Despite Onsale Inc’s third-quarter loss of $0.17 per share, executives and Wall Street analysts agreed that they were surprised and pleased with the internet auctioneer’s performance. Sales of $57.8m exceeded expectations. At the close of the quarter, 822,000 people were registered to bid for auctions hosted on the Onsale site. The site saw 350,000 orders placed, compared with 331,000 for the previous quarter. Executives hope that a deal with Yahoo to provide person-to-person auctions will increase traffic still further. A joint venture with Softbank in Japan is still in the throes of its startup phase, but the company considers its overall outlook positive. Onsale continues to show strong growth on a number of important metrics, said CEO Jerry Kaplan.
