Bits Blog: Facebook’s Stock Soars Amid Rosy Growth Expectations

DealBook: Workday Soars 74% in Debut

Some newly public stocks are experiencing that one-day pop.

Workday, the software company, opened 72 percent above its offering price of $28 in its debut on Friday, on heavy trading volume. The stock closed the day at $48.69, up nearly 74 percent on its first day.

Workday’s debut capped a streak of investor enthusiasm for initial public offerings this week. On Thursday, the real estate company Realogy and the stock photography company Shutterstock both jumped 27 percent in their debuts.

Investor appetite for Workday, which makes cloud-based applications for human resources, has been rising. This week, the company increased the expected range for its I.P.O., eventually pricing shares above that revised estimate.

Workday operates in a hot space. Enterprise companies, which provide technology services to companies, have sparked a flurry of deal-making activity, as well as offerings. For example, Splunk, which aggregates and analyzes data, went public at $17. Despite some volatility, the company currently trades at more than $31.

Revenue at Workday — which was founded by David Duffield and Aneel Bhusri, two veterans of the software industry — has more than doubled every year in since 2007, reaching $134 million in the year that ended Jan. 31, according to its most recent prospectus. Still like many start-ups, its struggling to turn a profit. The company has reported a loss every year since 2007.

Despite the recent spate of strong showings, the I.P.O. market is being picky, following the botched debut of Facebook. Last week, Dave & Buster’s Entertainment withdrew its offering, citing the current conditions.

EBay Profit Soars 144% as E-Commerce Rebounds

SAN FRANCISCO — EBay, once the online equivalent of a garage sale, is successfully transforming itself into a dominant force in mobile retailing, as seen by the successful turnaround of its Internet marketplace business and double-digit growth of PayPal, its online payments system.

EBay reported Wednesday that it more than doubled net income in the second quarter to $692 million, or 53 cents a share, a 144 percent jump from the quarter a year earlier.

The company said revenue climbed 23 percent, to $3.4 billion, slightly higher than the $3.36 billion Wall Street analysts expected.

John J. Donahoe, eBay’s chief executive, attributed those numbers to the successful turnaround of the company’s marketplaces business, which delivered $1.8 billion in revenue last quarter — its highest quarterly revenue ever — and the continued growth of PayPal.

“The eBay marketplace is back. PayPal is still growing faster and will eventually catch, but that is still a couple years away,” Mr. Donahoe said in an interview.

While eBay’s Marketplaces, its term for e-commerce, is still its biggest business, PayPal brought in $1.4 billion last quarter, a 26 percent jump from the same quarter a year ago.

The company, based in San Jose, Calif., expects each business to transact $10 billion in volume in 2012, more than double the volume in 2011.

Wall Street is optimistic. EBay’s stock has gained more than 33 percent so far this year, more than the 25 percent gain of rival Amazon. The stock closed Wednesday at $40.46, up 3.56 percent, before the announcement, and then jumped 4.7 percent in after-hours trading.

“Marketplace has completely turned around and PayPal is the No. 1 source for online payments,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BCG Partners.

EBay recently introduced PayPal into the physical stores of 16 retailers, notably Home Depot and Office Depot.

That physical presence could help the company fend off new competitors in mobile payments, notably Google’s mobile payments app, Google Wallet, and Square, the three-year-old mobile payments start-up run by the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

EBay’s earnings report arrived one day after it acquired Card.io, a start-up with a technology that allows users to take a photograph of their credit card with their smartphone to use for mobile payments.

EBay did not disclose how much it spent to acquire Card.io and did not say if it used PayPal to complete the transaction.

EBay Profit Soars 144% as E-Commerce Rebounds

SAN FRANCISCO — EBay, once the online equivalent of a garage sale, is successfully transforming itself into a dominant force in mobile retailing, as seen by the successful turnaround of its Internet marketplace business and double-digit growth of PayPal, its online payments system.

EBay reported Wednesday that it more than doubled net income in the second quarter to $692 million, or 53 cents a share, a 144 percent jump from the quarter a year earlier.

The company said revenue climbed 23 percent, to $3.4 billion, slightly higher than the $3.36 billion Wall Street analysts expected.

John J. Donahoe, eBay’s chief executive, attributed those numbers to the successful turnaround of the company’s marketplaces business, which delivered $1.8 billion in revenue last quarter — its highest quarterly revenue ever — and the continued growth of PayPal.

“The eBay marketplace is back. PayPal is still growing faster and will eventually catch, but that is still a couple years away,” Mr. Donahoe said in an interview.

While eBay’s Marketplaces, its term for e-commerce, is still its biggest business, PayPal brought in $1.4 billion last quarter, a 26 percent jump from the same quarter a year ago.

The company, based in San Jose, Calif., expects each business to transact $10 billion in volume in 2012, more than double the volume in 2011.

Wall Street is optimistic. EBay’s stock has gained more than 33 percent so far this year, more than the 25 percent gain of rival Amazon. The stock closed Wednesday at $40.46, up 3.56 percent, before the announcement, and then jumped 4.7 percent in after-hours trading.

“Marketplace has completely turned around and PayPal is the No. 1 source for online payments,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BCG Partners.

EBay recently introduced PayPal into the physical stores of 16 retailers, notably Home Depot and Office Depot.

That physical presence could help the company fend off new competitors in mobile payments, notably Google’s mobile payments app, Google Wallet, and Square, the three-year-old mobile payments start-up run by the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

EBay’s earnings report arrived one day after it acquired Card.io, a start-up with a technology that allows users to take a photograph of their credit card with their smartphone to use for mobile payments.

EBay did not disclose how much it spent to acquire Card.io and did not say if it used PayPal to complete the transaction.