eBay just posted strong fourth quarter earnings, announcing that revenue for the fourth quarter ending in 2010 increased a 5% to $2.5 billion, or up 10% excluding Skype, compared to the same period of 2009 (eBay sold Skype in Q3 of 2009). On a GAAP basis, eBay reported net income of $559.2 million, or $0.42 per diluted share. The company’s non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $638.8 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, representing a 24% increase excluding Skype, compared to the same period of 2009. eBay beat analyst expectations of $0.47 per share.
The company’s PayPal business ended the quarter with 94.4 million active registered accounts, adding approximately one million active accounts per month. PayPal’s net total payment volume was $26.9 billion in the fourth quarter (up from $21.3 billion in the same quarter in 2009), with nearly half of PayPal’s revenue in the fourth quarter was generated outside the United States. eBay’s marketplaces segment $15.0 billion in gross merchandise volume, with the number of sold items up by 10%, thanks to the strong holiday shopping season.
eBay CEO John Donohoe said in a statement that “We are driving strong global growth at PayPal and strengthening our core eBay business. And we are innovating quickly in areas such as mobile, which is helping to position us at the forefront of trends shaping the future of shopping and payments.”
eBay’s been making a big push towards mobile buying and it seems to be paying off. eBay just announced that mobile sales (gross merchandise volume) grew from $600 Million to $2 billion in 2010.
For the full year, eBay Inc. posted $9.2 billion in revenue, net income on a GAAP basis of $1.8 billion, or $1.36 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $2.3 billion, or $1.73 per diluted share. On a non-GAAP basis, excluding Skype, net revenue was up 13% for the full year compared to 2009 and earnings per diluted share was up 18%.
We’ll update the post with our notes from the earnings call.
Donohoe said on the earnings call that in 2011, eBay expects mobile gross merchandise volume to double to a whopping $4 billion. And unsurprisingly, PayPal had another strong year, particularly in international markets. And PayPal constituted 70 percent of transactions on eBay in the fourth quarter and PayPal mobile adoption generated 5 times the payment volume it did over the prior year.
StubHub’s revenue was up 18% over the quarter and ticket sales were up 20%+ year-over-year.