eBay tops Q1 expectations, says new categories coming

Dive Brief:

eBay on Tuesday beat expectations and raised its fiscal year forecast, calming investor fears that it would stumble and fall after the spinoff of its PayPal payments unit last year. For full-year 2016, eBay expects net revenue between $8.6 billion and $8.8 billion, representing growth of 3% to 5%.
eBay said it expects Q2 revenue to range between $2.14 billion to $2.19 billion, and adjusted profit from continuing operations of 40 cents to 42 cents per share, surpassing average Thomson Reuters analyst estimates for revenue of $2.14 billion and profit of 44 cents per share.
eBay also reported that Q1 gross merchandise volume, or the total value of all goods sold on its sites, rose 1% to $20.45 billion and that the number of its active buyers in the quarter rose 3.8% to 162 million.

Dive Insight:

In a conference call with analysts, eBay CFO Scott Schenkel characterized the company's turnaround as showing “green shoots,” pointing to ongoing improvements to its mobile, search and supply chain technologies and operations.

eBay's event ticket sales unit and its classifieds unit are both helping buoy the company’s fortunes as well: Stubhub saw Q1 revenue of $177 million, an increase of 34% year over year, and its classifieds business increased 15% year-over-year to $186 million.

eBay also appears to be moving out of the shadows thrown by the spinoff of its PayPal digital payments unit, though eBay CEO Devin Wenig also asked for some patience for the company’s product search improvements and structured data initiatives to bear fruit.

“I'll say what I've always said, which is this is a long-term process,” Wenig said. “There isn't a moment where it's all fixed and everything jumps up. In fact I think I've consistently said that you probably wouldn't even be able to really see these [structured data] experiences until towards the end of this year. So this is a slow process which will take time, but we are definitely seeing progress on that journey. And I'd say it's going about exactly the way we've explained for the better part of six months.”

Wenig also told investors "You're going to see us start to go on the offense and launch a couple of new categories soon" but did not offer specifics, notes EcommerceBytes. He added that eBay would advertise "a little" on television.