Ebay Marketplace Sales 1st Qtr down

[ekmadonna]

Ebay marketplace sales for the 1st qtr was down 1% and Marketplace GMV Down 4%, but yet ebay grew active buyers by 4% across all platforms for a total of 180 million active buyers? Guess they are not buying. Ebay claims 800,000 sellers are using Promoted listings and they took in 65 million dollars on Promoted Listings alone a 110% increase year over year.

[slati_2013]

Seems all their growth and money is coming from Promoted Listings and advertisements they run on eBay. The problem is those advertisements undercut their own sellers, while the Promoted Listings is just another way to increase their FVF. It seems now if you want to sell, Promoted Listings or running ads is the way to go.

[castlemagicmemories]

Just my thoughts, but the fourth quarter is usually a higher sales quarter, so it seems it would be possible to grow buyers yet still be down, because other buyers may not be active.

Some companies make 50% or more of their profits in the fourth quarter.

[ekmadonna]

the article stated they grew buyers by 4% in the 1st qtr this year not the 4th qtr.

[usgamecollector]

their numbers were all much better than estimates

[gracieallen01]

Of course, even with 'grew' a 4% increase in buyers in the 1st, that doesn't mean that they didn't have decrease in established buyers making purchases. 

It seems to be all in the way the numbers are presented.

[slippinjimmy]

The numbers seem to be making Wall St. happy, in the short term at least. Advertising revenues are growing well but are still only adding a tiny amount to the bottom line.  Operating expenses are down slightly, Free Cash Flow is up, "take-rate" is up, margins are up and the forward guidance has been revised upwards.

As far as sellers are concerned it's not so hot.....

While there are 4% more buyers, they are spending 4% less than in Q1 2018 hard to say if that means fewer items or cheaper items.

It will be interesting to see the Amazon numbers on Thursday even though they are hard to compare because of the obscured way AMZ reports third-party seller market share.

[gracieallen01]

Yep, seems that ebay is doing good for the 'shareholders'.  Now, If they could only do that for the sellers, .....

[mr_lincoln]

The downward trend of Sales (1%) and GMV (4%) may simply mean more junk purchased from China ... especially if Buyers are up 4% ...

Can't wait to see what they make on GTC Relisted items occurring in the same month ...

[popeye3165]

Well it will be interesting to see what happens when eBay reveals their first quarter results because if you go by what the sellers are saying here there should be approximately a 5-10% USA shop loss due to GTC and many of those sellers were also buyers on eBay you would think those number will have an effect on their USA bottom line.

[davewearsredsox]

Pops - GTC has a very light piece of the pie for the 1st quarter with the roll-out presented on March 18th. It may explain the 1% drop in gross and considering the amount of buyers are up as GTC was only in place for 14% of the quarter.

The second quarter will be released around August 1st and from what I am seeing I would bet that gross will be down 7-10%. I could be wrong but from what I am seeing trending, numbers continue to fall.

[tkinnebrew]

Those that make predictions are so far down-to-Earth that they can see nearly all the possibilities of what may or may not happen.  With all the changes that were made recently you know there won't be many more significant changes in the next 3-6 months.   Start with that 🙂

(Only here cuz I ran out of free listings)

[kathieskorner]

Have to wonder if their numbers are still based on gross sales rather than  net sales (after returns are factored in). 

And if the number of buyers are increasing, but the sales and GMV are down - that is hardly good news. 

[orangehound]

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@kathieskorner wrote:

Have to wonder if their numbers are still based on gross sales rather than  net sales (after returns are factored in). 

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GMV is gross sales, and it is before accounting for returns and cancellations ... the point, really, is that comparing 1Q 2018 GMV to 1Q 2019 GMV  is measuring "apples to apples", and this measurement tells us that eBay is becoming smaller in a market where most every other company is seeing double-digit growth.

In other words .... in a market where even blind squirrels are getting fat, eBay just went down a dress size.

[threshold.sales.group]

Basically it was bad news for sellers. Costs higher, sales on the platform lower.   The situation is actually a bit worse then at first glance when considering USPS implemented a big price increase at the beginning of the 1st quarter, which has the effect of increasing GMV.  

The thing I continue to find amazing when listening to the conference calls is how little most of the analysts understand about the core of the business. It ends up being a kabuki dance with lots (and lots) of buzz speak, but nobody asking the tough, obvious questions.