This Twitter session may make forward-looking statements relating to our future performance that are based on our current expectations, forecasts and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expected financial results for the second quarter and full year 2010, the focus on the Payments and Marketplaces business units going forward and future growth in the Payments and Marketplaces businesses.

Our actual results may differ materially from those discussed in this call for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, the further impact of the credit crisis; continued or worsening global economic downturn; changes in political, business, and economic conditions; foreign-exchange-rate fluctuations; the impact and integration of recent and future acquisitions; our increasing need to grow revenues from existing users in established markets; an increasingly competitive environment for our businesses; the complexity of managing an increasingly large enterprise, with a broad range of businesses, our need to manage regulatory, tax, IP and litigation risks (including risks specific to PayPal, Bill Me Later and the financial industry); and our need to upgrade our technology and customer service infrastructure at reasonable cost while adding new features and maintaining site stability.

You can find more information about factors that could affect our operating results in our most recent annual report on our Form 10-K and our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q (available at http://investor.ebayinc.com). You should not unduly rely on any forward-looking statements, and we assume no obligation to update them. All information in the presentation is as of April 21, 2010, and we do not intend, and undertake no duty, to update this presentation.

Cheers,
RBH

GAAP operating margin increased to 22.2% for the quarter, compared to 20.9% for the same period last year. Non-GAAP operating margin decreased slightly to 30.6% for the quarter, compared to 30.7% for the same period last year, as productivity gains were offset by faster growth in the company’s lower-margin PayPal business and lower take rates.

“Our first quarter results reflect another strong step toward achieving our three-year growth and profitability goals,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe. “We are becoming a more customer-focused and technology-driven company, delivering more innovative products and experiences and driving operating efficiencies to reinvest in growth. We are improving the fundamentals of our business, strengthening eBay Marketplaces and aggressively growing PayPal to become the leader in global online payments.”

eBay Inc. generated $418.3 million of operating cash flow and $266.0 million of free cash flow during the first quarter. Operating cash flow and free cash flow were reduced by a one-time tax payment of $207.4 million related to a legal entity restructuring, as a result of which the company moved approximately $1.1 billion in cash to the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2009.

If you are unable to listen along to the live earnings call by clicking here, you can follow along with my tweets in real-time, beginning at 2pm PT. I will be live-blogging here on the homepage of eBay Ink. Also, you can get up-to-the-minute information here and access the full press release HERE.

For folks interested in following the entire conversation on Twitter, the hashtag is #eBayQ110.

Cheers,
RBH

I’ve also tried to optimize my physical working space. I took a picture of it for you below. You’ll see I have three primary screens displaying different information. The left screen will display the earnings call slides as our CEO John Donahoe and CFO Bob Swan run through on the call. The right screen is my Seesmic desktop display that tracks the conversation coming out of earnings and all things eBay so I can monitor and/or retweet any nuggets coming from third-party bloggers. Finally, the center screen is where I will be typing the key quotes coming out of the call directly onto eBay Ink (and subsequently Twitter). I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’m presenting at Ragan’s Social Media for Financial Communicators conference at the NASDAQ in June so I’m hoping today goes smoothly because I’d like to capture it as my case-study for that presentation.

Cheers,
RBH

This Twitter session may make forward-looking statements relating to our future performance that are based on our current expectations, forecasts and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expected financial results for the first quarter and full year 2010, the focus the Payments and Marketplaces business units going forward, and future growth in the Marketplaces and Payments businesses.

Our actual results may differ materially from those discussed in this Twitter session for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, the further impact of the credit crisis; continued or worsening global economic downturn; changes in political, business, and economic conditions; foreign-exchange-rate fluctuations; the impact and integration of recent and future acquisitions; our increasing need to grow revenues from existing users in established markets; an increasingly competitive environment for our businesses; the complexity of managing an increasingly large enterprise, with a broad range of businesses, our need to manage regulatory, tax, IP and litigation risks (including risks specific to PayPal, Bill Me Later and the financial industry); and our need to upgrade our technology and customer service infrastructure at reasonable cost while adding new features and maintaining site stability.

You can find more information about factors that could affect our operating results in our most recent annual report on our Form 10-K and our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q (available at http://investor.ebayinc.com). You should not unduly rely on any forward-looking statements, and we assume no obligation to update them. All information in the presentation is as of January 20, 2010, and we do not intend, and undertake no duty, to update this presentation.

Cheers,
RBH

The company recorded net income on a GAAP basis of $1.4 billion or $1.02 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $585.8 million or $0.44 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2009. For the full year, eBay Inc. posted $8.7 billion in revenue, net income on a GAAP basis of $2.4 billion or $1.83 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $2.1 billion or $1.58 per diluted share.

“We delivered a strong fourth quarter with double-digit revenue growth driven by exceptional performance at PayPal and turnaround progress and momentum in our core eBay business,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe. “PayPal significantly expanded its presence globally and, for the first time, processed more than $20 billion in total payment volume in a quarter. Gross merchandise volume and sold items, accelerated for the third consecutive quarter. We are starting 2010 with significant progress against our three-year growth strategies for PayPal and eBay and a clear focus on our priorities going forward.”

eBay Inc. generated $770.6 million of operating cash flow $597.7 million of free cash flow during the fourth quarter.

After taking a break last quarter I will be back live-blogging our earnings via Twitter this afternoon. Therefore, if you are unable to listen along to the live earnings call by clicking here, you can follow along with my tweets in real-time, beginning at 2pm PT. Also, you can get up-to-the-minute information here and access the full press release here.

For folks interested in following the entire conversation on Twitter, the hashtag is #eBayQ409.

Cheers,
RBH

The first features eBay CEO, John Donahoe, discussing eBay’s take on Black Friday activity in the marketplace and PayPal‘s role in that. He also talks about m-commerce, and the early successes of the eBay Mobile application…

The second features PayPal president, Scott Thompson, discussing the 20% growth in PayPal traffic on Black Friday when compared to one year ago. He also discusses mobile payments:

Cheers,
RBH

eBay received approximately $1.9 billion in cash and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million. eBay retains approximately 30% equity investment in Skype. The company also purchased senior debt securities with a face value of $50 million as part of a Skype debt financing.

Josh Silverman posted to the Skype blog here.

Cheers,
RBH

New Capabilities for Adaptive Payments
PayPal unveiled new capabilities and enhancements for its Adaptive Payments APIs, expanding payment functionality for multiple recipients and on multiple platforms. New capabilities include:

Currency conversion: Fast, easy global payment apps, automatically converting currencies using current exchange rates.
Pay Anyone: For financial and other institutions to let their customers send money when logged in to their bank accounts. Their customers won’t need a PayPal account to use the service.
Pre-approvals: Enables developers to create reusable payments agreements between buyers and sellers. While payment approval happens online, the actual money movement can occur offline at different intervals, and through multiple devices that are not necessarily Internet-connected at the time.
Send Money: Developers can build person-to-person (P2P) solutions or business-to-business (B2B) payment applications on their platform of choice – whether it’s the mobile phone or a social networking site.
Chained Payments: Developers can take a cut or distribute funds from PayPal payments as they happen.
Parallel payments: Developers can enable buyers to send money to several people in one payment, which is ideal for purchasing multiple items from different sellers, or even for payroll applications.

Introducing Adaptive Accounts
PayPal introduced a beta of its Adaptive Accounts API to provide a streamlined signup experience for people who don’t have PayPal accounts, while maintaining security and privacy of consumer data. With the new API, developers can create PayPal accounts for their customers from within their applications.

New Pricing for Services Payments
Starting in Q2 2010, PayPal will offer pricing for developers building applications in markets that are traditionally served by cash and checks, such as rent, consulting businesses or payroll.

The introductory pricing is:
A flat fee of 50 cents for service transactions funded by a bank account or PayPal account balance, with a three-day settlement period; or a 0.75 percent fee for service transactions funded by a bank account or PayPal account balance, with instant settlement.

Mobile Embedded Payment Toolkit Beta
A key component of PayPal X will be the mobile payment software development kit (SDK), which makes it easier for developers to integrate PayPal into mobile applications to buy physical goods. With just a few lines of code, developers can add a checkout button to accept mobile payments without having to worry about collecting any financial information. The mobile SDK, which will initially support iPhone, will be available in the first half of 2010.

“Mobile transactions have been notoriously tough to monetize,” said Osama Bedier, PayPal’s vice president of platform. “With the new SDK, just tell us how much you want to get paid and what the payment is for, and the funds will be transferred in seconds, not days or weeks.”

X.com Developer Portal
PayPal also unveiled X.com, a new developer portal that contains all the information developers need to create applications built with PayPal X. All general sessions at Innovate 2009 can be viewed live from x.com, and all sessions from the conference will be available for viewing at x.com after the conference.

I’ll keep everyone posted with news from here at PayPal X Innovate 09 as it comes out.

Related Links:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/a-growing-paypal-could-soon-overshadow-parent-ebay/

http://mashable.com/2009/11/04/paypal-id/

http://venturebeat.com/2009/11/04/paypal-woos-developers-with-150k-challenge/

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/paypal-seeks-new-ways-to-use-its-payment-system/

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/11/05/paypal-on-track-to-lead-ebay-opens-doors-to-outside-developers/

http://gigaom.com/2009/11/03/paypals-partially-open-platform-to-usher-in-new-payment-models-apps/

http://tamebay.com/2009/11/paypal-x-dev-con-spawns-facebook-shopping-mall.html

http://econsultancy.com/blog/4907-paypal-turns-to-developers-in-its-quest-for-world-domination

Cheers,
RBH

“Our third quarter results were strong with PayPal gaining momentum and market share worldwide and our core eBay business showing positive trends,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe. “We’re delivering on our commitments, executing on our plans and operating smarter and faster.”

Net income on a GAAP basis was $349.7 million or $0.27 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income was $501.5 million or $0.38 per diluted share.

GAAP operating margin decreased to 19.8% for the quarter, compared to 24.7% for the same period last year. Non-GAAP operating margin decreased to 28.4% for the quarter, compared to 31.8% for the same period last year. The decrease in operating margins was caused primarily by the recently acquired Bill Me Later, the weaker U.S. dollar, and the company’s continuing shift to faster growing, lower margin businesses, partially offset by cost controls.

eBay Inc. generated $738.2 million of operating cash flow during the third quarter. Free cash flow during the quarter was $563.5 million.

Unfortunately I will be unable to live-blog our earnings via Twitter this quarter and instead, encourage you to listen along to the live earnings call by clicking here. Also, you can get up-to-the-minute information at both eBay Ink Blog News and ebayinc.com.

I’ll be back in the office next Monday as scheduled.

Cheers,
RBH