eBay’s Guidance As An Auction Didn’t Fetch The Minimum Bid (EBAY)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) has posted earnings on a non-GAAP basis of $0.45 EPS on $2.18 Billion in revenues.  First Call had earnings estimates at $0.41 EPS on roughly $2.14 Billion in revenues.  The actual report was good, but eBay’s guidance is going to be a disappointment to some of the perma-bulls.  Guidance is as follows:

  • eBay’s non-GAAP EPS $0.37 to $0.39 on on $2.0 to $2.05 Billion in revenues; next quarter estimates are $0.40 EPS on $2.15 Billion in revenues.
  • eBay is guiding fiscal 2008 non GAAP earnings of $1.63 to $1.67 on revenues of $8.5 to $8.75 Billion; First Call has estimates for fiscal 2008 at $1.66 EPS on roughly $9 Billion in revenues.

It bought back roughly 9.2 million shares of its common stock at a cost of approximately $312 million (For the full year, the company repurchased 44.6 million shares of its common stock for approximately $1.5 billion).  As we had previously noted, Meg Whitman is retiring from the company and John Donahoe will become successor as of March 31, 2008.  The company has approved yet another repurchase plan of up to $2 Billion in stock.

Shares were challenging its 52-week lows yesterday and the stock was still down well over 30% from its 52-week highs. Shares posed a late day rally to close up some 6.6% at $28.94, although because of tepid guidance shares are down some 8% at $26.55 in after-hours trading. 

It looks like that $40-ish price target and some earnings estimates for the year might be coming down tomorrow morning.

Jon C. Ogg
January 23, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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