eBay Trails Street on Guidance, Mobile Keeps Growing

Wednesday night eCommerce firm eBay said that gross merchandise volume, a value of just about everything sold across the platform, came in at $20.1 billion in the third quarter, a number that showed five percent growth year over year, but was slightly below analysts estimates.

For the quarter, sales were up, notching a third straight quarter of gains, to $2.2 billion, up 5.5 percent year over year, having separated from PayPal in 2015. The net income of 45 cents a share beat the Street by a penny.  Yet the stock slipped, possibly on the heels of the gross merchandise volume, and guidance was also slightly below what the Street expected for the current quarter, which contains the holiday season, for $2.36 billion to $2.4 billion versus the Street at $2.4 billion.  After hours traders sent the stock lower by seven percent.  Details showed some growth in buyer counts, as the total number of new buyers in the quarter came in at 1 million, bringing the total globally to 165 million.

Though the Street may have been nonplussed by that bigger picture number, mobile was called out on the conference call with analysts as a bright spot.  As noted by CEO Devin Wenig, redesigned mobile apps have been gaining traction since a May launch, and “customer reviews have trended higher as we have improved the speed and usability of our apps.”  The third quarter, he said, marked the second straight quarter of mobile acceleration and now the firm is at 47 percent mobile share.