eBay 2009 Annual Report Download - page 4

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We believe that improving the fundamentals of the eBay marketplace is also positioning us to compete and win in
the secondary market. We are increasingly moving new types of merchandise at high velocity, particularly through
our Daily Deals offers and Fashion Vault pilots. In 2010, our intent is to make eBay the best place to sell online and
a preferred shopping destination for buyers, especially in the most important retail product categories.
Across the Marketplaces segment, our adjacent e-commerce formats gained momentum. StubHub had
another fantastic year, particularly in Q4, with revenues up 54 percent over the same period in 2008. High-profile
concerts and sporting events drove ticket demand on our site, leading to increased market share. Our classifieds
business was also strong, up 20 percent in 2009 as we strengthened our global footprint. We saw promising early
results from initiatives in Spain, France, Germany and Italy that integrated our local classifieds offerings with the
core eBay business and eBay brand. We expect these initiatives to drive innovation in other markets in 2010.
We accelerated innovation across eBay Inc. to connect buyers and sellers in new ways. In addition to PayPal
opening its platform to third-party developers, our efforts in mobile commerce have put us in a strong leadership
position in this nascent business. As one example of our progress, the eBay mobile app for iPhone had been
downloaded almost seven million times as of January 2010, making it one of the top apps in the iTunes store at the
time.
Beyond downloading our app, consumers are shopping more and more via their mobile phones: In 2009, more
than $600 million worth of sales were transacted through our mobile applications. We intend to continue to
innovate in mobile commerce in 2010 and provide consumers other convenient ways to buy, sell and find the best
deals on eBay with their smart phones and other devices.
Within our organization, we focused on implementing smarter, more disciplined ways of operating. This
approach is designed to help us meet our goal of reducing our cost structure by a cumulative $2 billion over a
three-year period – a commitment we made at Analyst Day in March of 2009. We remain on track to achieve this
goal, and have reinvested our savings into customer experience, trust, marketing and technology. In addition, we
generated strong operating cash flow of $2.9 billion during 2009 and ended the year with $5.2 billion in cash,
cash equivalents and non-equity investments.
While we’re proud of the progress we made in 2009, we know we can do more in 2010, our 15th
anniversary year. Our company was founded on the premise that individual actions, taken collectively, can have
lasting impact. You’ve seen how this works in our business: We enable a buyer to access deals on a wide
selection of goods on the Web. We provide the platform and tools for anyone to easily start or grow a business
online. We enable anyone to pay or get paid almost anywhere in the world – without paper.
As a global e-commerce company, our mission is to connect buyers and sellers. To us, this is both an opportunity
and a responsibility … we’ve seen first-hand how individual actions can make a positive difference in the world.
In 2010, you’ll see this ethos at work in everything we do, not just in our core businesses. We intend to drive
awareness and membership for the eBay Green Team, which launched publicly in 2009 and is helping the
company and millions of consumers make smarter, greener choices. We intend to operate in more efficient and
sustainable ways, delivering on our commitment to energy efficiency and exploring innovative renewable energy
technologies. We’ll continue to empower our employees to give back to their local communities through the
eBay Foundation. And we will encourage individual giving through eBay Giving Works and PayPal Nonprofits,
both of which help charitable organizations by providing easy and immediate fundraising solutions.
At the heart of our business and all of these efforts is our founding principle: People are basically good. After 15
years of seeing the good that people can do with our technology and innovations, we’ve never believed this more.
On behalf of the 16,400 people worldwide who make up eBay Inc., thank you for believing it, too.
Pierre Omidyar
Founder and Chairman of the Board John Donahoe
President and CEO