It was day two yesterday. The Q2 results season was got under way as Big Blue pleased markets, and Yahoo disappointed.
Then yesterday, Apple and Motorola pleased while Intel disappointed with lower than expected sales.
But, after Apple, perhaps the next most interesting stock was eBay. Interesting, because it did very little.
Q2 profits at eBay were down on a year earlier, from $291.6million to $250 million. That’s okay, no one was surprised by that. In fact the best phrase that could be used to describe eBay’s growth over the last 18 months or so, would be “as flat as a pancake.”
It’s as if the company has done what it was going to do out of online auctions
Indeed, as yesterday it announced a $2 billion share buyback, which is what you expect mature companies to do, not high growth techs.
Does that mean eBay’s days as an exciting growth stock are over? Of course not. Paypal saw a 44 Percent rise in customer numbers, while Skype saw revenue rise 26 percent to $44 million.
VoiP is no longer a market which is dominated by Skype. It’s a sector which sees an extraordinary variety of competitors, from Tesco and DSG (formerly Dixons) to Google.
But it’s also an incredibly important business, which is set to transform communication. eBay owns the company which is still the market leader. The current loll in growth is, in our view, little more than the eye of the hurricane that is eBay.
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