The value of goods transacted on eBay Inc.’s U.S. marketplace grew 4.8% to $8.78 billion during the company’s third quarter ended Sept. 30, the online marketplace reported Wednesday. That’s up from $8.38 billion during the third quarter a year ago.
For the first nine months of 2017, U.S. gross merchandise value was $26.43 billion, up 2.6% from $25.76 billion.
Globally, sales on eBay’s marketplaces increased 8.1% to $21.68 billion from $20.05 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange rates, global sales grew 7% year over year, eBay says.
For the first three quarters of the year, global GMV grew 4.2% to $63.98 billion from $61.42 billion.
Global sales on eBay’s marketplaces saw the highest growth rate in three years, eBay says.
“In Q3, we drove acceleration across all three of our platforms (eBay marketplace, StubHub and Classified), delivering strong top and bottom-line financial results and our fastest volume growth in over three years,” CEO Devin Wenig says. “Our customers are responding to the significant product enhancements we have been making, and this is reflected in our results.”
Some of the features eBay has added in the past few months include grouped listings in search results, price-matching for select eBay products and an authentication program in which eBay verifies the legitimacy of luxury handbags. These are in addition to its more than two-yearlong structured data initiative. Structured data, which eBay says will help refine search results for eBay’s customers, has shown some early results, some analysts say.
“We believe the step-up in consolidated marketplace GMV is a positive early indicator of structured data traction, and believe holiday quarter guidance could prove conservative,” e-commerce investment analyst Colin Sebastian from Robert W. Baird wrote in a note to investors.
Revenue for the company in Q3 was $2.41 billion, up 8.6% from $2.22 billion. Through the first nine months of the year, revenue was $6.95 billion, up 5.6% from $6.58 billion.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, eBay also reported:
- Sales, not including sales through online ticket marketplace StubHub, of $20.52 billion, up 8.2% from $18.97 billion from the year-ago quarter.
- Revenue from eBay’s marketplace, not including StubHub, was $1.61 billion, up 8.8% from $1.48 billion.
- For StubHub, eBay’s concert and sport-ticketing marketplace, gross merchandise volume of $1.16 billion, up 1.8% from $1.14 billion.
- StubHub’s revenue, or fees paid by its sellers, was $273 million, up 4.6% from $261 million.
- Net income of $523.0 million, up 23.6% compared with $423.0 million.
- Active buyers (those who have made a purchase in the past year) increased 5.0% to 168 million consumers compared with 160 million users. This figure has been adjusted to exclude domestic active buyers in India following the sale of eBay’s India business to Flipkart.
For the nine months ended Sept. 30, eBay also reported:
- Net income of $1.59 billion, up 19.5%from $1.33 billion.