Earnings Labs

eBay Inc. (EBAY)

Q2 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, Jul 18, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the eBay Q2 2018 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Mr. Selim Freiha, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin Mr. Freiha.

Selim Freiha

Analyst

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. And welcome to eBay’s earnings release conference call for the second quarter of 2018. Joining me today on the call are Devin Wenig, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Scott Schenkel, our Chief Financial Officer. We are providing a slide presentation to accompany Scott’s commentary during the call. All revenue and GMV growth rates mentioned in Devin and Scott’s remarks represent FX-Neutral year-over-year comparisons, unless they indicate 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 2018 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, copies of which may be obtained by visiting the company’s Investor Relations website at investors.ebayinc.com or the SEC’s website at sec.gov. You should not rely on any forward-looking statements. All information in this presentation is as of July 18, 2018, and we do not intend and undertake no duty to update this information. With that, let me turn the call over to Devin.

Devin Wenig

Analyst

Thanks, Selim, and good afternoon, everyone. In Q2, we continued to execute our strategy, improving the core eBay experience, investing in service and clarifying our brand, while pursuing significant opportunities in advertising and payments. Total GMV was up 7% and revenue was up 6%, while active buyers grew 4%. With the addition of buyers from our recent acquisition in Japan, we now have 175 million active buyers. GMV in our Marketplace platform grew at 7% year on year with U.S. Marketplace GMV growing at 6% while international GMV grew 7%. Our StubHub platforms grew volume at 5% and our Classified platforms grew revenue at 10%. Finally, we repurchased nearly $1 billion -- we returned nearly $1 billion to our shareholders through our share repurchase program and we closed our acquisition in Japan. While we delivered strong earnings growth this quarter, we encountered some revenue headwinds from foreign exchange and weaker StubHub event landscape, which will put pressure on our revenue for the second half. In addition, while core Marketplace GMV growth remains steady we do not expect some of the key initiatives to deliver GMV acceleration until later in the year. None of this changes our strategy and approach, and we expect to deliver core GMV growth acceleration in the second half of 2018. We are focusing to an even greater extent on initiatives that will have the greatest impact on our customers and our business, including further scaling product based commerce, Guaranteed Delivery and our new C2C selling flow while launching a series of innovative new buyer experiences. At the same time, we are stopping work on less critical projects that are not moving the needle or are more speculative. Now let me update you on some of the progress we made in Q2. We continue to build on…

Scott Schenkel

Analyst

Thanks Devin. Let’s begin with Q2 performance starting on slide four of the earnings presentation. In Q2, we generated $2.6 billion of total revenue, $0.53 of non GAAP EPS, $188 million of free cash flow and we repurchased approximately $1 billion of our stock. Finally, in the quarter, we closed the acquisition of Giosis Q10 program platform, which expands eBay’s footprint in Japan. Moving to active buyers. In the quarter we increased our total active buyer base to 175 million including 3 million buyers from our Japan acquisition. Our trailing 12-month growth was stable at 4% including our new Japan buyers on a pro forma basis. Growth excluding Japan was 3% down one point versus the prior quarter due primarily to the lapping of new buyers from fidget spinners in the prior year. Scaling of new user experiences and our broader marketing programs will continue to be a key area of focus to drive more active buyer growth. On slide six, in Q2, we enabled $23.6 billion of total GMV, up 7%. The U.S. generated $9.3 billion of GMV, up 5%, while international delivered $14.4 billion of GMV, up 7%. Moving to revenue. We generated total net revenues of $2.6 billion up 6% on an FX-Neutral basis and up 6% organically, both down one-point versus the prior quarter. As Devin mentioned, we encountered unexpected headwinds from a weaker events landscape for StubHub and a stronger U.S. dollar, which more than offset revenue from our Japan acquisition. We delivered $2.1 billion of transaction revenue, up 7% and $563 million of Marketing Services & Other revenue up 5%. Turning to our Marketplace platform on slide eight. GMV grew 7% in Q2, flat versus the prior quarter, including approximately 60 basis points driven by the Japan acquisition. U.S. GMV grew 6%, decelerating 1…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley.

Brian Nowak

Analyst

Thanks for taking my question. Just to want to talk about sort of the back half and the new full year guide. Just want to talk to what gives you sort of confidence in the continued ability to reaccelerate GMV in the back half as the comps get somewhat easier? And how should we think about as you’re triangulating the acceleration in GMV with the lower revenue expectations for the year? Thanks.

Devin Wenig

Analyst

Thanks Brian. I will let Scott talk about the translation of revenue, but let me just talk about the business drivers. So, there are really two significant drivers to the second half. The first is the product and customer experience, and the second is marketing. On the product, we have some significant product changes coming into the market some of which are already in the market performing well which we are going to scale. So I mentioned Guaranteed Delivery, already out scaling, performing well. Our new C2C selling flow delivering meaningful consumer selling conversion, scaling already out in the market. Structured data’s tentacles are now touching every part of the company and they’re making a meaningful impact in many areas. The one area that we still got to iterate is on the full product based prior experience, where as I mentioned in my remarks, we are seeing really good conversion from brand new buyers who come to eBay and we have some work to do on the existing base. So, on the product side, we have been working, as you know, at this for quite a while. We have driven improved acceleration and better operating results over time and we believe that that will continue in the second half. At the same time, because we are seeing good performance of new buyers that come to eBay, we want to bring more of them, and to do that we are going to continue to activate our marketing channels and market aggressively. We are responding to a competitive e-commerce landscape. We love our proposition. We think that when people come to eBay that they see what a great proposition we have. So you can expect us to light up our brand in the second half further. You can expect us to be active in all marketing channels and to plus that up along with the new product releases. So, all of that, obviously, helped us factor in to the guide on core acceleration. Scott can talk a little bit about the core GMV to revenue translation.

Scott Schenkel

Analyst

Yeah. Brian, the way I would think about the translation from GMV to revenue is, it’s roughly the same. So when we talked about guidance for the year, we expected roughly 1 point of acceleration from our Marketplace’s business. And in the new guide, essentially, what we are saying is, at the high end we’d have 1 point of acceleration in the second half of the year and stable in the first half. And that would translate through in the form of revenue much, much the same way. I wouldn’t highlight any differences between GMV and revenue from a marketplace’s standpoint. We do have, as I called out, some pretty good lapping with the very strong quarter in Q4 from StubHub, that given their current trajectory and the market landscape is a pressure versus last time we spoke as well.

Brian Nowak

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark May with Citi.

Mark May

Analyst · Citi.

Thanks for taking my questions. From an outsider’s perspective, it appears that eBay ran more promos in Q2 than normal. Is that accurate? And if so, did you -- why did you do that? And what should we expect going forward? And then secondly, in terms of the reduction in force, can you maybe quantify that the impact on revenue and EPS in the second half of the year? Thanks.

Scott Schenkel

Analyst · Citi.

Sure. Mark let me take those. First off, on the marketing, yeah, I’d say, we spent more and I think the additional sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue highlighted that. Look, we are in a very competitive market and in e-commerce landscape that’s equally -- that’s really competitive. It’s important for us to adapt our approach as we try to remain competitive and drive traffic and activity you all saw was inventory. And so, we are increasingly focused, as we have talked about, in making sure that we are driving engagement and usage of the platform and whether that’s from increasing share of wallet with our existing buyers or attracting new buyers, and so the promotional activity is intended to do both of those. And while we are on the topic when you think about those incentives there is a wide variety of different incentives that you’ve seen both in the Kontron in the form of seller couponing, as well as buyer coupons, marketing expense, box boosters, et cetera. And we have been leveraging those promotions more heavily in recent times, and I think, we have been pretty clear and it’s been showing up in marketing as a percentage of revenue. And look I think you should expect and as implied in our guidance that that will continue and certainly the re-architecture of our cost base that we did in June was intended to enable that without having an impact to earnings. In terms of the actual EPS impact, what we are trying to architect on a GAAP, non-GAAP basis is that there is no impact to revenue and there is no impact to non-GAAP EPS from the restructuring that we did. However, we have enabled a significant amount of marketing incremental to our original plans to buffer the second half.

Devin Wenig

Analyst · Citi.

And let me just comment on that as well, which is it’s incredibly important to me that we are disciplined in our project approach that we are always allocating resource just towards the highest value customer projects that we experiment and when things don’t work, we reallocate, and we kill those projects. We do that always. In this case because we had at the top particularly of the technology organization, a significant reorganization with Steve moving to payments, it gave us an opportunity several years into this journey to take a deep look and to say, okay, we need to plus these things up and there are other areas that we just weren’t getting a return on them. So I think it’s really good discipline to stop projects that aren’t working and reallocate to projects that are where resource is fungible, we move it, but not all resource is and that’s what you saw us do in Q2.

Mark May

Analyst · Citi.

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ross Sandler with Barclays.

Ross Sandler

Analyst · Barclays.

Hey, guys. I just had a question on the buyer growth rate and the units sold growth rates. So you’ve been doing promotions that you just mentioned and you recently launched the Best Price Guarantee program. So it seems like there was an interesting value prop that’s out there, but isn’t yet really translating into an increased amount of active buyers or it might be and we have an increased amount of buyer churns. So can you just walk us through kind of what’s going on with the kind of organic, I think, the last two quarters you added about one million new active buyers. And then how does that translate to the unit growth rate, which has been plus one last quarter and flat this quarter, any color there on units versus ASP will be helpful? Thanks.

Scott Schenkel

Analyst · Barclays.

Ross, this is Scott. I would highlight that there is actually a couple underlying dynamics that we have called out in the past and that continue and will continue to pressure in a rolling 12-month metric for the time being. First off, as we kind of talked about, there is a fidget spinner dynamic that in Q2 of last year brought a lot of low ASP items that were a lot of new buyers as well and we have not retained those new buyers to the extent that we have in the past. They’re kind of one and done if you will buying those fidget spinners and they were very low ASP items. So, as we lap that that certainly makes it feel like the underlying growth rate is decelerating when in fact it’s more a one-off aspect of that. And that same thing is pressuring active buyers but now the other thing we talked about was we had been favoring higher ASP branded items in our search and as that has -- then that has kind of offset some of the ASP pressure or sorry some of the pressure that we got from the fidget spinners in the sole item number pushing ASP up a bit, but really sold items down. So hopefully that’s clear. But that’s the dynamic between those two both active buyers and sold items.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Heath Terry with Goldman Sachs.

Heath Terry

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Great. Thank you. I guess, Devin, just wanted to try and get some clarity on a couple of things. Can you outline for us some specifics on the marketing initiatives that you’re talking about that didn’t delivery in the first half and why you expect them to later this year? Were those all technology projects that you’re talking about or marketing programs? Just want to better understand what didn’t work and why it might go in forward? And then, specifically, towards the technology projects that you’re talking about cutting, I guess, where and how quickly do you expect to be able to reallocate those resources and those investments, what type of projects are at the top of your priority list these days?

Devin Wenig

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

On the second part of the question, I probably won’t get into specifics but we make a lot of bets and some of them are very long term bets and some of them are experiments and we have experimented with all kinds of new mediums of human to computer interface. We have experimented with just a lot of I think it’s very healthy for us to constantly experiment and have a portfolio of projects that are both near and far. And on some of the far ones we are continuing and some we are not. And again, I don’t want to get into a laundry list of small projects. But the overall reduction force was not very large and it reflects the fact that we stopped things that I think should have been stopped and that resource was not we allocable. On the question about the second half, like part of it, I think, Heath is things that it’s not that they didn’t deliver, but they’re taking longer than we probably would have hoped in January. So I look at where we have Guaranteed Delivery in C2C in the market and many of the tentacles of structured data. I am really pleased with what they’ve done but we have not been able to move them out of as fast as originally I would’ve hoped quite honestly. And in some ways that gives me confidence that we will get benefit from it we just need to move them out to and get more surface area. Another great example would be the brand. So on brand I am really happy that we are investing and we are sticking to investing in our brand. I think everybody that I have spoken to from our customers to our investors understands that we have an incredible brand, but one that can be easily misunderstood and it’s our job to close that perception gap. But brands take time and we -- when I look at the underlying metrics I said I think last call or the one before, what I am holding our brand spend accountable for is moving aided consideration and we are beginning to see aided consideration move. It hasn’t yet translated to our buyer growth number. I believe it will. But we have got to be persistent and run the company for the long-term and not shut it off because it didn’t make an impact this quarter. So there is an example of things that I think are both projects that we shutdown or projects that we believe will swing through and deliver for us in the second half and beyond.

Heath Terry

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Great. Thank you, Devin.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Colin Sebastian with Robert Baird.

Colin Sebastian

Analyst · Robert Baird.

Great. Thanks. Good afternoon. First off, based on the pending rollout of the payments beta, can we assume that the integration and testing with Adyen is on track? And then, secondly, if you have any comments on any notable differences in performance in markets outside of the U.S. internationally. Thank you.

Scott Schenkel

Analyst · Robert Baird.

Yeah. Let me take on the payment strategy. As Devin mentioned, I think, the team has made great progress this quarter on executing the plans. And in fact, next week we expect to launch our employee beta. And then we will roll out from there and are working already with sellers who will be invited to the initial 5% phase with our new managed payments experience later this fall and we will actually be sharing some of those plans with our sellers at the eBay Open next week. International versus U.S. markets. Look, underlying excluding the addition of the Japanese business, our international markets were flat quarter over quarter at 6%. That kind of hides some underlying strength in a few of our larger markets offset by some weakness in some of our smaller markets. But in particular I’d call out Australia and the U.K., and some modest improvement in Germany where we feel pretty good about the underlying performance. But on the other side there is some weakness in other markets on aggregate we are flat. I don’t know, Devin, if you have anything else.

Devin Wenig

Analyst · Robert Baird.

No. It might just be worth adding that one of the headwinds in the U.S. business was the export business this quarter, given the strengthening dollar. So we did see, as the dollar strengthened, U.S. exports came under pressure and that contributed to the 1 point decel in the U.S. business.

Colin Sebastian

Analyst · Robert Baird.

Is it too early to say whether the eBay Plus program is helping Australia or is there something else in that market?

Devin Wenig

Analyst · Robert Baird.

I think -- look, I think, it’s very early. But I would say, we are really pleased with where Australia is. It’s performing very well. We have a great customer proposition and we don’t see any change in trend. we are really pleased with Australia.

Colin Sebastian

Analyst · Robert Baird.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Edward Yruma with KeyBanc Capital Market.

Edward Yruma

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Market.

Hi. Thanks very much for taking my questions. I guess, first, you talked about a difference in behavior between new customers and existing customers, and that the existing base was less favorable. I guess, how do we think about your initiatives going forward to target that base? And then, second, obviously, you’ve talked a lot about this ramp up and marketing. How do we think about the balance between kind of brand marketing versus some of these targeted promos? Thanks.

Devin Wenig

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Market.

On the first part, I think, so far we have done pretty well making substantial changes to the Marketplace without disrupting it. I got a lot of questions a year ago about why we weren’t moving faster and my answer was always, because we don’t -- we want to make it work for both new customers and existing customers, and many of the things we have done I believe have done that, but we -- when we -- not everything is that easy. And when you have a very large habituated marketplace and you’re making substantial changes to the user experience some of it takes time. And that time may be design challenges, its front end product challenges. I think we are on to a really powerful product experience that both simplifies eBay, but equally doesn’t mimic anyone else and it shows what we are great at, which is the spectrum of value, our incredible advantage in inventory and in prices for consumers, without necessarily having any commodity high velocity items, having them weight through hundreds of thousands of individual listings. That’s what we are trying to accomplish. You get a new buyer who is not habituated to a way of doing things and they love it. Existing buyers have take more time and we have to thread the needle about not disrupting their experience, but also bringing out about that trade-off of simplicity but differentiation. And we see pockets of it, but it does take time. And overall, I feel very good about it. I feel like we are absolutely on the right path and I feel confident that we are going to get the benefit out of that in particular that we have -- that we are expecting. What the second part of the question was on --…

Edward Yruma

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Market.

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Justin Post with Merrill Lynch.

Justin Post

Analyst · Merrill Lynch.

Great. Thank you. Two questions. First, on StubHub, little light versus expectations, were there any customer changes or losses in the quarter, or is it really just the concert schedule, and is that set up for better next year? And then on the tax -- the lower taxes, is that also sustainable next year or is that something that’s just this year? Thanks.

Devin Wenig

Analyst · Merrill Lynch.

I will handle StubHub, Scott will handle taxes. I don’t think anything changed with StubHub. You don’t have to look very far to look at the underlying event landscape in Q2. It was a historically bad MLB start of the season. Some of that caused by a historically high number of rainouts and it was a four game NBA series, it was a five game final series it was a five game hockey series. There were just a lot of things that broke the wrong way on the landscape and as we have said quarter-to-quarter, when you have high market share in the U.S. that -- it is what it is. It comes with the event landscape. So I don’t believe any change in the underlying dynamics. I think we just had a tough landscape. And as we said, right now we don’t see any particular reason to believe the landscape will get better in the second half, but to me StubHub’s underlying market position business position has not changed.

Scott Schenkel

Analyst · Merrill Lynch.

Yeah. And the short answer is, yes, the tax rate that we booked year-to-date will continue as we head into the second half of the year and you can see that in the EPS walk that we provided. So roughly $0.03 this quarter, which is a catch up to the first half and then for the second half a roughly equivalent amount, so that upside will flow through and it will be ongoing.

Justin Post

Analyst · Merrill Lynch.

Got it. And so ongoing does that mean 2019 as well?

Scott Schenkel

Analyst · Merrill Lynch.

Yes.

Justin Post

Analyst · Merrill Lynch.

Okay. Thank you.

Devin Wenig

Analyst · Merrill Lynch.

Yeah.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Douglas Anmuth with JP Morgan.

Douglas Anmuth

Analyst · JP Morgan.

Thanks for taking the questions. I had two. First, just Devin I was curious if you had any thoughts on tariffs and if that could potentially impact seller inventory on the platform or pricing? And then, second, if you could talk a little bit about the strategy in India post the Flipkart deal and going more cross-border and how we should think about the investment required there? Thanks.

Devin Wenig

Analyst · JP Morgan.

Thanks Doug. On tariffs there is been zero impact to-date. All the tariff activity has been on raw materials commodities and agricultural products none of which directly impact us. But, obviously, we are watching it very carefully like every business is and at this point we don’t see any reason that it will pose a near term risk to our business, but you tell me what’s going to happen with the trade wars and I will let you know. But so far we are -- we have steered the business clear of anything that’s happened to-date. On India, so the first step will be when the Flipkart transaction closes. As you heard, Scott say, we will monetize our investment in Flipkart. Then the anticipation is that we will come back into the Indian market both through in import and an export strategy. We will start with export meaning Indian sellers selling on other marketplace platforms around the world that was something that we turned over to Flipkart. We are going to get that back upon the closing of the transaction. So we will light up the Indian seller base to sell across all of our major markets. And the second step will be the reintroduction of ebayindia.com. And I don’t yet have any timing on that, because we don’t -- we are not exactly sure when the Flipkart transaction’s going to close. But the idea would be to lead with exports and imports to lead with India with differentiated import inventory and from the moment the transaction closes to have the export business up and running. That’s our approach.

Douglas Anmuth

Analyst · JP Morgan.

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Mahaney with RBC Capital Markets.

Mark Mahaney

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Hey. Thanks. Two quick questions. One, you haven’t mentioned at all World Cup. Did that have any impact at all on your business? I hear that was popular with a lot of people. And then secondly that $50 million to $150 million reduction in Marketplace and StubHub revenue in the back half of the year? Is that kind of equally reduced from both areas more heavily from Marketplace or more heavily from StubHub, any breakdown there? Thank you.

Devin Wenig

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

I will take the World Cup. In the scheme of things, no. We saw an impact on every World Cup game saw a reduction in buying activity, but in the scheme of the size of our marketplace it’s not that meaningful. And we have got some StubHub GMS internationally out of World Cup. So I don’t -- I think it netted to basically it’s probably a small down but nothing that would have shown up or material. And Scott on the second part.

Scott Schenkel

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Yeah. What was the second part of your question, I am sorry?

Mark Mahaney

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

That $50 million to $150 million reduction in…

Scott Schenkel

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Yeah.

Mark Mahaney

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

If you can parse that out between those two places Marketplace and StubHub?

Scott Schenkel

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Yeah. Roughly 75, 25, Marketplace and StubHub.

Mark Mahaney

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Devin Wenig

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Yeah.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Salmon with BMO Capital Markets.

Dan Salmon

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets.

Hi, guys. Good afternoon. A couple of questions for me, I just want to return, not necessarily to Australia, specifically, but more eBay Plus. And Devin, just interested to hear what sort of traction you’ve seen for that specifically and where you think that program could go long-term, are there markets that it would fit appropriately, and that’s first. And then second, just the launch of the Highline, excuse m, the Highline Search Ad, I think it’s priced on a CPC basis. So I was just curious if it would be reported in marketing services revenue or in transaction revenue like promoted listings? Thanks.

Devin Wenig

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets.

Yeah. Good questions. On eBay Plus, so we now have eBay Plus in Germany and in Australia. And I am really pleased with the results. Now let’s keep in mind that the programs are slightly different based on where they are and I suspect that if eBay Plus moves out of those markets, they’ll change as well. I don’t -- in Australia, as an example, it’s not purely a shipping program. It’s also got a partnership with flybuys, which is a big national loyalty network for purchasing credit outside our network, to things like groceries and gas and other things. In Germany, it’s preferential access to deals and other benefits. So I -- right now, when I look at Australia that just introduced this, the uptake early -- it’s super early, but the uptake has well exceeded our expectations, we are very pleased with where that went. Including this week, where you saw a lot of global retail activity and we use the opportunity around Prime Day to market our propositions and we saw a great uptake of eBay Plus in Australia around this week, which I am really, really pleased with. Could eBay Plus move out? I think it could. We are obviously looking at that. I don’t think the proposition will equal the same thing everywhere. But I like the idea of a loyalty program that brings differential benefits to our most loyal customers and we will see where it goes from there, nothing to say at this point.

Selim Freiha

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets.

Hey, Dan. It’s Selim. On the Highline Search Ads, we just launched this. It’s an early beta. We are testing the -- I would consider the revenue from this at this point to be extremely immaterial and we are still evaluating how that will get treatment. As that becomes more material and relevant, we will update you on where that lands within the revenue, whether that’s transaction or MS&O.

Dan Salmon

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets.

Okay. Great. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Fitzgerald with Jefferies.

Brian Fitzgerald

Analyst · Jefferies.

Thanks. Maybe related to Dan’s questions, with the focus you’re putting on advertising, are you seeing the type of traction you anticipated there? What gates or levers are there that you can pull on to build momentum around advertising on eBay?

Devin Wenig

Analyst · Jefferies.

You’re talking about our advertising business, not us advertisers?

Brian Fitzgerald

Analyst · Jefferies.

That’s right. That’s correct. Yeah.

Devin Wenig

Analyst · Jefferies.

Look, I think that advertising along with payments, are two of the most significant mid-term opportunities that we have. And the one that I would point at most strongly is promoted listings first party advertising. It -- our growth trajectory is very strong, as you’ve heard on the last three or four earnings calls. And when I look at the ratio of first party advertising on eBay, compared to our GMV, I don’t -- I think we are not even in the first inning. There is a lot of runway to grow that business and we are putting a lot of muscle into growing it and I do believe that it is a meaningful revenue stream. I mean, you’ve heard from, Scott, it was meaningful this quarter, showing up in transaction revenue, and we are just getting started. So when I look out, not too long, but in the call it mid-term, you’ve got our core business that we are putting an intense amount of focus on that we are leaning into to accelerate. We are very focused on these two kind of let’s call it new mid-term opportunities, payments, which we have talked a lot about in the last two earnings calls and advertising, which are the over-the-top really exciting opportunities that we are investing in. And kind of that’s the way I look at the next period short-to mid-term playing out is keep improving the core, generate acceleration in the second half and invest in and get prepared for the over-the-top new opportunities in advertising and payments.

Selim Freiha

Analyst · Jefferies.

Operator, we will take one more question.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our final question comes from Thomas Forte with Davidson.

Thomas Forte

Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my question. You made a lot of improvements to improve your search results on Google and then they rolled out a new algorithm with kind of a mobile first emphasis, and you’ve also done a lot to improve the mobile experience on eBay. Just curious to see if any of the changes at Google had either positive impact on your results in the quarter?

Scott Schenkel

Analyst

Well, the answer -- the -- look I don’t -- I never really talk about Google’s impact on us, but I will just say putting aside the impact to us, what we have seen consistently is that not all of our, let’s call it, SEO pages are built on structured data, we have been moving them aggressively. The ones that are have performed extremely well. The ones that are not have continued to be under pressure and that means that our job is to move it all and that’s what we are doing as fast as we can. But where we have built our SEO beachhead on our structured data footprint, we have continued to see improvements in ranking and traffic. And where we have not yet moved, we have continued over the last several years to see degradation. So the imperative is to keep moving it, keep going and get it all over as quickly as we can.

Thomas Forte

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in the question-and-answer portion of today’s call. I would now like to turn it back over to management for any closing remarks.

Selim Freiha

Analyst

No. That’s it. You can go ahead and close the call. Thank you everybody.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may all disconnect and have a wonderful day.