While eBay’s (NASDAQ:EBAY) Marketplace has continued to see stalled growth, two other segments that eBay operates show impressive potential moving forward. eBay’s mobile classifieds business with mobile app Close5 and Stubhub, eBay’s ticket sales marketplace. After a split with PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) and Enterprise last year, eBay stock has plummeted 24% to $22.
eBay reported its annual earnings for 2015 this month. Sales revenue declined 2%, which includes its core business Marketplace sliding 3.6%, StubHub increased 15%, and Classifieds dropped 2%. However, excluding a negative impact due to the strong US dollar, all of its three segments revenues grew at a FX neutral basis. The three segments: Marketplace, StubHub and Classifieds grew at 5%, 15% and 15% rate, respectively, year-over-year. Although StubHub and Classifieds each accounted for only 8% of eBay’s total revenue, both segments have strong potential to grow at a double-digit rate for the long term.
Two Potential Segments
StubHub is now the world’s largest ticket marketplace with revenue of $725 million, with more than 50% of the ticket-resale market share last year, way ahead of Ticketmaster, which has only 11% of ticket-resale market share. StubHub is adding some new features to streamline the ticket buying process, including “best value offering” and “instant relisting” functionalities to enable fans to find the best deal immediately. And if they cannot attend events, sellers can relist their tickets directly to the market. StubHub is expected to continue to grow strongly at 20-30% for the next few years.
eBay’s Classifieds segment provides local classified advertisements and a forum similar to that of Craigslist. eBay previously held a 25% share of Craigslist from 2008 until 2015. Craigslist still has the highest traffic of any classifieds, but eBay’s new Classifieds business has more user friendly reviews. eBay’s Classifieds business has enhanced the user experience with its new mobile app Close5, which has attracted 6 million users to sell their items locally last quarter. Close5 allows users to list their items much faster than Craigslist, and also allows for a seamless transaction to take place where the seller can directly communicate with buyers through the app. On Craigslist, transactions are generally completed through email or by phone. Excluding currency headwinds due to the strong dollar, eBay Classifieds grew at 15% last year and is expected to continue to grow as the future of the classifieds business shifts more toward mobile apps and away from Craigslist.
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