Huge thanks to Perrine Crampton (@pcrampton) for putting together this recap of short form posts and tweets around yesterday’s eBay earnings call for Q1, 2012. What makes Storify really cool is that you can go through the slide show below and click on the links within each captured tweet – and even share right from the slides. At 206 slides, it’s a bit of a slog… but it’s still pretty neat to view:
eBay Inc. CEO, John Donahoe, spoke on CNBC earlier today in response to the company’s Q1, 2012 earnings. Here you go:
eBay Inc. today reported that revenue for Q1FY12, increased 29% to $3.3 billion, compared to the same period of 2011. We recorded Q1 net income on a GAAP basis of $570 million, or $0.44 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $725 million, or $0.55 per diluted share. The year-over-year increase in first quarter GAAP earnings per diluted share was driven primarily by strong top-line growth partially offset by increased investment in the shopping experience and the impact of acquisitions.
“The first quarter was a strong start to the year for us with momentum continuing in our Marketplaces, PayPal and GSI Commerce businesses,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe. “We believe that innovation in retail today is technology driven, and consumers are embracing smarter, easier, better ways to shop. We are enabling commerce in this new retail environment, supporting and partnering with sellers of all sizes and giving consumers worldwide the ability to shop anytime, anywhere, for whatever they want.”
There are a number of options for you to get more information around today’s earnings announcement. You can listen along to the live eBay earnings call. You can follow along with my tweets in real-time, beginning at 2pm PT.
PayPal
PayPal ended the quarter with 109.8 million active registered accounts, a 12% increase year over year. On average, PayPal added more than 1 million new accounts every month in Q1 2012. PayPal revenue increased 32% year over year and PayPal’s net total payment volume (TPV) grew 24% to $34 billion in Q1 compared to the same period of last year. PayPal expects to process $7 billion in mobile TPV in 2012. The Home Depot launched PayPal payments in all of its nearly 2,000 U.S. stores, giving shoppers the opportunity to pay using just their mobile phone number or PayPal payment card and PIN.
eBay Marketplaces
The Marketplaces business also delivered a strong Q1. Gross merchandise volume (GMV), excluding vehicles, increased by 12% year over year to $16 billion with sold items up 17% globally year over year. U.S. GMV excluding vehicles increased 13% year over year. International GMV, excluding vehicles, increased 11% year over year.
Downloads of eBay’s suite of mobile apps surpassed 12 million in the first quarter and 78 million globally since the launch of mobile in the third quarter of 2008. eBay expects to generate $8 billion in mobile volume transacted in 2012.
GSI
GSI, which was acquired in the second quarter of 2011, contributed $237 million in revenue for the first quarter. GSI generated $715 million in global ecommerce (GeC) merchandise sales during the quarter. Same store sales grew 26% year over year, reflecting strong ecommerce sales from retail clients.
Business Outlook
• Second quarter 2012 — eBay expects net revenues in the range of $3,250 – $3,350 million with GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.49 – $0.51 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.53 – $0.55.
• Full year 2012 — eBay now expects net revenues in the range of $13,800 – $14,100 million with GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $1.91 – $1.96 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $2.30 – $2.35.
Cheers,
RBH
eBay Beats; Q1 Revenue Up 29 Percent To $3.3B; Net Income Up 20 Percent tcrn.ch/HSOvo1 by @leenarao
To ensure that PayPal continues to offer the best possible products and services to our customers, we are planning a technology migration of our data center on Thursday, April 19, 2012, starting at approximately 10 p.m. PT. We expect it to last 45- 60 minutes. During this time, there will be a system-wide interruption to the PayPal service and our website. This means that customers will not be able to log into or use their PayPal accounts. Rest assured that, during this time, all funds will be secured as usual by PayPal’s powerful security and fraud protection.
Please check @askPayPal on Twitter, the PayPal Facebook page and The PayPal Blog for confirmation that the outage has concluded. Once the migration is complete, consumers and merchants will be up and running again, business as usual. This technology migration will set us up for some of the planned future product innovations that users will start to see over the next several months.
Every day it seems we hear about a new social tool, community builder or networking solution. How does one keep up? We’re going to start sharing some resources here on Ink for eBay sellers. Today, Pinterest and Facebook Timeline.
Pinterest
Pinterest is the latest one-word social sharing solution vying for your attention. eBay has started to incorporate Pinterest sharing into our Marketplace and you can read a full breakdown on how to use Pinterest with eBay over on the eBay Stories Blog:
The eBay product team has made it very easy to work with Pinterest, providing a share link to Pinterest with a stylized “P” right next to our symbols for other ways to share favorite items, such as Facebook, Twitter, or by email…
… So, what is all the fuss about Pinterest anyway? In a nutshell, Pinnners (as aficionados of the site are called) like to share items from throughout the web and pin favorites on their page, usually thematically, like an online pinboard. You’re probably thinking “doesn’t Facebook and/or Twitter do something like this already?” and you’d be right. They have similar features, but the cool thing about Pinterest is the layout and ease of use. You can browse through and see photos of items your friends (or other pinners) have found, and re-pin them to your board to check out later. It is a fun, easy way to discover products you may not even have known you wanted, get inspired, and even follow people who share your tastes. The Pinterest mission statement sums it up: “Our goal is to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”
Join Shoutlet Thursday, April 19 at 2PM Eastern/11AM Pacific where they’ll cover:
** Pinterest basics
** Current adoption and audience statistics
** Benefits and strategies for marketers
** Rules of engagement
** Examples of brands using the platform in creative ways
Facebook Timeline
By now you’ll have probably converted to the new Facebook Timeline format. With that you’ve probably noticed that there are some new image requirements that have come along with the change.
For those of you managing FB pages for your respective businesses, here is a great cheat sheet resource for new Facebook Timeline image requirements.
The deadline to cast a vote is April 26, 2012. The winners will be announced on May 1. eBay also received two Honoree distinctions in both Best use of Camera and Best Lifestyle categories for the eBay Fashion and eBay Motors apps, respectively.
eBay is no stranger to the Webby Awards. Most notably, the eBay Community was awarded a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award back in 2007 for the hundreds of millions of registered buyers and sellers who “made eBay a cultural phenomenon and permanently changed the way people connect, discover and interact with each other.”
eBay Adds More Solar Power
eBay has completed installation of a solar array on top of its LEED Gold-certified Topaz data center in South Jordan, Utah, the largest solar installation to date. The array, designed and installed by SPG Solar, includes 72,000 sq ft of solar panels, covering virtually the facility’s entire roof. As an environmental benefit, eBay expects the array to offset 702 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Its power capacity is 665kW and the company estimates it will produce more than 900,000kWh of electricity every year. [via eBay Ink]
Further News
+ E-commerce is driving up prepaid card usage as consumers have started to use them more to pay bills and make online purchases.
+ HTML5 is the latest version of the ubiquitous web programming language, and it’s especially important in mobile commerce.
+ There is a growing trend within the converging spaces of social media and e-commerce.
Looking Back on eBay Ink April 18, 2012: eBay Instant Sale now offers $$ for broken devices. My 2 broken iPods may no longer be worthless. eBay has opened up its Instant Sale program to include new, limited-time pricing for broken or damaged iPods, iPhones and iPads, offering consumers more value for their broken gadgets than ever before in celebration of Earth Month. Additionally, eBay will offer every user that sends in their device – broken or not – a bonus $5 eBay gift card and a matching $5 donation to Global Green USA.
Through April 30, eBay Instant Sale will begin paying up to $150 for broken iPads, $100 for iPhones, and $50 for iPods. Until now, Instant Sale offered free shipping and responsible recycling for all broken items, but limited cash value. As a result, I now have two otherwise useless iPods that could translate into about 100 new songs from iTunes for my functioning one.
eBay InkWeekend Roundup is a summary of news and updates around eBay, PayPal, Social Media, Technology and E-commerce. Let us know what interests you.
I’ve been the primary author and editor of eBay Ink for the past 4 years but on those rare occasions that we’ve had contributed content here on the blog, I’ve very much welcomed the fresh opinion and new voice.
With that in mind, we wanted to give you the opportunity to have your say here on eBay Inc.’s official corporate blog. So much so, that we set up contributed content guidelines.
CONTENT PREP
** Unless a topic has been previously determined, choose a compelling topic or story idea.
** Gather complementary assets such as videos and images to support your post.
** Instruct the date and exact time of publish for post. For example, Tuesday November 15 at 9:00am Pacific. Note if copy material coincides with launches or important announcements.
CONSTRUCTION
** Keep tone of voice conversational and light, you are talking to people directly.
** If possible, lead with an image or video asset. It’s the initial hook that pulls readers further into your post. Be sure that images included in the post are high resolution.
** If support pieces exist for your post – other web pages or documents – be sure to provide links to those pages or the documents themselves.
** Keep word count to 500 characters maximum.
** Break-up post to include images – products, subject matter or action shots — in between paragraphs
** Before the post is published, review the post to ensure the accuracy of language, links and assets.
POST-PUBLISHING RESPONSIBILITIES
** Follow up with blog readers by responding to comments or questions left on the post.
** If any changes need to be made to the post, please contact the site administrator.
Many of you will remember that in the spring of 2010 we opened Topaz, our first wholly-owned data center in South Jordan (which was awarded LEED Gold status by the US Green Building Council). Since then we’ve continued to invest in Utah and worked to demonstrate our commitment to make our operations there even more efficient and sustainable.
Today, we are announcing eBay’s largest solar installation to date, atop the Topaz data center. The installation includes a 665 kilowatt (kW) solar power system, designed and installed by SPG Solar, featuring 72,000 square feet of solar panels, covering virtually every inch of roof space on the data center. The installation will produce 924,013 kilowatt hours (kWh) of clean electricity annually, which is equivalent to offsetting 702 tons of greenhouse gas emissions or planting 136 acres of pine forests. In addition to the environmental benefits, we anticipate the installation will pay for itself in just four years. The Topaz solar array, along with our 650 kW array and 500 kW Bloom Fuel cell installation at our San Jose headquarters and our 100 kW solar array in Denver, brings our total renewable energy capacity to almost 2 Megawatts. To put that in perspective, that’s equivalent to about 11% of our total US data center electricity demand.
The Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal announced their 2012 Women of Influence Awards today and I’m proud to say that two of our executives made the honor roll – Richelle Parham, chief marketing officer for eBay Marketplaces and Kristin Yetto, SVP of HR for eBay Marketplaces – were 2 of the 100 award winners.
I got to sit down with Richelle and Kristin to discuss the accolade and we talked more about the internal program here at eBay called the Women’s Initiative Network (WIN).
eBay Aligns with PayPal to Drive Growth
PayPal, one of the fastest-growing businesses for eBay, now accounts for around 27% of the companies overall value. PayPal recently rolled out some additional online and mobile payment options geared specifically for small businesses. PayPal Payments, a suite of payment offerings provides small businesses with multiple options to accept payments from their customers. This enables merchants to accept payments online via PayPal, physically via PayPal Here and through mobile via PayPal Mobile. With these flexible options, PayPal aims to become the default payment processor for small businesses. [via Forbes]
Further News
+ The Hottest Trend in e-Commerce? Clothes.
+In-app purchases are proving a boon for app developers, boosting revenues for both developers and app store owners such as Google and Apple.
+ What makes the online consumer tick?
+ The Facebook Timeline of social commerce represented as an infographic.
Looking Back on eBay Ink April 12, 2011: Today, eBay, HP, Microsoft and Intel released a statement in support of Senator Kerry’s (D-MA) and Senator McCain’s (R-AZ) Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act. The Act establishes a framework to protect the personal information of all Americans both online and offline. Please click here to view eBay, HP, Microsoft and Intel’s statement of support.
eBay InkWeekend Roundup is a summary of news and updates around eBay, PayPal, Social Media, Technology and E-commerce. Let us know what interests you.
