Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference Tuesday, Donahoe said eBay would support a national Internet sales tax plan — as long as it worked. And the company is simply not confident that the Marketplace Fairness Act will.

“We’re not against an Internet sales tax,” Donahoe said. “But the Internet sales tax has to work.”

And right now it doesn’t, according to Donahoe — at least not the way eBay would like.

Donahoe says that the Act, which seems likely to pass the Senate next week, will negatively impact small businesses, including millions of small eBay sellers. The reason: Right now, the act proposes a tax threshold of $1 million in annual out-of-state sales. That’s a relatively low bar for small retail businesses that, if the Marketplace Fairness Act is approved, would suddenly be obligated to collect sales taxes from the more than 9,600 tax jurisdictions nationwide.

So Donahoe and eBay are pushing for the threshold to be raised to at least $10 million, with an exemption granted to any retailer with sales below that.

“We believe the tax burden that’s going to be put on the smallest businesses is going to disadvantage them,” Donahoe said. “And so we’re just asking for a small business exemption so that what happens online mirrors what happens offline. At the end of the day, it’s not going to impact our company one way or another, because the marketplace will still sell, but larger sellers will benefit at the cost of smaller sellers.”

Photo Credit: eBay

But the CEO has done well during his tenure at eBay thus far, kickstarting the company out of a period of stalled growth, spurring the Marketplace and PayPal payments businesses and continuing to see consecutive quarterly growth.

To keep this up, Donahoe is singing the same tune as the rest of the industry: Focus on mobile and target international markets. We caught up with him for a bit this week, where he expanded on eBay’s ambitions.

On the Rise of Mobile and Spurring Engagement

“We know that mobile users are more engaged than non-mobile users. To keep that going, the simplest thing we can do is to just be present and continue to make it easy for our customers. To do that, we’re building useful, compelling mobile apps and making the registration process very easy.

“For us, the registration flow on mobile devices in particular is easier — the best one we’ve got. You’ll remember we bought Card.io (a startup that makes mobile purchases much easier). You can just take out your credit card, take a picture and boom — you’ve made an account.

“During that first three to 18 months after registering, we see a kind of ramp up to what they buy, and the frequency with which they visit.

“Second, it’s the multiscreen users that tend to be more engaged over time. For example, we’ve seen you browsing on your smartphone and then you buy an item on your desktop. That’s increasingly the wave of the future. You’re going to have screens on everything — your smartphone, your laptop, your car, your watch, almost anything with a surface.”

On International Growth

“Here’s some facts in rough terms. There’s more than two billion Internet users today, and that number will double over the next two years. Think about who’s going to make up those new users — 78 percent of those new users will be in BRIC and emerging markets. You gotta go to where the people are, and the majority of those people will be accessing the Web by the smartphone.

“They’ve become global Internet citizens, if you will, but they want to trade, and in many cases there won’t be a local e-commerce option. Russia, for example, wants goods and services that aren’t available there. So they’ll shop on eBay. Because such a large portion of our business is cross-border, we see many consumers coming in from these emerging markets.

“Again, that’s where our mobile leadership really helps. There’s a lot being said about mobile first right now. We’re not saying it, we’re doing it.

“We’ve launched Russian mobile apps. We’ve got a large team of mobile app developers. We bought Critical Path Software. We bought Duff Research. The innovation and the cycle time with which we can build innovative work is getting faster and faster.”

Earnings came in at 63 cents per share on revenue of $3.7 billion, a 14 percent jump compared to the year-ago quarter. That outperforms the Street’s expectations by a penny — just like it did last quarter. Analysts’ estimates pegged this quarter’s earnings at 62 cents per share on revenue of $3.77 billion. Over the same period last year, eBay earned 55 cents a share on $3.28 billion in sales.

“We had a strong first quarter, with accelerating user growth across both Marketplaces and PayPal, and with GSI enabling their retail clients to grow faster than ecommerce,” eBay CEO John Donahoe said in a canned statement. “Technology is creating a commerce revolution, and we are in the forefront with strong mobile leadership and a focus on helping retailers and brands engage consumers anytime, anywhere.”

The company added 2.8 million new accounts over the first quarter through mobile alone, bumping up the company’s payments and Marketplace businesses. In all, the Marketplaces business added another 3.9 million active users over the quarter to reach 116 million, while PayPal tacked on another 5 million accounts to total 128 million active users.

The commerce giant has consistently outperformed expectations over the past year and change, seeing double-digit revenue gains in the last five consecutive quarters. Much of that was attributable to eBay’s fast-growing mobile business, which CEO John Donahoe expects to exceed $20 billion in volume in 2013. And of course PayPal, eBay’s payments processing arm, has grown tremendously in volume of transactions processed over the past few years, and eBay expects that growth to continue.

This quarter indeed saw the PayPal business grow by 18 percent to revenue of $1.5 billion.

Shares of eBay were trading down about 2.5 percent in after hours, at $54.74.

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

“We are building the Uber for delivery people,” Donahoe said this morning at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, following an appearance by Apple’s Tim Cook. “We think we can do it at scale. No one single retailer can do it on their own, so we are building it for the retail industry and using our technology capabilities to build it.”

His opinions differ drastically from Amazon’s last public statements on the topic. In July, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said the company was building more distribution centers to be closer to customers and to speed up delivery times, “but in terms of same-day delivery, we don’t see a way to do same-day on a broad scale at the moment.”

Donahoe said he believes that there is plenty of unused inventory in today’s delivery systems to make it work. The goal is to be able to bid out each order to the nearest driver, similar to the way Uber taps into a network of town cars looking for their next fare.

So far, eBay is experimenting on a small scale with pilot programs in San Francisco and parts of New York City. The eBay Now app allows you to look for local inventory at several stores, including Macy’s and Walgreens. After an order is placed, the products are delivered within two to four hours (right now, Donahoe said, times are averaging one to two hours).

He said the system doesn’t work for any one retailer on their own, but that it could work by providing the service to a network of companies with many locations. Still, that isn’t stopping other mega merchants, like Walmart, from also experimenting with same-day delivery. The benefit to eBay or Walmart, in general, is that they are relying on inventory located in stores near central locations, unlike Amazon, which owns massive distribution centers often based on the outskirts of town.

Is delivery something that could eventually make money? Donahoe thinks so.

“We are trying to build it, and over time, if we are building value, then the retailers will pay for those leads,” he said.

gracious_tiger / Shutterstock.com

In each of its last four quarters, eBay has posted double-digit year-over-year revenue growth. Looks like the company’s fourth quarter was no different.

After market close Wednesday, eBay reported fourth-quarter earnings of 70 cents per share on revenue of $3.99 billion.

Analysts had expected eBay to earn 69 cents a share, excluding one-time items, on revenue of $3.97 billion. During the same period in 2011, eBay earned 60 cents a share on $3.4 billion in sales. So this quarter’s performance was a dime better.

As in quarters past, eBay’s beat was driven by the strong performance of its Marketplaces and Mobile business. Marketplaces saw growth in the U.S. increase three points. And, as CEO John Donahoe pointed out in the company’s earnings release, Mobile really blew things out. “EBay mobile finished the year with $13 billion in volume — more than double the prior year — and PayPal mobile handled almost $14 billion in payment volume, more than triple the prior year,” Donahoe said. “In 2013, we expect each to exceed $20 billion.”

For fiscal 2012, eBay’s revenue increased 17.8 percent to a total of $14.072 billion.

“While PayPal is strong and performing well, making decisions that impact our employees was hard. So this is a difficult day at PayPal,” said David Marcus, PayPal’s president, in a blog post. “These are good people, good friends and colleagues, who have played a role in creating PayPal’s strong global leadership position today.”

The restructuring plan was originally disclosed during eBay’s earnings call earlier this month, but it was unknown how many people would be affected.

This morning, the digital payments company said it informed about 325 full-time employees, primarily in its product and technology organizations, that they were being laid off. Additionally, PayPal also ended contracts with about 120 contractors globally.

During eBay’s conference call, CEO John Donahoe said that the new structure was designed to consolidate its product groups from nine to one. “Here’s the way to think about it — customers want a seamless experience across the Web, online and offline,” he said. “While it’s true there will be reductions, we are committed to accelerating the pace of innovation. We aren’t seeking cost reductions — this is 100 percent about streamlining the creation of great products.”

Separately, eBay said it will take a $15 million charge in the fourth quarter related to the staff reductions.

Here’s Marcus’ blog post explaining the cuts:

Delighting our customers every day with great, simple products and experiences is a priority for me, and for everyone at PayPal. It’s something we need to become better and faster at. And that means we need to transform how we work.

So we’ve been redesigning our product organization, collapsing nine product groups into one. We are creating agile teams of designers, engineers and product managers. Instead of being organized around projects, our teams will now be dedicated to products and focused on our customers — consumers, developers, small businesses and large retailers.

Unfortunately, making the right decisions on behalf of our customers meant we had to make some very tough decisions inside our company. This morning we informed approximately 325 full time employees, primarily in our product and technology organizations, that their roles are being eliminated. We also are ending contracts with approximately 120 contractors globally.

While PayPal is strong and performing well, making decisions that impact our employees was hard. So this is a difficult day at PayPal. These are good people, good friends and colleagues, who have played a role in creating PayPal’s strong global leadership position today. We appreciate all the contributions that they have made. And they are being treated with fairness and dignity, consistent with our culture and values.

Moving forward, I’m confident these changes will make PayPal even better and stronger. Our customers can expect faster innovation and great products and experiences that make their lives simpler. That’s our commitment — every day.

- David Marcus, President, PayPal

Photo Credit: eBay

Those are all words being used to describe eBay’s third quarter. But while the analysts are skeptical about whether eBay can keep up the growth it has enjoyed over the past two years, CEO John Donahoe says he’s feeling better about the company than he has in a while.

“The company is in the strongest position it has been in for many years,” Donahoe said in an interview. “And I think with what’s happening in the world of commerce, it plays well to our strengths and capabilities. I think we are a stronger company, more innovative and more customer-focused and getting better every day.”

In the third quarter, eBay hit the high end of its guidance and raised its outlook for the year, but since it has a track record of beating forecasts by a lot, analysts were hesitant to call the quarter a home run.

Mark Mahaney of Citi, which has a “neutral” rating on the stock, called eBay’s results “solid, but not exceptional,” and “slightly soft” because “this company has exceeded the high-end of its guidance for eight straight quarters.” Colin Sebastian of Baird Equity Research, who has an “outperform” rating and a price target of $58, was also reluctant to say the company was on fire: “Although management raised the implied guidance range for Q4, the midpoint of revenue guidance is slightly below consensus, which we believe is prudently cautious at this point ahead of the holiday spending ramp.”

Still, investors pushed eBay’s stock up $2.24, or 4.6 percent, to $50.44 a share in midday trading, putting it close to the company’s 52-week high of $50.65 a share.

In reaction to analysts’ neutral stance on the stock, Donahoe said: “We’ve beaten our guidance every quarter for I’m not sure how many quarters — and we beat it again this quarter. We are having a strong year, and our share price is up for the year, but you know how it is, there’s always a hope that it goes higher and higher. Our growth rates have been very steady; we don’t overly worry about that.”

Part of Donahoe’s confidence stems from the work eBay has done over the past year to overhaul its marketplaces business. The turnaround has included fixing the back-end technology and revamping the design, including a new logo and homepage redesign. This holiday, eBay will use TV commercials to help get the word out that it’s a new eBay. The tagline being used is, “From the new to the hard to find, when it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay.” PayPal, which also has updated its look and feel, is running an online marketing campaign featuring actor Jeff Goldblum.

In the third quarter, all three of the company’s divisions grew: PayPal’s revenue jumped 23 percent year over year, marketplace revenue grew by 9 percent, and its GSI division increased by 12 percent. In addition, it sees new opportunities to grow revenue by helping brick-and-mortar stores like Toys “R” Us and Macy’s compete online. It is also expanding into in-store payments through PayPal. As Donahoe likes to say, if PayPal captures just 1 percent of the offline payments market, it will double in size.

During the company’s conference call yesterday, Donahoe confirmed rumors that PayPal is undergoing a restructuring, which could result in layoffs. He said the new structure is designed to consolidate its product groups from nine to one. “Here’s the way to think about it — customers want a seamless experience across the Web, online and offline,” he said. If that’s the case, then those product groups should not be separate. He reiterated that it has nothing to do with cost reductions. “While it’s true there will be reductions, we are committed to accelerating the pace of innovation,” he said. “We aren’t seeking cost reductions — this is 100 percent about streamlining the creation of great products.”

Levie will be debuting an array of partnerships with Oracle, NetSuite, Concur, Jive, FuzeBox, Cornerstone, SugarCRM, Zendesk and others, where Box has developed hooks to HTML5-ify what they are doing, so customers of these applications can use all their tools together, instead of in different silos. The company calls this Box Embed, and it was announced earlier this morning.

His openers today are venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and eBay CEO John Donahoe.

8:41 am: Andreessen and Donahoe kick off with some political jokes (the eBay CEO’s wife, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, is U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council). Andreessen notes that he joined the eBay board shortly after Donahoe was hired.

Andreessen hypes recent eBay progress, including mobile growth, acquisitions of Milo and RedLaser, and the spinoff of Skype (a big deal for him at Andreessen Horowitz). Then he talks about the great stock price. Eventually, he may let Donahoe talk, but we’ll see.

8:48 am: Donahoe says that five years ago it was clear that the eBay user experience was behind. “I started using the ‘T’ word,” he said — with the eBay turnaround being user experience, pricing, policies.

Andreessen asks about company culture. Donahoe says he has replaced 80 of the top 100 people at eBay. The outsiders bring objectivity and new skills. “You can’t change the culture unless you change the people,” he says.

Donahoe says that even though he’s not a founder-CEO, he can inject that energy into the company with acquisitions where the founders take leadership roles — like how 25-year-old Milo CEO Jack Abraham is now head of all of eBay Local, and Zong CEO David Marcus now leads PayPal.

Andreessen sets up two competing mobile theories: Peter Thiel versus Aneel Bhusri of Workday. Thiel says the Yelp of mobile with be Yelp, etc. Meanwhile, Bhusri says mobile is an architecture change that’s fundamental, so there will be new leaders. Which do you believe, he asks Donahoe — clearly a loaded question, considering that eBay is the e-commerce incumbent. EBay apps have been downloaded 100 million times, Donahoe replies. And payments are going to change more in the next three years than they did in the past 20.

9:08 am: Andreessen: Talk about the cloud. Oh, maybe they are going to finally talk about stuff that’s more related to Box!

Donahoe says eBay has always been a cloud company, but it’s increasingly so. He uses Box on his iPad, and his product team loves it, too. Infomercial time!

9:14 am: Donahoe says his big takeaway for the next five years is: “Most people are underestimating how fundamentally the shopping and paying experience is going to change.”

9:17 am: Time for Aaron Levie, who leaps out doing the “Gangnam Style” dance.

He says Box started in 2005 with the goal of helping people manage content from any device.

Today, Box has more than 140,000 active businesses, 14 million users, and 92 percent of the Fortune 500. That’s more than double a year ago.

Now he’s doing some light stand-up about the state of the tech industry. “Larry Ellison joined Twitter, did exactly one tweet, then celebrated by buying an island.”

Box works faster than the competition, Levie says, as much as 10 million times faster in Tokyo. This part is vague, but there is a pretty map.

Box has had a 10x increase in iOS usage, and a 30x increase on Android in the past year.

And there’s been a 72 percent increase in the number of businesses that have taken the product through their entire enterprise.

9:27 am: Levie’s big themes — and these are shockers — are: social, cloud and mobile.

Microsoft was founded around the idea of a PC on every desk in every home — Levie notes this was before his time, though not his COO’s. The challenges were that you needed to move data around physically; it was hard to collaborate; there were lots of error messages; the limit of client-server was met. So now it’s time for post-PC, where we can share and work from anywhere.

Now, instead of a computer on every desk, it’s a computer in every hand.

So Box wants to integrate the world of users and the world of IT.

9:40 am: Following a customer video, Levie says he’s getting to the news, which is around getting to and sharing data in more easy and elegant ways.

Box had never really highlighted search — some users didn’t even know Box had it. A new version of the site moves search to the top center of the page. Levie says his own Box account has access to 100,000 files, so search is critical for him. In the redesign, users will also be able to “Like” content and use other social Facebook-y features.

Users can do things like create Microsoft Word documents directly from the site, and there’s more of a sense of a company network where anyone with an email domain on the same URL can work together.

Levie talks about how customers often feel pressured to buy from one particular vendor. He’s after Larry Ellison again, showing an image of Darth Vader while talking about lock-in.

So Box is launching Box Embed (as I noted way up top in the intro) with 10 partners: Concur, Cornerstone, DocuSign, Eloqua, Zendesk, Jive, NetSuite, Oracle, SugarCRM and FuzeBox.

Demo shows how all this sharing, creating and viewing stuff can be built directly into NetSuite.

Folks from NetSuite and Jive come up to talk about how working together with Box is great. But still, it’s clear that everyone wants to be a platform, not an app on someone else’s platform.

10:10 am: On to mobile. The number of enterprise-relevant apps has doubled in the past year, Levie says. Given how fast mobile devices change, and how pervasive they are, companies should embrace BYOD (bring your own device), he argues. So Box is adding to its existing OneCloud platform for mobile (launched six months ago).

50 percent of Box traffic is now from mobile, which is a big increase.

So today there are 100 more new OneCloud apps, doubling the available amount.

More demos: This time, Mindjet jumping between iPad and Web app.

The new Box vision, says Levie, is to give people the ability to work with anyone, anywhere, from any device.

iStockphoto.com/mbortolino

In the U.S., e-commerce sales reached $43.2 billion in the second quarter — up 15 percent compared to the year-ago period, according to comScore.

The quarter marked America’s seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, as consumers get even more comfortable spending online and having products show up on their front porches.

What’s more, Amazon grew twice as fast as the overall market. The big-box retailer of the Web said that in the second quarter, it grew 32 percent if you take away the impact of foreign exchange. Likewise, eBay’s sales rallied in the second quarter, increasing 23 percent.

In contrast, brick-and-mortar retailers are struggling. For example, Best Buy’s same-store sales were down 5.3 percent in the three-month period ended May 5.

The comparisons are not entirely fair, because both Amazon and eBay lump together U.S. and international sales, and Best Buy separately reported that online revenue was up 20 percent, but it provides some perspective on how fast the shift from offline to online is happening.

What’s more, while comScore provides one of the most comprehensive reports for gauging e-commerce spending, its numbers do not take into account shopping conducted over cellphones and tablets — and that’s becoming hard to ignore.

In the second quarter, CEO John Donahoe said, he saw “a staggering surge” in mobile commerce that did not exist just a few years ago. Now eBay is expecting both its marketplaces division and PayPal to transact $10 billion in mobile volume this year, or more than double 2011.

Amazon does not break out mobile sales, but other, smaller, sites are also reporting significant mobile traffic. For example, One Kings Lane, an online home decor site, said mobile is making up 22 percent of the company’s sales.

Two other findings from the Q2 comScore report:

• The top-performing online product categories were: Digital content and subscriptions, consumer electronics, flowers, greetings and gifts, computer hardware, and apparel and accessories. Each category grew at least 16 percent compared to the year-ago period.
• 42 percent of e-commerce transactions included free shipping, representing a seasonal pullback from a fourth-quarter high of 52 percent.

Despite economic uncertainty in Europe, eBay, which has been busy fixing its core e-commerce business and betting big on the next generation of payments, was expected to report strong results today.

The company reported a profit of $692 million, increasing 144 percent year over year, on revenues of $3.4 billion. On a non-GAAP basis, the company reported a profit of 56 cents a share, which was up a more modest 16 percent due to strong top-line growth, partially offset by increased investments in the shopping experience and acquisitions.

After an already strong day, eBay’s shares continued to soar in late trading, increasing another 5.6 percent, to hover near $42.71.

The results easily beat analyst expectations, which were more bullish than the company’s own estimates. In a survey by FactSet Research, analysts were estimating that eBay would earn 55 cents a share, excluding one-time items, on revenue of $3.36 billion.

A big question was whether the company was going to maintain its outlook for the third quarter, given currency struggles in Europe. But signs are good. EBay is forecasting revenues in the range of $3.3 billion to $3.4 billion and a profit of 53 cents to 55 cents a share, excluding some items, to closely match analyst expectations of earning 55 cents a share on $3.42 billion in sales. It also did not adjust full-year guidance, which is expecting revenue in the range of $13.8 billion to $14.1 billion, and GAAP earnings per share of $1.91 to $1.96.

In a statement, eBay’s CEO John Donahoe, said: “Our entire company is strong, but we’re particularly pleased with eBay Marketplaces, which delivered its strongest organic growth in gross merchandise volume, excluding vehicles, since 2006.”

He also said the company is seeing a “staggering surge” in mobile shopping and that the company now expects eBay and PayPal to each transact $10 billion in mobile volume in 2012 — more than doubling 2011 numbers.

A quick update on the company’s three core divisions:

• EBay Marketplaces: Contributed $1.8 billion in net revenue, jumping 9 percent year over year.
• PayPal: Contributed $1.4 billion in net revenue, jumping 26 percent.
• GSI: The division, which was acquired in the second quarter a year ago, contributed $221 million in revenue.

Notes from the Q2 earnings conference call:

• John Donahoe jumps on the call, saying they had another great quarter and that every part of the company is strong.
• A reflection point is occurring in retail, mobile is becoming the digital nexus of people’s lives. We now expect eBay and PayPal mobile to each transact $10 billion this year.
• This is Donahoe’s mantra that he repeats on a regular basis: Retailers of all sizes need partners to help them compete in this world, and this is our focus: Enabling commerce. We will not compete with them.
• PayPal’s global reach is a competitive advantage; more than half of the revenue came from outside the U.S., he said.
• PayPal added more than one million active accounts in Q2, ending with 113 million active accounts. In Q2, Abercrombie & Fitch and Joseph A. Banks are aggressively rolling out PayPal offline to hundreds of their stores.
• Now on to Marketplaces: Donahoe says this was our best year since 2006. EBay is revitalized, we are more relevant today than ever to buyers and sellers. Our fixed price format grew 20 percent in the quarter, and is well over 60 percent of sales — that means a majority of items are sold for full price, and not at auction.
• 48 percent of transactions shipped free, up 11 points from the prior year.
• EBay apps have been downloaded 90 million times, sellers are listing almost two million devices every week, and a handbag is purchased every 30 seconds.
• Closed one acquisition in the quarter, which might be referencing the Card.io purchase disclosed yesterday, but no meaningful M&A activity is expected in the near term, the company says.
• Opening it up to Q&A.
• On mobile and when and where consumers are using it: Donahoe says lots of male users are buying auto parts while they are under the hood of the car, but also consumers are using their devices to shop or investigate while walking down the street. He says with PayPal it’s the same thing. PayPal is being used to close transactions on the eBay mobile apps, but it’s growing elsewhere, too, as retailers find it useful to add PayPal to their check-out processes.
• With respect to online sales tax, eBay’s position remains the same: The company is working with authorities to lessen the burden on small sellers, so they don’t have to jump through the same administrative hoops as larger retailers.

Despite a relatively stable and growing U.S. business from both its marketplace and payments division, Citi’s Mark Mahaney cautioned in a research note, eBay’s results could be adversely impacted by the currency crisis in Europe.

eBay

Earlier this month, Mahaney reduced his estimates for the quarter because of economic uncertainty and the fact that international makes up about half of all of eBay’s revenue.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet Research currently estimate that eBay will earn 55 cents a share, excluding one-time items, on revenue of $3.36 billion, compared with a profit of 48 cents a share on $2.8 billion in sales in the same period a year ago.

Those expectations exceed eBay’s own goals, which forecasted revenue in the range of $3.25 billion to $3.35 billion, with GAAP earnings per share in the range of 49 cents to 51 cents and non-GAAP earnings per share in the range of 53 cents to 55 cents — both on a diluted basis.

Mahaney is expecting a slightly more modest report of $3.33 billion in revenue and 54 cents in non-GAAP earnings per share.

Today, eBay’s shares traded higher, closing at $39.07, or a few dollars shy of its 52-week high of $43.94 a share.

Other analysts believe that the impact won’t be felt for another few months, even though just last quarter, eBay raised full-year guidance, saying that it expects revenue in the range of $13.8 billion to $14.1 billion, with GAAP earnings per share of $1.91 to $1.96.

Chad Bartley of Pacific Crest Securities said that eBay’s results “should be fairly solid,” even though e-commerce trends in the quarter proved to be challenging. In general, the U.S. held up better than Europe, but still there was some softness.

According to MarketWatch, Bartley believes eBay will achieve Wall Street consensus forecasts for this quarter, but that the company’s outlook could end up missing projections.

As a result, analysts tomorrow will be watching eBay’s fiscal third-quarter forecast closely to see if it matches their expectations of earning 55 cents a share on $3.42 billion in sales.

Over the past year, the company has been executing well on its three main businesses: Marketplaces, PayPal and GSI. It is also spending a lot of time formulating its strategy for both mobile payments and working with offline retailers. Expect updates on those initiatives, too, even though it will still take a while for them to produce any material revenue.

EBay, which is typically the first of the major e-commerce companies to report earnings, often sets the tone for others. Amazon will release its second-quarter results next Thursday.

In an invitation sent to All Things D, the company says: “Meet PayPal’s new president, David Marcus; be the first to speak to PayPal’s new, brand-name retail partners; and get an exclusive sneak peek at how PayPal plans to make payments easier than ever for tens of thousands of mid-size merchants.”

The two-and-a-half-hour event will take place on Thursday at the company’s San Jose campus.

It’s unclear which retailers will be on hand, but so far, the company has been working with major retailers, like Home Depot, and there have been other unconfirmed reports of a relationship with Office Depot.

To date, eBay’s CEO John Donahoe has been careful to characterize this year as an experimental period, where the company will be laying the groundwork for its entrance into the physical payments space with several deployments. It is not banking on scaling the operation until the following year.

Right now, PayPal has presented two solutions to retailers, including a plastic credit card that allows purchases to be charged to a PayPal account and a mobile payments solution, which allows customers to enter their mobile phone number and a PIN into the payment terminal without the need for the phone to be present at the time of purchase.

The approach is much different than what Google Wallet is pitching, which ironically launched its product exactly a year ago next week. Google’s deployments, which relied on near field communication technology, have been hindered by low adoption by both retailers and the carriers.

As expected, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point released a new letter on the bio controversy he set off at Yahoo, again calling for the firing of its CEO, Scott Thompson.

“It seems farcical to us that the Board will most likely spend more time deliberating over whether Mr. Thompson should be fired than it did properly vetting whether he should have been hired,” read the letter in part. “The necessary investigation into whether certain senior executives and Board Members knew of Mr. Thompson’s deceptions before hiring him should not delay decisive action over his ethical breaches.”

Loeb, who is waging a proxy fight with Yahoo over board seats he wants, also offered to work with the Yahoo board to find a new CEO if it accepted his slate of directors. In the interim, he suggested Yahoo put either CFO Tim Morse or media head Ross Levinsohn in the job. Morse had taken that position temporarily after Yahoo fired its last CEO Carol Bartz last fall.

Confused yet?

Loeb set off a management crisis there last week with the revelation that Thompson had added a fake computer science degree to his bio.

The first casualty came yesterday with the stepping down of Yahoo director Patti Hart, who was charged with vetting Thompson for the job.

The Yahoo board also announced yesterday that it would be conducting a probe of the circumstances around the hiring, as well as how the faux academic credentials got in Thompson’s bio and also the company’s regulatory filings.

The new letter was a reaction to Thompson’s apology on Monday for the borked bio becoming a “distraction” (but not, oddly, for the mistake itself). Loeb had previously called for Thompson’s firing over the bio fibbing.

Loeb will be appearing at an investor conference in Las Vegas later today, where he will surely be asked about the situation.

In related news, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Thompson’s former boss, lent words of support, but also underscored that the online commerce company’s legal filings of his bio were always correct, even if its Web site and other PR documents handed out were not. Thompson came to Yahoo from a stint as president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit.

As reported by Bloomberg, Donahoe said:

“When Scott was hired at EBay Inc., all of EBay’s filings had the accurate information. Some of EBay’s PR materials had that bio. Our legal filings were taken care of by our legal department. Some of the PR materials had that info,” he said while in Tokyo of the correct bio versus the incorrect one.

Donahoe added: “I think Scott Thompson did a great job at PayPal. I think he’s a very talented leader and I believe he can help Yahoo. I hope they get through this and he can continue to do the very challenging job he’s got of helping to turn Yahoo around. I’m Scott’s biggest fan.”

This has been the first public support of Thompson by a prominent Internet figure, which might help lagging morale at the company.

Here’s the full version of the latest Loeb letter:

Third Point May 9 Letter Release

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

Daniel Loeb of Third Point — the activist shareholder who set off a management crisis at Yahoo last week with the revelation that new CEO Scott Thompson had added a fake computer science degree to his bio — will be onstage at a high-profile investor confab in Las Vegas this afternoon.

It’s Loeb’s first public appearance since he scored a direct hit on Yahoo in his ongoing proxy fight against the company — a first casualty yesterday, with the stepping-down of Yahoo director Patti Hart, who was charged with vetting Thompson for the job.

With one win like that, can Loeb resist using the panel — titled “Titans of Wall Street: Insight & Strategies for Capitalizing on Today’s Markets” — to strafe Yahoo a bit?

Sources said Loeb is prepping some reaction to Thompson’s apology on Monday for the borked bio becoming a “distraction” (but not, oddly, for the mistake itself), as well as an offer to work with the Yahoo board on a new CEO choice. Loeb has called for Thompson’s firing over the bio fibbing.

But the pugnacious investor will likely also be asked to opine on the situation so far at the off-the-record SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, which describes itself as “committed to facilitating balanced discussions and debates on macro-economic trends, geo-political events and alternative investment opportunities within the context of a dynamic global economy.”

What will be more interesting to see in the days ahead — even as the Yahoo board investigates how the false information about Thompson’s academic credentials got on that bio, as well as in regulatory filings — is if Loeb can be more than just a bomb-thrower and put forth a more specific and substantive plan for the long-troubled company than he has so far.

It’s not a requirement, of course, since Loeb is only seeking board seats and is not lobbying to be CEO, whose job it is to formulate a cogent strategy. But other Yahoo shareholders he is seeking to convince to join him in his proxy battle probably want more than “Yahoo stinks” from him at some point.

Still, for today at about 1:35 pm PT, when Loeb is scheduled to speak, it’s probably a good bet to expect some less-than-pretty noise from Sin City.

Update: In related news, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Thompson’s former boss, lent words of support but also underscored that the commerce company’s legal filings of his bio were always correct, even if its Web site was not. Thompson came to Yahoo from a stint as president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit.

As reported by Bloomberg, Donahoe said:

“When Scott was hired at EBay Inc., all of EBay’s filings had the accurate information. Some of EBay’s PR materials had that bio. Our legal filings were taken care of by our legal department. Some of the PR materials had that info,” he said while in Tokyo, of the correct bio versus the incorrect one.

Donahoe added: “I think Scott Thompson did a great job at PayPal. I think he’s a very talented leader and I believe he can help Yahoo. I hope they get through this and he can continue to do the very challenging job he’s got of helping to turn Yahoo around. I’m Scott’s biggest fan.”

This has been the first public support of Thompson by a prominent Internet figure, which might help lagging morale at the company.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Or, at least, that was the undertone of eBay’s conference call yesterday.

The company reported strong first-quarter results, beating both top- and bottom-line projections. It also raised guidance for the year, and said its business is stronger than it has been in five years.

“Our marketplaces business has turned the corner, shifting from defense to offense, and is delivering accelerating results,” said eBay’s CEO John Donahoe in the call.

This morning, the San Jose company’s stock was up nearly 16 percent, soaring to $41.58 a share. The rally easily pushes the company’s stock past its previous 52-week high of $38.18.

A number of years ago, eBay had hit rock bottom, sort of like Yahoo or AOL today.

Since then, Donahoe has been working hard to reinvent the entire eBay.com experience. He says the first quarter results are the first indication that the work is starting to pay off.

“It’s a significantly improved experience, and it’s not just current users, but it’s new users, who are coming to eBay and saying they really like it — maybe they haven’t been here in 10 years, but they are saying ‘Wow, this is different,’” Donahoe said in an interview. ”The pace of innovation is accelerating.”

The revival was fueled by a new TV advertising campaign around the holidays that had the tagline “Get it new, get it now,” which highlighted the company’s fixed price business. During the quarter, the company’s fixed priced business grew 18 percent. The company said the number of new buyers on the site also was up 9.5 percent in the quarter.

The company’s first quarter revenues totaled $3.3 billion, an increase of 29 percent year over year. For the same period, net income totaled $570 million, increasing 20 percent.

The strong results were attributable to the turnaround in its marketplaces business, but also PayPal and the recently acquired GSI Commerce division.

During the quarter, PayPal revenue increased 32 percent year over year to $1.3 billion, and GSI generated $715 million in merchandise sales, up 26 percent over the same period a year earlier.

In addition to conducting a turnaround, eBay is also aggressively pushing into new markets.

With PayPal, it’s rolling out new payments services, like mobile payments and in-store payments at check-out. With the help of GSI and a new division called X.commerce, the company is also concentrating on building tools that third-party offline and online retailers can use to more effectively compete against Amazon.

It is both of those businesses that Donahoe is tremendously excited about.

Yesterday, I reported that Square, which is a start-up in the mobile payments space, was attempting to raise capital at a $4 billion valuation — providing some validation to a similar PayPal product called Here.

“What I’m enormously excited about is I think PayPal Here has real capabilities that are even better than Square’s,” he said. “I think there’s enormous growth in that sector.”

In after-hours trading, the stock was up 7.3 percent, or $2.63, to trade at $38.50 a share, exceeding its 52-week high.

The company said first quarter revenues totaled $3.3 billion, an increase of 29 percent year over year. For the same period, net income totaled $570 million, increasing 20 percent.

EBay attributed the strong results to momentum in its traditional marketplaces business, PayPal and the recently acquired GSI Commerce division. (See below for notes from the earnings call.)

In a statement, CEO John Donahoe said: “We believe that innovation in retail today is technology driven, and consumers are embracing smarter, easier, better ways to shop. We are enabling commerce in this new retail environment, supporting and partnering with sellers of all sizes and giving consumers worldwide the ability to shop anytime, anywhere, for whatever they want.”

The results trump both what analysts had been expecting and what the company was estimating internally.

Analysts, on average, had expected eBay to report earnings of 52 cents per share on revenue of $3.15 billion, according to a poll by FactSet. Those expectations were on the high side of eBay’s own forecast, which was estimating revenue in the range of $3.05 million to $3.15 million, with earnings per share of 50 cents to 51 cents.

When forecasting, companies and analysts use non-GAAP earnings per share, which exclude some extraordinary expenses. On a non-GAAP basis, eBay reported net income of $725 million, or 55 cents a share.

Here’s a breakdown of how the three units performed:

• Marketplaces

The division, which includes both its auction and full-priced merchandise, saw gross merchandise volume increase 12 percent year over year to $16 billion. In particular, its fixed-priced business grew 18 percent.

• PayPal

PayPal revenue increased 32 percent year over year to $1.3 billion, driven by increased penetration on eBay as well as more merchant adoption.

• GSI Commerce

The GSI business, which was acquired last year and provides services to third-party retailers, generated $715 million in merchandise sales, up 26 percent over the same period a year earlier.

In Q2, the company expects revenues to continue to grow in the range of $3.25 billion to $3.35 billion. It said earnings per share for the same period would range between 49 cents and 51 cents a share. Non-GAAP earnings would range between 53 cents and 55 cents.

The company also raised full-year guidance, saying that it expects revenues in the range of $13.8 to $14.1 billion, with GAAP earnings per share of $1.91 to $1.96.

Notes from the Conference Call:

• EBay’s CEO John Donahoe joins the call, and is very happy to report that all of eBay’s businesses are performing well.
• PayPal has opportunities online, on the mobile phone and, increasingly, offline. Donahoe noted that half of the payments division’s revenue came from outside the U.S. PayPal is being used for 76 percent of purchases on eBay, which achieves the company’s 2013 goal.
• Donahoe wants to talk about innovation: PayPal is now available in 2,000 stores around the country by swiping a PayPal card or entering a mobile phone number and PIN. “We have signed contracts with several additional retailers and will deploy over the next year,” he said.
• Donahoe brags that PayPal Here, which competes directly with Square, just launched and is already available globally (unlike Square).
• Donahoe addresses the executive shake-up at PayPal. It included the exit of former President Scott Thompson and head of product, Sam Shrauger, to Yahoo. David Marcus is the new president.
• The company’s marketplaces business is also growing, jumping 22 percent year over year, which Donahoe notes is faster than the e-commerce category overall.  StubHub, the company’s ticket marketplace, also launched in the U.K.
• And now, updates from GSI Commerce and X.commerce, the two divisions that are delivering services to retailers. They are also doing well! X.commerce, which is the newest, launched 2,000 new apps for retailers during the quarter.
• In summary, Donahoe is pleased!
• CFO Bob Swan is now giving a deadly boring recounting of the finances, despite the company’s stellar results.
• EBay is increasing full-year guidance by $100 million on the top line and 5 cents on the bottom line.
• In summary, Swan says he’s excited!
• Now for the Q&A.
• First question is about Home Depot and the rollout of payments to other retailers (of course, because it’s the sexy new thing …). Donahoe is very excited about it because it expands the opportunity for PayPal tremendously. He admits that consumers aren’t really using it because there’s been no advertising. In May, they’ll change that and try to get more engagement. In the interim, it is also working with other retailers, and in the second half of the year, they’ll be launching those as a way to test and learn. “I feel good about our progress,” he said. “We’ll be ready in 2013 and 2014 to roll out in new categories and internationally.”
• Surprisingly good question from analyst: Will banks make eBay pay more for accounts tied to checking accounts in the future? The answer: They don’t worry about it and the Fed sets the rates. “We do not expect the Fed to make any changes to rates. If anything, we would expect the trend of going down to continue.” They also think they can use PayPal’s scale to get really competitive rates, and they have four more years left on the contract. In the worst-case scenario, even if its costs went up 5x, it’s less than a point of operating margin on PayPal, but they don’t expect that to happen.
• Why is marketplaces doing better? Donahoe says customer retention is up, and over the past six months, they’ve been marketing. Active buyer growth is up 9.5 percent in core marketplaces business.
]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120418/ebays-stock-jumps-thanks-to-double-digit-revenue-gains/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120330/paypals-new-leader-to-bring-entrepreneurial-vibe-to-payments/ http://allthingsd.com/20120330/paypals-new-leader-to-bring-entrepreneurial-vibe-to-payments/#comments Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:00:34 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=191264 David Marcus’s self-proclaimed interests include mobile, payments, technology and getting stuff done.

True to his word, the entrepreneur has done a lot in the past eight months.

He sold his start-up to eBay for $240 million; became PayPal’s VP of Mobile; and launched PayPal’s mobile payments service, called Here. Now, he’s been named president of PayPal. The position opened up in January, after Scott Thompson stepped down to become CEO of Yahoo.

Now, with his appointment, Marcus’s list of things to do grows a lot longer.

In an interview, eBay CEO John Donohoe emphasized that what PayPal needs more than ever is an entrepreneur at the helm, one who can take advantage of all the opportunities that lie ahead.

“It’s the right time for PayPal to combine the global scale and reach with a product guy and entrepreneur like David, who is going to take PayPal to the next level,” he said.

PayPal, which is eBay’s fastest-growing division, is pushing into two new hot areas: Mobile payment and point-of-sale.

Mobile payments are taking off as people shop online from their phones and tablets, while offline is a massive opportunity dominated by the Visas and MasterCards of the world.

It’s hard to put a dollar figure on the market opportunity, but PayPal tries putting it in perspective.

In mobile alone, it expects payment volume to hit $7 billion this year, up from $150 million in 2009. For point-of-sale, it will double PayPal’s $70 billion business if it captures 2 percent of all sales. If it captures 4 percent, it will triple it.

Before joining PayPal, Marcus was the founder and CEO of Zong, a mobile payments company that was building a platform that allowed users to charge purchases to their carrier bill. Today, PayPal uses Zong’s platform for mobile payments, and is also leveraging it for its offline payments business. For instance, when using PayPal to pay at the register, users don’t need to have their wallet or phone with them. They can simply enter a phone number and PIN to pay. That technology is live today at more than 2,000 Home Depots.

Donahoe said he was impressed by Marcus when eBay was still in talks to acquire Zong.

“He really felt deeply that if he could get Zong to PayPal’s scale that we could do extraordinary things,” Donohoe said. “From the moment he joined, it’s been fun to watch an innovator who’s been recognizing that he can innovate at scale.”

Over the past seven months, Marcus has been charged with the launch of PayPal Here, which allows small-to-medium-size merchants to accept payments using a small dongle plugged into a smartphone. The service, which launched earlier this month, is nearly identical to a service offered by Square, a start-up founded by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey.

Marcus said he was really impressed with how fast it was to launch such a complicated product that required encryption and compliance on a global scale. In the first 24 hours, the company signed up more than 1,000 businesses an hour for Here.

“The organization came together, and we built it really quickly,” he said. “I’m excited in this new capacity. If we innovate at scale, we can change the world in a meaningful way.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120330/paypals-new-leader-to-bring-entrepreneurial-vibe-to-payments/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120329/ebay-promotes-david-marcus-to-fill-top-vacancy-at-paypal/ http://allthingsd.com/20120329/ebay-promotes-david-marcus-to-fill-top-vacancy-at-paypal/#comments Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:52:41 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=191144 PayPal has appointed David Marcus to the position of president, filling the vacancy that was suddenly created when Scott Thompson left to become CEO of Yahoo.

Marcus joined PayPal in August 2011, after it acquired Zong, a leading mobile payments provider, where he was founder and CEO.

The appointment will be effective April 2, and Marcus will report directly to eBay’s President and CEO John Donahoe.

Since Marcus joined PayPal, he has served as the VP of mobile, responsible for leading the company’s mobile payments business. By appointing Marcus, the company is clearly emphasizing its mobile payments initiatives, which includes expanding into in-store payments at retail.

For instance, Home Depot recently rolled out PayPal to all of its nearly 2,000 stores nationwide, and PayPal is implementing its point-of-sale innovations with other national retailers this year.

In a statement, Donahoe said, “David is the right leader for PayPal. … He will bring start-up energy to PayPal’s unmatched global reach and digital payments capabilities. And he will sharpen PayPal’s focus on accelerating product innovation, driving consumer engagement and making paying anytime, anywhere through your digital wallet a safe, easy and convenient experience.”

Over the past year, Marcus worked on the development of PayPal Here, which is a card reader that can be plugged into mobile phones to accept credit card payments, much like Square, a competitor.

“Shopping is fun, but paying is not,” Marcus said in a statement. We’re off to a great start in 2012 with breakthrough products that will truly change the way everyone shops and pays.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120329/ebay-promotes-david-marcus-to-fill-top-vacancy-at-paypal/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120120/online-commerce-trend-more-spending-smaller-purchases/ http://allthingsd.com/20120120/online-commerce-trend-more-spending-smaller-purchases/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:22:03 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=165905 The average checkout size is shrinking, even though more people spent more money online this holiday season.

In November and December, the number of online transactions increased by 37 percent, and overall sales jumped by 25 percent. But the average ticket size declined by 9 percent, according to Chase Paymentech, which analyzes information across the top 50 e-commerce retailers.

As it turns out, more consumers are turning to e-commerce for more of their everyday spending, rather than reserving online purchases for big-ticket items.

Here are Chase’s three reasons for the decline:

• More consumers are purchasing digital media, which has a lower price point than most physical goods — MP3s cost less than CDs, e-books cost less than paperbacks, and apps cost less than game cartridges.
• Prices for popular electronics, such as tablets, e-readers and TVs, are falling.
• More retailers are offering free shipping, which eliminates the incentive to fill carts to reach a free-shipping threshold.



EBay, which is the first major e-commerce provider to report Q4 results, confirmed it was also seeing the trend. The company’s payments division, PayPal, reported smaller transactions during the fourth quarter across the merchants it serves.

John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, explained in an interview that the biggest driver of that trend was eBay’s acquisition of Zong, a mobile payments provider that powers the sale of digital goods. In addition, Donahoe said retailers, including eBay, heavily discounted products in order to drive more purchases this holiday.

Amazon, which is the leading e-commerce provider, also said that it is selling a lot of low-priced digital goods, ranging from e-books to MP3s.

Historically, the company has said that Christmas is the largest day of digital sales on Amazon.com, followed by Dec. 26. In 2010, from Christmas Eve through Dec. 30, Amazon customers purchased three times more digital content — including Kindle books, magazines, movies, TV shows, music and digital games — compared to the weekly average for the year.

Despite transactions declining overall, Chase identified two exceptions: Apparel and footwear rose 6 percent; toys rose 10 percent year over year.

(Amazon photo courtesy of thisisbossi)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120120/online-commerce-trend-more-spending-smaller-purchases/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120119/ebays-john-donahoe-literally-starts-hammering-out-the-plan-for-mobile-payments/ http://allthingsd.com/20120119/ebays-john-donahoe-literally-starts-hammering-out-the-plan-for-mobile-payments/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:00:33 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=165133 John Donahoe has a hammer, and he’s not afraid to use it.

The yellow-handled hammer, which the eBay CEO purchased at Home Depot using PayPal, signals that the company’s plans for entering the mobile payments business has entered the construction phase.

In an interview yesterday, Donahoe provided a few details about the company’s Home Depot trial and how it would expand from five to 51 stores across the country over the next week.

He also talked about his own experience of buying the tool earlier that morning. (Seen at right: Donahoe wielding his hammer.)

The company also announced fourth-quarter results yesterday, solidly beating both the company’s internal guidance and analyst expectations.



One of eBay’s big initiatives over the past year has been to find ways to work more closely with physical retailers by providing them with the technology they need to operate more efficiently online and offline. Over the past year, that has included buying 13 companies, for a total investment of $3.4 billion.

“We are right at the intersection of something that’s really cool,” Donahoe said. “This isn’t something that everyone sees, like social networking three years into it, when only the early people knew about it.”

What everyone is not seeing, he explains, is how retail and payments are two massive industries that are “at an inflection point where they will go through dramatic change.”

One major opportunity is payments being made at the cash register, and arguably many others see it, too, including Google, Visa, MasterCard and the wireless carriers, which are all working on their own solutions.

Interestingly, Donahoe was willing to put a price on it — and it’s huge.

If eBay is able to capture just 2 percent of the sales occurring at the point of sale, it will be able to double PayPal’s $70 billion business today. If they capture 4 percent, they’ll triple it.

Of course, that will take some time.

This year, eBay is focused on learning and testing out the technology in several trials; then, in 2013, it will begin to scale the business. In 2012, the company is not even factoring in a lift from point of sales in eBay’s revenue guidance.

The company’s big test will start later this week, when it expands its trial with Home Depot from five stores in the Bay Area to 51 stores in the Bay Area, Atlanta and Omaha.

Everything continues to be on track, despite the unexpected departure of PayPal President Scott Thompson. Thompson shocked Donahoe right after the New Year with the announcement that he was leaving to become CEO of Yahoo.

Donahoe declined to give an update on his plans to replace Thompson, saying that he was fine with serving the interim role in the meantime, and relying on the rest of the team PayPal has in place.

So far, Donahoe said, the mobile payments technology works flawlessly, based on his own experiences, but there’s still some additional scenarios they will have to consider.

Yesterday morning, he drove to a store in San Jose, where he consciously left his wallet and phone in the car.

He walked through the aisles to find a hammer and tape measure, and then went to check out, where the terminal gave him the option of checking out with PayPal. He entered his mobile phone number and PIN, and the transaction was completed, with the receipts sent to his phone and email.

“It was faster than swiping the card,” Donahoe said. “This is an advantage that PayPal has. No one else can do it with a mobile number and PIN. There was no fancy whiz-bang technology.”

Customers will also be given the option of paying with a PayPal credit card.

But not all the pieces are in place yet.

Coming soon: Users will be able to store their loyalty cards in their PayPal wallet, and will be able to receive personalized offers based on their shopping habits.

Also, it’s worth noting that while Donahoe checked out easily, there will be a learning curve for others. In advance of going to the store, users will have to associate a phone number and PIN with their account, and enable their account for in-store checkout.

Right now, there’s no contingency plans for if a person doesn’t have a PayPal account, or if it’s not set up. In fact, a very small percentage of the more than 100 million PayPal users have likely done that.

“That’s exactly why I say this is the year for trialing and learning,” Donahoe said, appropriately adjourning the interview with a bang of the hammer.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120119/ebays-john-donahoe-literally-starts-hammering-out-the-plan-for-mobile-payments/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120112/ebay-predicts-mobile-commerce-will-grow-60-percent-in-2012/ http://allthingsd.com/20120112/ebay-predicts-mobile-commerce-will-grow-60-percent-in-2012/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:24:08 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=163281 EBay’s John Donahoe has drawn his 2012 mobile predictions line in the sand.

He is forecasting that mobile commerce — purchases made from apps or the browser on a phone or tablet — will hit $8 billion in mobile gross merchandise volume this year, up 60 percent from $5 billion in 2011.

Donahoe made the predictions last night in Las Vegas, where he gave the keynote at a technology dinner for leaders of the Consumer Electronics Association.

Additionally, the company predicted that PayPal will reach $7 billion in mobile total payment volume this year, increasing from $4 billion in 2011.

He made the bold predictions despite the recent unsettling departure of PayPal President Scott Thompson to join Yahoo as CEO, indicating that he is still confident about PayPal’s mobile future.

During the keynote, Donahoe also announced that Best Buy was its newest partner to use the RedLaser barcode scanning app to offer local in-store pick-up services. Other companies that offer it today include Toys “R” Us.

Other big data figures: 

• EBay Mobile currently has more than 65 million downloads of its mobile applications across all platforms.
• More than 890,000 new eBay shoppers made their first eBay purchase through the company’s mobile apps in 2011, a 113 percent increase year over year.
• PayPal’s original prediction for 2011 was that it would achieve $1.5 billion in mobile total payment volume for 2011. Instead, it hit $4 billion. A year earlier, it totaled only $750 million.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120112/ebay-predicts-mobile-commerce-will-grow-60-percent-in-2012/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120106/paypals-first-mobile-payments-pilot-is-with-big-box-retailer-home-depot/ http://allthingsd.com/20120106/paypals-first-mobile-payments-pilot-is-with-big-box-retailer-home-depot/#comments Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:50:00 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=161112 On the heels of the announcement that PayPal was losing its top executive to Yahoo, a convenient leak today revealed the name of the big-box retailer PayPal is working with on its first point-of-sale trial.



In a note sent to investors today, Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, was the first to disclose the relationship between the eBay-owned company and Home Depot.

“We speculate that Home Depot may be one of the first retailers to roll out PayPal at the point of sale,” Luria said.

In a statement, a PayPal spokesperson confirmed the partnership: “We frequently run trials with our retail partners. In this case, PayPal and The Home Depot are engaged in a limited pilot program for new POS technologies. The pilot is currently being run in five stores and involves a small number of PayPal employees.”

Home Depot is obviously a huge win for PayPal, which until now had only provided online payment solutions to customers.

The pilot, which went live in December, allows employees to pay for items at the register using a PayPal-issued credit card or by entering their mobile phone number into the point-of-sale device at the register. Neither solution uses near field communication, which can be a limiting factor for adoption.

More pilots are expected to take place early this year, but PayPal has been reluctant to name its partners, because it wants the retailers to be the ones to make the announcement when they are ready.

On Wednesday, Yahoo officially announced that it had hired PayPal President Scott Thompson as its new CEO, shocking executives at eBay, including CEO John Donahoe.

In an interview, Donahoe downplayed Thompson’s role in the company’s emerging mobile payments business by saying that the whole team participated heavily in the 2012 plan.

Wedbush’s Luria concurred: “We do not believe Scott Thompson was instrumental to the Mobile Payments vision. It is our impression that although ‘Paypal at the POS (point of sale)’ was led by PayPal management, the holistic mobile payments vision was driven at the eBay Inc. level.”

On Wednesday, eBay’s stock sank nearly 4 percent to close at $30.16. Today, it closed at $30.63.

Luria has an “outperform” rating on the eBay stock, and a 12-month price target of $48 a share.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120106/paypals-first-mobile-payments-pilot-is-with-big-box-retailer-home-depot/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ceo-john-donahoe-talks-about-on-whats-next-for-ebays-paypal-after-scott-thompsons-surprise-exit-to-yahoo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ceo-john-donahoe-talks-about-on-whats-next-for-ebays-paypal-after-scott-thompsons-surprise-exit-to-yahoo/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:08:27 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=160170

In an interview this afternoon, eBay CEO John Donahoe confirmed that it was indeed a “shock” — as he wrote to staff in a memo — after returning from a long New Year’s weekend, to learn that the head of one of the online commerce giant’s key divisions, PayPal President Scott Thompson, was leaving to be CEO of Yahoo.

With only 15 hours’ notice before the planned announcement this morning by Yahoo — and even earlier, given that AllThingsD.com scooped the news last night — Donahoe had no time to inform the company, especially those working at PayPal.

Still, he was as cordial as he could be, given the circumstances.

“Scott is a great guy, and he did a great job at PayPal, and I am one of his biggest supporters,” said Donahoe — known at the company for his even-handed demeanor — despite being blindsided by the longtime eBay exec and also Yahoo. “I told him, ‘I hope you are very successful at Yahoo.’”

But the eBay leader, who noted that he prefers to avoid corporate drama, shrugged off the suggestion that there would be any animosity going forward with Yahoo.

“It’s not the timing that I would have liked. It would have been nice for him to be able to tell the team, but that’s neither here nor there,” Donahoe said. “It’s no big deal.”

He also said he’s not holding a grudge against Thompson.

“Scott wanted to be a CEO, and that’s great. He felt the opportunity wasn’t going to come along again. He had the best non-CEO job in the world, but he wanted to be a CEO, and wanted to go for it,” said Donahoe. “I get that, and there’s not that many CEO jobs coming up.”

Still, after the news broke, one senior Yahoo leader joked to AllThingsD that he was afraid to call Donahoe.

Indeed, now that Yahoo has nabbed Thompson from its crosstown Internet peer, Donahoe will have to move fast to fill the exec shoes now abruptly left empty.

That’s especially true since Thompson’s departure is occurring at a most inopportune time.



First the good news: The digital payments division, which has been the bright spot at eBay, is on target to have a record 2011 performance, and is set to roll out several significant initiatives this year.

But the big item on PayPal’s agenda is daunting, too: To challenge both incumbent payment providers, along with new entrants, such as Google, by creating a digital wallet that can be used for physical payments at retail.

Nonetheless, the most pressing order of business, obviously, is that Thompson will have to be replaced.

And that’s no small task. The seven-year PayPal veteran has a deep knowledge of the digital payments market, and has a track record of success. PayPal has continued on a breakneck pace over the last couple of years, with the division’s revenue now on track to surpass that of eBay.

In addition, Thompson — often described as likable with an easy-going personality — was the company’s most visible cheerleader on payments, eagerly talking to major retailers and convincing them to get on board with its next generation of services.

Now, while PayPal has a plan and a budget for 2012, there is currently no sole person to implement the vision.

Donahoe, who will head up PayPal in the interim, said he addressed the PayPal executive team in a meeting this morning, in an effort to keep the momentum going.

“I got together with the team this morning and we spent a couple of hours together. Rest assured that they are driving ahead collectively to implement the plan that they helped put together over the last year,” Donahoe said. “They have a clear set of 2012 priorities, and they are excited.”

He added: “There was a shock in the morning, but by noontime, it was full speed ahead.”

As an example, Donahoe said eBay had already reassigned five of the company’s top 15 strategic accounts that Thompson was responsible for. Donahoe will take a couple of those, as will eBay CFO Bob Swan, and Devin Wenig, president of eBay’s Marketplaces unit.

But make no mistake, there needs to be a Thompson replacement, and quickly.

PayPal does have a deep bench of executive talent, and any number of senior executives could step up to take the role, although it’s also likely that eBay will conduct an external search before coming to that conclusion.

“I won’t worry about what’s next until we’ve made it a couple weeks into the year and are hitting our milestones,” said Donahoe, who noted that the company’s vision was shared by the management team, and even though Thompson was the one communicating externally, “It was not a one-person plan whatsoever.”

Donahoe declined to elaborate any further on how eBay would conduct a search.

Thompson’s direct reports and key leaders include:



Ed Eger, SVP and GM of North America, core payments and emerging markets; John McCabe, SVP of worldwide operations and customer service; Patrick Dupuis, CFO; Gary Marino, SVP of credit products and risk, who joined through the acquisition of Bill Me Later; Mark Lavelle, VP of strategy and business development, also from Bill Me Later; Rupert Keeley, SVP of Asia Pacific; Sam Shrauger, VP of global product and experience; James Barrese, VP of product development; David Marcus, VP of mobile, who joined through the acquisition of Zong; and Ranjana Clark, SVP and chief customer and marketing officer.

And there is a fairly long list of companies for eBay to attempt to cherry-pick from.

One obvious company is Amazon, which has a competing payments division. If PayPal could legally pull it off, Matt Swann, VP and general manager of payments of Amazon, would be a prime candidate to run the company.

There are also other companies with payment talent — many of which are also situated near eBay in Silicon Valley — including Apple, Google, Facebook, VeriFone, Intuit and the traditional payments providers, such as Visa, MasterCard or American Express.

While analysts viewed Thompson’s departure as a negative, they were still largely optimistic about PayPal’s future.

Colin Sebastian of Baird Equity wrote in a note to investors that “the core PayPal consumer value proposition remains strong, in our view, and remains well positioned for long-term growth.”

Citi Analyst Mark Mahaney pointed out that Thompson’s departure comes on the heels of a number of PayPal executive departures, including Stephanie Tilenius and Osama Bedier, both of whom left for Google; and Lorrie Norrington, who left eBay for personal reasons.

Still, eBay’s stock dropped $1.18 a share, or nearly 4 percent, on the Thompson news, to close at $30.16.

It is interesting to note that eBay’s market cap hovers close to $40 billion, which is still twice Yahoo’s market valuation.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ceo-john-donahoe-talks-about-on-whats-next-for-ebays-paypal-after-scott-thompsons-surprise-exit-to-yahoo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ebays-john-donahoe-shocked-by-executives-departure-to-yahoo-internal-memo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ebays-john-donahoe-shocked-by-executives-departure-to-yahoo-internal-memo/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:33:11 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=159766 As Kara Swisher reported late last night and confirmed this morning, Yahoo has named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its new CEO.

Thompson, who is currently in charge of one of eBay’s fastest-growing divisions, PayPal, will start at Yahoo next week.

This morning, we got our hands on the internal memo that eBay’s CEO John Donahoe sent out to the troops.

In the letter, which is posted below, he called the move a “shock” to him and the company. But Donahoe has known about Thompson’s talks with Yahoo for a while, but was apparently surprised that he had been hired and only found out yesterday, as he noted in the letter below.

Thus, Donahoe will fill Thompson’s position temporarily, until a transition plan is in place.

Thompson’s departure is notable because he was arguably leading one of the more important initiatives inside San Jose-based PayPal.

In a recent interview with me, Thompson said: “We are doing something so big that it will change the face of payments.”

Well, apparently, he’s found something larger to bite off.

Thompson’s departure will likely be seen as a significant blow to eBay.

At the time of our conversation, Thompson had just addressed 150 merchants at a PayPal event in Los Angeles that included big names like Home Depot and Sports Authority. He spent the week convincing them that PayPal was their next big partner for online and in-store payments.

Over the past year, eBay has been restructuring its core shopping experience online, while nurturing its rapidly growing digital payments business. The timing couldn’t be worse. Right as mobile payments is destined to take off, PayPal has a magical combination of assets, consisting of contacts with the retailers, the technology, and an impressive base of customers already using its services.

At the same time, a host of other challenges are going after the space, like Google, the wireless carriers and the traditional payment companies.

PayPal has also struggled with retaining top talent, losing two executives to Google, so Thompson’s departure won’t help its reputation in that department.

Donahoe pledges that the impact of Thompson leaving will be limited: “We will not miss a beat. And we will continue driving the incredible momentum that each of you has helped to create.”

This morning, eBay’s stock is trading 3.4 percent lower at $30.23 a share.

Here’s Donahoe’s full letter:

 

To all PayPalians,

As you may already have seen, Yahoo! announced this morning that Scott Thompson is joining the company as CEO, effective immediately. Scott informed me Tuesday afternoon, saying that despite his passion for PayPal, this was an opportunity he felt he had to take. I know I speak for everyone in wishing Scott the best.

I will serve in the interim role as President and will be meeting with the PayPal leadership team this morning to plan a seamless transition. And while I’m sure Scott’s decision is a shock to many of you, as it was to me, there is one thing I am certain of: PayPal has an enormous opportunity in front of it and we will not slow down. We will not miss a beat. And we will continue driving the incredible momentum that each of you has helped to create.

PayPal had an outstanding 2011 and a strong close to the fourth quarter. PayPal’s vision is clear. Our strategies are set and we have a strong, focused leadership team in place. And across PayPal, we have you — an incredibly talented team, committed to creating the future of money and changing how the world shops and pays.

Let’s do it, and take this special business to the next level in 2012 and beyond.

John

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ebays-john-donahoe-shocked-by-executives-departure-to-yahoo-internal-memo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120104/confirmed-yahoo-names-paypal-head-scott-thompson-as-new-head/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/confirmed-yahoo-names-paypal-head-scott-thompson-as-new-head/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:08:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=159711

As I reported late last night, Yahoo said it had named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its new CEO. The exec is currently in charge of the large eBay online payments unit.

He’ll start next week, but there are staff conference calls today and also an all-hands meeting on Yahoo’s main Silicon Valley campus (meet at URLs, troops!) tomorrow.

Yahoo shares are down almost three percent on the news so far, as Wall Street has been hoping for a big sale of some sort and not another turnaround.

Yahoo will be holding a 7 am PT press conference about the move and presumably to swan around Thompson.

(Welcome, Scott! I hope you were informed — please do not listen to what co-founder Jerry Yang says on this important issue — that you are supposed to send all internal memos to me! Also, as one of my Twitter followers, Mike Dudas of Google just tweeted: “If Thompson leads companies as well as he grows a moustache, Yahoo made a great CEO choice!!” I concur.)

A Yahoo PR person confirmed the hire very cordially in a phone call early this morning and the Internet giant also put out a press release.

So did I, of a sort, last night. Given I am too tired to rewrite myself, here is what I had reported:

The company fired its last CEO, Carol Bartz, in September, and Yahoo has been run by the board and also by interim CEO Tim Morse, who had previously been its CFO.

After Bartz’s ouster, Yahoo said it was looking at a range of strategic options, including the possible sale of all or part of the company.

That was the focus at first, although Yahoo had simultaneously hired Heidrick & Struggles to look for a new CEO.

The company attracted two partial investment bids from private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital, but shareholders were unhappy with the low prices of these so-called PIPE — Private Investment in Public Equity — arrangements.

Yahoo then moved to try to strike a tax-advantaged deal with its long disgruntled Asian partners, China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s SoftBank, to sell back parts of the large stakes it has long owned in Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan.

Those complex negotiations are still ongoing and look promising, which could yield Yahoo billions of dollars in capital to be given to investors, for stock buybacks or to invest in new initiatives.

Since then, the board — long considered one of the more cloddish in tech — has turned its attention to hiring a new CEO, in the hopes of trying once again to revive its flagging fortunes.

Thus, it began looking to hire someone with deep tech experience at a large public consumer Internet company in Silicon Valley.

That narrowed the field, with Yahoo looking at a range of choices with expertise in advertising, technology platforms and more.

There is a lot of that on the deep bench that eBay CEO John Donahoe has assembled at the online commerce giant, including Thompson.

Plus, he is a genuine Internet geek.

According to his eBay bio, Thompson became president of PayPal in early 2008, after serving as its CTO in charge of information technology, product development and architecture.

Before eBay, he worked at Inovant, a subsidiary of Visa formed to oversee global technology for the organization. He was also CIO of Barclays Global Investors and has worked at Coopers and Lybrand on information technology.

And here’s a tasty new wrinkle: Thompson recently “liked” Yahoo on his Facebook page, along with the decidedly more interesting Kickstarter and Splunk.

Again, Scott, thanks for the Facebook tip — I knew the social networking site could come in handy!

(Also, here is an interview I did with him post-announcement.)

And here is Yahoo’s official press release where Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock says nice stuff about Thompson:

YHOO_News_2012_1_4_General


]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120104/confirmed-yahoo-names-paypal-head-scott-thompson-as-new-head/feed/ 0