By Greg Bensinger 

EBay Inc. last year fought to keep hold of PayPal in a contentious battle before reversing course. As it plans to spin off the fast-growing payments unit on Friday, the e-commerce company may wish it had held its ground.

The company's second-quarter results, its last as a united entity, tell a story of two online giants headed in seemingly opposite directions. While PayPal can point to double-digit revenue growth and a slate of recent acquisitions, eBay is beset by shrinking sales and is jettisoning assets.

EBay on Thursday also said it was selling off its eBay Enterprise unit for $925 million, less than half the $2.4 billion it paid for the division four years ago, while its core marketplace posted sales below PayPal's for a second straight quarter.

Indeed, when the e-commerce company re-emerges as a stand-alone company on Friday it will more closely resemble the eBay that bought PayPal in 2002 to help accelerate growth. But today it faces the ever-growing threat of Amazon.com Inc., as well as new e-commerce upstarts.

Devin Wenig, eBay's incoming chief executive, seemed to acknowledge the company's challenges in a call with analysts, pointing again to lasting effects from a 2014 data breach and a change in how Google Inc. shows search results. His counterpart, Dan Schulman, meanwhile was setting a lofty goal to effectively quadruple use of the PayPal app.

"EBay has faced a number of issues that have led to growth challenges, including the Google demotion," said Carlos Kirjner, a Bernstein analyst. "The key is whether they will be able to recover; they need to find new ways to bring in new users."

On Thursday, eBay posted a 6% sales bump to $4.65 billion, including results from the Enterprise unit, and a profit of $83 million. Excluding items, the company's earnings beat analyst expectations. In 4 p.m. trading, the shares were up 3.4% to $65.59 on the Nasdaq.

In eBay's core marketplace, which comprises mostly eBay.com as well as ticket-seller StubHub, sales fell 3% to $2.12 billion, the second straight quarterly decline after five years of increases. A year earlier, the division posted a 9% sales increase. PayPal's sales grew 16% to $2.26 billion.

EBay pointed to currency fluctuations as a primary reason for the sales shortfall. Without that impact, the company said marketplace sales would have increased 5%.

EBay's 6% increase in active buyers, to 157 million, was less than half the rate of last year's second quarter. PayPal's growth, too, slowed to 11%, or 169 million accounts, from 15% in the year-earlier period.

Nearing its 20th anniversary later this year--a mark celebrated by Amazon this week--eBay presents a starkly different profile than its larger Seattle rival. While it has tried for years to shed its reputation as a repository for one-off items, eBay has had only mixed success in convincing brands to sell their new goods on the site.

Amazon, meanwhile, has a massive network of warehouses from which it ships many new products, a growing Prime loyalty program and nearly 280 million customers accounts. Amazon is expected to approach $100 billion in sales this year and commands a market capitalization of $221 billion, whereas eBay's sales--minus PayPal--will likely fall under $10 billion this year with a market cap of about $35 billion, based on early market indications.

"We made solid progress but we have a lot of work ahead of us to maximize eBay's significant potential," said Mr. Wenig. "Our absolute priority is to improve our competitiveness and drive more stable profitable growth."

As the PayPal spinoff nears, eBay has been cleaning house. In June, it sold back to Craigslist Inc. a 28.4% stake it had held in the classified-ad site since 2004 for an undisclosed amount, while also settling remaining litigation. Earlier this year, eBay pared about 2,400 jobs, representing roughly 7% of its workforce.

What remains is primarily eBay.com, a mix of fixed-priced items and auctioned goods, as well as StubHub. EBay still relies on its millions of sellers to ship their merchandise to customers, which over the years has yielded inconsistent shipping speeds and reliability.

Some analysts have speculated that eBay could be an attractive takeover target by bigger rivals such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., or private-equity players.

Mr. Wenig on Thursday said he would focus his attention on small- and medium-size sellers, who bring "a mix of inventory, from unique items to discounted and seasonal inventory to liquidation goods."

EBay reiterated a June filing in which it said it expected revenue from its marketplace division to remain flat or grow as much as 5% next year, not including the impact of foreign exchange fluctuations.

Notably, eBay's gross merchandise volume, the amount of sales it helps facilitate, fell 2% to $20.1 billion, though it would have been up 6% without the impact of currency fluctuations. PayPal's net payment volume, by contrast, jumped 20% to $65.9 billion.

PayPal's Mr. Schulman recently oversaw the planned $890 million acquisition of Xoom Corp., and said on Thursday he hopes to compel users to open the company's primary mobile application two to three times weekly, compared with that amount per month today.

"That is a significant stretch goal for us," Mr. Schulman told analysts.

Write to Greg Bensinger at greg.bensinger@wsj.com

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