eBay reported overnight that its net income grew sharply in the fourth quarter, helped by a gain from the sale of its remaining investment in Skype.

Its results beat Wall Street's expectations, thanks to strong holiday sales at its namesake website and growth at PayPal, its online payments business.

In a conference call with analysts, CEO John Donahoe called 2011 an "inflection point for shopping".

"For consumers and retailers we intend to make shopping more locally convenient and more globally accessible," he said.

"This means enabling retailers of all sizes to reach consumers when, where and how those consumers want to shop."

EBay's long-term plan is to transform into a commerce company that melds the online and offline shopping worlds. As part of this effort, it has been expanding PayPal's reach beyond the Web, to mobile devices and tablets.

The company is also testing a service that will let people use their PayPal accounts to shop in brick-and-mortar stores, though the program is still in the early stages.

The company earned $US1.98 billion ($A1.90 billion), in the October-December quarter. That's up from $US559 million ($A537.42 million), or 42 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Excluding special items such as the Skype gain, eBay says it earned 60c per share in the latest quarter, above the 57c that analysts were expecting.

Revenue grew 35 per cent to $US3.38 billion ($A3.25 billion) from $US2.5 billion ($A2.40 billion).

On average, analysts polled by FactSet expected revenue of $3.32 billion.

The e-commerce and online payments company said its PayPal business continued to grow, ending the quarter with more than 106 million active accounts. That's up 13 per cent from a year earlier. Revenue jumped 28 per cent to $US1.24 billion ($A1.19 billion) and the business processed $US33.4 billion ($A32.11 billion) worth of payments during the quarter. That's up 24 per cent from a year earlier.

As more people used their smartphones and tablets to buy things online, payments made through mobile devices accounted for $US4 billion ($A3.85 billion) of the total payments processed through PayPal - a more than fivefold increase.

The company's marketplaces business, which includes eBay.com and other e-commerce sites and businesses, saw its revenue grow 16 per cent to $US1.77 billion ($A1.70 billion).

EBay's outlook for the current quarter fell shy of expectations. The company expects adjusted first-quarter earnings of 50c to 51c a share against analysts' predictions of 54c.

For all of 2012, the company is forecasting adjusted earnings of $US2.25 ($A2.16) to $US2.30 ($A2.21) a share on revenue of $US13.7 ($A13.17) to $US14 billion ($A13.46 billion). Analysts are expecting $US2 ($A1.92) per share in earnings and $US11.59 billion ($A11.14 billion) in revenue.

The company's stock climbed 60c, or two per cent, to $US30.94 ($A29.75) in after-hours trading after closing down 19c.