Earnings Labs

eBay Inc. (EBAY)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Jul 20, 2016

$100.32

+0.03%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to eBay's Second Quarter 2016 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer section and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Selim Freiha, Vice-President Investor Relations. Sir, please go ahead.

Selim Freiha - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us and welcome to eBay's earnings release conference call for the second quarter of 2016. Joining me today on the call are Devin Wenig, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Scott Schenkel, our Chief Financial Officer. We're providing a slide presentation to accompany both Devin's and Scott's commentary during the call. All revenue and GMV growth rates mentioned in Devin and Scott's prepared remarks represent FX-neutral year-over-year comparisons unless they clarify otherwise. This conference call is also being broadcast on the Internet and both the presentation and call are available through the Investor Relations section of the eBay website at investors.eBayinc.com. You can visit our Investor Relations website for the latest company news and updates. In addition, an archive of the webcast will be accessible for 90 days through the same link. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that, during the course of this conference call, we will discuss some non-GAAP measures related to our performance. You can find the reconciliation of these measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures in the slide presentation accompanying this conference call. In addition, management will make forward-looking statements 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 the future performance of eBay Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries including expected financial results for the third quarter and full-year 2016 and the future growth in our business. Our actual results may differ materially from those discussed in this call 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 Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q,…

Operator

Operator

Our first question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with UBS. Your line is now open.

Eric J. Sheridan - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Thanks so much for taking the question. Maybe one for Devin and one for Scott. Devin, wanted to know if we could dive into some of what you're seeing on the structured data side on the category level? Is there anything you want to call out for us in terms of certain categories in terms of duration of how long they've seen structured data and what that might mean for GMV growth? Would love to get a little bit of color there. And then, Scott, on the cost structure of the business, we were a little surprised you called out lower contra revenue as well as lower sales and marketing but you saw a reacceleration. Want to know what that might mean for the cost structure of the business long-term and sort of return on marketing spend? Thanks. Devin N. Wenig - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Eric, for the question. On structured data, our current efforts are crossing all categories, but I guess what I would point out is that the category where we've had structured data the longest, which is in part why we went down this path is our parts and accessories business. We've had that, even before we embarked on this journey, we've had that in place for a couple of years. It also happens to be our fastest growing category. So, we do see that where we have time to build a catalog and then build experiences on top of it, in this case for parts and accessories we built what we call Fitment, which is simply the ability to swap parts in and out and understand what part fits what car, that's a great user experience. And each category is slightly different. That's unique to parts. But, we are seeing some of the benefits now come through across multiple categories. I'll turn it to Scott for the second part of the question. Scott Schenkel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, Eric, in terms of marketing, a couple of dynamics. As we've talked about in the past, quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year, we'll move contra to marketing expense and marketing expense to contra as we look to optimize our efficient frontier of how we reallocate marketing expense to drive growth over the long term. As it relates to this quarter, our marketing expense was roughly flat. And I think as you look forward, what you can expect is we'll be leaning in on our consideration and brand spend and reallocating within our marketing expense. That's not to preclude that we wouldn't invest more in contra, per se, but that's kind of what we expect in the second-half which is a bit more within marketing expense reallocation.

Eric J. Sheridan - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Great. Thanks for the color.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Heath Terry with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Heath Terry - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Great. Thanks. Devin, was hoping you could maybe get a little bit more into some of the contra revenue at least to provide kind of a context for where we are now. If you were thinking about this scale of one to 10, obviously contra revenue went up significantly after the data breach and everything. Are we now back down to where we were prior to that, are we 70% of the way down? What's the right way to think of where we are and sort of how much further there is to go to potentially get back to normal? And then to the extent that motors is an area that you've seen significant strength over the last few quarters, how much of that would you say is a function of motors being one of the categories or one of the areas where you started with structured data early and is it right to think of that as a leading indicator for the rest of the business? Scott Schenkel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, Heath, this is Scott. Let me start with parts and accessories and just make sure I differentiate between automotive. I think, as you know, vehicles, automotive, we don't put into GMV, more shows up in subscription revenue within MS&O. But for parts and accessories, we've had a catalog in Fitment for a good period of time and I think you can see through the product experience in a number of different areas that it's going to change over time and how we're going to migrate towards a product experience that's based more on a catalog. And that's…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Carlos Kirjner-Neto with Bernstein. Your line is now open. Carlos Kirjner-Neto - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. You have said that eBay's customer experience should be fundamentally different by the fourth quarter in large part because of the ongoing structured data initiative. Yet your slide on the progress of structured data suggests only a small portion of the potential product pages were deployed by the end of 2Q. Is it correct then to assume that we should see a large number of structured data pages deployed in 3Q and are you on path to achieve that? And secondly, can you shed some light on the extent to which the 11% FX neutral growth in fixed-price GMV was due to cannibalization of auctions or is that close to a clean organic growth? Thank you. Devin N. Wenig - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, let me take the first part, Carlos. Thanks for the question. We are on track with our structured data plan. We're where we thought we were going to be. It was never going to be smooth quarter-by-quarter. There are times that we go faster, times we go slower. I would say I do expect to see a fairly large ramp of our deployed, both product and browse pages in the back half of this year. I just want to correct one thing you said, which is I think what I said is you'll start to feel it by the end of the year. You'll start to see it in the numbers and start to feel it. I didn't say everything would be done by the end of this year. It won't be done. This is a multiyear effort,…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Justin Post with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Justin Post - Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc.: Great. Thank you. A couple of questions. Just on the 15 million structured data pages live, what could that look like by 4Q? I guess what's the opportunity there and how much more pages could we see by the end of the year? And then secondly, I'm calculating kind of a 1% decline in U.S. Marketplace revenues based on the percentage mix you give in the report. Is that right or is it zero – it could be rounding, but just what was that number for U.S. Marketplace? Thank you. Devin N. Wenig - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Justin. Let me take the first part of the question. And this relates back to Carlos' question, also. I do expect acceleration. I would expect to see a significant ramp of the number of product and browse pages. I think what I would hope for – it's not a forecast, but I would hope to see a number over 100 million by the end of the year. I also want to just caution that you can't take 15 million, draw a line to 100 million and say, there's the growth. It's different categories, some of that will be media. But that's the degree of re-platforming we're doing. And you will see a fairly significant broadening of these new experiences in the second-half. I'll turn it over to Scott for the second part of the question. Scott Schenkel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, Justin, let me start at the top real quick. Total revenue for the company was 7%, up one point quarter-over-quarter. If you just double-click into Marketplaces, Q2 Marketplace transaction revenue accelerated one point to 2%. And the U.S. transaction revenue was minus 1%, which is I think what you flagged, which is up five points quarter-over-quarter. And really that's driven by two things. One, the increased volume, as well as less contra quarter-to-quarter. Justin Post - Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc.: Great. Thank you. Scott Schenkel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yep.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mark May with Citi. Your line is now open.

Mark A. May - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Thanks. I had a couple of questions that are just kind of digging into the guidance on more of a segment level. Given the strength at StubHub and you've talked about the difficult comps, I just wonder if you could frame that a little bit? How are you thinking about the growth rate going forward in the second half as you face these comps? And sort of when you strip out some of the benefits, kind of how should we be thinking about underlying organic growth for that business when we get beyond kind of this difficult comp period? And I guess similarly around the Marketplace or transaction business, as we exit the year or into the second half of the year in Q4, your comps in Q4 in particular get pretty easy. How are we thinking about growth exiting the year given those factors, the cumulative effect of structured data and maybe a better contra revenue backdrop? I mean are you thinking that we could be in the high single-digits or even double-digits exiting the year for that segment? Thanks. Scott Schenkel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Hey, Mark, look, I think we delivered solid first half results. The way we're thinking about it for the second-half is based on revenue at 6% to 7% in the first half, we expect Q3 to be about 6% to 7% as we continue to execute our initiatives. We did raise our outlook for revenue for the rest of the year and for the total year to 5% to 6%. And the thing I would think about is just keep in mind that the second-half dynamic is such that both StubHub has some pretty significant lapping that we expect a deceleration in their growth rate, and PayPal, the PayPal operating agreements, we start to lap them. And the combination of those two things put about one to two points of downward pressure on our revenue in the second-half of the year. But, I wouldn't let that take away from the – look, I think with a revenue guide of 5% to 6% for the full-year, I think it should show relative confidence versus the last time. I wouldn't put a double-digit number on that, though, just to be clear.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Mark Mahaney - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Two questions, please. You talked about kind of an improvement in SEO traffic and just if you could please comment on how sustainable you think that is? And then secondly, you did mention investments in AI and ML machine learning. Have we already seen some impact of those investments, like can you just bring it down to the P&L or bring it down to trends and how that would actually show up? Are we already seeing it or is that something that's a multi-year rollout and how would that show up? Okay, thank you. Devin N. Wenig - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: First on SEO. Yeah, we've had SEO challenges since May of 2014 when Google made a significant algorithm change and a few other factors were in play. And there's been downward pressure slowly on our SEO channel ever since. It's been a long, slow decline since then. It turned around this quarter in part, because I believe we're putting fantastic user experiences based on structured data into our SEO channel. I wouldn't get overly excited. It was marginally positive, but it was a positive trend. I do expect that trend to continue. We don't know because we don't control the SEO channel entirely. There are other factors at play. But my hope is that we've gone from a slow steady downtick to a slow steady uptick from here. Because I think objectively if you look at these new experiences, they are some of the best shopping experiences available on the Internet. On artificial intelligence and machine learning, some of it depends on how you use the term. I guess I'd say two things. One is, when we talk about processing the data as the second step of our structured data approach, that is machine learning.…

Mark Mahaney - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Thank you, Devin.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Colin Sebastian with Robert W. Baird. Your line is now open. Colin A. Sebastian - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thanks and congratulations on the good quarter. In terms of the higher conversion rates from the new product pages through SEO, I'm wondering if there is any reason why that conversion wouldn't increase by a similar or directionally similar amount as well from direct traffic? And then secondly, given the improved rankings you are achieving in organic search, does this offer a way to reduce ad spend if you're showing up higher in search or is that allowing part of the reallocation of spending to brand as you mentioned? Thanks. Devin N. Wenig - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I guess – Thanks, Colin. I direct the first question to slide number five. I think that's the right one. It's called structured data user experiences. And the question was would the conversion hold when we look at the direct channel? It depends. I think for us the biggest question is how do we deploy this in the search results pages, where a lot of the traffic ends up whether it's through SEO or direct. And we're just starting to experiment with that. That as you would understand is the area we have to be the most careful. And that's when people say why don't you just throw all these experiences in, it seems to be working. We've got a high converting, very high traffic search channel. I think that these pages matter in there. They will make an impact. But that's the main artery of commerce. And we've got to be careful and that will take test and learn time. Is there any reason I believe that we…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Douglas Anmuth with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Douglas T. Anmuth - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Thanks for taking the questions. One for Scott and one for Devin. First, Scott you indicated that you've seen some imposed Brexit trade-off in the UK on exports and imports, but overall the UK not slowing. Are you comfortable now that you're in a stable place in the UK and then also just more broadly across Europe, given any macro or FX-related impacts? And then, Devin, you obviously had the new buyback authorization. Can you talk about how you and the board have thought about a buyback relative to a dividend in any recent discussions? Thanks. Scott Schenkel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. First question on Brexit. Look, at this point what I'd tell you is it's too early to tell. What I've flagged is, we have seen the normal trade quarter shifts based on the strength of the U.S. dollar vis-à-vis the pound and the euro, quite frankly. And the uptick in the UK exports with the corresponding drop in imports, especially from the U.S. and Germany is what we would normally expect to see, but it's early days. So no doubt that we've seen a deceleration of our growth in exports from the U.S. to the UK and the same for Germany. But it's early days on this and we'll continue to watch what's going on with the domestic UK Marketplace as we go forward in the quarter. Devin N. Wenig - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: On capital allocation. Obviously, Scott can comment on it, but I'll just say from my perspective, we're disciplined capital allocators, and the shareholders that I've spoken to appreciate that and it's a long game. And we don't want to get buffeted by whatever the flavor of the month is, in terms of this is more in favor or that's more in favor. You're beginning to see that over time we're reducing the denominator and that's having an impact. Scott talked about the leverage we're starting to get from reducing the share count and we believe in our platform. I guess that's the most important thing. We wouldn't be buying equity back if we didn't believe in our platform. We do. And obviously, over time it feels good to be buying stock back in the low 20%s or whatever the average number was when the stock is significantly higher for that. That's how you reward long shareholders who stay with us. And right now, we're going to keep doing that and we'll be disciplined in how we allocate capital and we've always said that. Scott Schenkel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. Look, what I'd flag, Doug is, we remain on track with our full-year plans as I said for the share repurchases as I laid out in our earnings call. The additional share authorization, repurchase authorization from the board enables us to do that. And we'll continue to be disciplined about how we return and utilize capital.

Douglas T. Anmuth - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Okay. Thank you, guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Robert Peck with SunTrust. Your line is now open.

Robert S. Peck - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Your line is now open.

Yeah. Hi. Thank you. I just have two questions here related to competition. One, could you talk about the impact you saw in July on Prime Day, positive or negative flows there? And then number two, could you talk about one of the big topics in the space has been increase on brands and fraud, some recent news around Amazon on that. Are you seeing any benefit or detriment based on some of the trends on fraud and brand protection? Thank you. Devin N. Wenig - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Let me start at the top. It's a super competitive market. There hasn't been any material change in the competitive landscape over the last six months. It was very competitive. It's still very competitive. With regard to Prime Day, look, I don't want to really get into it other than saying Prime Day was a really good day for us. It was a really strong day of growth for us. Scott Schenkel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Look, to your second question, Bob, I would say that fundamentally, counterfeits aren't welcome on eBay. We're committed to combatting the sale of counterfeit goods and have been consistently an Internet leader in working to stop the online sale of counterfeit goods, working with a combination of sophisticated detection tools and strong relationship with brand owners and retailers and law enforcement agencies. And as we think about that and then the overall trust on our marketplace, what we're striving to do is improve the trust, make sure people know they're buying authentic goods and that, on a go-forward basis, we continue to expand our eBay protection and eBay guarantee that's available in the major markets today.

Robert S. Peck - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Your line is now open.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Richard Kramer with Arete. Your line is now open.

Richard Kramer - Arete Research Services LLP

Analyst · Arete. Your line is now open.

Thanks very much. A couple of quick ones that don't seem to be touched on. Can you de-dupe the new active buyers or the active buyers between StubHub and eBay and give us a sense of what sort of targets you might have for the overlap or some success you might get between getting StubHub or Classified users to also become eBay active buyers? And one for Scott, when you look at the new higher levels of free cash flow to sales that you've seen, how should we think about that not just through the end of the year but into next year? Are you seeing these new levels as a result of some of the efficiencies now that you are a year on from the split and why wouldn't we expect these to be continued over time unless there is a significant new investment cycle taken? Devin N. Wenig - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks. On the first part of the question, it's important to me to drive synergy between our platforms, and StubHub has always benefited by being part of eBay and we're driving hard at that. So an example of what we're striving to do is have StubHub merchandise. It's a perfectly natural use case. I'm going to the game, I want to buy the jersey. And you're going to see more of that over time as we share traffic and as we merchandise and as we drive the eBay tickets category to StubHub. There's a really good complement between traffic customers and merchandising and we'll drive hard at that. On Classifieds, similarly we have a couple of very interesting experiments. I'm encouraged by about how do we show consumer-sold inventory on both platforms? At the end of the day it's a different format, but ultimately it's a consumer trying to sell an item and there's a buyer somewhere that wants that item. So, we believe there's an experience that can get the best out of both of those platforms and we're starting to test our way into that. So, I'm encouraged by the cooperation between the various platforms. And I'm going to push hard at that as we go forward. Scott Schenkel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Hey, Richard, on free cash flow, look it's a bit preliminary to be talking about 2017 free cash flow, but as I think about the underlying cash flow dynamics of the company, we'll generate between $2.2 billion and $2.4 billion of cash this year with CapEx as a percentage of revenue at 7% to 9%, and I don't really anticipate that being significantly different into the future.

Richard Kramer - Arete Research Services LLP

Analyst · Arete. Your line is now open.

Okay. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Pitz with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Brian J. Pitz - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Just had a few more on StubHub. Was traction around product improvements as expected or better with consumers what you're seeing? Also any comment on the change in the competitive environment versus last year, which I think you called out a couple of times? And finally, do you plan on additional tuck-ins around the ticketing business? Thanks. Devin N. Wenig - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I don't know whether it was better than we expected or what we expected, but I'm really pleased. There's no doubt that the innovation at the point of the product is driving StubHub share gains and market competitive position. Both the ticket pricing engine and the change to the way pricing is displayed have driven clear demonstrable growth. I'm even amazed when we talk about making innovative bets to the future. When we went down the path of building a VR application, we thought it was a little early, but it was an interesting thing to do, see how consumers like it. You heard in Scott's remarks, for the venues available, mostly MLB baseball stadiums, I mean, 20% of ticket sales touched that VR application. That's a big deal. And we have excellent product and technology capability, not just in StubHub and in eBay. And as the world moves to digital, I want to use that to drive a competitive wedge between us and the physical world. So, I feel really good about StubHub's market position. Their growth is going to come down because they're going to hit a growth wall as Scott said in September, but that doesn't change the fact that StubHub is very well positioned in the market right now. On acquisitions, steady as she goes. If we find acquisitions that make sense to expand their portfolio, whether it's tech, talent or geographic expansion or whatever, we won't hesitate to do it. We have a strong balance sheet. We'll be disciplined. But, we won't back down from accelerating on our strategy.

Selim Freiha - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Operator, we have time for one more question.

Operator

Operator

Our last question comes from the line of Ron Josey with JMP Securities. Your line is now open.

Ronald V. Josey - JMP Securities LLC

Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Devin, you mentioned improved tools for sellers and I think you highlighted helping sellers identify where demand is. And so with that in mind, can you talk a little bit more about the Seller Hub? I think you said in 1Q 25,000 sellers were using the tool and it's going to roll out more broadly I think this summer. So, wondering if these increased metrics around product sales have led to just increased relative velocity overall with product sales? Thanks. Devin N. Wenig - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks for the question. Yeah, it has been launched in the U.S. There are now over 120,000 sellers that are currently using Seller Hub, mostly in the U.S., and they like the tool. And the tool for us is one part helping them manage their inventory and one part giving them insight into their pricing and supply/demand gaps within the marketplace. We mentioned that they can get great data on what's trending and where buyers are looking for inventory in their gaps. And they can fill those gaps with inventory. It's a great real time, in essence, inventory management system for both sellers and in many ways for eBay. Later this year, we'll begin rolling it out through Europe and more broadly. I wouldn't really draw – I draw a closer line between the consumer side structured data and the new user experiences to the quarter acceleration than to Seller Hub, but Seller Hub helps over the long run. And I want to build a great experience for our sellers just like we are for our consumers. And that's a really core part of it is Seller Hub.

Ronald V. Josey - JMP Securities LLC

Analyst

That's great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And that concludes today's question-and-answer session. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the program and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.