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SAN FRANCISCO : Online auction website eBay said Wednesday chief executive Meg Whitman will step down in March, handing the company's reins to its marketplace unit head John Donahoe.
Confirmation of Whitman's departure came as eBay announced its profit in the last three months of 2007 soared 53 percent to 530.9 million dollars, or 39 cents per share, from the same quarter the previous year.
Whitman joined eBay in March 1998 while eBay was a US-only auction-based trading site with 500,000 registered users, 30 employees and 4.7 million dollars in revenue.
EBay now has hundreds of millions of users worldwide, more than 15,000 employees and nearly 7.7 billion dollars in revenue.
"With humor, smarts and unflappable determination, Meg took a small, barely known online auction site and helped it become an integral part of our lives," said eBay chairman of the board Pierre Omidyar, who founded the firm in 1995.
Donahoe joined eBay three years ago and is president of the Marketplaces unit, which accounts for 70 percent of the California-based company's revenues.
"John and I have worked very closely together to arrive at this day, and we'll continue to work together through the transition," said Whitman. "EBay and its millions of users are in great hands as they head into the future."
Donahoe is "committed to continuing Meg's legacy," Omidyar said.
Whitman has been a defining force at eBay for much of the company's existence and losing her could be a blow on par with a firm losing its founder, said Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group.
"She is much of what eBay is right now because so much of the decision-making process has come from her," Enderle told AFP.
"This could be kind of traumatic for a firm. We will see how they pull through it."
EBay joined other tech companies in tempering earning expectations for the current quarter.
EBay estimates revenues for the first quarter of 2008 will range from 2 billion to 2.05 billion dollars and that profits will be between 37 and 39 cents per share, a forecast short of financial analysts' expectations.
Consumer spending notoriously slows in the months after the year-end holiday shopping season, and a recession in the United States could apply further brakes in that major market.
A recession might improve eBay's bottom line if people strapped for cash turn increasingly to selling their stuff on the website, Enderle said.
The threat faced by eBay comes from popular Internet firms Google and Craigslist, which offer ways for people to sell items online, Enderle said.
"EBay is under increasing threat from Google and Craigslist," Enderle said. "So Meg Whitman leaves at a time when eBay needs more dynamic leadership if it is going to survive."
EBay's board of directors unanimously endorsed Donahoe, saying revenues and profits have doubled in his unit under his leadership.
- AFP /ls
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