EBay Inc (EBAY) — Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Good afternoon. Thank you all for joining us for eBay's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. 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 our commentary during the call, which is available through the Investor Relations section of the eBay website. Before we begin, I'll remind you that during this conference call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP measures related to our performance. You can find a reconciliation of these measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures in our accompanying slide presentation. Additionally, all growth rates noted in our prepared remarks will reflect organic FX-neutral year-over-year comparisons, all earnings per share amounts reflect earnings per diluted share, unless indicated otherwise. During 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. Our actual results may differ materially from our forecast for a variety of reasons. You can find more information about risks, uncertainties and other factors that could affect our operating results in our most recent periodic reports on Form 10-K 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 April 30, 2025. We do not intend and undertake no duty to update this information. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jamie.

Thanks, John. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today. We started off 2025 on a strong note as our Q1 results came in ahead of expectations across all key financial metrics despite a dynamic operating environment. Our gross merchandise volume grew by nearly 2% to approximately $18.8 billion marking our fourth consecutive quarter of positive GMV growth. Revenue increased over 1% to $2.58 billion. Non-GAAP earnings per share grew by 10% to $1.38, and we returned approximately $760 million of capital to shareholders through repurchases and cash dividends. Before I discuss our Q1 results in greater detail, I'd like to acknowledge the significant developments around cross-border trade since we last spoke with you. Tariffs and changes to certain customer requirements in the U.S. have created significant uncertainty for small businesses while concerns over escalating prices for imported goods have weighed on consumer confidence. As more of these new trade policies are implemented, we are focused on helping sellers and buyers navigate these changes with as little disruption as possible. Our SpeedPAK shipping program manages much of the complexity of international shipping for CBT sellers across several of our largest corridors while ensuring compliance with customs regulations in both origin and destination countries. Items shipped through SpeedPAK also have tariff duties included in the total price at checkout, creating greater transparency for buyers. For non-SpeedPAK purchases, we are managing expectations for buyers by educating them on the new costs, information requirements and potential delays associated with international shipments. This includes messaging on the view item and checkout pages on eBay as well as localized information pages with up-to-date guidance amid rapidly changing policy. While our business is not immune to increased costs and friction associated with tariffs, our dynamic global supply and demand is an advantage in this environment. Our extensive selection of pre-loved and non-new in-season goods across a variety of categories can also help mitigate the pressure on consumers' discretionary budgets during periods of rising costs. Now let's turn to the key drivers of our Q1 results. Focus category GMV grew by over 6% in Q1 and now makes up more than a third of our total volume globally. Collectibles was the largest contributor to growth for the second straight quarter as year-over-year GMV growth in trading cards accelerated for the ninth straight quarter. This growth was supported by continued innovation on behalf of trading card hobbyists building on what we believe is the industry's leading value proposition. Our strategic partnership with collectors and its subsidiary PSA continues to yield benefits for our marketplace. The PSA storefront on eBay has already sold more than 0.5 million trading cards since PSA launched a seamless integration, enabling its customers to consign cards on eBay in Q3 of last year. In January, we incorporated PSA data directly into the item page for graded trading cards, enabling potential buyers to see the full population of cards at each grade level, allowing them to more easily evaluate their rarity. This delivered on a key request from hobbyists and feedback to this change has been extremely positive. At the end of March, we launched an entirely new capability for buyers looking to purchase trading cards on eBay and have them ship directly to PSA for grading. This saves the buyer time and effort spent on submitting grading paperwork themselves and reduces costs as one shipping leg is eliminated. Grading services from trusted third parties like PSA are a key use case for trading card enthusiasts as grading helps them maximize the value of their collections. Our fashion category generates more than $10 billion of GMV for eBay annually. Over the past year, we've significantly improved the customer experience for luxury fashion, pre-loved apparel and streetwear enthusiasts. We launched AI-powered shopping experiences like Explore and Shop the Look. We expanded our inventory coverage for authenticity guarantee and tapped into new sources of supply in international markets. And we continue to drive consideration of eBay in fashion and reinforce our value proposition of trust and selection through full funnel marketing, including earned media reach through our cast of eBay influencers and partnership with Conde Nast. In Q1, we launched U.S. preloved apparel as a new focused category on eBay, as we made significant improvements for sellers and buyers in this category. We continue to increase trust by introducing enhanced condition grading standards for apparel during Q1. We recently launched a new AI-powered discovery experience for fashion shoppers in the U.S. and U.K., which offers a more immersive and engaging browsing experience. We replaced static browse pages with endless feeds organized by theme or subcategory with dynamic visuals and interactive elements. These feeds progressively load content as users go down the page, and are flexible in accommodating varying content formats, such as autoplay video, curated compositions, eBay Live events, promotions and relevant eBay store funds. Throughout 2025, you'll see more innovation in fashion as we work towards solidifying our platform as the trusted destination for pre-loved branded fashion products, where customers can truly shop head-to-toe across a breadth of brands and price points. Our geo-specific initiatives are another key building block for growth in 2025, most notably our consumer-to-consumer initiative in the U.K. As a reminder, in Q4, we introduced a suite of new capabilities to upgrade the U.K. C2C experience, including significantly reducing friction to stimulate consumer selling. This initiative has materially improved our C2C GMV trends versus our prelaunch baseline and has outperformed our internal expectations to date. We reached a major milestone in Q1 with the introduction of our U.K. buyer protection fee in February, which significantly narrowed the initial monetization gap. After introducing buyer-facing fees in the U.K., C2C GMV growth and other KPIs have remained significantly higher than their prelaunch baselines. We continue to ramp our managed shipping offering in the U.K. which dramatically simplifies shipping for C2C sellers while reducing costs and improving trust for buyers. In Q1, we enabled sellers to offer free shipping and added the flexibility for them to select carrier preferences. In Q2, we plan to add pickup and drop-off capabilities that are very popular among U.K. consumers as well as support for larger bulkier items. In recent weeks, we began to gradually mandate adoption of managed shipping in the U.K., starting with new and occasional C2C sellers. At full scale, we expect managed shipping to close the remainder of the monetization gap in C2C driving significant value for customers and create a new source of revenue and operating income for eBay. Our teams continue to leverage artificial intelligence to make our marketplace more efficient and intuitive. At the end of Q1, we rolled out a simplified AI-powered listing flow to all C2C sellers in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, which integrates our magical listing technology and product knowledge graph. Sellers now start their listing with photos and a title, and we leverage generative AI to identify the exact product in our catalog or fill in relevant item aspects wherever possible, including the description. This listing flow also includes a more intuitive step-by-step process to review product details, pricing and shipping information before finalizing the listing. This new listing tool is resonating well with sellers as customer satisfaction rates are 90% or higher across each market, and it's also having a positive impact on our business. We've observed significant increases in completion rates and new and reactivated listers while meaningfully reducing the average time spent on listing. We've also seen measurable increases in sold items and GMV per listing attempt. Our Magical bulk listing tool also continues to drive powerful results for B2C sellers after launching in the U.S. for all categories. This tool has more than halved the average listing time versus our previous bulk listing tool, giving sellers more time to run their businesses. Magical Bulk Listing has already emerged as the most commonly used tool for listing sports trading cards contributing to a significant increase in the average weekly listings in that category. In February, we expanded this tool to B2C sellers in the U.K. and Germany and have seen similar improvements in average listing times. We're focused on making listing on eBay as simple and easy as possible because we believe it will unlock a significantly larger total addressable market in e-commerce. Advancements like Magic Listing have demonstrated significant progress toward that goal, and we will continue to invest in making listing even more seamless in the quarters ahead. Turning next to advertising. In Q1, our first-party advertising revenue grew 14%. Active Promoted Listings increased sequentially and made up over $1.1 billion of the more than $2.3 billion total listings on eBay at the end of Q1. Over 3.7 million sellers adopted a single Promoted Listing product during Q1. Our first-party ad revenue growth remained broad-based during Q1. Promoted Listings general ads were the largest contributor to year-over-year growth as we launched several optimizations to make ads on the View Item page more personalized and relevant, driving increased engagement. Promoted offsite ads continue to gain adoption. And during Q1, we launched several improvements like automated image optimization technology to maximize impressions for a seller's listings. Promoted Listings priority ads also contributed to growth as we increased coverage of cost per click units across more of our existing ad services. Within payments and financial services, we continue to focus on adding new forms of payment on eBay to expand buyer choice, improve conversion and optimize our payments mix. In April, we expanded our partnership with Klarna to offer buy now, pay later solutions to our U.S. customers. We're seeing encouraging early results with average order values on U.S. Klarna transactions more than three times the market average. In the U.K., adoption of eBay balance continues to ramp among C2C customers, and has already captured a low single-digit share of wallet for U.K. GMV overall. In addition to carrying zero cost of payments, eBay Balance is driving incremental purchasing behavior as it encourages sellers to spend more of their earnings on eBay. We also recently announced the addition of Checkout.com as a new payments partner. Additional acquiring partners make our payments platform more resilient and enable us to optimize our authorization rates. And importantly, they strengthen our ability to deliver fast, reliable and frictionless payment experiences to our 134 million customers globally. In closing, in Q1, we delivered our fourth consecutive quarter of positive GMV growth amid ongoing uncertainty in the global economy. Our strategy is working and has put us on a path towards sustainable long-term growth. Today, we also announced some changes to our leadership team. This will be Steve's last earnings call with eBay. I want to personally thank Steve as he has been an exceptional partner during a period of significant transformation. His leadership helped guide us through the uncertainty of the pandemic and laid the foundation for the strength and resilience we see in the business today. I am deeply grateful for his contributions and wish him the best. As Steve transitions, we are excited to welcome Peggy Alford as eBay's incoming CFO on May 12. Peggy brings more than 20 years of experience leading finance, operations and global teams in the technology sector. Peggy has a proven track record of building strong organizations and driving operational excellence. Her leadership and expertise will be tremendous assets as we continue to position eBay for the future. In addition to the CFO change, eBay is evolving its leadership structure designed to fuel faster innovation, deep and cross-functional collaboration and position the Company for long-term growth in a rapidly evolving digital and AI-powered landscape. We are bringing together product and market teams into a more integrated agile structure designed to enhance speed, alignment and customer centricity across the organization. This new organization will be led by Jordan Sweetnam, Chief Commercial Officer. We are also consolidating engineering into a single organization, reflecting a broader ambition to operate with greater speed and drive operational scale. This new combined engineering and technology organization will be led by Mazen Rawashdeh, our Chief Technology Officer. I want to congratulate both Jordan and Mazen on their expanded roles. As part of this evolution, Eddie Garcia, Chief Product Officer, will be leaving eBay. I am deeply grateful to Eddie for his outstanding partnership and visionary leadership in shaping our product strategy which has significantly advanced eBay's offerings and customer experience. He has built a world-class team, and his legacy positions us well for future success. Before passing to Steve, I want to reiterate my gratitude for his leadership and contributions over the last four years. Thank you, Steve. Over to you.

Thank you, Jamie. It's been a privilege to serve as eBay's CFO. I am proud of what we've accomplished. I'm incredibly optimistic about eBay's future prospects. I look forward to ensuring a successful transition with Peggy over the coming weeks. Now turning to our Q1 results. In the first quarter, we exceeded expectations across our key financial metrics. GMV grew nearly 2% to $18.8 billion. Revenue grew over 1% to $2.58 billion. We delivered non-GAAP operating income of $771 million and grew non-GAAP earnings per share by 10% to $1.38. In addition, we returned approximately $760 million to shareholders through repurchasing cash dividends. I'll take a closer look at our financial performance during the first quarter. Gross merchandise volume grew nearly 2% to $18.8 billion on an organic FX-neutral basis. We continue to navigate an uneven demand environment with shopping activity more muted in February and improving in March. Golden added roughly 30 basis points to total FX-neutral volume growth in the quarter while foreign exchange was nearly 130 basis points of headwind to spot GMV growth. Our growth rates in Q1 also included a net headwind of 50 basis points due to lapping the extra leap day in 2024, partly offset by the timing of Easter. Focused categories were a key driver of GMV, growing over 6% in the quarter with positive growth contributions across trading cards, motors, parts and accessories, luxury goods, refurbished and apparel. Moving on to our geographic performance. U.S. GMV grew nearly 0.5 point in the first quarter, driven by focused categories, in particular, our trading cards business. As a reminder, we report GMV based on the location of the seller. If we were to look at volume based on the location of the buyer, U.S. growth was slightly higher than our international markets in aggregate. International GMV grew nearly 3% on an FX neutral basis in the quarter, while FX was nearly 250 basis points of headwind to spot growth. The macro environment in our international markets has been weaker than the U.S., particularly in Germany and the U.K. However, the investments we made in C2C in both markets over the last two years have improved our growth trajectories compared to the prior baseline and helped mitigate these market-wide headwinds. Shifting to our biometrics. Our trailing 12-month active buyers grew over 1% to 134 million in the first quarter. Enthusiast buyers were roughly 16 million and spend per enthusiast buyer grew slightly year-over-year and remained at over $3,100. Next, I will discuss our revenue and take rate. We reported Q1 revenue of $2.58 billion on an organic FX-neutral basis, representing over 1% growth and an acceleration from Q4. Foreign exchange was a nearly 50 basis point headwind to spot growth. Our take rate was roughly 13.8%, increasing nearly 10 basis points year-over-year. Our U.K. C2C initiative pressured overall take rate by approximately 30 basis points in Q1, which was offset by advertising and financial services contributions and an FX tailwind of 10 basis points. Total advertising revenue was $442 million in Q1, representing GMV penetration of nearly 2.4%. In Q1, we included ad revenue generated by our platform marketplaces like Q10 and TCGplayer in our total reported advertising revenue for the first time. We've included details on the prior year baseline for comparability. Excluding off-platform ads, total advertising revenue would have grown by 12% to $426 million. First-party ads on the eBay platform grew over 14% to $418 million. Our third-party display ads declined by 41% to $8 million as we continue to deprecate these legacy ad units. Moving on to profitability. Non-GAAP gross margin declined by over 0.5 point with headwinds from depreciation expense and traffic acquisition costs related to promoted offsite ads, partly offset by cost of payment efficiencies. As a reminder, we extended the useful life of our servers and networking equipment in 2024, which benefited our margins last year and created a headwind for 2025. In Q1, this depreciation headwind pressure both gross and operating margins by nearly 70 basis points. Our non-GAAP operating margin was 29.8% in Q1, down 0.5 point. In addition to depreciation, operating margin was pressured by our U.K. C2C initiative on a year-over-year basis, partly offset by 40 basis points of foreign exchange tailwind. Our non-GAAP earnings per share grew 10% to $1.38 and GAAP earnings per share grew over 25% to $1.06. A higher GAAP earnings growth rate was primarily due to the lapping of investment losses a year ago, partly offset by a slightly higher GAAP tax rate this quarter. Shifting to our balance sheet and capital allocation. We generated free cash flow of $644 million in Q1 and hold cash and non-equity investments of $6.2 billion at the end of the quarter. After paying down $800 million of senior notes during March, we had gross debt of $6.7 billion on our balance sheet. We repurchased $625 million of eBay shares during the first quarter at an average price of nearly $67. We also paid a quarterly cash dividend of $134 million in March or $0.29 per share. Our equity investments were valued at over $1.1 billion at the end of Q1. The majority of this value is our private stake in earlier with approximately 8% ownership valued at nearly $900 million. Moving on to our outlook. As Jamie noted earlier, tariffs and other trade policy changes have created significant uncertainty for our sellers and buyers. Quarter-to-date, we have observed healthy volume trends due to strength in our focus categories and what could be a modest pull forward of demand from consumers worried about increased costs and complexity at U.S. customs in the near future. To account for a variety of scenarios in the remainder of the quarter, we are providing wider-than-usual guidance ranges for Q2. We expect GMV between $18.6 million and $19.1 billion for the second quarter, representing FX-neutral growth between negative 1% and positive 2% year-over-year. This includes an expected contribution of approximately 20 basis points from Golden and roughly 50 basis points of headwind due to the timing of Easter. Based on current exchange rates, we estimate FX would represent roughly 180 basis points of tailwind to spot GMV growth. We forecast revenue between $2.59 billion and $2.66 billion in the second quarter, implying negative 1% to positive 2% total FX-neutral growth. Based on current exchange rates, we estimate FX would represent roughly 170 basis points of tailwind to spot revenue growth. On a sequential basis, we expect take rate to improve driven by a full quarter of contribution from our U.K. C2C buyer protection fee and ongoing managed shipping ramp. We expect non-GAAP operating margin to be between 27% and 27.8% in the second quarter. We expect headwinds from managed shipping, the depreciation policy change and M&A-related expenses to be partly offset by an FX tailwind. We forecast non-GAAP earnings per share between $1.24 and $1.31 in the second quarter representing year-over-year growth between 4% and 11%. Next, I'll share some perspectives on the full year. Based on the trends we have observed year-to-date, our full year commentary remains unchanged and contemplates a range of scenarios for tariffs and the continuation of an uneven demand environment we have been navigating for many quarters. We are planning our business around these key assumptions for 2025 and investing for the long-term health of our marketplace. However, more severe outcomes for tariffs or a significant deterioration in the U.S. macro environment would push us toward the lower end of our ranges or make it challenging for us to deliver on these targets. For 2025, we expect to generate low single-digit GMV growth on an FX-neutral basis driven by our focused categories, geo-specific investments and horizontal initiatives. We forecast revenue growth modestly higher than GMV for the full year on an FX-neutral basis, driven by advertising, shipping and financial services. We continue to expect non-GAAP operating income growth to be relatively in line with FX-neutral revenue despite absorbing several unique headwinds on to non-GAAP operating margin year-over-year. We forecast capital expenditures to be between 4% and 5% of revenue for the full year and expect our non-GAAP tax rate to remain stable at 16.5%. Our outlook for free cash flow remains unchanged. Because we have a number of unique tax considerations resulting in 2025 tax payments of over $1 billion related to investment sales last year, repatriation tax and timing of R&D credits. Excluding these unique tax items, normalized free cash flow is expected to be comfortably north of $2 billion. In regards to capital allocation, we are targeting share repurchases of at least $2 billion in 2025 while maintaining the flexibility to lean in opportunistically when appropriate. Our Board also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.29 per share for Q2 to be paid in June. Based on these assumptions, we still expect our non-GAAP earnings per share growth in the high single digits for 2025. In closing, our teams have done a tremendous job executing on our strategy, leading to a strong start to 2025. I'm proud of the strong financial foundation we've established together over the last four years as we reorientated the business towards sustainable long-term growth. It's been a true honor to work with such extraordinary people and serve this vibrant community, and I look forward to cheering on eBay's continued success. And with that, Jamie and I will now take your questions.

I'll kick it off by saying thanks to Steve for all the help, and I always enjoyed all the interactions over the years. So, thank you, Steve, and good luck going forward. In terms of looking out over the full year, I think the main question we're getting from investors right now with respect to the commerce landscape, and I would love to understand how you're thinking about it philosophically or how you factored it into the forward commentary would be how to think about demand elasticity in an environment where pricing might be going up a lot? And how elements of prior period experiences might inform the way you brought that either to your commentary for this year or other ranges of probabilistic outcomes you're thinking about as we go through 2025?

Yes, Eric, I'll start. This is Jamie. The macro environment remains uncertain and challenging to predict, but we've been facing uneven demand for many quarters, which makes our Q1 results and outlook appear even more favorable. In terms of overall demand elasticity, we believe eBay is in a strong position due to our extensive global seller base that can utilize our CBT shipping solutions and adjust to changes in trade policies. We anticipate that buyers will be more inclined to seek our non-new in-season inventory, especially during times of consumer pressure. Regarding previous periods, we've observed that when consumers are uncertain and seeking value, eBay tends to be more resilient because of the offerings in our marketplace. Currently, over 40% of our goods are used and refurbished, and this segment is growing significantly faster than new goods. Additionally, we see these periods as opportunities to bring in new sellers, as individuals looking for value may sell items to generate cash, and eBay provides an excellent platform for that. Lastly, reflecting on prior periods, especially during COVID, our large seller base allows them to be more adaptable and react quicker to changes, which has been a consistent pattern we've witnessed.

Hey, everyone. And first off, Steve, it's been great working with you, so looking forward to what's next. Maybe just a lot of questions, especially on China tariffs and what the impact might be on a sustained basis. I guess, can you provide some color on how big China-based exporters are on eBay, at least in terms of the China to U.S. trade route, the potential to maybe shift some demand to inventory from other regions? And then any way to contextualize the potential sourcing risk for non-China-based sellers who still source from that region?

Yes. Our business does face challenges from increased tariffs and related issues, but we are confident in our capacity to support our community. To give you some perspective, the trade route from Greater China to the U.S. accounts for about 5% of our total GMV, and overall China represents just under 10%. Most of that 5% business, approximately three-quarters, is already assigned to end markets and is thus affected by tariffs, meaning it won’t be impacted by changes in de minimis costs. For the remaining portion that is not already assigned, around half utilizes our custom shipping solution called SpeedPAK. This solution simplifies the complexities associated with tariffs for sellers, while buyers benefit from complete transparency as they directly pay for this at checkout. We anticipate that with minor adjustments, a larger number of sellers will take advantage of our shipping solutions. Overall, we appreciate that having diverse goods and inventory allows for substitution across the marketplace, providing buyers more options, while our tools and shipping solutions deliver excellent outcomes for sellers, enabling buyers to determine which products they find most appealing.

And Steve, thanks for all your help. It's been great working with you. With respect to advertising revenue, are you seeing any impact from tariffs on that portion of the business, particularly from your China-based merchants that maybe buy ads? And can you also speak broadly to the durability of this revenue stream even through different macro environments? How deep are the auctions such that if one category of sellers might pull back, someone else steps in to plug the hole? How should we think about that dynamic?

Yes. We have strong demand across the board for our advertising business, and we continue to drive kind of increasing penetration of the user base. Now over 3.7 million sellers have adopted a single ad product, Nikhil. And we have 1.1 billion live broader listings out of our nearly $2.3 billion. I would say we've seen no material impact on our advertising to date. We've seen strength across the board in our Promoted Listings General, our CPA product, our CPC-based product, and I talked a little bit on the call about promoted offsite and some of the new innovations that we have there from that perspective. So overall, we're pretty pleased with the performance of advertising. And our ad demand is very distributed across a large seller base, a large number of products. So, we feel good about the ongoing opportunity that we have in advertising.

Alight. Great. So I appreciate the opportunity. I guess, well, first Steve, also, it's been a pleasure working with you and wishing you all the best. Jamie, first off, a lot of attention, I think, is turning to the concept of Agentic Commerce and you guys are in front of us a bit with really some of the tools you have in partnerships. But I'm curious, in your seat, how you think ultimately consumer shopping behavior changes and the world in the e-commerce marketplace of platform. I mean, if agents are doing more of the steaming on behalf of consumers? And then Steve maybe on the outlook, I guess I'd be curious.

Hey, Colin. Just real quick, you came across pretty muffled in that, and I want to make sure I get your question right. Can you try again on the question there?

Hopefully, you can hear me. I'm in transit. I was just curious about your views on Agentic Commerce and how it ultimately impacts consumer behavior.

Yes, I believe I understood your question about Agentic Commerce. Regarding the internal initiatives we are developing, we are pleased with our progress. For instance, with our magical listings feature, over 10 million unique sellers have utilized it to create more than 200 million listings, resulting in several billion dollars in GMV. We continue to apply Agent Technology in our marketing and customer support to enhance efficiency in our operations. We've introduced new Agentic tools and the Shop the Look feature. This quarter, I mentioned the launch of a new fashion discovery platform linked to AI. Additionally, we have announced several early tests, including one with OpenAI to make our inventory accessible to more shoppers through their initiatives, along with some smaller tests we haven't yet disclosed that involve our own Agentic technology. Overall, if you were to observe this organization, you would see that it’s more common to inquire which teams are not utilizing AI or how we are not considering it in customer experience, as it is now a widespread approach in leveraging AI for both customer interactions and operational processes.

Going back to a previous question, it seems that for China, about 10% of the sellers are specifically identified, while over 40% are dealing in secondhand goods. This leaves roughly half of the GMV from sellers in the U.S., Europe, or other locations. Do you have an idea of how many of these sellers source their products from China? I realize that this might be challenging to determine, but I'm curious if you ever consider that. More generally, there are always concerns about a potential consumer pullback later this year. Your business operates quite differently compared to previous instances of consumer weakness due to the rise in collectibles, which now includes not just trading cards but a variety of luxury items and other larger GMV categories. As you project different scenarios, how do you foresee eBay performing in a recession compared to past experiences when the categories were different?

Steve here. I'll handle the first question and then turn it over to Jamie for the second. You're correct. As Jamie mentioned earlier, approximately 5% of our global GMV flows from the Greater China to the U.S. corridor. Your observation about our used and refurbished inventory is accurate, as it constitutes just over 40% of our total sales, which we view as a significant competitive advantage, especially as consumers are increasingly seeking value in the current environment. Regarding other listings on the platform, there is additional volume on eBay from U.S. sellers who source products from Greater China, and these sellers must deal with tariffs similar to our CBT sellers. Naturally, we've considered various scenarios as part of our business planning, and we've accounted for this impact when preparing for the different tariff situations. Jamie, could you address the second question?

Yes. What I would say, Ross, is that we are not unaffected by consumers who have less discretionary money to spend. However, we are in a better position and more resilient because of our marketplace inventory. Consumers often seek us out for value, which aligns well with what we offer. They come looking for used or refurbished items, and they are flexible in their choices. For example, sellers in parts and accessories are exploring more salvage opportunities. Additionally, as our focus categories expand, there tends to be a distinction between higher-income and lower-income buyers. For instance, our handbags sourced from Italy or France and training cards primarily from the U.S. show different manufacturing origins and have less elasticity concerning consumer spending. Overall, we are pleased that we shifted to non-new items five years ago, as it has strengthened our platform’s resilience. The strategies we have pursued have also contributed to greater diversification and more shipping options, among other benefits.

Jamie, given the mix of pre-owned and refurb on the platform now, does it make sense to leverage this competitive advantage that you currently have during this time and kind of make a more aggressive push to build top of the funnel and awareness to sort of gain a permanent competitive edge? And then also somewhat related to that, with all these macro shifts, are you seeing any changes in the competitive landscape now with maybe some of the subscale players who were previously investing aggressively scale down that's helping the business now?

Yes. Just to make sure I got your question, because of our level of pre-loved you said, and used on the platform or what did you say?

Yes, pre-owned and refurbishment goods on the platform, right.

Yes, we are heavily invested in this opportunity. We're focusing on both buying and selling aspects. For instance, in the U.K. and Germany, we are promoting the message of selling on eBay, as it's an ideal time to attract new sellers to the marketplace. We've observed that when buyers transition to becoming casual sellers, they tend to purchase more. Thus, we are actively focusing our marketing efforts in this direction. We see a considerable total addressable market in consumer-to-consumer sales that we are targeting. On average, households have between $3,000 and $4,000 worth of inventory that can be sold on eBay, yet less than 20% of that is currently available online. Our vision with magical listing is to simplify the process of listing that inventory on our platform by handling the descriptions and item specifics. Notably, even though our bulk magical listing technology is relatively new, we are already noticing that a significant portion of our listings for trading cards is coming through this platform, which is very promising. We are also making significant advancements in fashion, having recently launched a discovery platform for pre-loved fashion that features endless feeds based on sizing and styles. This will continue to be a focus as we move into 2025. Regarding competition, our scale provides us an advantage as we can attract buyers and engage them across various categories. For example, a buyer who purchases a watch over $500 is likely to spend $5,000 on watches and more than that across other categories. In our vehicles category, our new partnership with Caramel has been promising, with buyers spending thousands of dollars. Our global scale allows us to benefit from global supply and demand. Additionally, as Steve often mentions, our strong financial model enables us to invest during these periods and capture opportunities for eBay.

I very much appreciate it. How would you characterize, I mean, your business is very scaled, it is global. So how would you characterize the health of consumer today from your vantage point? And are there any leading indicators that you're seeing across different geographies that you can point to where you think you may have seen some pull forward in demand so far, and there could be some risk, or you may not have seen that and you think that consumer generally is healthy? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Shweta, it's Steve here. Thank you for the question. It's clear that the macro environment remains uncertain and difficult to predict. But we have been operating in a rather choppy environment for the last number of quarters as we managed through this. I think I'd carve in between U.S. and international. Demand in the U.S. continues to be more resilient, and we've seen healthy volume trends so far in the second quarter, and that's informed us in terms of how we thought about the second-quarter guide and the color that we've continued to provide for the full year, assuming that there's no discernible change in that underlying environment. I think as it pertains to Europe, and particularly Germany and the U.K., leading indicators in the U.K. like consumer confidence remain depressed. There continue to be concerns over cost of living and inflation, which in our second-largest market is obviously quite pertinent. And then when I think about Germany, it continues to remain tough. Our consumer confidence was impacted by recent elections and geopolitical events. I think it's fair to say that German consumers are now concerned about the spillover effects of U.S. trade policy and its government is now predicting a third consecutive year of zero GDP growth. So that's the general overall dynamic that we're seeing. But having said that, we do continue to execute. And I think it's a real testament to the work the Company is doing, the investments that we're driving forward, and the fact that we now have four consecutive quarters of positive GMV growth that we continue to do that. And so, this continued softness in the overall macro environment is contemplated in the guide, assuming that there's no discernible change in the macro environment.

Thanks a lot, Steve. Just a quick follow-up. Given the resiliency of your platform, what are your thoughts on leaning more aggressively on marketing spend to gain greater share?

I think we've continued to get the balance right. We have continued to lean in to drive operational efficiencies across the platform. We're investing for the long-term future of the Company and to stimulate the long-term sustainable growth. And I really think about all the cost factors that we have across the Company. Marketing is one of them. And I think we've been very effective in those investments over recent quarters.

Jamie, I think you mentioned over 2 billion listings. I think that's up mid-teens year-over-year and maybe that's the second year in a row that it's up that magnitude. I'm just curious what you attribute that to? And maybe any broader implications of that? And then for Steve, wish you the best. It has been great working with you. I wanted to go back to your comments on the linearity of the quarter. I think you said March might have been better than February. And just curious what you'd attribute that to? I don't know if it's just the leap year comp, but just any additional thoughts there would be helpful.

Thanks for the question, Tom. I'll address the selling side. You're right about the 2.3 billion listings, which are largely driven by the strong performance we've observed in our overall selling experiences, particularly from our C2C seller base. Listings have been increasing at double-digit rates on the platform. Since 2023, we've consistently grown the 12-month active seller count each quarter. A majority of our sellers are C2C sellers, with small businesses representing about 70% of that segment. Our focus on enhancing the C2C value proposition and reducing friction has been key. This includes efforts like improving image enhancements and streamlining the shipping process. In the U.S., we facilitate this through eBay international shipping, while in China we use SpeedPAK solutions. In other regions like the U.K., we're introducing managed shipping to simplify the shipping process for C2C sellers. By minimizing friction and promoting the work we've done in the U.K. and Germany regarding our C2C efforts, along with marketing that emphasizes the C2C value for consumers, we're effectively attracting more sellers and boosting our listing count. Steve, would you like to address the second question?

Yes, Tom, it's great to connect with you. It’s fair to say we experienced some inconsistent demand as we entered the year. January and February showed a softer environment, especially in February. However, we observed strong momentum in March and April. We believe part of this may be attributed to a pull-forward effect, as mentioned in our prepared remarks. Additionally, the underlying health of our platform is promising, particularly with the focus category showing a 6% year-over-year increase, which is also 6% faster than the overall platform growth. While there was some unevenness early in the year, we are very pleased with the continued success our teams are achieving.

Just curious, as you kind of lean into fashion in 2025, can you speak to maybe your appetite kind of for M&A or buy versus build? There are some kind of private competitors out there. You made acquisitions like PCG player to bolster that category that's been going quite well. So, can you maybe talk through kind of appetite for M&A, the funnel and just how you're thinking about that kind of focused category this year?

Yes, I would say nothing has changed. We continue to use our build, buy, and partner framework, which has proven effective. Regarding TCGplayer, we have formed a partnership with Collectors Universe, the owner of PSA. We recently introduced a new feature for collectors that allows them to send ungraded trading cards directly to PSA for grading with just one click, eliminating the previous requirement of shipping the card to oneself and re-entering the card details on the PSA form. This is a significant advantage. On the buying side, both TCGplayer and Golden Auctions have been performing well, enhancing our capabilities. We have also invested in building features like magical bulk listings, which are driving our business in that sector. We are continually exploring ways to accelerate our capabilities while maintaining a disciplined approach to our build, buy, and partner strategy. In the fashion category, we've made strides such as acquiring Certilogo, a Milan-based company specializing in digital authentication of fashion products. They are developing digital product passports with leading brands, facilitating one-click reselling on eBay, and providing long-term advantages. We are collaborating with influencers and brands like Vogue to promote our outstanding fashion inventory. Influencers such as Margherita Missoni and Emma Chamberlain are part of this initiative. We are applying this strategy across all categories, focusing on what makes sense within the build, buy, and partner framework to accelerate transformation. We are excited about developments in pre-loved fashion and collectibles and our recent acquisition in P&A aligns well with our ongoing strategy.

I want to express my appreciation for the collaboration we've had, Steve. You've been incredibly supportive. Also, regarding the limited thoughts on Temu and Shein, they've significantly reduced their marketing expenses, which I believe could have a major influence on the minimal impact rules. Could this present an opportunity for you to consider as a potential advantage? Additionally, can you share if you're noticing any changes in your marketing channels and cost-per-click, or if there's a potential opportunity there?

Yes. We're constantly looking on a daily basis how to maximize the ROI of our marketing spend. I'd say a couple of things. One is we were less impacted because when they came in, spending a significant amount, especially in the U.S. market, because so much of our traffic is organic on the platform. And so, it's really less of an impact on our business. When you look at the products that they're selling, it's a really immaterial GMV overlap. We moved away from the low ASP items a while ago as we strategically focused on non-new in season on focus categories, et cetera. I would say overall, our marketing ROI has been healthy year-to-date, but nothing really to call out other than in addition to the dynamics of the marketplace, we're continuing to find ways to use AI for our marketing as well. So, we're starting to incorporate AI into CRM and how we're communicating with our customers in a completely different way. So, that's also helping drive the ROI of our marketing spend. And we continue to lean in opportunistically where we think there's an opportunity.