US e-commerce company eBay Inc pointed the US government shutdown and current consumer spending habits as the reasons why it had projected a lackluster holiday in the forthcoming quarter.

EBay said profits for the upcoming fourth quarter would only be in the range of USD0.79 to USD81 per share. The price range was way lower than the average USD0.83 per share estimated by analysts.

On Thursday, shares of the e-commerce company plunged 6%. It had also forced at least nine brokerage firms to reduce its share-price targets. Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie Equities Research, foresaw that eBay would be facing tough competition in major market players Google Inc, China's Alibaba and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

On the other hand, several analysts had said they would wait for the projections of Amazon.com and Google to determine whether eBay's report ring true about the e-commerce market in the fourth quarter.