eBay reported financial results for its fourth quarter and year ended, 12/31/08, this afternoon. Fourth quarter revenue was $2.04 billion – a year-over-year decrease of 7% (or $145 million). Non-GAAP EPS was down about 9% to $0.41. Although the Q4 revenue was within the quarterly guidance set, it does represent eBay’s first negative quarter.
Visit the eBay Ink News page to access Fast Fact documents for eBay Inc., PayPal, Skype, the press release, earnings call and all related items to Q4FY08 for eBay.
I live-blogged the earnings call for the third consecutive quarter on our Twitter feed(http://twitter.com/ebayinkblog).
Quarterly Business Highlights:
• eBay Inc. completed the acquisition of Bill Me Later to further extend PayPal’s leadership position in online payments.
• eBay Inc. completed the acquisition of Den Bla Avis (dba.dk) and BilBasen (bilbasen.dk) in Denmark to further extend
its global leadership position in online classifieds.
• eBay Inc. completed the acquisition of Ticket Technology to enhance the selling platform for StubHub.
• eBay Inc. completed the acquisition of Positronic, a developer of predictive search technology, to enhance eBay’s
efforts to bolster search functionalities on its ecommerce sites.
• eBay Marketplace sellers in the U.S. lowered shipping costs significantly – dropping the average shipping costs to buyers by 25% compared to Q4CY07.
• Jack Sheng of eForcity Inc. became eBay Marketplace’s first ever 1 million feedback seller.
• StubHub announced a partnership with the NHL franchise Buffalo Sabres, HSBC Arena and Tickets.com to enable an integrated ticketing solution for the team and arena.
• eBay’s Classifieds businesses averaged 91 million unique visitors per month during the quarter, representing an increase of 41% year-over-year.
• PayPal expanded its reach on the Web with the launch of merchant service account deals with American Airlines (U.S.), Hoyts Cinemas (Australia), Promarkt (Germany), Aldo Shoes (Canada), Jet2 (U.K.), Laura Ashley (U.K.), Amway (U.S.), and Zappos.com (U.S.).
• PayPal continued its global expansion by launching new localized sites in Mexico, Hong Kong and Singapore.
• PayPal extended its mobile strategy by partnering with RIM to become the exclusive payment option on the BlackBerry Application StoreFront.
• Driven by very strong adoption in Asia, SkypeOut minutes reached 2.6 billion globally, a 61% increase year-over-year.
• Skype expanded its senior leadership team with the addition of Daniel Berg as chief technology officer and Christopher S. Dean as chief strategy officer.
Cheers,
RBH