You’ve heard me talk about the growing prevalence of regional offices as a compelling and growing part of the Portland startup community. To date, many of these offices — which often rival or fully eclipse (Intel) full fledged Portland companies in size — have played the role of employers, event hosts, and sponsors for the community, as a whole. And that’s a trend that I hope to see continue.
But given that many of them are outposts of public companies, they’re also subject to any number of influences outside our region. Like the stock market. So I thought it might be worthwhile to do a better job of keeping you up-to-date on them.
Like eBay, which has had a strong Portland presence through acquisition since the early days of mobile here in town. And the good news is, they just beat their quarterly estimates.
The company today said that for the quarter that ended December 31, it posted revenues of $2.9 billion with non-GAAP net income of $670 million or $0.71 per share. On both counts, it just beat analyst expectations, which were respectively $2.87 billion on EPS of $0.68. But as a sign of the flagging business that activist shareholders have been highlighting, gross merchandise volumes were $24.6 billion, up just one percent on a year ago, even as revenues rose six percent.
“We delivered record earnings for the fourth quarter and full year 2018,” said Devin Wenig, President and CEO of eBay Inc., in a statement. “In 2019, our focus will be on further improvements to the eBay user experience, while pursuing significant long-term growth opportunities in advertising and payments. We are confident in the strength of our business and future growth prospects, as demonstrated by our decision to institute eBay’s first-ever dividend and increase our share repurchase program.”
For more analysis, see Techcrunch. For more details, visit eBay investor relations.
