eBay Payments Biz Grows 61 Pct QoQ

The expectations for eCommerce giant eBay’s quarter may have been muted, and so the company’s latest quarterly results were better than expected.

In terms of the headline numbers, eBay, which has been in the midst of a restructuring program, posted a top line of $2.6 billion, slightly higher than a year ago and a tad better than the $2.55 billion expected, and earnings of 67 cents on an adjusted basis were four pennies better than expected.

Active buyers were up four percent year on year and the tally now stands at 180 million on a global basis, said the company.

Gross merchandise volumes were $22.6 billion, down in total by one percent on an FX neutral basis. The bulk of the company’s top line stemmed from marketplace revenues, which gained three percent to $21.6 billion.  Marketplace GMV was $21.6 billion, down four percent on an FX neutral basis.

Drilling down a bit, StubHub was flat year on year to $230 million, and on the conference call with analysts management pointed out that soft Superbowl activity was partly offset by other events. Classified was $256 million.

Turning to GMV, that has been intermediated by the company: the total sellers in the program have tallied 4.3 million, up 20 percent over the fourth quarter.  Management said on the call that they are “delighted by our progress” on payments and stated that this part of operations is “exactly on track.”  The total intermediated to date stands at $363 million since launch in September of last year.  The company said on Tuesday that it is expanding managed payments to Germany. As reported, under its pact with PayPal, eBay is able to expand its payments processing operations to a second market.

The company also said in its materials that promoted listings placements and eligibility grew as well. In the first quarter, said eBay, there were 800,000 active sellers, promoting more than 200 million listings.  Revenue from this segment was $65 million, up about 110 percent year on year.