Driven by sustained growth in its payment-processing division, ecommerce giant eBay on Wednesday reported third-quarter profits up 23 percent from the year earlier period, though revenue was nearly stagnant, up just 1 percent from last year.
For the quarter ending Sept. 30, eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) posted net income of $432 million, or 33 cents per share, up from $350 million, or 27 cents per share, in the same period last year.
Excluding one-time items, eBay posted earnings of 40 cents per share, beating out analysts' forecast of 37 cents per share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
Total revenue checked in at $2.25 billion for the quarter, just beating out the year-earlier mark of $2.24 billion. Analysts had been expecting revenues of $2.18 billion.
Revenue in the company's payments division, headlined by PayPal, increased 22 percent year-over-year, rising to $838 million in the third quarter of 2010 from $688 million last year.
"We delivered strong third quarter results, with great performance at PayPal and stable results at eBay," eBay President and CEO John Donahoe said in a statement. "PayPal gained share globally and eBay continued to improve key metrics. Our company is strong and we are managing our global portfolio to balance strengths, challenges and opportunities, invest in growth and deliver consistent performance."
PayPal closed the quarter with more than 90 million active accounts, adding more than 1 million new accounts each month of the period, eBay said.
Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, eBay offered net-revenue guidance in the range of $2.39 billion and $2.49 billion, and earnings between $0.37 and $0.40.
Shares of eBay were up more than 6.5 percent in after-hours trading.
Kenneth Corbin is an associate editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.
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