Dive Brief:
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EBay has downsized its global workforce for the second time this year, a spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.
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The marketplace is slashing its global staff by 9%, with cuts impacting all regions where it operates.
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That affects more than 1,000 people and comes after cutting 800 roles in February.
Dive Insight:
EBay has offered only a vague rationale for this latest round of downsizing, saying that it will help further its goals.
“Yesterday we shared the difficult news that we plan to reduce a portion of our workforce. As we work to capture the significant opportunity ahead, this step was taken to ensure we continue to operate from a position of strength by aligning our teams and resources with our top strategic priorities,” a company spokesperson said in an email to Retail Dive Wednesday. “We are grateful for the contributions of these colleagues, and are committed to supporting them through this transition with care and respect.”
During a conference call with analysts in August, CEO Jamie Iannone reiterated the company’s strategy as built on focus categories like collectibles; consumer-to-consumer sales; and sales of preowned and refurbished items. Those three provided more than 70% of the marketplace’s gross merchandise volume in Q2, he said.
Financially the company is on solid ground, even after acquiring U.K. secondhand marketplace Depop from Etsy for $1.4 billion earlier this year. Announced in February, shortly before making its first round of job cuts, the deal closed over the summer.
Otherwise in Q2, revenue rose 15% to $3.1 billion, with GMV also up 15% to $22.4 billion. Net income from continuing operations rose over 50% to $552 million. The results beat UBS and other analyst expectations.
In April eBay scrambled to fix technical hiccups that brought its site down entirely at some points, though any impact of the glitch was likely minimal, as executives didn’t discuss it during their August call.
But the company is well positioned in the AI race, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley. In a report last month they list Amazon and eBay among the best positioned when it comes to “partnering with next generation horizontal platform agents.”
EBay reports its Q3 results next week.
