EBAY eBay Inc

By Greg Bensinger 

EBay Inc. posted its second straight quarter of sales gains, suggesting the online retailer may be turning the corner after a rocky start as an independent company free of payments unit PayPal.

In a sign of confidence in the company's direction, eBay raised its earnings and sales expectations and said it would buy back more of its shares.

The San Jose, Calif., company's shares rose more than 6% in after-hours trading to $28.76, nearing their high since the PayPal spinoff a year ago.

Under Chief Executive Devin Wenig, eBay has worked to change its image as a site for shopping bargains, since it doesn't control shipping or maintain its own inventory in contrast to rivals like Amazon.com Inc. and Jet.com.

"We made good progress on our strategy, and we are starting to see some positive movement in underlying traffic and conversion metrics driven by early versions of our new user experiences," Mr. Wenig said on a call with analysts.

Mr. Wenig said eBay would ramp up its marketing efforts on social media and continue to invest in artificial intelligence software to better predict buyers' shopping behavior.

EBay has struggled to keep pace with other online retailers, particularly since carving off PayPal, though it appears buyers are again returning to the site. The retailer said it had 164 million active buyers on the site, up from the first quarter's 162 million.

The company has sought to bolster its image as a catchall site for rare tchotchkes, as well as new goods. But as Amazon.com Inc. has brought in more third-party sellers, with unique inventory, eBay hasn't been able to maintain its cool.

EBay also is working to revise the index for its entire site to improve its rankings in Google search, a long and painstaking process that requires sellers to provide additional information about their products. It is an important initiative, since so many buyers begin looking for merchandise through simple Google searches.

Event ticket reseller StubHub continues to be a bright spot for eBay, posting a 40% increase in sales to $225 million. StubHub recently bought Spanish rival Ticketbis, as well as software firm Ticket Utils and reached a deal to resell tickets for the New York Yankees, which had been a vocal critic.

EBay said it authorized the repurchase of $2.5 billion of its own stock and had bought back $500 million already.

The company boosted its outlook for the year, expecting revenue to reach as high as $8.95 billion and earnings per share to hit as much as $1.90.

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

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 20, 2016 18:19 ET (22:19 GMT)

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