eBay Reports Fantastic Fourth-Quarter Results

By Jiang Zhang:EBay (EBAY) reports Q411 results on January 18th. The Street expects the company to earn $0.57 on $3.32 billion in revenue. Last quarter, eBay gave a conservative guidance, which gives room for an earnings surprise due to strong holiday sales numbers and continued ramp up in mobile e-commerce.

By Valuentum: Though much of the recent rise in the share price of Collective Brands (PSS) can be attributed to takeover speculation, shares jumped over 4% in after-hours trading Tuesday as a result of much better-than-expected quarterly results. The company's fourth-quarter loss came in at $0.69 per share, but that result was materially better than consensus expectations.

By Bram de Haas:eBay (EBAY) owns the payment processor PayPal. PayPal (40% of eBay's 2012 revenue) is a popular payment method or e-wallet. It's also very well positioned to become the dominant payment processor in the global e-commerce industry and what is even more important: the global mobile shopping payment processor.

By Valuentum: Fast casual food seller Panera (PNRA) announced solid fourth quarter results to cap off an excellent 2012 Tuesday after the market close. Revenue jumped 15% year-over-year to $572 million, roughly in line with consensus expectations. Earnings growth was also strong, with earnings per share increasing 34% year-over-year to $1.75 per share, exceeding consensus expectations.

By TechCrunch: By Leena Rao

By Valuentum: On Wednesday, global commerce and payments company eBay (EBAY) reported solid third quarter performance that showed accelerated growth in both Marketplaces and PayPal. We continue to like the company and hold shares in the portfolio of our Best Ideas Newsletter. In fact, we said the company was an outright steal when it was trading in the low $30s last year (it's now over $50 per share).

Zacks.com submits: Red Hat Inc. (RHT), a leading provider of open source solutions, reported first quarter 2011 non-GAAP earnings (including share-based compensation but excluding amortization of intangible assets) of 15 cents per share, above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 13 cents and 25% higher from 12 cents in the year-ago period.