EBay sales climb 18 percent to $3.9B in fourth quarter

EBay's sales climbed 18% to $3.9 billion in revenue during the fourth fiscal quarter, up from $3.4 billion during the same period a year earlier.

In a prepared statement, management touted double digit user growth across its portfolio as well as strong gains in mobile adoption.

EBay posted net income of $751 million, or 57 cents a share, compared to net income of $1.98 billion, or $1.51 a share, for the same period the previous year. Excluding various expenses -- primarily $1.7 billion related to the sale of eBay's remaining investment in Skype a year ago -- eBay reported so-called non-GAAP net income of $927 million, or 70 cents a diluted share, up from $789 million, or 60 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter.

The whisper number for the fourth quarter, which reflects analyst estimates of non-GAAP earnings, was $0.69.

"We feel great about our performance" John Donahoe, eBay's President and CEO, said during a conference call this afternoon.

Donahoe pointed to the performance of eBay mobile, which he said doubled its transaction volume to $13 billion over the previous-year period, as well as PayPal mobile, which did roughly $14 billion in payments. That's more than triple the volume of the previous prior year, he said, adding that eBay expects the transaction volume of each unit to exceed $20 billion in 2013.

"We are all in on mobile," he said, adding that mobile consumers return to PayPal and eBay more frequently than those using other platforms.

For the full year, eBay's revenue climbed 21 percent to $14.1 billion in 2012. The company reported full-year net income of $2.6 billion, or $1.99 per diluted share, which on a non-GAAP basis amounted to $3.1 billion, or $2.36 a share.

Management said that eBay intended to put more emphasis on the so-called BRIC countries -- Brazil, India, Russia and China. They added that PayPal was growing quickly in Latin America, singling out the growth in the Brazilian market as being "on fire."