eBay Q4 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 23, 2022

Key Takeaways

  • Strong Q4 and full-year results: eBay grew Q4 revenue 5% to $2.6 B and non-GAAP EPS of $1.05 (above guidance), while full-year revenue rose 15% and EPS increased 21%.
  • Focus categories driving growth: Targeted segments like sneakers, luxury watches, handbags and trading cards now represent ~20% of GMV and outgrew the rest of the marketplace by ~15 points.
  • Managed Payments completion: The migration simplified seller onboarding, lowered fees for most sellers, added $2 B of payments revenue in 2021 and unlocks new financial services opportunities.
  • Advertising momentum: Promoted Listings revenue rose 4% in Q4 to $227 M and surpassed $1 B for the full year (+9%), as new offerings (PL Express, PL Advanced, external listings) ramp adoption.
  • 2022 guidance headwinds: eBay forecasts GMV down 5–8% and revenue flat to +3% (FX neutral), with non-GAAP EPS of $4.20–4.40 and margins pressured in H1 before reaccelerating in H2.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
eBay Q4 2021
00:00 / 00:00

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Ebay's earnings release conference call for the Q4 of 2021. Joining me today on the call are Jamie Iannone, our Chief Executive Officer and Steve Priest, our Chief Financial Officer. We're providing a slide presentation to accompany Steve's commentary during the call, which is available through the Investor Relations section of the eBay website at investors. Ebayinc.com.

Operator

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, We will discuss some non GAAP measures related to our performance. You can find a reconciliation of these measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures and the slide presentation accompanying this conference call. Additionally, all revenue and GMV growth rates mentioned in Jamie and Steve's remarks represent FX neutral year over year comparisons unless they indicate otherwise. In this conference call, Management will make forward looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding our future performance and expected financial results. These forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and our actual results may differ materially from our forecasts for a variety of reasons.

Operator

You can find more information about risks, uncertainties and other factors that could affect our results in our most recent periodic reports on Form 10 ks and Form 10 Q and our earnings release from earlier today. You should not rely on any forward looking statements. All information in this presentation is as of February 23, 2022, and we do not intend and undertake no duty to update this information. With that, let me turn it over to Jamie. Thanks, Joe.

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone, and

Speaker 1

thank you for joining us. Today, I'll begin by sharing highlights since our last earnings call. Then I will focus on the near term progress we are making towards our strategic vision. And finally, provide a short preview of our Investor Day in 2 weeks. At the end of my remarks, I will turn the call over to Steve, who who will discuss our financial performance and outlook in greater detail.

Speaker 1

The 4th quarter marked another solid quarter for sellers and buyers on eBay. They benefited from investments in our strategy to drive sustainable growth in our marketplace. We are simplifying the seller and buyer experience, increasing customer satisfaction and improving our underlying growth trajectory. Let me highlight a few achievements from the We are seeing faster GMV growth in focus categories that now represent approximately 20% of global volume. We successfully completed our multi year payments transition on time with more customer benefits and with greater financial impact than expected.

Speaker 1

Our advertising business grew faster than marketplace volume as more sellers adopted new ad products. We delivered revenue growth at the high end of our expectations and earnings growth above guidance. And finally, we continue to execute our ESG agenda. In addition to being carbon neutral, We made progress on our long term sustainability targets and Ebay finished a record breaking year. I'm very pleased with our Q4 financial results.

Speaker 1

We delivered 5% revenue growth on the back of payments migration and Promoted Listings growth. We also delivered $1.05 of non GAAP EPS, more than the high end of expectations. For the full year, revenue was up 15% and non GAAP EPS was up 21%. As proud as I am of our team for delivering these results, I am more excited about Ebay's future based on the response from our customers to the strategy we are implementing. This is evident in focus categories.

Speaker 1

We are delivering best in class customer satisfaction and it is leading to faster GMV growth. In Q4, focus categories grew 15 points faster than the rest of the marketplace. The next category we are focused on is motors parts and accessories or P and A for short. This is one of our largest categories globally and is full of enthusiasts who are passionate about what they trade on eBay. Many are very active buyers who shop in multiple categories with over 60% of their eBay spend coming on products outside P and A.

Speaker 1

Starting in December, we began investing in top of funnel marketing across TV, radio and social channels in partnership with key industry influencers. These ads highlight the valuable choices P and A enthusiasts have on eBay across 100 of millions of listings. In addition, we implemented monetization changes to higher priced items and saw an increase in listings during Q4. We are leveraging the scale of our supply in new ways. With input from our P and A sellers, we simplified our global category structure.

Speaker 1

This makes it easier for buyers to find unique parts from around the world, unlocking more cross border trade. These initial changes led to modestly better performance in P and A GMV during Q4 relative to the overall business. It's early days and we plan to make further investments this year to improve our trajectory in this category. In focus Categories where we have been investing for several quarters, we have seen growth sustain at higher levels. Sneakers over $100 continue to grow double digits globally.

Speaker 1

Our success in the US is being replicated in other major markets. Part of that success is authentication, which is scaled to 5 countries over the past year. And in Q4, we started authenticating cross border transactions into the US. But we are not stopping there. Last quarter, we acquired sneakercon, a leading authenticator with operations in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Germany.

Speaker 1

By bringing additional capacity in house, we increased the scale and flexibility of our operations. We also introduced 3 d TrueView on select listings. This capability increases trust for buyers shopping for unique high value pre owned items. Given our success in driving customer satisfaction to over 90% and sustained double digit GMV growth, we have reintroduced monetization in the U. S.

Speaker 1

For sneakers over $100 The initial customer feedback has been encouraging as sellers continue to benefit from a lower take rate than many other platforms. Sellers are also listing more luxury watches on eBay. We saw a double digit increase in supply quarter over quarter And total GMV in this category continues to grow at strong double digit rates in the U. S. In Germany and the UK, authentication is also leading to higher customer satisfaction.

Speaker 1

In luxury handbags, we saw acceleration in Q4 to positive double digit growth in the U. S. Based on the success of Authenticity Guaranty, We are growing the number of brands covered by the program. In addition, we have expanded selection by authenticating cross border imports from Japan, a key source of unique inventory. And just a few weeks ago, we announced Authenticity Guarantee for all single ungraded trading cards sold for over $7.50 in the US.

Speaker 1

We plan to expand this offering to include graded, autograph and pass cards sold for more than $2.50 later this year. As we exited 2021, our certified refurbished program had expanded to over 3 20 brands. This program now includes brands like Microsoft, Dyson, Samsung Galaxy and KitchenAid. And as a reminder, these products are certified by the manufacturer, are like new and are backed by a 2 year warranty and Ebay's money back guarantee. HireTrust has increased customer satisfaction and accelerated GMV to positive double digit rates.

Speaker 1

Certified refurbished products from top brands make up a small percentage of the total refurb activity on eBay, but are growing significantly faster. This has inspired us to expand further. And in November, we announced eBay refurbished, a destination for like new products. This expanded experience has more inventory from top rated sellers. These trusted sellers are thoroughly vetted to meet rigorous performance standards so buyers can purchase with even greater confidence.

Speaker 1

In Q4, we saw promising early results from this expansion in mobile phones and plan to extend to tablets, smartwatches and laptops this year. In addition to improvements in focus categories, we made a number of changes during Q4 that benefited sellers and buyers across all categories globally. We've started a pilot with our API sellers to add video to their listings. To date, we have seen hundreds of thousands of listings add video content. Buyers get experience on individual item pages and in seller stores.

Speaker 1

Looking ahead, we plan to enable more sellers to tell their story by adding videos through additional listing flows. Another new growth capability we are scaling for sellers is coded coupons. Since launch, sellers have realized over 3 $50,000,000 in GMV. Over 60,000 sellers have driven repeat purchases from almost 6,000,000 buyers. Buyer Trust is essential in the 3rd party marketplace and is an area of focus for our technology investment.

Speaker 1

In Q4, we leveraged artificial intelligence to significantly decrease the time to detect and remove counterfeits. In the categories where it has been deployed to date, most listings are renewed before a buyer has a chance to see it. These are a few recent examples of how we are using technology to increase trust while simplifying seller and buyer experiences. Moving on to payments. In Q4, we completed the transition to a modern payments platform by migrating all remaining sellers away from the legacy system.

Speaker 1

This has resulted in a simpler seller experience, lower fees for most sellers, more choice for buyers and better than expected financial results. Although this marks the culmination of a major multiyear effort, in reality, this is just the beginning. By managing seller and buyer money flows, We can remove transactional friction and provide more trusted services. We've been systematically eliminating unpaid items, which removed friction for approximately 10,000,000 transactions in 2021. In addition, sellers are being paid faster for weekend sales in most major markets.

Speaker 1

We are also exploring new ways to allow sellers and buyers to benefit from our scale. In the U. S, we recently launched a partnership with Chase Freedom Rewards that increases top of funnel impressions, driving buyer traffic to eBay. We are excited by the value payments has provided our seller and buyer community and we see more growth opportunities ahead. Moving to advertising, in Q4, ad revenue growth once again outpaced volume due to Promoted Listings, driving approximately $227,000,000 in revenue, up 4%.

Speaker 1

Adoption grew at double digit rates in both the number of sellers and the number of listings promoted. Looking at the full year, our advertising business, including both first party and third party ad products surpassed $1,000,000,000 up 9%. To drive the next growth cycle in advertising, we expanded the rollout of new to more sellers and markets during the quarter. PL Express, our auction listings product was fully launched to all major markets. We also integrated this feature into more listing tools to drive further adoption.

Speaker 1

For PL Advanced, our cost per click offering, We opened access to AI driven recommendations for keywords and bid pricing. While this product remains in a limited beta as we optimize the customer experience, We are increasing exposure and streamlining reporting for sellers. For external promoted listings, we continue to ramp more affiliate traffic through the eBay partner network. We also increased traffic from external paid search to promoted listings in European markets. Participating sellers are seeing increased traffic and conversions, while maintaining control over ad pricing.

Speaker 1

We've carefully metered the rollout of these new products, while balancing impacts to our buyer experience. Despite the limited release, new ad products provide a material contribution to Promoted Listings revenue growth in Q4. We expect this to accelerate in the coming quarters as availability and adoption of these new products increases. Another area where we made significant progress last year was in Volume of pre loved products grew faster than new products in 2021, driven by demand from younger consumers.

Speaker 2

For the

Speaker 1

full year, we delivered $2,700,000,000 of GMV in pre loved electronics and apparel in the U. S, UK and Canada. In addition to providing customers great value on unique used goods, re commerce activity also helped to meet our sustainability goals. These purchases reduced carbon emissions by approximately 540,000 metric tons in 2021. EBay is a carbon neutral company and I'm thrilled by the recognition we recently received as a sustainability leader in e commerce.

Speaker 1

For the 3rd year running, eBay has made the Dow Jones Sustainability World and North American indices, putting us in the top 10% of companies in our industry globally. EBay was also included in Just Capital and CNBC's Just 1 100 list. This list measures corporate performance and efforts in areas such as climate change, DE and I and employee wellness. When compared to nearly 1,000 companies, eBay ranked 88th overall and 4th in retail when it comes to minimizing our environmental impact. I'm really proud of the progress our team is making here.

Speaker 1

The eBay community continues to demonstrate its tremendous generosity. In Q4, eBay for Charity enabled Sellers and buyers to raise almost $37,000,000 up 6%. And for the year, customers raised over $145,000,000 up 18%, the most raised since we started this program almost 20 years ago. Lastly, we were honored this year to receive Glassdoor's 20 22 Employees' Choice Award. This award reflects anonymous feedback from current and former employees regarding topics such as career opportunities, culture and values and diversity and inclusion, just to name a few.

Speaker 1

We are truly honored to be recognized by the people who make eBay the company it is. Now I would like to talk about our upcoming Investor Day on March 10. In July of 2020, I outlined a clear vision of a winning strategy for the company. At that time, we increased our focus on sellers and buyers, accelerated the pace of innovation, simplified the portfolio and revamped the leadership team. We also drove successful multi year initiatives in payments and advertising, both of which exceeded ambitious targets.

Speaker 1

This unprecedented level of change at eBay all happened in parallel with a global pandemic that massively disrupted short term consumer behavior. The early results have demonstrated that our strategy is working and the business is stronger than it was before the pandemic. Our focus categories are returning to market rates of growth, High value buyers are growing and they are spending more. We are empowering sellers by simplifying their experience, saving them money and providing tools to accelerate their growth. Our technology investments are driving a simpler and more sustainable marketplace.

Speaker 1

And along the way, our investors have been rewarded with strong earnings growth and significant capital returns. Looking ahead, We're excited for the next few years as we build on the momentum we have established. I look forward to introducing you to our world class leadership team and sharing more about our plans, along with a few new initiatives we will unveil at Investor Day. We have our eyes squarely focused on deepening our relationship I would like to sincerely thank our extraordinary employees for an amazing year. They completed a huge payments transition, executed 2 large dispositions and improve the underlying growth of our business.

Speaker 1

While doing so, they delivered tremendous sustainability results and supported sellers and buyers during these challenging times. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve to provide more details on our financial performance. Steve, over to you.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Jamie, and thank you all for joining us today. I'll begin with the financial highlights from the quarter and full year on Slide 4 of our investor presentation. Next, I'll walk through key operating and financial metrics in greater detail. Finally, I'll provide our forward outlook and closing thoughts before we begin Q and A. Please note my comments will reflect year over year comparisons, the constant currency, unless I note otherwise.

Speaker 3

Overall, we are pleased with our Q4 results as we met or exceeded expectations across all of our key financial metrics, capping off an exceptional 2021 for eBay. I've been inspired by our team's relentless focus and execution amid uncertain economic and operating conditions throughout the year. Importantly, our performance in 2021 demonstrated the progress we have made towards a return to durable, sustainable growth in the years ahead. The revenue grew 5% to $2,600,000,000 in Q4, over 15 points faster than volume growth. For 2021, revenue grew 15% to $10,400,000,000 up 18 points faster than volume growth.

Speaker 3

Our non GAAP operating margin was 31.6% for the quarter. For the full year, we generated approximately $3,500,000,000 of operating profit, a 33.4% margin. Non GAAP earnings per share grew 24 percent to $1.05 in Q4. For the full year, EPS grew 21% to $4.02 We generated $2,600,000,000 of free cash flow in 2021 and returned $7,500,000,000 to shareholders through repurchases and dividends. Let's take a deeper look into our key operating and financial metrics.

Speaker 3

As a reminder, We adjusted our definition of GMV in December following the completion of our payments migration. The change had a modest impact on our historical GMV and active buyer figures, but the impact of the change on year over year growth for each metric in Q4 was immaterial. Starting with active buyers. We ended 2021 with 147,000,000 active buyers on a trailing 12 month basis, representing a 9% year over year decline. The expected decrease in active buyers was primarily driven by low value buyers, which fell 9% versus Q4 of 2019.

Speaker 3

High value buyers over the same period was 3%. Although fewer buyers sold on eBay as compared to pre pandemic levels. Total high value buyers were up due to growth in high spending and GZF buyers. And importantly, even as mobility restrictions have been lifted, spend for high value buyer continues to expand with healthy rates. Our buyers purchased $20,700,000,000 of GMV in Q4, which marked an 11% decline and landed near the high end of our outlook.

Speaker 3

Compared with Q4 of 2019, GMV grew 9% at constant currency, representing a 3 point deceleration sequentially. On a geographic basis, U. S. GMV grew 22% versus Q4 of 2019, while international GMV declined 1% on an FX neutral basis. Our U.

Speaker 3

S. And international markets were impacted by softness in overall online shopping activity during the Cyber 5 holiday period, but both geographies improved during the remainder of December. Consistent with prior quarters, numerous factors contributed to the growth differential between our U. S. And international markets.

Speaker 3

Core macroeconomic factors like GDP, retail growth and inflation have been notably stronger in the U. S. Than our international markets. Other macro factors like global supply chain disruptions, shipping constraints and other export challenges have had a negative impact on growth in our international These dynamics have particularly impacted sellers involved in cross border trade, which skew towards non U. S.

Speaker 3

Markets. Conversely, Our domestic sellers likely benefited from item scarcity due to supply changes. Our domestic GMV has Momentum in Collectibles, which is largely a U. S. Phenomenon.

Speaker 3

In addition, high ASP luxury categories are growing faster in the U. S. As the rollout of our innovation playbook is more nascent internationally. However, as our luxury categories build momentum and we roll out product improvements in Please like P and A, which represents a higher share of GMV and international markets, growth outside the U. S.

Speaker 3

Should see greater benefits. Our focused category coverage expanded to approximately 20% of GMV as we made product improvements in P and A and broadened our country footprint and existing luxury categories. Focus categories outpaced growth in other categories by approximately 15 points in Q4, demonstrating the impact of our innovation playbook. Net revenue during the quarter was $2,600,000,000 up 5%, while transaction revenue also grew 5%. Under our updated definition of GMV, our transaction take rate of 11.8% was roughly in line with Q3 as we completed the Managed Payments migration.

Speaker 3

Managed Payments contributed 15 points of revenue growth in Q4, $82,000,000,000 of incremental revenue in 2021, meeting our full year target. We remain excited about the potential for managed payments to open up new opportunities in financial services for our sellers and buyers. Within our advertising business, Promoted listings grew 4% during the quarter, outpacing volume by 15 points. As Jamie noted, We are encouraged by the progress of our new ad products, which began to gradually move the needle on Promoted Listings growth during the quarter. Moving down the P and L.

Speaker 3

Our non GAAP operating margin in Q4 was 31.6%. For the full year, our non GAAP operating margin was 33.4%, increasing by close to 200 basis points versus 2019. This leverage was particularly notable given the incremental contribution from managed This generates material operating profit, but is dilutive to reporting operating margins. Cost of revenue rose by over 4 points as a percentage of revenue in Q4 year over year due to the variable payment processing costs for managed payments. With the migration behind us, we expect gross margins to stabilize around the current run rate in the short term with normal seasonal fluctuations from quarter Our other operating expenses declined by over 4 points in aggregate, roughly offsetting the decline in gross margin as payments revenue as fewer fixed expenses.

Speaker 3

Turning to earnings per share. During the quarter, we delivered $1.05 of non GAAP EPS, That's 24%. Contributions from payments and advertising in conjunction with share repurchases offset the lapping of mobility tailwinds last year. We generated a GAAP loss per share of $1.47 due primarily to mark to market losses on our investment portfolio. We generated $372,000,000 of free cash flow in Q4 and ended the year with cash and non equity investments of $7,300,000,000 as well as gross debt of $9,100,000,000 We repurchased $3,000,000,000 of shares during Q4, an average price of approximately $70 per share, with the majority of our buyback executed through accelerated share repurchase programs.

Speaker 3

Additional ASR details will be available in a 10 ks filing. We also paid a quarterly cash dividend of $107,000,000 in December, representing $0.18 per share. Our investments are detailed on Slide 13. After closing our Premier and Korea deals, which yielded approximately $5,000,000,000 in cash, Our remaining investment portfolio is worth over $8,000,000,000 in aggregate at the end of Q4. Our remaining Adeventa shares were valued at $5,400,000,000 We held approximately $1,100,000,000 of Adient shares after exercising our 1st tranche of warrants during Q4.

Speaker 3

Including the estimated value of our remaining 1 tranches, Our total Adient investment amounted to $1,500,000,000 Our stake in Kakao Bank was worth roughly 7 And finally, the fair value of our nearly 20 percent ownership interest in GMark in Korea was approximately $700,000,000 Moving to our outlook, beginning with the full year on Slide 14. To summarize, 2022 will be the tale of 2 halves. During the first half of the year, we'll lap significant mobility in macro tailwinds from 2021 as margins pressured as We scaled investments sequentially. During the second half, we should observe the cleanest year over year comps we've encountered since entering the pandemic, revealing the underlying growth in earnings power of our business. For the full year, we forecast GMV to decline by 5% to 8% on an FX neutral basis with an FX headwind of roughly 200 to 300 basis points to reported growth.

Speaker 3

We anticipate In the mid teens on an FX neutral basis during the first half as we lap a period of significant global mobility restrictions and the U. S. Stimulus effects. In the second half, we expect flat to modestly positive GMV growth and exited the year growing volume at 2% to 3% in constant currency. Notably, the quarterly phasing of our GMV should more closely approximate pre pandemic seasonality moving forward, assuming mobility and macro factors remain relatively stable throughout the year.

Speaker 3

We expect our 2022 take rate to expand by roughly 1 point, driven primarily by a full year of managed payments and increased revenue contribution from Promoted Listings as we scale our new products. We forecast 2022 Revenue of $10,300,000,000 to $10,500,000,000 representing FX neutral growth of flat to positive 3%. During the first half, we expect revenues to decline in the lowtomidsingle digits before reaccelerating in the 2nd half to go in the mid to high single digits in constant currency. As we exit Q4, we expect the relationship between revenue and GMV to tighten as we fully lap the managed payments rollout. We expect non GAAP operating margin of between 30% 31% this year.

Speaker 3

The Q2 should mark the low point for margins during the year as we lap difficult comps and ramp up our pace of investment. Our investments in focused categories last year had a measurable positive impact on growth. Thus, we are doubling down on investments in products and full funnel marketing initiatives in 2022 supporting these categories. We're confident these investments will improve customer satisfaction rates and drive sustainable growth in the years ahead. We forecast non GAAP EPS of between 4 $0.20 and $4.40 in 2022.

Speaker 3

During the first half of the year, we expect EPS to be down low single digits year over year as we lap last year's outstanding growth and scale investments. However, the midpoint of our outlook implies EPS will go in the high teens during the second half as GMV turns positive and revenue outpaces volume. Our Board recently increased our share repurchase authorization by $4,000,000,000 bringing our total authorization to approximately $6,000,000,000 We are also raising our quarterly dividend by 22% to $0.22 per share, our 3rd consecutive double digit raise since establishing our dividend in 2019. Looking at the Q1 guidance on Slide 15. We forecast revenue between $2,430,000,000 and and $2,480,000,000 representing a decline between 5% 7% at constant currency.

Speaker 3

We expect our take rate to be roughly stable sequentially, implying GMV is down 17% to 19% year over year on an FX neutral basis. We anticipate non GAAP operating margins between 31.5% 32% in Q1, up modestly versus Q4 at the midpoint, but down 5 to 6 points year over year as we lap extraordinary volume leverage last year due to COVID. We project non GAAP EPS between $1.01 $1.05 in Q1, representing a year over year decline of 6% to a decline of 3%. In closing, 2021 was an outstanding year for eBay. We delivered strong Q4 and full year results despite challenging operating environment, uncertain macro conditions and constantly changing consumer behavior throughout the pandemic.

Speaker 3

Our focus categories meaningfully outpaced We generated $2,000,000,000 of revenue from managed payments this year after completing our migration and Still see many more opportunities to leverage financial services to reduce friction for sellers and buyers on eBay. We We delivered over $1,000,000,000 of advertising revenue this year and significantly broadened our ads portfolio to meet the needs of more sellers, helping them grow their businesses on eBay. We made prudent investments in people, products and technology to support our strategic pillars. We believe these investments would drive durable growth in our marketplace in the years ahead. We grew non GAAP EPS by 21% on top of strong earnings growth in the prior year, generated $2,600,000,000 of free cash flow, unlocked billions more through our portfolio divestitures and returned $7,500,000,000 to shareholders through repurchasing dividends.

Speaker 3

We are proud to have taken meaningful steps to improve our environmental impact this year by achieving 100 percent carbon neutrality, setting ambitious science based targets for the future and the continuous progress we are making as we focus on driving re commerce and the circular economy as a whole. I would like to echo Jamie's thanks to our incredible employee base as our tireless efforts have been instrumental in bringing our strategy to life. To our valued sellers and buyers in the eBay community, your response to our investments in trust and innovation There is conviction that we are on the right path. We are excited to reveal more details about our future roadmap very soon. To the investment community, we appreciate your continued interest and look forward to hosting you at our virtual Investor Day on March 10.

Speaker 3

With that, Jamie and I will now take your questions.

Speaker 2

Operator? Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Scott David from Stifel, your line is now open.

Speaker 1

Thank you for taking the question.

Speaker 4

I have 2. The first, U. S. And international GMV growth rates have been diverging recently favoring the U. S.

Speaker 4

For a variety of reasons. And so as we get through to the second half of 'twenty two, In which overall GMV improves to flat to modestly positive and

Speaker 1

you begin

Speaker 4

lapping the stimulus and Mobility dynamics, supply chain cross border and differences in the reopening time in various countries. Should we assume that U. S. First, does international growth dynamics converge even maybe favoring international due to cross border? And are there any specific countries you'd point out in one direction or the other relative To be overall growth rate of the business when we get back to that kind of normal period of time again.

Speaker 4

And then secondly, I know you just divested a number of business, Valuations of companies that could be bolted onto the platform have changed considerably just in the past few months. And I'm curious if the environment change has made Considering acquisitions within the marketplace category? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. So, hi, Scott, this is Jamie. So on the U. S. Versus international, As we talked about last quarter, there's a couple of dynamics that are impacting the differences in the growth rate.

Speaker 1

First on the macro side, just different markets, GDP Growth, inflation growth, retail growth are different and lower in Europe than what we're seeing in the U. S. We've talked about The supply chain challenges, which have a bigger impact on our international business than on our U. S. Business.

Speaker 1

So in some cases in the U. S, we're favored I think things like video graphics cards, which are in high demand. At the same time, we have a strong cross border trade business And some of our sellers are impacted by some of the supply chain dynamics and export challenges and that hits our international segment more than our U. S. Segment.

Speaker 1

The 3rd component is really the focus categories are much more nascent in our international business than in the U. S. So think a category like watches, which has been live for several In the U. S, we just rolled that out to UK and Germany this quarter, did that with some of our other products and focus categories where they're still rolling out to our international markets. And as we've seen, it takes a few quarters For us to achieve the growth rate levels that we saw in the U.

Speaker 1

S. But we believe that, that playbook will apply and that will help the convergence that you talked about. The last thing is really just the collectibles difference between the two markets. Trading cards in that whole segment is stronger in the U. S.

Speaker 1

Than it is in international. So it's a long way to say that there's a number of factors that are at play there. But yes, we believe over time as the categories roll out, that will drive the convergence As well as some of the macro effects like the supply chain and other pieces change over time. On your second question on M and A, yes, we continue to look M and A as an opportunity to accelerate our tech led reimagination, we've said we will be opportunistic to look at Areas that are asset light and consistent with our business to drive the strategy that we've laid out. The example I would point to is most recently sneaker con and And that investment with authentication properties and services in 5 different countries, enabling us to accelerate even After what's happening on sneakers, where we've seen really great success.

Speaker 1

In fact, we think the playbook has worked well enough now that we actually re monetizing sneakers this Quarter for sneakers over $100 So it gives us scale and it gives us flexibility and that was the point of the acquisition.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you. And your next Question comes from the line of Ross Sandler from Barclays. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Hey, guys. Just following up from Scott's question, I think looking at the exit run rate for 'twenty two, some investors we talked to, I think, were hoping to see A little bit more than 2% to 3% GMV growth with all the focus on category activity and initiatives that you're working on. So I guess, why are we seeing higher growth once we kind of hit the easier comp period? Are we still cleaning up some of the lower quality buyers? Anything that you would call out in terms of why that growth rate isn't quite up to the e commerce averages at the end of 'twenty two?

Speaker 5

And then Steve, you mentioned new opportunities in managed payments now that we're 100% covered. Just can you elaborate a little bit on what you guys Are going to potentially roll out in payments, that would be great.

Speaker 3

Ross, Steve here. Thank you for the questions. I think the thing I would say is that we've made very significant progress in our growth at eBay over the last couple of years. As you recall, prior to the pandemic, as we left 2019, the overall 2019, the business was shrinking minus 2, we actually exited 2019 at minus 4%. And as we've gone through the pandemic, we've made the right investments.

Speaker 3

We've really driven the tech led reimagination and really driven our focus category playbook, which is working very, very effectively. As you sort of cycle through the pandemic, as we've said, the second half of the year, the first half, we obviously are lapping very significant mobility challenges associated with the pandemic last year. As we come Through the first half and get into the second half, it is obviously the cleavest comps that we've got from the pandemic. But we've always said over the last couple of years, the tech led reimagination is a multiyear process. I'm delighted with the progress that we've made.

Speaker 3

The momentum is working. We're going category by category. And as we've said, we're exiting the year And our expectation to exit the year is sort of 2% to 3% growth. The thing with the focus categories I'd also like to add is that those areas that we've lent into are growing about 15 points higher than the rest of the platform. And so again, it's very, very clear that strategy is working, and it will continue to take some time.

Speaker 3

The second thing I would talk about is obviously on Managed Payments, magnificent work by the team, very proud of what was achieved in 2021. I would describe it as being the end of the beginning. We completed the transition, enabled us to drive a seamless experience for our customers, both from a commerce standpoint and a payment standpoint, Gives us the opportunity to eliminate things like UPIs or unpaid items, which has continued to take friction away from the platform and increase trust. But again, we have opportunities as we go forward. I'm really excited that we have the opportunity To have Julie Loga, who is leading our payments platform and the initiatives going forward, who will be joining us at our investor event On the 10th March, we will be sharing with us our longer term strategy.

Speaker 3

And I'm looking forward to you dialing in and seeing us on the 10th March.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Moving on, your next question comes from the line of Stephen Ju from Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thank you. So Jamie, because Elevate has always been SMBs and individuals and It seems like the ad products that seem to be fairly popular with sponsors are those that are doing a lot of that automating of spend for them. So Some sellers may be pretty savvy and they might want to do manage the campaigns on their own, but I would imagine more folks would probably rather have eBay do the and before them. So can you talk about where you may be in terms of simplifying PLAs for your sellers to expand the adoption rate?

Speaker 6

And expanding on that do it for me theme, can you talk about where you may be in terms of the adoption rate for your external promoted listings product?

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. So thanks for the question. So we agree with you. So we think the benefit of having Well, advertising products is to appeal to not only multiple types of sellers, but multiple types of advertising occasions. So we build our first 1,000,000,000 Our business over the last 5 years on a single product, which is a CPA based product, and we've introduced 3 new products, Express, which is A fixed price, easy to understand product, which is really just an opt in product for our external promoter listings.

Speaker 1

So that one's pretty straightforward. And then Advanced, which is actually a quite sophisticated product for SMBs, ones that are more used to keyword bidding, campaigns, daily budget levels, CPC announced, etcetera. And so what I would say is that we're happy because the CPA based product, our product that was out there for 5 years, It's actually a pretty easy product and a low risk product, meaning I only pay when I sell the product from that perspective. But we're also excited that the new products actually round out the portfolio of opportunities to drive advertisement. The advanced ones like CPC are still in the nascent stage.

Speaker 1

So we're still in a limited beta with those products And it's really it'll take time just like it did for multi years with the CPA to build the optimization, to drive Trial to drive adoption, etcetera. But exactly what you said is why we have the portfolio of products. And yes, we continue to look at ways to Artificial intelligence and other things to make not only the product easier for sellers to adopt, but also make them more effective in terms of the ROAS For the return on ad spend that we're seeing, thus far we've been really pleased with the ROAS that sellers are getting and shows us that there's continued opportunity in our advertising portfolio.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Your next question Comes from the line of John Blackledge from Cowen. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks. Two questions. First, On the focus categories based on the current GND guide, do you expect the focus categories to sustain That growth differential, the 15% differential versus non focused categories in fiscal 2022? And then second question on margininvestments, the 1Q 'twenty two out margin is a bit higher than the 'twenty two out margin guide.

Speaker 7

You cited some investments. Could you discuss the investment spend that's kind of being phased in throughout 'twenty two? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. So I'll start with the first one and then Steve, you can take the margin question. So on the focus categories, yes, over time, we will be adding Focus categories. Our next one is parts and accessories. And that category is a very large category on eBay, one where we're coming from a position of strength, Especially in U.

Speaker 1

K. And Germany, we have a market leading position. There are some differences. Trading cards had a very strong year In 2021. And so, thus far, the category is performing well.

Speaker 1

But overall, I would say, yes. We think that the focus categories will continue to maintain a significant margin to the rest of the business. And frankly, it's why we're exciting and why we're investing to your second question. If I just back up and take sneakers, Sneakers have been declining for 3 years, John, at double digits. We invested in the category.

Speaker 1

We built vertical specific marketing campaigns. We built And A plus experience that had over 90 customer satisfaction. And what you saw there is that the business really took off. We grew triple digits A year ago, still doing double digits in that business. And in fact, the category is still healthy now that we're actually re monetizing it.

Speaker 1

So we just reintroduced Presentation over $100 for sneakers and that's part of the investment that we're looking to do in 'twenty two is to continue to roll out this winning formula That we have in the playbook, 2 additional categories. Hi, John. Steve here. So let me just give

Speaker 3

you a little bit of color on the overall margin position as we've guided The full year margin for 2022, 30% to 31%. There's a number of items at play here. Number 1, We've got volume deleverage that's happening in the overall business as we cycle through the lapping of the pandemic, which was much more significant In the first half, as you can imagine. Secondly, as we sort of lapped the payments Transition that we went through, that's also a dilutionary effect. On the flip side, we have We've been doing a lot of work on our operational efficiency and going deep on our cost structure to identify opportunity to take Cost out of the business to enable us to go forward with reinvestment.

Speaker 3

And then finally, we have been, as Jamie said, really delighted with the A trajectory that we've had with regards to our focus categories, think about sneakers, think about watches, think about the 15% 15 point increase over the core platform. And that's been a result of investments that we have made to really change the tide and turn the tide on the focus categories we've had. So we're going to be leaning into product. We're going to be leaning into full funnel marketing As we go category by category 'twenty two, so to be an investment year as we go forward. Q2 We'll be the lowest point of the margin for the year when, firstly, we do continue to lap through that significant COVID lapping from last year, But also the phasing of the investments as they start to ramp in the second quarter and ramp through the rest of the year as we go forward.

Speaker 3

So hopefully, that gives Shape of the macro picture, but also the shape of margin trajectory as we go through 2022. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now

Speaker 4

Thanks for taking the question. Maybe a multi parter on buyers that sort of dovetails with some of the questions you've gotten so far. If we were to Impartmentalize buyer growth going forward. How should we be thinking about the headwinds you're facing in sort of a post pandemic environment, elements where you yourself are not chasing buyer growth for the sake of chasing buyer growth and where there could be tailwinds to buyer growth from Some of the new verticalized experiences you're trying to build out for the platform over the medium to long term. So sort of I don't know if there's a way to sort of characterize it that way, but if we were to think about those three buckets and elements of headwinds and tailwinds and how it feeds back in to think about buyer growth going forward?

Speaker 4

Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yes. So look, on high value buyers, we've talked about the shift in strategy where back in 20 Our team focused on the total number of active buyers, and I've refocused the organization since last July on this idea of turning buyers into enthusiasts And really focusing on our high value buyers. High value buyers, if you look at it, are really made up of 2 groups, buyers who sell And then high value buyers, buyers who buy over $800 and shop 6 times a year. When we look at high value buyers in total this quarter, they're 3% year on 2 year, whereas our low value buyers are down 9% year on 2 year. So this is a very conscious strategy to not Low ASP Couponing and some of the stuff that we were doing.

Speaker 1

To your question, both of these metrics for buyers are trailing 12 metric 12 month metric. So what we're seeing is a slight deceleration from the infrequent sellers and that's something that we had planned to see and will likely see for Coming quarters in some time period. But the 2nd group, the enthusiast buyers, is growing and in fact their spend is growing more Each quarter, so that it grew again this quarter. We call those our enthusiast buyers. I've met a lot of these enthusiast buyers, right?

Speaker 1

They wake up, they grab a cup of coffee and they open up the eBay app. They shop eBay across multiple categories. And when you look at their And it's a very healthy spend level, right, dollars 2,000 plus So what we're going to be focused on is things like driving the cross category shopping nature of those buyers. And so take watches from when we acquire a watch buyer, we'll get them to spend $9,000 in watches, But they'll go on to spend $7,000 in other categories. So we get this multiplier effect on eBay from being able to acquire somebody into Category and having them spend across the vast breadth that we offer.

Speaker 1

So you'll see different patterns over time. You will continue to see some Deceleration from these infrequent sellers and quarter to quarter, we may see some changes in high value buyers. But overall, when we look at the trajectory of what we're doing is we're making the business a whole lot healthier by focusing on this group, getting to go cross category And frankly, acquiring enthusiast right into our focus categories. That's the strategy that we'll have and we'll go into more detail on Investor Day on March 10 on that.

Speaker 3

Thanks for the color, Jamie.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Komin Sebastian From Baird, your line is now open.

Speaker 1

Great. Good afternoon, guys. Maybe 2 for me as well. A follow-up on the comments around sustainable growth and focus category. Is P and A the only incremental vertical A great change embedded in guidance for the first half and beyond easier comps then does the second half growth outlook include other category enhancements You haven't really talked about yet.

Speaker 1

And then maybe Steve secondly, there were some changes to seller pricing announced recently. I wonder if you could perhaps unpack the size of that impact from those changes in the take rate and how that flows through the year in terms of the guidance? Yes. So as you've seen, Tom, I don't like to talk about where we're going next for competitive reasons and kind of giving away what is our next Focus area. So the only one that we've announced is going after parts and accessories next as a large category dominant market leader position And a great opportunity for us.

Speaker 1

We talked about investment. You're starting to see full funnel marketing from what we're doing in parts and accessories from a leading position, as well as a number of product changes like opening up our global category structure to make it easier to do cross border trade business, putting all of our parts into the vehicles, apps, etcetera. And so we'll go into a lot more depth on Investor Day and what we're seeing in the focus categories that we worked on and our path forward, but that's all that we've announced up until this point.

Speaker 3

Hi, Colin. Thanks for the question. I'll talk about take rate. So just as a reminder, our take rate is ballpark around 12%, but 8 to that is final value fees, 3 on payments, 1 on adds. There is a little bit of there's a number of items that we're going through as we go through the trajectory of 2022.

Speaker 3

The first thing is that we're obviously starting to lap payments. And so some of that trajectory that we saw grow significantly as we went through 2021 will plateau off. We're obviously continuing to see some of the That's momentum that Jamie sort of alluded to earlier. And then there's obviously puts and takes in terms of Category mix and category pricing as we go forward. In the prepared comments, we talked about an incremental one point of take rate as we go through sort of 2022, and that's primarily going to be a result of the payments rollout for the full year effect as we go forward.

Speaker 3

The other thing I would say is that we continue to drive great value for our sellers. If you think about prior to payments Rollout, we actually brought the combined take rate down as a result of going through managed payments. So we still create and offer Extremely good value for our sellers as we go forward and eBay being the platform of choice for those great sellers as we go forward.

Speaker 1

Yes. A good example of that is in sneakers, right? So I talked about us re monetizing sneakers for sneakers over $100 We're still a great value for buyers and sellers versus other places that they can Sell and buy sneakers, so we feel great about that and that's the feedback that we've gotten from the community. We'll continue to make other smaller changes like we gave in Accessories and watches and in certain categories, constantly with this viewpoint of how do we provide the right value For our sellers on the platform to make sure we're bringing the best inventory out.

Speaker 3

Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Edward Yruma from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Speaker 1

Thanks for taking the questions. Two quick ones for me. I guess first, to the extent you can talk about it, with some of these changes in the pricing structures as a follow-up to the last question, Do you see any adverse impact in terms of the number of sellers or the performance level when you reprice some of these categories tactically? And then as a follow-up to that, As you look across the rest of the portfolio, do you think that there are other opportunities for you to take price, given the strong momentum the platform has? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. So in general, we obviously studied the elasticity quite a bit. And what I was saying about sneakers is true, which is We're maintaining a double digit growth in that category and relative to other places that they can Sellers sneakers were still very economical and the best value for doing so. So we always look at The authenticity was our opportunity to bring more demand. In certain cases, we do, for example, C2C promotions to bring So we're kind of rebalanced obviously being a great value for our sellers and our ultimately monetization.

Speaker 1

I'd probably point you back, Ed, to what Steve said about advertising, which is the main vector for us in terms of Driving monetization across the board and increasing the take rate. Other than that, we're really just looking at category by category, making sure that we're competitive. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Tom Champion from Piper Sandler, your line is now open.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Good afternoon. Jamie, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the impact on Back on buyer activity from video content and video added to listings. And then Steve, maybe just a quick one for you, not to beat a debt horse on managed payments and the take rate, but notice the transaction take rate remained flat quarter over quarter, 3Q to 4Q, all else equal, would think that would go up a little bit. Is that kind of evidence of offering a discount or lower core transaction take rate in some categories or a function of mix.

Speaker 8

Just curious if you could discuss that result a little bit. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes, Tom. So on the videos, what I would say is very, very early days. So we just rolled out the feature. I'm excited about it from 2 elements though. One is excited for our eBay store sellers that they can now build a video, tell their story.

Speaker 1

One of the unique parts of eBay is it's not just a transactional model. So So if you look at some of these models, your brand doesn't need a whole lot. At eBay, we let the seller really build the brand and have access to 160,000,000 buyers. And so that I think will be really powerful as more and more sellers adopt it. The same thing is true for our listings and bringing video across the platform.

Speaker 1

One is it just makes the engagement of the platform much more compelling. I think about an OVO I recently bought on the platform of Two quarters ago for my daughter, it was great, lots of pictures and lots of description, but got a video and be able to hear it would have been even more compelling. You could think about that in the latter category. So it's really early days. We're just adopting it for our API based sellers And moving into our core listing flows, but we think over the coming quarters and years, it will be exciting new element for us on eBay.

Speaker 3

Hi, Simon. It's Tayron. Great question. Well, I'd say we were essentially complete as we entered the Q4 of last year with regards to the payments migration, as we talked about, fantastic work by the team. And so on the basis of that and the fact that as you put it, you got a bit of seasonality in there and category mix, So nothing to say though.

Speaker 3

It's just a function of those two items.

Operator

Thanks, guys. Operator, I think we've got time for one more.

Speaker 2

Perfect. Your next question is from Brian Fitzgerald from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

A little bit about growth in pre owned, particularly among young buyers and the sustainability push across the company. Just wondering You could talk a little bit more about the sustainability vision, how that aligns with your younger buyer cohorts. Anything you could Tell us about kind of brand awareness and association with that sustainability focus Among younger users, growth in those younger cohorts. Thanks.

Speaker 1

I think the strategy we laid out last July of leaning into e commerce It's leaning into right where the next generation is going. And I'm really happy because not only leading into where Gen Z is, but We're keeping products in circulation, keeping them out of the landfill. We did a survey recently and 87% of respondents So they had sold pre owned goods in the last 12 months, important to Gen Z, Because it plays a huge role in their experience. 81% of Gen Z said that buying pre owned items has become more common for them in the last year. So we feel great from a business perspective, but also from an ESG perspective.

Speaker 1

If you think about what e commerce does, We just made the Dow Jones Sustainability World. I talked about some of the other recognition that we had as an organization. We've seen 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars In terms of adjustments, just in apparel and pre loved electronics. So from an ESG standpoint, we think ESG It's so core to what eBay does that we should be in every ESG fund. So both our business and an ESG standpoint, we think we're leaning into a great vector of growth.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks, Jamie. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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