eBay released their 3rd quarter Earnings today and it’s a familiar tale of strong payments growth (In the past I would have said PayPal but we have Bill Me Later as well now), slightly better than expected eBay marketplace performance and a good result from eBay classifieds.
The interesting parts are that eBay UK and eBay Germany continue to way outperform eBay in the US, and that purchases using apps on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows 7 mobile are accelerating and expected to hit $1.5billion this year (up from $600million last year).
Bill Me Later is starting to accelerate now that it’s built into the eBay platform. Just as eBay was a great way to acquire new PayPal customers, eBay is proving to be a great acquisition tool for Bill Me Later and it’s growing at 53%.
Overall eBay performed better than expected with a modest 3% increase in marketplaces business and 26% growth in payments. The big problem eBay have is that with ecommerce in general growing around 12-15% a 3% increase on the eBay marketplace just doesn’t look good.
In fairness we’re only halfway through what John Donahoe forecast would be a three year turnaround to revitalise the marketplace, so the next year will be where it really counts. What will be interesting is how Wall Street react to the cancellation of eBay.com duplicate listings scheduled to begin on the 26th October and more importantly how it will affect sellers and sales.
3 Responses
The last comment about the street reaction to the new duplicate listing policy has now made it perfectly clear why eBay.com are offering massive listing incentives at the moment.
It is an attempt by eBay to keep the listing numbers up for the next 3 months.
It would be interesting to know how many listings will be cancelled by eBay as a result of this new policy. It could amount to millions.
Where does it mention the “good result from eBay classifieds”?
I doubt if Wall Street even know what duplicates are !
They are too busy waiting for Bernancke to print some more money !
Wall Street will be more impressed by Amazon’s results !