eBay (EBAY) first quarter earnings preview

Back in March, Chief Executive John Donahoe, laid out a few ways that eBay is trying to adapt in order to regain strength in its troubled marketplace business, including focusing more on the market for offseason or liquidation-ready items and refining onsite search capabilities. These are fine, but one area where the company really has to continue to make progress is in cultivating buyers' trust, while at the same time keeping its big sellers happy. This is something that the company has had a tough time juggling in the recent past.

Two of eBay's biggest businesses are Skype and Paypal. Paypal seems to be moving in the right direction, and the company plans to double this business by 2011. In 2008, Paypal processed around $60 billion worth of transactions, and the company expects to see this increase to between $100 and $120 billion over the next three years.

Skype is another matter, and the company has decided that it is going to go ahead and spin off the company at some point in early 2010. It insists that Skype is a great stand-alone business, but just does not have the synergy to remain lumped in with eBay and Paypal. As a stand-alone business, it believes that Skype will be able to fully maximize its potential.

Should eBay come through with its expected 33 cents per share, it would mark a 21.4% drop from the same period last year, when it was able to show 42 cents per share for its first quarter 2008.

Analyst view: Going into this afternoon's earnings release, Youssef Squali, an analyst with Jefferies & Co., stated that he expects eBay will hit its 33-cent target. He expects to hear management announce a continued cautious outlook for the remainder of the year as consumer demand should continue to remain weak. He rates the stock as a "buy" and has a $20 price target. The stock finished up yesterday's trading at $14.29.

We will see just how well the company was able to do in the first quarter this afternoon . . . what are your predictions?