Tech stocks were back in favor with investors on Wednesday, and eBay kept the momentum going after the bell with better than expected results.
eBay shares leapt 10% in late trading — on top of a 5% gain during the day — on fourth quarter sales that rose 29% to $1.72 billion, ahead of $1.67 billion estimates. Earnings of 31 cents a share were three cents better than Wall Street analysts expected, and the online auction king’s first-quarter sales guidance of $1.67-$1.72 billion was in line with $1.7 billion forecasts.
“All three of the company’s business units delivered impressive results this quarter, including record net revenues from our Marketplaces business, strong total payment volume on PayPal, and a triple-digit increase in the number of Skype users,” CEO Meg Whitman said in a statement.
Tech stocks surged during the day on Sun Microsystems’ return to profitability and news that Yahoo
will soon roll out its new advertising platform.
But AMD shares slumped 8% on news that the chipmaker’s price war with Intel
took its toll in the fourth quarter. QLogic
fell 5% on its results.
Corning , Check Point
, Hyperion
, Parametric
, RF Micro
and Seagate
gained on their results.
Adobe rose 6% on a new CFO.
The Nasdaq soared 35 to 2466, the S&P 500 rose 12 to 1440, and the Dow gained 88 to a record 12,621. Volume declined to 2.78 billion shares on the NYSE, and rose to 2.3 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led 22-10 on the NYSE, and 20-10 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 73% on the NYSE, and 83% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 296-17 on the NYSE, and 143-42 on the Nasdaq.