EBay Posts 3Q Profit, Future Less Bright, PayPal Shines

Third quarter numbers for auction giant eBay are out and the news is a bit troubling. The company met the low side expectation coming in at $2.11 Billion.  The average price per item sold was off 7 percent and the company warned that the bad economic conditions will continue to challenge revenues in Q4 and beyond.   Classified ads and Stub Hub efforts have been surprisingly successful, but it’s the performance of Paypal that caught our attention. Paypal generated 28 percent of total revenues and for the first time, off-eBay transactions generated more than on-eBay sales.  The purchase of pay site BillMeLater.com is expected to continue this trend and, as Edgelings Managing Editor Michael S. Malone has noted before, eBay seems to be evolving more into a bank than an auction site.