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Topic: Growth Stocks

EBAY INC. $43 – Nasdaq symbol EBAY

EBAY INC. $43 (Nasdaq symbol EBAY; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.3 billion; Market cap: $55.9 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 4.3; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.ebay.com) gets half of its revenue from its auction websites, which now have 104.8 million users.

The company gets a further 40% from processing online payments through its PayPal service. This business has huge potential, particularly as it expands to retail stores and handling payments from smartphones.

The remaining 10% comes from GSI Commerce Inc., which helps businesses process orders from their websites. eBay paid $2.4 billion for GSI in June 2011.

In the three months ended June 30, 2012, eBay’s revenue rose 23.1%, to $3.4 billion from $2.8 billion a year earlier. Revenue rose 26.5% at PayPal and 9.1% at the auction sites. GSI contributed $221 million to the quarter’s revenue.

Earnings rose 15.7%, to $730 million from $631 million. Per-share earnings rose 16.7%, to $0.56 from $0.48, on fewer shares outstanding.

The stock has gained 39% since we first recommended it at $31 in our December 2010 issue. It now trades at 20.8 times eBay’s projected 2012 earnings of $2.07 a share. That’s still a reasonable p/e ratio in light of its rising earnings and PayPal’s growth.

eBay is a buy.

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