Ebay Promises Clarity On StubHub Sale Sooner Than Later

Get ready for some clarity on StubHub.

That’s one of the messages from eBay’s third quarter 2019 results, released Wednesday (Oct. 23). The online marketplace operator plans to update whether it will sell StubHub in the coming weeks. The company said in its earnings release that “eBay continues to review the role and value of StubHub and Classifieds in its portfolio to determine the best path forward and anticipates sharing an update on the StubHub business before the next earnings release.”

The Q3 results follow September’s announcement that Devin Wenig stepped down from the role of chief executive officer, a position he had held since July 2015. The CEO tenure stretches from the spinoff of PayPal to this month’s reports that the company was eyeing selling its stakes in StubHub and the company’s Classifieds business. The company’s fortunes over those four-plus years, as measured by top line, have been anything but a straight line upward and to the right.

These newest results show that eBay revenue remained flat year over year, standing at $2.65 billion. That topped estimates of $2.64 billion. As far as active buyers, that metric increased 4 percent compared to the same period last year, standing at 183 million active buyers across the globe. Marketplace revenue, meanwhile, decreased 1 percent in Q3, to $2.1 billion, eBay said.

“We performed in line with expectations in Q3 while improving the Marketplace experience, creating better customer outcomes, and maintaining momentum in advertising and payments,” said Scott Schenkel, interim CEO. “We also made progress on our portfolio review and completed a thorough operating review that has resulted in a three-year plan to drive margin improvement while enabling reinvestment in critical customer initiatives.”

EBay also offered an update on its payment activities. “Since launching the managed payments offering approximately one year ago, eBay has processed over $1.1 billion in payments for more than 20,000 sellers, with over $500 million of those payments processed in Q3,” the company said.