Ebay said today quarterly profit rose 24 per cent as moves to stabilise its auctions business showed signs of taking hold.
The company - which employs over 900 staff in its west Dublin centre along with its sister company Paypal - said fourth-quarter revenue rose 29 per cent, fuelled by demand for hard-to-find Sony and Nintendo gaming consoles and strengthening business in international markets such as Germany and Britain.
That reassured investors worried by three years of slowing revenue growth for the online marketplace.
Gross merchandise volume, the total value of goods and services sold on Ebay auction sites, grew 20 per cent to $14.4 billion. That volume figure grew 17 per cent, year-over-year, in the third quarter of 2006.
Fourth-quarter net income rose to $346.5 million, or 25 cents a share, from the year-earlier quarter's $279.2 million, or 20 cents a diluted share. Excluding one-time items, net income rose 27 per cent to $431 million, or 31 cents per share, topping Wall Street's consensus forecast by three cents.
Net revenue of $1.72 billion, up 29 per cent from a year earlier, marks a steadying of Ebay's growth rate, which has fallen over the past three years from above 50 per cent. Analysts, on average, had expected growth of only 25 per cent.
The results led Ebay's shares to surge 13 per cent.