Published April 21, 2010
eBay gets boost in revenue as people flock for discounted goods in economic downturn, lowers future profit expectations
The world’s largest online auction website, eBay, today lowered revenue projections for the full year, sending the stock down more than 8-percent to $24.17 per share in after hours trading as at 7:15pm EST.
The company also released [PDF] Q1 2010 earnings today, reporting total revenue of $2.2-billion, beating analyst expectations but still sending the stock down after lowering future expected earnings.
The company said net income in Q1 2010 was $398-million ($0.30 per share), up from $357-million ($0.28 per share) from the same period in 2009.
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Published November 30, 2009
The world’s largest online auction site, eBay, has been hit with a massive €1.7 million (USD $2.55 million) fine after the company has failed to adhere to a previous injunction that ruled the company wasn’t doing enough to block the sale of counterfeited Louis Vuitton products.
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Published November 06, 2009
eBay is inching closer to selling it’s popular internet telephony service Skype after reaching an agreement with Joltid and Joost M.V. over patent infringement litigation.
The settlement did not come cheap. Skype founders Niklas Zennstorm and Janus Friis have given up a lot of equity, bringing their total stake in the company to 14-percent, in order for Joltid to drop litigation and to pass all rights to the questioned underlying VoIP technologies to Skype.
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Published April 16, 2009
eBay announced today the company has bought a controlling 67% stake in South Korea’s largest internet-based marketplace, Gmarket, in a deal worth US $1.2 billion. The deal was approved unanimously across the Gmarket board.
It is highly unlikely eBay will merge Gmarket with its current brands in the region.
eBay CEO John Donahoe said, “The combination of Gmarket and Internet Auction Company establishes an exceptionally strong leadership position for eBay in one of the world’s largest, most dynamic and innovative e-commerce markets,”
It is a good strategic strategy for eBay to try to further establish itself in the emerging and high growth Asian region markets.
The deal will be completed in only a couple of months in June 2009.
Published April 14, 2009
eBay has made it clear that they over paid for Skype and the synergies they were hoping for are just not there.
According to comments made today by eBay CEO Tom Donahoe, he said, “it’s clear that Skype has limited synergies with eBay and PayPal. We believe operating Skype as a stand-alone publicly traded company is the best path…”
According to the company, an IPO will be completed by Q2 2010.
Skype currently has more than 400 million global users, and generated $551 million in total revenue in 2008.
Published March 30, 2009

eBay’s popular VoIP service Skype has just launched a mobile version of its service for the iPhone. A BlackBerry version will launch by the end of May. It firstly rolled out the iPhone Skype app on Tuesday in Japan (already available in Japan from the time difference) and will also launch tomorrow for everyone else. Reports indicate the sound quality and everything else is great. The apps will be completely free to use and download, but some features such as making calls requires Skype credits.