Ebay - Ecommerce Platform a Case Study in Scalability
Annual Report 2009
To Our Stockholders, In 2009, eBay Inc. became a stronger, more focused company. We communicated our three-year growth and operating targets in March 2009, setting bold goals for us to remain a global payments and e-commerce leader. During the year, we experienced significant growth in our payments business, which we believe is wellpositioned for success in the years to come. We strengthened our Marketplaces business by fixing fundamental issues that we believe were holding us back. And we sold a majority of Skype, allowing us to focus on our two core growth engines: payments and e-commerce. We did all of this while embracing the kind of operational and financial discipline that is the hallmark of a healthy, growing company. Our financial performance for the full year reflects these efforts. Despite the challenging environment in 2009, particularly in the first half of the year, we delivered $8.7 billion in revenues, a 2 percent increase from the prior year, and $1.83 of diluted EPS. Although our operating margin of 17 percent was lower compared to 2008, we delivered $2.9 billion in operating cash flow for the year. We connected more buyers and sellers than ever before through our core payments and e-commerce businesses in 2009. PayPal had an exceptional 2009, ending the year with net total payment volume (TPV) of $71 billion – a 19 percent increase over 2008 – and 81 million active registered accounts globally. Our Marketplaces business, led by eBay, grew its customer base to 90 million active users worldwide and took important steps in improving the fundamentals of its business, focusing on trust, value and selection. Our Marketplaces portfolio got stronger overall in 2009: Acquiring Gmarket, Korea’s leading online marketplace, gave us a leadership position in a key e-commerce market in Asia. StubHub, a leading online secondary tickets marketplace, continued its robust growth trajectory in 2009, as did our global classifieds businesses,
To Our Stockholders, In 2009, eBay Inc. became a stronger, more focused company. We communicated our three-year growth and operating targets in March 2009, setting bold goals for us to remain a global payments and e-commerce leader. During the year, we experienced significant growth in our payments business, which we believe is wellpositioned for success in the years to come. We strengthened our Marketplaces business by fixing fundamental issues that we believe were holding us back. And we sold a majority of Skype, allowing us to focus on our two core growth engines: payments and e-commerce. We did all of this while embracing the kind of operational and financial discipline that is the hallmark of a healthy, growing company. Our financial performance for the full year reflects these efforts. Despite the challenging environment in 2009, particularly in the first half of the year, we delivered $8.7 billion in revenues, a 2 percent increase from the prior year, and $1.83 of diluted EPS. Although our operating margin of 17 percent was lower compared to 2008, we delivered $2.9 billion in operating cash flow for the year. We connected more buyers and sellers than ever before through our core payments and e-commerce businesses in 2009. PayPal had an exceptional 2009, ending the year with net total payment volume (TPV) of $71 billion – a 19 percent increase over 2008 – and 81 million active registered accounts globally. Our Marketplaces business, led by eBay, grew its customer base to 90 million active users worldwide and took important steps in improving the fundamentals of its business, focusing on trust, value and selection. Our Marketplaces portfolio got stronger overall in 2009: Acquiring Gmarket, Korea’s leading online marketplace, gave us a leadership position in a key e-commerce market in Asia. StubHub, a leading online secondary tickets marketplace, continued its robust growth trajectory in 2009, as did our global classifieds businesses,