Earnings Labs

eBay Inc. (EBAY)

Q4 2005 Earnings Call· Thu, Jan 19, 2006

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Transcript

Lydia Ventura, Investor Relations Director

Management

Good afternoon. Thank you and welcome to eBay's earnings release conference call for the fourth quarter 2005. Joining me today are Meg Whitman, our President and CEO; and Rajiv Dutta our Chief Financial Officer. This conference call is also being broadcast on the Internet and is available through the Investor Relations section of the eBay website. Before we begin, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that during the course of this conference call, we may discuss some non-GAAP measures in talking about our company's performance. You can find the reconciliations of these measures to GAAP measures in the tables of our earnings release. In addition, management may make forward-looking statements regarding matters that involve risk and uncertainty including those relating to the Company's ability to grow its businesses, user base, and user activity. Our actual financial results could differ materially from those discussed during this conference call. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include but are not limited to the Company's need to manage an increasingly large emphasized with a broad range of businesses of varying degrees of maturity. The Company's need to increasingly achieve growth from its existing users as well as from new users in its more established markets. The Company's ability to deal with the increasingly competitive e-commerce environment, including competition for its sellers from other trading sites and other means of selling and competition for its buyers from other merchants online and offline. The need to integrate, manage, and profitably expand the newly acquired businesses including Skype, the Payment Gateway business acquired from VeriSign and Shopping.com. The regulatory and competitive risks specific to Skype, the Litigation Regulatory Credit Card Association and other risks specific to PayPal especially as it continues to expand geographically. The Company's need to manage other regulatory tax and litigation risks, even as its product offering to expand and its services are offered in more jurisdictions. The Company's ability to upgrade and develop its systems, infrastructure and customer service capabilities to accommodate growth at a reasonable cost. The Company's ability to maintain site stability and performance on all of its sites while adding new products and features in a timely fashion, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, the Company's ability to profitably expand its model to new types of merchandising sellers. Assumptions and methods used to value and expense stock options provided to employees and the Company's ability to profitably integrate and manage recent and future acquisitions and other transactions. More information about factors that could affect our operating results is included under the captions "Risk factors that may affect results of operations and financial condition," and "management's discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations" in our annual report on form 10-K, and quarterly reports on form 10-Q. Copies of which may be obtained by visiting the Investor Relations section of our website. And now, over to Meg.

Meg Whitman, Chief Executive Officer, President

Management

Thank you, Lydia. And welcome, everyone, to today's conference call. Q4 was an outstanding quarter for eBay, for strength growth and export momentum of profitable across the board. EBay added 12.5 million new users and generated record growth merchandised volume of $12 billion. PayPal added nearly 10 million new accounts and delivered a record 8.1 billion in total payment volume. Skype and Shopping.com the newest addition to our Company, also had record growth this quarter. As a result the Company delivered record net revenues of 1.3 billion in Q4, up 20% sequentially and 42% year-over-year. These results are a truly remarkable year for the company. At our Analyst Conference in February, we made our strategies for growing each of our businesses. And those strategies worked. We achieved accelerating growth in our two largest eBay market places in US and Germany and in many of our other international price as well. We grew PayPal’s eBay business around the world and expanded its business of eBay, and we broadened our vision for bringing people together to meet across south, which yet added tradition of new businesses such as Skype. These efforts allowed us to deliver outstanding results for the full year. In 2005, the eBay community generated $44.3 billion in GMV, up 30% from the full year 2004. PayPal added 32 million new accounts, an increase of 51% from the prior year and the company’s net revenue for 2005 jumps 39% from the full year 2004. 2005 was eBay’s 10th anniversary and our 8th year as a public company. In just a few short years, eBay has become an important part of people’s lot. Millions of people have turned eBay change in the way goods are bought and sold around the world. And 100s of thousands of our vendors have discovered economic…

Rajiv Dutta, Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks Meg. Q4 was a very impressive holiday quarter for eBay, as the business performs strongly on all fronts capturing a research in 2005. The trends this quarter was underscored by accelerating year-over-year revenue growth rate on fourth year reported and organic basis. eBay’s revenue growth accelerated in Q4 exceeding the top end of our guidance by $44 million in the reported basis and $55 million on a foreign exchange neutral basis. This revenue was driven by outstanding performance in our two largest markets, the US and Germany, a great quarter from shopping.com, accelerating same of volume growth in PayPal and tremendous performance through Skype. In short every eBay business contributed to this quarter’s results. The strong revenue performance and continued operational efficiencies in that core businesses generated record proforma operating profits and operating cash flows. Proforma operating income was approximately $43 million higher than our guidance had implied and the proforma EPS of $0.24 that’s $0.3 higher than our guidance. Operating cash flow reached a record $526 million in the quarter. These results made 2005 a truly remarkable year. We demonstrated a strong growth across all of our businesses significantly strengthened our strategic positioning and delivered outstanding financing performance. We entered 2006 with an incredible portfolio of assets and significant momentum. So let’s discuss this quarter’s financing performance in a bit more detail starting with the top line My all indication, the 2005 holiday season was very strong free ecommerce. At eBay integrated marketing campaign, key business initiatives and products innovation over the course of 2005 amplifies this mega trends across each of our business. As a result the quarter saw terrific consumer engagement across the board. In the eBay market places shoppers are fluxed to be their size delivering record visitors in its largest market US, Germany, and…

Question and Answers

Management

Operator

Operator

Operator Instruction

Management

Q - Brian

Management

Brian, this is for Mary. How are you guys, right great quarter. Can you quantify what was fundamentally different this holiday season versus last holiday season I known you had fairly some issues in the back half this quarter. What did you learn from last year or they driven by the investment and then may be as a second part of that , you could talk a little bit more detail about the investments in the US and the Germany. What was specifically working for drive growth rate?

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Sure I’ll take that, and I would broadly characterize our initiatives into three bucket, more effective marketing, excellent business initiatives and product innovation. This is a very young and responsive business, we make small changes and what we have learned is that we can generate significant changes in trajectory. If I purchase on eBay US and Germany, I would say the largely the formula was the same, that first of all we change the balance between offline and online marketing, and improved our ability to optimize napple search and optimize page search. We also did, I think the better job in both Countries of integrated marketing campaign and in the United States with a particularly effective message in the head campaign, and then we also did you known initiative in customer safety and customer support seller online, as well as product innovation small changes that basically made at easier for buyers to buy in and seller itself. So it was a whole host of thing but if I had to point to one thing I would say, you known a better balance of our final online marketing and integrated marketing.

Q - Brian

Management

Great thanks

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Thank you

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Next question?

Operator

Operator

Our next question Mark Rowen from Prudential.

Q - Mark Rowen

Management

Thank you, and congratulations. My first question is to Rajiv. And it basically is the relationship between listings versus merchandise volumes and transaction revenue, and the between those seems have been moving around a lot for the last few quarter, and so if I look at you your listings which were up 35% even if I accept stores that was up 28%, it only generated gross merchandise volume of 22% and I know you said how that was a part of that but on gross merchandise volume for listing was down 9%year-over-year, and despite that you got 37% transaction revenue growth or even if I accept shopping .com 30%. So I was wondering if you could comment about the relationship between the two, I mean is the reason gross merchandise volume so much lower than listings growth, because ASP and success rate are following?

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Sure, sure, Mark let me take that question. You know, as I said in my prepared comments, the underlying metrics in the business in the US is from actually around the world was very, very strong and robust. The GMV growth rate as I pointed out was lower than the revenue growth rate, and this is impart due to two things. One, and this accounts for almost 4 or 5 percentage points differential in growth rate in foreign exchange. So particularly when you look at our currency translation on a year-over-year basis, the GMV is impacted by the fact that currency was against that. The second major component that accounts form almost an equal impact to foreign exchange is motor vehicle. Motor vehicle always has a seasonal down tick in Q4, this quarter we believe that this is actually further accentuated by the fact that there was some very strong OEM incentive in the middle part of this year. So when you look at the GMV growth rate, actually when you look at the GMV excluding motor vehicles and normalizing for foreign exchange, there is no difference in the relative pattern between GMV growth rate and the rest of the business including listings. Now just to add a couple of more points with respect to some of the things that influences the relative metrics, one is Q4, seasonally is a fair greater promotional activity. So we definitely do see greater listings activity in Q4, this is true in Germany and this is true around the world in Q4, this quarter was not that different. And one other thing I’d point to, if you are looking at overall revenue, don’t forget that revenue now includes shopping.com, which was $50 million we have to normalize for shopping.com as well.

Q - Mark Rowen

Management

Okay

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

And to this particular point, sorry if I may add, ASPs are actually was strong and robust, conversion rates very strong and robust, and mindful of stores versus non-store listings.

Q - Mark Rowen

Management

Okay. Second, on the fee changes that you’ve announced today. Can you give us a sense on the final value fees, how much of that changes your rate going forward once those are instituted?

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Sure Mark. So, let me just anchor pricing discussion in what we always have said and remains through which we try to manage the health environment through the market. And the pricing changes that we made always have a first eye on how was the top in conversion rates and health environment give the overall market. So we had a number of decreases, the decrease in fees, these are all US exchange rate changes by the way we will be announcing from international changes later on in the quarter. But in US, we decrease in certain fee in the corresponds from $0.25 down to $0.20, and then get some bundling feature fee like gallery, subtitles, listing designers, you can get all three for $0.55, which is actually a 32% discount. Picture show is now for free; sales report of lots free, and we just counted pricing on picture manager and actually increased the storage limit. The one and only one pricing increase itself without the backend, we increased the final value fee in the middle from 2.75% to 3%. And then added some value in terms of putting shift in general search inventory format into general search as well as offering eBay expressed for no incremental cost. And we also believe we are going to able to continue to drive record levels of traffic to eBay even as the complexity of buying key words continues to increase. So net net net , we think we’re increasing the value propositions for sellers, and when we add it all together at least right now we don’t see that take break will be influenced really in one way or another. At the end of the year on either eBay market place in UK, all revenues provided by GMV, we think that take rate would be roughly the same given all these difference changes.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

You know, we would add that we do expect that this to be accretive broadly speaking to revenue, because what we expected to be is driven by increased volume as of sellers get rid of success as they utilize features that we know are incredibly successful in conversion rates in helping conversion rates.

Q - Mark Rowen

Management

Okay great thank you.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Okay. Thank you Mark. Next question.

Operator

Operator

We go next to Imran Khan from JP Morgan.

Q- Imran Khan

Management

Hi Meg and Rajiv good quarter. A couple of questions, first, meg you know during the Skype acquisition you talked about model, I was wondering if you can share some what kind of, if you have any update in terms of integrating Skype, classified listing or main platform listing. And secondly, moving onto Rajiv, Rajiv I know you talked about that you have different kind of businesses and different kind of seasonality. But if you just purely look at the listing growth sequential from Q4 to Q1, should we expect to see the same kind of seasonality that we saw over the last two to three years from Q4 to Q1?

A - Meg Whitman

Management

I will take the first question on Skype integration. So we did the first thing which was heavy gross marketing with close to eBay marketing places as well as PayPal, you know we had onsite marketing on most eBay property, home pages, PayPal, Classifieds, we have a Skype hub page on both eBay and PayPal, and you know something where we distributed Skype has set to all eBay power sellers, I am talking about our merchants with a tremendous response. We now move on to the next section which is these integration into the market places and the development of the Skype for model. So those projects are on the product roadmap, we anticipate through 2006 you will see those integrated Pay per Pal as well as integrated and for our classified section, and stay tuned, you know typically won’t announce that right before we launch it.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

And with respect to your question on listings. You know there is many kinds of discussion in listing, I don’t particularly track listing, you know there is a number of things that we will be doing no difference from previous quarters, as we are looking at the overall sequential growth rate for the business, you know be mindful of obviously the fact that shopping has a sequential down from Q1, which is along the launch of shopping.com, PayPal merchant services is also now much more holiday season dependant, as it’s the overall eBay businesses, because it could have easily driven by holiday seasonal shopping for the rest more means in consumers come online. Looking at the listing, if you look from either the US business or the international business, I don’t expect to see a significantly different trajectory, listing for that said it is not a perfect measure for understanding look happy to underlying revenue.

Q- Imran Khan

Management

One last housekeeping question, did you break down the GMV numbers with the US or international, thank you?

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

No we did not.

Q- Imran Khan

Management

Okay. Did you share that or

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Yeah, I mean the GMV growth rate for international very closely track the revenue growth rate, so if you think about the power that was breakdown which means power between revenue and GMV growth rate is very consistent, keep in mind that all of the foreign exchange effect obviously related to the international, I can figure.

Q- Imran Khan

Management

Thank you, very much for the time. I appreciate it.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Thanks. Next question?

Operator

Operator

We go next to Scott Jeff (ph) with Stiper Nicholas (ph).

Q - Scott Jeff

Management

Hi Margaret thank you. The question is first related to autos, what you look forward in terms of reacceleration of solely OEM incentive or would it be any other driver there, and then secondly free cash flow in 2005 with 145% of net income, I was wondering if you give some guidance with some of ratio think about their ratio going forward either as a percentage of net income or as the percentage of operating income, and finally what your CapEx guidance in the fiscal ’06, thanks.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

With regard to autos. First of all in Q2 and Q3 that is historically the strongest period for autos. So really except the reacceleration especially in the United States and Germany and in the UK in those two quarters, and we also have a number of products innovation that have see fixed price in the summer time, so I am not worried about autos we had anticipated slow downs and we anticipated we have reacceleration in Q2 and Q3 on the US of the product innovation and seasonally you know a bit stronger.

Q - Scott Jeff

Management

You know, with respect to the cash flow and free cash flow there is nothing that this model that is fundamentally changing, the cash flow generation capability of the business, I have expected to many ways more of the profitability of the business advertisement in years and quarters previous. The CapEx we expect to be as percent of revenues, broadly consistence with what we had e in 2005 which will in rise add about 7% revenues, so that would meet our CapEx range for 2006 somewhere between $400 million and $420 million, but this is a very strong cash doing business and we expected to continue to be that way.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

I mean, you may remember about size, it’s size is even less capital incentive in eBay, and the total CapEx budget size in 2006 is $2 to $3 million. So Skype is not going to drive our CapEx expenditure.

Q - Scott Jeff

Management

Thanks.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Next question

Operator

Operator

We have next Mark Mahaney from Citigroup.

Q - Mark Mahaney

Management

Thank you, two quick questions, one, any update on the CFO search, and secondly just to pin down on guidance a little bit, you clearly had our performance in the quarter, I think versus the midpoint to your revenue guidance, you are up something like $64 million, $65 million, yet you are not changing the revenue guidance for us. Is there something you are seeing that which were incrementally more cautious about '06 given the out performance in December quarter, thank you.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

With regard to the CFO search, we have innovated a number of candidates, so I must say it was hard to tell, but we actually are down to a very short list of finalized candidates and we are really feeling good about the short list and sharpening that closure in the next couple of weeks.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

And Mark I had expecting question everyday, but I am very much focused on being here to getting the next year for on board and making sure that we have an appropriate transition. So, I think you know with respect to your second question in terms of guidance I was waiting how along into the Q&A before that question comes up. So here is you know there is a couple of headlines things had made. We have a very meaningful look under business which business is doing very strong and in fact I men specifically notes to point out that as we look at the first couple of weeks generally we see some very good strong and very strong trend, really confirming to us the momentum we’ve seen in Q4 and in 2005 just continuing into 2006. There is the CapEx that I have pointed out which relates to the seasonality of the business, because we now have some very large components return to the next that are more Q4 dependence. So the question is to how does that translate into 2006, you know the way we are looking at this is that we have a number of new businesses and a number of new business initiatives that are peripheral to consumption 2006 and what we’d like to do is to get some more visibility into how these are performing before we update guidance for you again. It’s a pretty transparent business as we go through the quarters we will share with you.

Q - Mark Mahaney

Management

Thank you very much.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Thanks.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Next question?

Operator

Operator

We go next to Robert Peck of Bear Stearns.

Q - Robert Peck

Management

Hey congratulations, I just wanted to touch in a couple quick points. One, Meg, could you give us your though on the GMV effect going forward not in a near-term, but may be go long-term on Google in remarks, and number two could you also touch those on may be some more most specifics of PayPal and EachNet in China remember CRU, Active users, GMV.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

So when I talk a little bit about Google based and free mot, we will take it and call something else now other than free mot, that is a Microsoft product. Can you, read or focused and I am very glad to start this initiative well over a year ago, because we have to take straight up leading to the local classified business if I mentioned in 40 Countries and over 300 Cities. And we believe that it does have increase in returns on a local basis. So we’re really pleased with where we are and we’re really excited about the fundamental underlying technology platform. That said, we’re going to keep an eye on Google base, keep an eye on Microsoft Classified efforts. And you know, then you also have to remember if we have ability to efforts from eBay platform in every major country, we have a leading position across the world and we can leverage eBay traffic, and you know focus actually matters. We are number one in ecommerce, I think we know more about I think we know more about these businesses than anyone else and we really hope that to stand up in good step. So, if, I am, with regard to the GMV tax and I don’t think it’s hard for us to the desk, and you know we have our classified businesses going to grow fast because that doesn't have GMV component to us. The GMV is going to be slightly overtime less relevant matrix, because we have lots of businesses where there is no GMV, number for example shopping.com, classified, rent.com etc. If we go to China we are excited about China, we have just had over third quarter of accelerating GMV growth rate, we had some very positive impact in previous Skype changes Skype was sealed with huge enthusiasm by our journeys few in a days and I think leave to great enhance except in face little a critical season point for Chinese users. So the business is strengthening we have a great team there, and actually on the eBay side we just had a new country manager about the management rule rode up in running and off to a good start. PayPal has good penetration on eBay for GMV is going very, very well in China and then of course we have Skype in China in its joint venture with form online. So we’ve got core businesses in China all of which had synergy with one another. So you know, what we are to a long infrastructure that we had set for a long time and we are really excited about the momentum we have seen in the last three quarters.

Q - Robert Peck

Management

Thanks Meg, congratulations.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Thank you.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Next question?

Operator

Operator

Moving on next to Anthony Noto with Goldman Sachs.

Q - Anthony Noto

Management

Thank you very much, Rajiv, given your comments about guidance and your comment that we can see the biggest transparent which are conservative, I just want to note down some of the organic growth rate in fourth quarters, and surely this is, from my estimates fourth quarter domestic organic revenue growth was roughly 26% to 28%, in the Internationally organic growth rates excluding effects was roughly 46% to 48%, I was wondering if you can confirm those numbers, so you can kind of back up some PCs mobile units, that you are pointing to given a listing in jump 10% sequentially quarters they already. And then, Meg you mentioned Pay per call, I was wondering if you could comment who we see 2006 paper call integrated into eBay US in the stand point of sponsored listings against key word such as well as, potentially launch of one or two categories that are just pay per call not a listing fee or final value fee, we have any really testing on opportunity, thanks.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

So, actually your first couple of question that in '06, sort of your estimates on growth rate looking like organic rate growth rate domestic 26-28, International 46-48, those are well we speak at what is very consistence with what the growth rates was in normalized from exchange and when you normalize for the acquisition.

Q - Anthony Noto

Management

And just sorry, and those were both faster than Q3, was up a bit.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Absolutely, so the thing that I think give up, particular session if you are looking at the Q4 results is organic acceleration, whether we are looking at, the eBay businesses, all we looking at the PayPal business, or we looking at posted your acquisition that all perform really very well.

Q - Anthony Noto

Management

Thanks Rajiv.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

And with regard to your question. Pay per call, whether will be innovated in the eBay US and other we will launch new categories that are only takes for lead. Your call will be announce Skype back, we laid out those plants we are committed to those plan the timing and the market in which we launch, we have an non stop, but we remain committed to those plans. Yeah we can’t really say more about that crisis for a minute.

Q - Anthony Noto

Management

How about just sponsor listings on key words such as within the core business today, in the US, is that we get in '06?

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Stay tuned, we will pick you will see, that this is a very competitive market and then I just want to make sure that we don’t get out ahead of our goal.

Q - Anthony Noto

Management

Thanks, thank you very much

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Thank you, next question.

Operator

Operator

We go next Jeetil Patel from Deutsche Bank.

Q - Jeetil Patel

Management

Hey, Rajiv, couple of questions looking at the PayPal business, I guess search business seems to be greater in streaking up from the world, and I guess you look at the payment systems being used on the retail or merchant side on those kind of clicks being generated, is there an opportunity to may be partner with some of the search companies or one of them to basically integrate your payment system known as PayPal with their marketing and distribution capabilities, and then secondly on just the overall GMV growth rates, can you just characterize as you look at the 22%, 26% foreign exchange adjusted GMV growth for the fourth quarter, how do you think it’s in some of the bigger regions like Germany, UK and the US on a GMV growth basis relative to the broader industry growth which do you think, grew with the market faster in line, overall can you just give us a characterization there, thank you?

A - Meg Whitman

Management

With the regard to take off, let me step up back a little bit and remind you the provisions for PayPal on the global online payment standard and that can name new buying some things for new or from a large business. It can mean people paying each other on a person-to-person pay another basis and can also name payments that are buying micro payments contents on the web as well as enhancing the ability of other buyers to pay big attendance, so we are opened to partnering with anyone as long as is it further is a tribute on objective of PayPal and continues to build the PayPal brands. So we are open to it, just a number of difference discussions that happen from lunch time, but again we are very serious about making for the pick up and, so we just moving the online global payment standards.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Sure, and with respect to the second part of your question that related to GMV growth rate for eBay versus the overall industry, I think the person I find to it, the statement that Meg made earlier which is the eBay business is not composed not more than just GMV growth, so when you look at things that the shopping.com in our classified business, it is a little difficult to characterize, you know how those are doing relative to the company to the overall industry. But as we look at the quarter in Q4 in particular, we look at the same date of the Q2, we have not seen much industries specific data for Q4 and the US, Germany and the UK, I can’t tell you that this from our extend looking at these businesses and how they have come, they are very pleased, with our growth in each of these markets, we wait and see how that fax up relative to eCommerce growth and I think across the board these businesses actually continue to accelerate really well.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

And as we told at our Analyst Day in February, or objective is to grow our market place as faster than eCommerce. Will that happen every quarter and every market I can’t say definitely yes, or definitely no, but the long term objective is to continue to go faster than eCommerce in every market and allow them to the business.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Great thanks next question.

Operator

Operator

We have next question from Paul Keung with CIBC.

Q - Paul Keung

Management

Good afternoon guys, thanks for taking my question, first question you told us before that detail on PayPal, what was the growth of PayPal if you take up VeriSign acquisition, and I guess what really, what is the organic growth of the merchant services and should we expect acceleration versus services and how do you all stay solid?

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Sure, VeriSign, actually called out only accounted for about $6 million of revenue in Q4. So if you strip that out I think merchant services would just over 50%, 51% growth on a year-over-year basis and still accelerating, and PayPal overall accelerating even excluding the VeriSign gateway business. So the gateway business actually its not add that much to PayPal growth solid in Q4, it was $6 million.

Q - Paul Keung

Management

And how should we take about in '06 and I guess when I question.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Skype.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

You should continue to look for VeriSign raising merchant services, towards the beginning I believe that the merchant services pulse rate and that is continuing expansion internationally we have just began, the merchant services program I though the United States it is really only began in the UK. So we've got international there, we've got monetization opportunities there. Website payments flow which is our new small merchants of eBay product, again it really largely at US products today, we have lots of opportunity to expand that internationally and then the VeriSign payment's gateway business and our ability to interpret that and actually take all those small merchants and in forward stand to go to a forward one solution on PayPal that is actually the huge objective for 2006. And it’s one of the reasons that we haven’t taken up guidance, as we really want to see how that works, we want to see what the upside isn’t that and we will you give you an update at the end of Q1 and end of Q2 about how that’s going, but we takeout that’s one of the biggest things after this but the pickup is of their content of gateway.

Q - Paul Keung

Management

Okay. Thanks very much. And as the follow up, the second question was on Skype's. This is an easy question. And in the total business, obviously I would free execution in the quarter and we see design much near the conservative, but the business will come along before if you take a look at the end of the analog, but is it safe to say given that what is that the design we actually have exceed forecast, somewhere you thought it would be doing 9 days ago?

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Yeah it's absolutely I mean is this, I think I pointed out Skype have exceed our expectations.

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Both on revenues and business product.

Q - Paul Keung

Management

Okay, so that the change for '06 so if you look to make a different assumption on that then you have I would say since to be in progress, is it what we say in the fourth quarter correct?

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

That I will leave to you and to the follow up.

Q - Paul Keung

Management

Just a time, okay thanks a lot.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Terrific, I think we have time to just one more question please.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Heath Terry of Credit Suisse.

Q - Heath Terry

Management

Great, thank you. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the impact of the US express launch on your plans for shopping.com, should we expect that at some point for shopping.com to be more integrated into eBay express and much as same way that you have done with half over the years and then when take on merchant services was invaded you talked about the percentage PayPal transaction that were going over the slide having past some levels that what you have to Americans express in terms of the percentage of transaction, is anything like that you can talk about with the new partners like Dell, that you have in the fourth quarter?

A - Meg Whitman

Management

Okay, so let me take the question about eBay express and shopping.com, we don’t actually import see, at least in the next couple of years, integration of the shopping.com site and the eBay.com site and eBay express. eBay express is actually a new way to shop on eBay. It leverages shopping.com technology in terms of the catalog, and it's doing the first time foundation of our new enhanced searching and finding technology which we refer from the Del as in the past. And it has some really fine features like the shopping cards for multiple sellers, so I have to buy Adams import sellers that all in the card and check that all one. So fundamentally the inventory is inventory on eBay that’s been aggregated. And that is object price largely new and we actually got it to check out really fast using PayPal. Shopping.com of course to the shopping comparison site that primarily used by large retailers drive new customers for their products, so the similarities our fixed price in new season and but the rest of the site is really quite different, and we like having the two assets in our portfolio because we think that target different customers and different customer shopping occasion, so don’t look for an integration at least in the several years.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

And you know with respect to the second part of your question, PayPal and it’s take up with larger merchant in particular Del, these really pleased, I mean this is very early but we have had very good take up for PayPal, in terms of number of the transactions being processed by Del, it’s going very fast. When you look at merchant services more broadly, I mean this is now the third consecutive quarter of accelerating growth merchant services. So as Meg pointed out, and we are taking some more steps, when we acquire PayPal we talked about for the few business PayPal which is building on.com in the US, taking PayPal global with the eBay properties and then taking it across outside eBay to merchant services, that could be focused on, you know early returns is very pleased, but in a number of new initiatives that are on the cost for the year.

Q - Heath Terry

Management

Great, thank you.

Meg Whitman, President, Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you very much for joining us everyone, we appreciate your attention.

A - Rajiv Dutta

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

That does conclude today's conference. Everyone have a great day.

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Management