock tumbled more than 11 percent in after-hours trading to $91 on INET after falling over 3 percent in regular trading. The stock rose over 60 percent in 2004.

Sales rose 44 percent to $935.8 million, up from $684.4 million a year ago and barely beating analysts' consensus estimate of $934 million for the quarter.

"Ebay's results were weak relative to expectations on Wall Street," said Scott Devitt, analyst with Legg Mason Wood Walker. "This is a company that is priced for perfection and the expectations were for outperformance in the quarter and a raised outlook for 2005. This didn't happen."

For the full year, the company logged a profit of $829.5 million, or $1.21 a share, up 68 percent from the same time a year ago. Analysts had forecast a full year profit of $1.22 a share.

Total sales in 2004 rose 51 percent to $3.27 billion from $2.17 billion reported in 2003.

For fiscal 2005, eBay said it expects total revenue to fall in the range of $4.25 billion to $4.35 billion, slightly below the top-end of analysts' forecasted range of revenue of between $4.1 and $4.5 billion.

The company expects profits in 2005 to be between $1.48 to $1.52 a share. Wall Street estimates are for a profit of between $1.50 to $1.72 a share.

Revenues slowed its international operations in the fourth quarter compared to the prior quarter, with net transaction revenues increasing 64 percent year-over-year compared to an 82 percent year-over-year growth in the third quarter.

U.S. net transaction revenues rose 24 percent year-over-year, down from the 29 percent growth in the third quarter.

Said Devitt, "The international business is really the growth story for eBay, especially as the U.S. market matures. However, there was a significant material decline in revenues overseas in the fourth quarter."

EBay had 135.5 million registered users at the end of the fourth quarter, up 43 percent from a year ago. New listings in the quarter were up 39 percent from a year ago to 404.6 million.

Revenue from PayPal, eBay's online payment unit, rose 53 percent to $200.2 million.

EBay also said that its board approved a two-for-one stock split, payable February 16, 2005, to stockholders of record on Jan. 31, 2005

During a conference call with analysts, eBay's chief financial officer Rajiv Dutta said the company was boosting its investment in expanding its PayPal service and in new market opportunities in 2005 to $300 million, up $100 million from an earlier $200 million target.

Specifically, Dutta along with eBay CEO Meg Whitman signaled out China as the "biggest future ecommerce opportunity anywhere." To that point, Dutta said the company would earmark $100 million, or 2 percent of eBay's expected global revenue this year, to new investments in China.

Ebay entered the Chinese market through its acquisition of EachNet in 2003. Dutta said the Chinese shopping site has logged $360 million in annualized returns based on the fourth-quarter performance.

"The $100 million investment is aimed at generating eBay's long-term revenue growth. We're not interested in just being No. 1 in China but the No. 1 player in ecommerce," said Dutta.

Legg Mason Wood Walker's Devitt sees it a little differently. "Ebay is really fighting for China but there are two entrenched players there already. So eBay had to invest more in China to compete more aggressively for market share."