eBay Q3 Earnings Beats Expectations Following Its Split From PayPal

eBay reported its third-quarter earnings today — its first as a separate company from PayPal — and beat investor expectations with earnings of 43 cents per share and $2.1 billion in revenue. Investors were looking for $2.09 billion in revenue and earnings of 40 cents per share.

The report sent eBay shares straight up, with the company’s stock rising 9 percent in extended trading. In the second quarter this year, eBay’s standalone revenue was $2.11 billion, and in the same quarter last year the company’s revenue was $2.15 billion. Prior to the earnings report, shares of eBay were up around 2.5 percent on the year.

Still, the numbers are not as good as the prior year. Revenue was down 2 percent year-over-year, and the company’s earnings per share fell 6 percent year-over-year. The company reported GMV of $19.6 billion, compared to GMV of about $20 billion in the same quarter the year earlier. eBay isalso selling off its enterprise unit, essentially splitting off both PayPal and eBay enterprise as part of the company’s earnings report.

Taken together, this essentially pegs eBay’s core services as a stable, but not necessarily exciting business in terms of growth. The company unveiled a new version of its app in September this year with a more unified mobile experience. At the time, the company’s apps had been downloaded 279 million times.

As expected eBay faces increasingly stiff challenges from selling competitors like Amazon, but it does seem like investors are showing a little bit of faith in the company’s core business model. For the next quarter, the company is forecasting $2.275 billion to $2.325 billion in revenue, and earnings of between 47 cents and 49 cents per share.This is eBay’s first quarter reporting separately from PayPal, a big bellwether moment for the company as it returns to its roots as a selling platform. PayPal started trading in July earlier this year, and at the time immediately popped around 8 percent in trading on its first day as an independent, publicly traded company.

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