South Korea's Super Gmarket

Score one for Gmarket (Nasdaq: GMKT ) . South Korea's leading online marketplace came through with another strong quarterly report Wednesday night.

Revenue climbed 35% to $65.4 million, with online ad sales outpacing transaction fees. That certainly didn't hurt margins, with earnings rising 55% to $0.21 a share. Wall Street was looking for a profit of just $0.17 a share on $65.9 million in revenue, making this the second consecutive quarter that Gmarket blew past analysts' profit projections.

Gmarket is looking pretty good these days. The site has attracted 14.3 million registered users, generating 18 million unique monthly visitors even now during the seasonally challenging part of the year.

If you're a fan of the eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY ) growth story but wished you had jumped on earlier in the company's growth cycle, foreign speedsters like Gmarket and Latin America's MercadoLibre (Nasdaq: MELI ) should fit the bill.

Even as Gmarket eyes Japan -- and MercadoLibre looks to grow beyond its strongholds in Argentina and Brazil -- there is still ample room for growth in their home countries.

Gmarket -- a recent Rule Breakers newsletter recommendation -- is making news as the smallest of Yahoo!'s (Nasdaq: YHOO ) three Asian investments, but the company's story is so much better than where the 10% sliver that Yahoo! owns will wind up if Yahoo! eventually falls into Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT ) arms.

Gmarket has now topped analysts' bottom-line guesstimates in six of its first eight quarters as a public company. That's not just a good start for a young company -- it's a good start for a young investment.

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Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz wonders if South Korean bidding wars are won in won. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.

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