eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Europe has been more pronounced over recent quarters because of — particularly because of the energy challenges as we go forward. And in addition, you’ve got some labor pressure being impacted in Europe as well that’s impacting the business. Specifically, around eBay, we do have a resilient business, but however, general inflation does have a, I suppose, a mixed impact on our business because we lead into non-new-in-season items, that really just helped impact where consumers are looking for value, and we have a lot of pre-loved and refurbished items on our platform and that performance in Q4 was a great reflection of that. However, because of the macro challenges, we’re not immune to the inflationary pressures on the discretionary consumer spending.

So, hopefully, that gives you a little bit of color in terms of how we think about the business.

Operator: Your next question is from the line of Stephen Ju with Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Stephen Ju: Thank you. So, Jamie, I think we spent quite a bit of time talking through the re-commerce opportunity on this call. Now, given eBay’s history with cataloging, I have to think that having increased parameters on how gently or not gently used the same item may be and how that’s described from seller-to-seller, that’s probably creating a unique sorting problem. So, can you talk about how you are tapping the opportunity and ultimately, sort of the correct results to the user?

Jamie Iannone: Yes, Stephen, I basically would just point you, for example, the parts and accessories, right? What we’re doing there is using our knowledge around fitments and all the investments that we’ve made over the last couple of quarters and being able to say, if you’re looking on the site in parts and accessories, you’re going to see these big green check marks, let’s say, Fits Your Vehicle. And now with what we’ve released just last week, we’re actually going to say it’s guaranteed to fit. Think about that as like authenticity guarantee for vehicles. So, we’re continuing to category-by-category, find the best way to improve that search experience. And something like refurbished it’s certifying the quality of that refurbishment and saying we’re going to stand behind that with a 30-day hassle-free return eBay Money-Back Guarantees.

So, the combination of the great work that our search team does with AI to really drive more relevance on the platform drive better recall in our search results, et cetera, combined with the category-specific work that we’re doing to really optimize that experience on a category-by-category basis, is really the intersection of those two. It’s what’s working out, I think, so well for us and why we’re seeing strong numbers in the strategy and in the focused categories that we’ve rolled out.

Stephen Ju: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question is from the line of Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Doug Anmuth: Great. Thanks so much. I just want to shift gears and ask about expenses, Steve, and the 2% growth in non-GAAP expenses and in 2023. If you could just talk about some of the key investments here and puts and takes? And I guess, in particular, how we should be thinking about sales and marketing, assuming that you’ll continue to do full funnel margin on the focus categories? Thanks.