eBay Struggles With Turnaround as Goliath Amazon Holds Sway

eBay is struggling in its effort to carve out a unique place in an e-commerce industry dominated by Amazon, according to Bloomberg.

CEO Devin Wenig’s decisions to increase spending on marketing, redesign eBay’s homepage to personalize products for each visitor and make it easier for users to navigate the site’s 1 billion listings produced a sales gain of 3.7 percent in the first quarter, similar growth to the prior period. His goal, almost two years after the company’s split with payments business PayPal, is to make eBay a go-to for unique items not found on Amazon.

Revenue in the current quarter will be $2.28 billion to $2.32 billion, the company said in a statement. Analysts on average estimated $2.32 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Adjusted earnings per share will be 43 cents to 45 cents, compared with analysts’ projections of 47 cents. First-quarter profit was 49 cents per share on revenue of $2.22 billion. Analysts on average estimated 48 cents on sales of $2.21 billion.

The company gained 2 million active buyers in the first quarter to 169 million, a 4 percent gain from the period a year earlier. Gross merchandise volume, which is the value of goods moved through transactions, gained 2.4 percent to $20.9 billion, about the same growth as the previous quarter.

eBay is looking to speed up sales growth, which has lagged behind that of e-commerce leader Amazon and faces increasing pressure as Wal-Mart invests in online sales. Shoppers are continuing to shift their spending from stores to websites. E-commerce spending in the U.S. will represent 13.9 percent of all retail sales in 2021, up from 9.2 percent this year, according to estimates from eMarketer.

eBay plans in the next several months to introduce a three-day delivery guarantee on millions of products. That’s slower than Amazon’s two-day delivery offered for Amazon Prime shoppers who pay $99 a year to subscribe to the fast shipping program.

The company also is looking abroad and earlier this month invested $500 million in Flipkart that is part of a partnership with the e-commerce leader in India that allows merchants to offer products on both websites. The company gets the lion’s share of its sales from international markets, such as the U.K., Germany, Australia and Korea, and cross-border business from China, but the U.S. still accounts for about 44 percent of revenue.