It comes around with unerring regularity: eBay has reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2017. Here are the headline numbers. (As ever we’ll leave it up to experts in the field of finance to analyse the report.)
– Gross Merchandise Volume of $20.9 billion
– Revenue of $2.2 billion
– GAAP and Non-GAAP EPS per diluted share of $0.94 and $0.49, respectively.
– eBay to repurchase $350 million of common stock
You can read more details here.
Devin Wenig, President and CEO of eBay Inc. said: “The first quarter was a strong start to the year with accelerating growth in active buyers, revenue and our core U.S. business. We are on the right path as we continue to evolve our shopping platform for consumers, leverage our technology advantages and market a sharpened eBay brand globally.”
And the number of buyers is up. Two million more active buyers are using eBay platforms making a total of 169 million global active buyers over the first three months of 2017. Marketplace GMV was up 2% if you take into account global currency fluctuations.
Tickets and classifieds are where eBay has excelled. StubHub delivered GMV of $916 million (up 6%) and revenues totalling $210 million, up 18%. Classifieds delivered revenue of $199 million, up 7%. Classifieds in Germany performed particularly strongly.
But having read over the various reports and commentary of these results it would seem that analysts and the like are unexcited by the results. The stock took a tiny tumble after the reports and the outlook towards the end of the year was slightly downgraded. None of this will fill the dark hearts of Wall St.with much enthusiasm.
Looking at the results, and eBay more generally, with a Tamebay lens on, it seems to us that nothing is happening quickly. There are opportunities to develop and hone the marketplace, and play to eBay strengths, that are manifold (it can’t be Amazon and shouldn’t even try) but big news and ground breaking developments have yet to be seen since the Paypal divorce nearly two years ago.
