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Good day, everyone. My name is Megan, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome you to the eBay First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to John Egbert, Vice President of Investor Relations.
Good afternoon. Thank you all for joining us for eBay's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today on the call are Jamie Iannone, our Chief Executive Officer; and Peggy Alford, our Chief Financial Officer. We're providing a slide presentation to accompany our commentary during the call, which is available through the Investor Relations section of the eBay website at investors.ebayinc.com.
Before we begin, I'll remind you that during this conference call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP measures related to our performance. You can find the reconciliation of these measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures in our accompanying slide presentation. Additionally, all growth rates noted in our prepared remarks will reflect organic FX-neutral year-over-year comparisons, and all earnings per share amounts reflect earnings per diluted share, unless indicated otherwise. All year-over-year growth rates versus 2025 and are also based on recast financials reflecting our adoption of the new internally developed software accounting guidance in 2026. During this conference call, management will make forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding our future performance and expected financial results.
These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Our actual results may differ materially from our forecast for a variety of reasons. You can find more information about risks, uncertainties and other factors that could affect our operating results in our most recent periodic reports on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and our earnings release from earlier today. You should not rely on any forward-looking statements.
All information in this presentation is as of April 29, 2026. We do not intend and undertake no duty to update that information. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jamie.
Thanks, John. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today. I am pleased to report we're off to a very strong start in 2026. Our first quarter results exceeded our guidance and consensus estimates across the board despite ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty across many of our major markets. During Q1, gross merchandise volume rose by 14% over $22 billion while revenue grew 17% to more than $3 billion.
Strong flow-through of this top line momentum led to 18% year-over-year growth in non-GAAP operating income, which reached over $900 million. Our non-GAAP earnings per share increased by 21% year-over-year to $1.66. These strong top and bottom line results were driven by a broad-based GMV acceleration across all of our major categories, alongside improved year-over-year trends across most of our key geographies. Our most established strategic priorities now make up approximately 70% of our total GMV. This includes focused categories, our consumer-to-consumer or C2C business, and e-commerce, which is made up of pre-owned and refurbished items.
These priority areas each individually grew faster than overall GMV in Q1. And collectively, they grew in the high teens year-over-year. reflecting the impact of our strategic investments over the last several years. Our focus categories continue to build momentum in Q1, with GMV growth accelerating to 24% and reflecting the benefits of our continued investments in trust, product experience improvements and full funnel marketing. The collectibles category was the largest contributor to GMV growth in Q1, and reflecting broad-based momentum across the category, the 30th anniversary of Pokemon in late February, fueled significant enthusiasm that translated into strong demand on our platform, which we supported through coordinated activations across our core marketplace, eBay Live, TCG Player and Golden.
Sports trading card GMV growth accelerated notably in Q1 and was a larger contributor to GMV growth in Pokemon, as we benefited from strong late-season demand for the NFL and NBA as well as 2026 releases for Major League Baseball. Outside of trading cards, we observed strong GMV growth across much of our broader collectibles offering, including in right to in areas like collectible coins, toys, action figures and comic books. We also saw a transitory benefit to GMV growth from gold and silver bullion in response to precious metal prices. But this demand began to normalize in late Q1 as expected and should revert to historical levels in Q2. Within our off-platform marketplaces, TCG player growth remained strong, and golden growth accelerated as it reached a new quarterly GMV record in Q1. Golden facilitated several landmark sales during the quarter including a Pokemon Pikachu Illustrator card that's sold for over $16 million, officially becoming the most valuable trading card ever sold at auction.
To further support our trading card enthusiast, we continue to enhance our AI-powered card scanning feature, which recently surpassed 30 million cumulative scans. This tool allows users to scan a single photo to instantly identify card. Surfacing historical prices and population data to help enthusiasts trade with confidence. In Q1, we expanded the card scanning feature beyond sports to cover our top 5 collectible card game genres including Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering and One Piece.
Overall, our continued investments in both on and off platform experiences are deepening engagement with collectibles enthusiasts. Through our innovation across multiple sports, genres, buying formats and price points, we are further solidifying eBay as a premier global shopping destination for the hobbyist immunity. Importantly, the momentum we observed in Q1 extended well beyond collectibles as the remainder of our U.S. business also delivered double-digit GMV growth and outpaced broader e-commerce benchmarks. Our motors, parts and accessories business, or PNA, delivered its strongest quarter of year-over-year GMV growth since 2021, contributing approximately 2 points of growth to our overall marketplace in Q1. Our guaranteed FIT program has meaningfully increased conversion on fitment enabled listings in the U.S., U.K. and German markets, helping fuel the strongest quarter of P&A GMV growth we have seen in several years.
Given the success we've seen in our initial markets, we recently expanded guaranteed fit to Australia, helping further solidify our online P&A leadership in this market by giving motors enthusiasts, the confidence to tackle their most complex projects knowing they'll have the right part for the job every time or their money back. We also recently strengthened our P&A value proposition with the acquisition of Aladin Systems, a U.K.-based software provider for salvage yards. We expect this acquisition to bring more recycled P&A inventory onto the eBay platform, which provides value for cost-conscious consumers and supports the circular economy.
Our acquisition of Caramel, a little over a year ago is helping us bring in more comprehensive eBay Motors offering by combining the strength of our scaled P&A business with our nascent but fast-growing vehicles business. We see meaningful opportunities for synergies between these businesses as they are highly complementary. Each vehicle sold on eBay creates a natural opportunity for future engagement in P&A. As buyers return to the marketplace to maintain, repair and personalize their vehicles.
In vehicles, our secure fully digital transaction capabilities are driving improvements across the purchase funnel. And we are seeing encouraging traction as we expand from our initial focus on C2C transactions to begin serving small dealerships as well. While it's far earlier in its journey than P&A, vehicles continues to scale month-over-month and exited Q1 at an annualized GMV run rate in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In fashion, we are building on the momentum we initially created by enhancing trust across high ASP categories like watches, handbags, jewelry, sneakers and streetwear through authenticity guarantee.
More recently, we've expanded authenticity guarantee eligibility to a wider selection of pre-loved and luxury apparel, shoes and accessories for a more complete head-to-toe value proposition for fashion enthusiasts. After diversifying our brand and inventory coverage in the U.K. and Germany last year, we followed suit in the U.S. during Q1 by expanding authenticity guarantee to more than 70 shoe and fashion accessory brands. We've also improved our value proposition for fashion e-commerce by streamlining and calibrating garment sizing across global standards. These changes have simplified the listing process for sellers removed a major point of friction for buyers and contributed to a measurable increases in quality views, bought items and conversion velocity in fashion.
Our breadth and depth of selection in branded pre-loved fashion inventory is also key to our relevance in the category. Our AI tools like the latest generation of magic listing experience are making it dramatically simpler for sellers to list pre-loved fashion items on eBay, helping drive a mid-teens year-over-year increase in casual fashion listers in Q1. At the same time, we are strengthening our position in fashion by using community to build greater awareness and consideration with enthusiasts. -- eBay Live is becoming a meaningful driver of GMV in certain fashion categories. And in March, we held our first direct from brand live shopping event with Marks & Spencer in the U.K.
Our second annual Vogue Vintage market events in the U.S. and U.K. were another strong example of how curated events elevate eBay's relevance in prelude fashion. We are consistently showing up at the cultural moments that matter most to fashion enthusiasts, including the Grammys, the Oscars and Berlin Fashion Week during Q1. We've also driven engagement through our sponsorships of the new Saturday Night Live and Love Island: All Stars programming in the U.K. Taken together, these efforts are making eBay a more compelling destination for enthusiasts and helped accelerate overall fashion GMV growth in Q1, including healthy double-digit growth across our fashion focused categories in aggregate.
Our consumer-to-consumer or C2C business remains one of the most important strategic priorities. C2C sellers bring the unique hard-to-find inventory that differentiates eBay and strengthens our position in e-commerce. Multiple years of investment have reduced friction and helped reinvigorate growth in a segment that makes up more than [ 1/4 ] of our total GMV. We saw the momentum continue in Q1 as C2C delivered double-digit GMV growth across the U.S., U.K. and Germany, meaningfully outpacing B2C growth in those markets.
We believe this momentum reflects the enhanced value proposition for consumer sellers in the markets with reduced transactional friction, driving a healthier sell-to-buy flywheel. In May, we plan to revamp our consumer selling experience in Australia, our fourth largest market by demand. We will remove selling fees for consumer sellers in Australia and introduce a buyer-facing fee on C2C transactions. While also tailoring our seller segmentation and manage shipping service to cater to local market dynamics.
Similar to our C2C initiatives in the U.K. and Germany, our goal is to reduce friction for casual sellers, increase our supply of differentiated inventory and ultimately unlock a larger addressable market opportunity. Another area where we are seeing strong momentum is eBay Live. In categories where trust storytelling and community are central to the purchase experience. eBay Live gives sellers a powerful way to showcase unique inventory and engage buyers in real time. while helping us bring more customers into high-value enthusiast experiences. Now operating in 7 markets globally, eBay Live continues to scale rapidly, with an annual GMV run rate more than 8x higher year-over-year in recent weeks.
We supported that momentum in Q1 through strong growth in programming across a diverse mix of categories, and improved event discovery throughout the eBay mobile app, including the recent addition of an eBay live button on the bottom navigation for U.S. users on iOS. In Q1, we hosted our first live stream shopping event outside of the holidays as our 48 hours of drops event in the U.S. set a new daily record for eBay Live GMV, with each day outpacing our previous record on Black Friday by 60%. We also saw impressive results internationally where local 24-hour events in the U.K. and Germany each reached 7-figure daily GMV milestones, proving that our live stream playbook is effectively capturing enthusiast demand across geographies.
We continue to leverage our AI capabilities to reimagine core experiences across the marketplace. For sellers, the latest generation of our magical listing experience uses our proprietary models, product knowledge graph and 30 years of marketplace data to do much of the hard work of creating a listing from guiding sellers on which photos to take to generating key details like titles, categories, item specifics and pricing. The U.S. rollout of this experience has been one of the most impactful launches we've had in years as it has driven a greater than 50% increase in new listing creation rate double-digit percentage increases in sold items and GMV per lister, stronger retention and a material increase in estimated customer lifetime value for these sellers.
Based on these compelling results, in the U.S. market, we began expanding this experience to new and reactivated listers in Germany in April, where early AB tests are showing directionally similar uplift on key seller KPIs as the U.S. launch which gives us confidence to extend this experience to more countries and seller segments in the coming months. For buyers, our genetic search beta is creating a more intuitive and conversational way to shop by allowing customers to refine results through natural language and a multi-turn dialogue much like working with a personal shopper that understands their sizes, styles and brand preferences.
While still early, we have observed some encouraging learnings from this beta as we're seeing approximately 50% more search engagement in sessions utilizing AI-powered refinements, which is ultimately translating into double-digit percentage increases in purchase behavior. These innovations are just 2 examples of our transition to an AI-native marketplace. By embedding these capabilities into the core of our platform, we are fundamentally changing the pace at which we can remove friction, unlock supply and drive long-term value for our enthusiasts. We are also extending the reach of our marketplace through partnerships, following a successful pilot of eBay inventory and Facebook Marketplace search results last quarter, this integration has transitioned to general availability. eBay inventory is now enabled in the search box for the majority of Facebook Marketplace users in the U.S., Germany and France.
This integration further enhances the visibility of our differentiated inventory to Facebook's scaled audience, which can drive qualified incremental traffic to our sellers' eBay listings. Our search integration complements our existing presence in the marketplace feed for a subset of users where we continue to iterate on the experience and gather valuable learnings. Now turning to shipping. Shipping solutions are a major focus for us this year as we leverage our scale and expertise to help sellers tap and demand across borders amid an increasingly complex trade policy landscape.
In Q1, we continued to scale eBay International shipping in Canada following its Q4 launch, and we expanded access to SpeedPAK for sellers in Germany and 6 other markets. Our SpeedPAK partnership continues to perform well in Greater China and Japan as these capabilities are becoming increasingly important as cross-border trade grows more complex. Before concluding my prepared remarks, I'm proud to share that eBay was once again recognized as one of Fortune's most innovative companies. In January, we also released eBay's inaugural climate transition plan, a company-wide road map to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. This plan reflects how we are well positioned to drive sustainable commerce at scale and as a result, creating during value for our customers, communities and the planet.
In closing, we delivered a very strong start to 2026 with results that exceeded our expectations and reflected broad-based momentum across the marketplace. A few key themes stand out from the quarter. First, our strategic priorities are driving the majority of our GMV growth. Focused categories, C2C and e-commerce now represent approximately 70% of our total GMV and continue to gain share through our disciplined execution which enhances our long-term resilience and strengthens the structural growth profile of our marketplace.
Second, our GMV growth is broad-based and extends well beyond any single category. While collectibles continues to outperform we saw improved trends across all of our major categories, including accelerating GMV growth across eBay Motors, electronics and fashion, eBay Live continues to scale rapidly across a diverse group of categories and we're in the early stages of realizing valuable synergies between P&A and vehicles. Third, we are progressing from AI-powered optimizations to building fully AI native experiences on eBay. We're increasingly embedding AI in the foundational elements of our marketplace to remove friction, unlock supply at scale and deliver more personalized and relevant products to our customers.
While the macro environment remains dynamic, as I look toward the balance of 2026, I'm confident in the sustainability of our underlying business trends and the durable foundation we've established to support long-term growth. With that, I'll turn the call over to Peggy to provide more details on our financial performance. Peggy, over to you.
Thank you, Jamie. I'll begin with our financial highlights for the first quarter. GMV grew by 14% to $22.2 billion. Revenue grew 17% to $3.09 billion.
Our non-GAAP operating income grew 18% year-over-year to $907 million. Non-GAAP earnings per share grew 21% year-over-year to $1.66. And we returned $639 million to shareholders through repurchases and cash dividends. Let's take a closer look at the key drivers of our strong Q1 performance. GMV grew over 14% to $22.2 billion on an organic FX-neutral basis.
Foreign exchange provided a tailwind of approximately 400 basis points to spot GMV growth. We saw a broad-based strength this quarter with year-over-year growth improving sequentially across all our major categories with most contributing positively to GMV growth, led by collectibles, eBay Motors, electronics and fashion. Focus category GMV grew 24% in the quarter and outpaced the remainder of our marketplace by 15 percentage points. Shifting to our major geographies.
U.S. GMV growth was particularly strong in Q1, up nearly 27% driven by a broad-based acceleration across categories. Strength extended beyond collectibles while the remainder of our U.S. business also delivered double-digit GMV growth and outpaced broader e-commerce benchmarks. Several of our strategic initiatives contributed more meaningfully to growth than prior quarters. eBay Live and C2C were each larger contributors and exports from the U.S. to our international markets also accelerated, supported by improvements to our eBay International shipping program and a weaker U.S. dollar.
In addition, our year-over-year growth continued to benefit from lower funnel marketing efficiencies and our Conner partnership. International GMV growth also accelerated in Q1 and grew over 2% on an organic FX-neutral basis, with foreign exchange providing a tailwind of 70 basis points to spot GMV growth. While macroeconomic conditions remain challenging in our largest international markets, we are investing effectively in areas where we have a right to win. Focus categories, C2C and eBay Live each contributed to improved growth in the U.K. and Germany.
We also saw cross-border growth recover across key regions like Greater China and Japan reinforcing the benefits of our investments in shipping solutions, which are making it easier for buyers and sellers to transact globally amid a more complex trade environment. Next, let's look at our buyer metrics. Our trailing 12-month active buyers grew 1% to nearly $136 million in Q1, including buyers from recently acquired ties. On an organic basis, active buyers were over $135 million, also up 1% year-over-year.
Higher growth was especially strong in the U.S., accelerating to nearly 6% in the quarter. Enthusiast buyers remained at roughly $16 million, but grew by nearly 2% year-over-year and spend exceeded $3,400 on a trailing 12-month basis. In the U.S. market, enthusiast buyers grew even faster at 8% year-over-year. Now turning to our income statement.
We generated revenue of $3.09 billion up 17% on an organic FX-neutral basis, with foreign exchange providing a tailwind of 260 basis points to spot growth. Our take rate was 13.9% in Q1 and up modestly year-over-year. Tailwinds from advertising, shipping initiatives and lapping of our U.K. C2C buyer fee rollout in the prior year were partially offset by rapid growth in eBay Live in ongoing category and ASP mix changes.
Additionally, foreign exchange was a headwind of approximately 20 basis points to our reported take rate year-over-year. Total advertising revenue was $581 million, representing GMV penetration of over 2.6%. First-party adds grew 28% to $555 million. Promoted Listings comprised over $1.2 billion of the over $2.5 billion total listings on eBay and 5.2 million sellers adopted at least 1 promoted listing product during the quarter.
In addition, off-platform adds grew 29%, while third-party display ads declined as expected due to our continued deprecation of these legacy ad units. Revenue from our shipping programs grew in the double digits during Q1 and is becoming a more significant contributor to our take rate. Our shipping solutions are also strategically important as they leverage eBay's scale and expertise to reduce costs and complexity, improve trust and increase conversion and overall sales velocity. We intend to further scale our shipping initiatives, including managed shipping solutions for domestic C2C sales and cross-border solutions through EIS and our partnership with SpeedPAK.
Moving to our profitability and earnings. Non-GAAP gross margin was 74.6% in the first quarter, up 1 point year-over-year driven primarily by lower cost of payments and operational efficiencies. In addition, gross margin benefited from our U.K. managed shipping program, switching from gross to net revenue recognition on January 1, which I discussed last quarter. Our non-GAAP operating income grew 18% to $907 million in Q1, reflecting our ability to balance continued investment in our strategic priorities with strong flow-through to earnings.
Sales and marketing expense increased in the quarter, primarily reflecting higher marketing investment behind strategic priorities like C2C and eBay Live as well as incremental spending to capitalize on favorable returns in lower funnel marketing. Transaction losses increased as expected in Q1, and reflecting newer shipping programs and customer experience enhancements. We were encouraged to see loss trends improve toward the end of the quarter, and we continue to expect these shipping programs to follow a typical curve with higher losses initially that moderate over time as we learn and optimize.
Non-GAAP earnings per share was $1.66, up 21% and GAAP earnings per share was $1.12. Shifting to our balance sheet and capital allocation. We generated free cash flow of $898 million in the first quarter and ended the period with cash and fixed income investments of $5.1 billion and gross debt of $6.7 billion on our balance sheet. Our equity investments and warrants were valued at roughly $770 million. In March, we received approximately $190 million from Aurelia's shareholder distribution.
This return of capital reduced the carrying value of our [ Orolia ] investment to approximately $470 million at the end of Q1. We repurchased $500 million of eBay shares in Q1 at an average price of approximately $90 and paid a quarterly cash dividend of $139 million in March or $0.31 per share. Our pending acquisition of Depop is now expected to close by the end of the third quarter of 2026. We have received regulatory clearances for the transaction in the U.S. and Germany, and reviews are in progress and on track in other markets, including the U.K. and Australia. Now turning to our outlook, starting with the second quarter.
We expect GMV between $21.3 billion and $21.7 billion, representing total FX-neutral growth between 8% and 10% year-over-year. Based on current exchange rates, we estimate FX would represent a roughly 100 basis point tailwind to spot GMV growth. Our Q2 guidance reflects continued broad-based GMV growth within our strategic priorities and incremental contributions from live and vehicles. Our guidance also contemplates lapping dynamics from lower funnel marketing efficiencies and our U.S.
Carna partnership which became noticeable growth drivers during Q2 of last year. These factors, combined with gold and silver bullion volume reverting to historical levels in Q2 and account for the majority of the implied year-over-year growth deceleration from Q1 to Q2. We forecast revenue to be between $2.97 billion and $3.03 billion in Q2, implying total FX-neutral growth of 8% to 10% year-over-year. Based on current exchange rates, we estimate FX would represent a roughly 120 basis point tailwind to spot revenue growth. We expect non-GAAP operating income growth between 6% and 10% year-over-year in Q2, implying non-GAAP operating margin between $27.6 and 28.1%.
Our guidance contemplates a healthy balance between investment and strategic priorities with strong flow-through of operating leverage to the bottom line. We forecast non-GAAP earnings per share between $1.46 and $1.51, representing year-over-year growth between 7% and 11%. The Next, I'll share some updated thoughts on the full year, excluding the impact of the pending Depop acquisition, which I will discuss separately. For 2026, we are now planning our business around year-over-year GMV growth between 7% and 7.5% on an FX-neutral basis.
This updated view reflects the strong momentum we are seeing across our business, balanced against more challenging comparisons as we move through the year, including lapping considerations from the prior year and moderation of some of the category-specific tailwinds we have discussed on this call. We continue to expect revenue growth to be in line to slightly ahead of GMV for the full year on an FX-neutral basis as healthy growth in advertising and shipping revenue is expected to be partially offset by mix shifts in our business, including higher growth contributions from live and vehicles. We are now anticipating non-GAAP operating income growth of between 9% and 11% for the full year, reflecting our stronger GMV and revenue expectations.
As we have noted previously, when our business outperforms, we will continue to evaluate opportunities to reinvest a portion of that upside into our strategic priorities to further strengthen our marketplace and drive future growth. We continue to expect non-GAAP earnings growth to be relatively in line with non-GAAP operating income in 2026. We anticipate our lower cash balance and higher interest expense would pressure the net interest and other line items year-over-year, partially offsetting the tailwind from our share repurchases. We continue to expect a non-GAAP tax rate of 17.5% for the full year which is 1 percentage point higher than our tax rate in 2025. Our capital allocation outlook remains unchanged.
We forecast capital expenditures to be between 4% and 5% of revenue for 2026. We are targeting roughly $2 billion of share repurchases for the full year. In addition, our board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.31 per share for the second quarter to be paid in June. As I noted earlier, we expect our pending acquisition of Depop to close by the end of Q3. Given the updated time line, we expect Depop to contribute approximately 1 percentage point to total FX-neutral GMV growth year-over-year in 2026. From a profitability perspective, we expect the acquisition would represent a low single-digit headwind to the 9% to 11% operating income growth we anticipate for the core eBay marketplace, which includes planned investments in Depop and integration costs.
We would also expect the Depop acquisition to dilute our non-GAAP earnings per share growth by low single digits with the EPS impact modestly higher than operating income due to foregone interest income from the cash used for this transaction. In closing, we're encouraged by our strong start to the year and the broad-based momentum across the business. Our results reflect continued execution within our established strategic priorities and strong returns on our investments in emerging growth vectors like eBay Live and vehicles. As we look ahead, we remain committed to balancing disciplined investments in areas that can strengthen our business over time with continued earnings growth and thoughtful capital allocation.
Overall, we feel very good about the path ahead and our ability to create long-term value for our shareholders. With that, Jamie and I will now take your questions.
[Operator Instructions]. Our first question will come from Nikhil Devnani with Bernstein.
Jamie, I was hoping you could help bridge the gap between that 6% U.S. buyer growth number and the GMV number, which was much higher than that. What have you seen on order frequency trends relative to ASP growth? And I guess bigger picture is the funnel for new buyers that are coming to eBay expanding again?
Yes, it is. And we're encouraged by what we're seeing with our buyers. And we see even more positive signals when you look at the underlying trend. So while global active buyers increased by 1% year-over-year and enthusiast buyers grew by 2% year-over-year, that really doesn't tell the whole story.
Our U.S. buyer growth has been much stronger at 6% year-over-year. and U.S. enthusiast buyers grew even faster at 8%. We've also talked about our mid-value buyers, Nikhil. And what we've seen is they've also grown year-over-year every quarter since the beginning of 2024 consistently outpacing our total active buyer growth, which really suggests strong trends beneath the service. That's somewhat counterbalanced by some of the trends that we're seeing in international mitigated by the macro pressure.
So overall, what I would say is I'm actually very pleased with the strength we're seeing across the board, the improvements in buyer count the cohort mix, the engagement and the spend, and it's really balanced. Like when you look at the U.S. GMV, Nikhil, it's balanced between active buyers, sold items, an ASP, which is, I think, a healthy place to be.
And maybe if I could follow up with a question around gross margin and COGS for Peggy. As we think about initiatives like live and all the AI product investments you're making now. How do we think about the puts and takes on COGS over the long term for the business? And any offsets that you might have elsewhere productivity gains or otherwise to counter that as well?
Thanks for the question. When we look at our Q1 gross margin, what we saw was that it was driven primarily by cost of payment and operational efficiencies. We said it was up 1 point year-over-year. It benefited from the U.K. managed shipping program, switching from gross to net accounting at the beginning of the year.
And as we look further in the year, we do see that there's going to be some similar puts and takes to the gross margin driver. But what we're really excited about is that we're continuing to see a lot of strength on the top line. And because of the sort of like diverse nature of our growth areas, if you look at live and some of the AI efficiencies that we're seeing, you're going to see some different sort of drivers to gross margin. But all we're seeing is going to benefit both the top line as well as our operating profit dollars as we scale.
Our next question will come from Nathan Feather with Morgan Stanley.
Broadly, consumer sentiment has weakened a bit over the past 2 months, although spending seems like it's held strong. How do you think about balancing those inputs as you put together your guidance for the remainder of the year? And just more generally, what have you been seeing in the consumer health over the past few months as gas prices have risen?
Yes. Look, we continue to see a dynamic global macro environment with the divergence between the U.S. and international. In the U.S. for our business, consumer demand continues to be resilient so far despite the volatility in trade policy and geopolitics. And strength was really broad-based across the board in Q1 in clean collectibles, motors and fashion.
I would say it's a different story in Europe, where it's more challenging as reflected in the consumer confidence and some of the macro data, though the investments we've been making in the region have really helped offset that. our international year-over-year growth improved from Q4 over to Q1, as did CBT and our other solutions. So we've kind of maintained the status quo or kind of thought about things in the status quo. Our ability to incrementally guide Q2 and raise the year is really based on the confidence of the resilience we're seeing in our marketplace. Remember, Nathan, that we're a bit more resilient because even in more challenging times, people turn to eBay to find value and used or refurbished or that perspective.
So we feel more well positioned because of that.
Great. That's helpful. And then just given the really strong GMV performance over the past 12 months, on a go-forward basis, if we look at maybe like a 2 year-over-year to exclude the impact of tougher comps, the any key limitations that would prevent the GMV momentum you're seeing in 2Q from persisting into the back half?
We feel really good about the momentum that we're seeing overall. And so Peggy talked about the real kind of divergence that you see between Q2 and Q1 is just due to the number of factors that whether she called out whether that be a billion or some of lapping dynamics. But what we continue to see is a strong consumer and more importantly than that, what we see is a great return on the investments that we're making in the business. So when you look this quarter at the focused category growth of 24% and the areas that we've invested in, and we're seeing it really resonate with consumers.
And so we feel good about the back half and the strong 2-year stack, and we feel great about what we're seeing given the consumer right now and just the underlying growth in the business.
Your next question will come from Ken Goralski with Wells Fargo.
This is Zach Morrissey on for Ken. I just wanted to double click on this C2C strengths, specifically in the U.S., obviously it's been a source of strength. I think you said a double-digit GMV growth there. Just curious what you're seeing from a competitive dynamic.
I know we're seeing a lot of investments in the space. Vintage appears to be scaling and investing more aggressively in the U.S. Curious if you're seeing that reflected in any parts of your businesses? Or is this kind of contributing to the broader industry kind of secular growth?
And then I think you noted on kind of the marketing investments, specifically in C2C, is that something we should kind of expect to continue to be an area focused throughout he course of the year?
Yes. Look, we continue to have a very strong C2C business around the globe, and U.S. is amongst our strongest businesses in C2C, and we saw really healthy growth there. we've been operating in a very competitive global landscape for fashion e-commerce for years and it has really raised the bar for the customer experience and help unlock the total addressable market that's locked up in closets, attics, basements and garages. What we're seeing as we roll out things like magical listing, and we're using AI for listings, which is now up to 500 million listings is we're seeing more listings per lister, great seller metrics because of our ability to kind of unlock all that inventory.
And so that's had a meaningful impact on our performance. If you look at just total GMV growth in fashion, it accelerated sequentially in Q1, our fashion-focused categories contributed roughly 1 point of growth to our overall marketplace with luxury growing at healthy double digits. And our improved C2C value proposition has been impactful in fashion and frankly, across the board. And what we've seen is double-digit growth in each of our top 3 markets by demand in the U.S., U.K. and Germany.
So overall, we feel really great about the momentum that we're seeing in fashion. And our pending acquisition of Depop indicates that we're really leveraging our built by and partner playbook, just like we did in collectibles to enhance the fashion experience for enthusiasts. Peggy, do you want to talk about the full funnel marketing that we're doing?
Sure. So in Q1, we leaned into full funnel investments in support of our strategic priorities, notably in focused categories, C2C and live. Full funnel marketing does remain a really important way for us to support our strategic priorities. It drives awareness and consideration of eBay.
We did a number of events and activations during the quarter. And when we think about how we think about it going forward, we continue to see it as a strong lever also do take the opportunity when we have strong GMV performance and strong profitability in the quarter, to make sure that we're investing, including in sales and marketing in order to continue that growth ahead. So that's that important balance that will continue to look at, which is sort of that balance between strong flow-through to the bottom line and investing in continued growth from quarter-to-quarter. Sales and marketing being one of those levers.
Our next question will come from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.
Maybe building on the last answer and sort of asking a 2-parter. When you look out over the next 6 to 12 months, what do you guys see as the critical investments to make to maintain and build momentum around the enthusiast buyer part of your business, just so that continues to move in sort of a very positive direction, that would be one. And then against the dynamic of what you laid out with respect to marketing, how are you thinking about marketing changes that you're seeing out there across the social media and the search landscape referencing back to kind of ROI you might be able to get as marketing ramps for you guys relative to innovations that are happening across performance marketing more broadly.
Yes. Eric, we're going to continue to invest in the areas that are really driving kind of healthy growth across the business. We're going to continue to invest in the focus categories. You're obviously seeing the nice return from the investments that we've made there.
We're leveraging AI throughout the entire product experience really taking the friction out of the experience, and you're seeing more and more of that with the Agentic search beta that we have going on with the incremental improvements in the new Magic listing. We've been investing in live and seeing really nice returns from that. We grew -- we're growing in the last few weeks, 8x year-on-year in that format, and it's really engaging buyers and sellers in a new and different way. And while a little bit earlier, vehicles as well is going to be kind of another area for us to continue to invest in over the course of this year.
But we're really pleased with the ROI that we're seeing off of those investments that we're making. When you think about our marketing plan, we've been using a full funnel marketing approach that's been really working well. And you've seen more kind of mid- and lower supported by the upper funnel that we're doing. We've been driving really interesting activations across social media.
We did -- we had all the popular -- the Grammys the Oscars we're sponsoring Saturday Night Live to Berlin's Fashion Week driving all the way down to putting products that are most relevant inside of people's social feed. Facebook is a good example of that. We've got some new tests with them going on. in addition to putting the items inside of Facebook Marketplace in the search experience. So we're going to continue to push forward.
What's great is that AI is giving us a ton of new capabilities there, Eric. The ability to create creative at incredibly low cost and build a lot more of a test-and-learn infrastructure is really compelling to see the ROI on things like that, that we're getting. It's also helping us in our own marketing and our CRM. Yesterday, I was looking at a personalized glass with a dog -- I was going to put my dog name on it.
I forgot about it, and I got an e-mail this morning that said, celebrate with new beer glasses. So AI had kind of written this really compelling subject line and things like that, we're seeing numbers like 40% more engagement. So what I feel really good to is how our marketing team is embracing those new AI technologies, to really kind of speak to the long tail of inventory and opportunities that we have on eBay.
Your next question will come from Bern McTernan with Needham.
Great. Wanted to ask on strategic priorities. The GMV grew from strategic priorities 10%, 25% and then accelerate in 1Q. Is this mostly C2C? Or is there -- or is the strength more broad-based? And then within C2C, is this primarily being driven by magical listings or any other product you would call out?
Yes. It's really broad-based across the board is what we're seeing in our year-over-year growth across all of our major categories sequentially with the strongest growth in focus categories within collectibles, motors and fashion. And while U.S. GMV was particularly strong at 27%, we also saw improvements in our international trends.
When you look at our specific strategic areas you asked about but focused category C2C and e-commerce now make up about 70% of total GMV. And individually, they each saw double-digit growth. So that kind of gives you a sense of how broad-based the growth is. The strength that we're seeing in C2C is coming a lot from a, we're doing some really significant and helpful marketing about magical listing and the value proposition that we have there.
And we're finding that the KPIs are really fantastic, right? I mean it's got a customer satisfaction of 95%. We're seeing 50% more listings per lister and more engagement. And it's driving a higher customer lifetime value for the sellers that are using it.
This is why we're expanding it to new geographies and we'll expand it to additional seller segments over time. But that's really helping us drive that part of the business. But when you look at it, it's really across all of those priorities that we're seeing really nice double-digit growth.
Your next question will come from Andrew Boone with Citizens.
I wanted to ask about advertising strength in the quarter. It surprised us in terms of the strength that you guys saw. And then can you connect that into just expectations for 2026? And then you guys called out the benefits of AI search.
Can you guys just speak to that, where are we in the process of making search just more performant? What are the benefits today? And what should we expect going forward?
Yes. So first on advertising, strong quarter, right? Ads grew 27%, and that was a combination of strong volume growth and the continued monetization of our ads product. So that was mainly driven by our 1P business, which grew 28%.
And across the board, our CPA and our CBC products on eBay and our offsite ads all contributed to Q1. Looking forward, we continue to expect ads revenue growth for '26 to be healthy. It's really driven by multiple levers, including seller adoption, listings penetration, ad rate optimization and scaling new products, we're now leveraging AI in our advertising products to increase the yield on the same type of placements while giving sellers a really good kind of ROAs continuing to give sellers are really good ROAs on that. So we continue to see advertising revenue outpacing GMV for the foreseeable future, and I'm really pleased by the innovations that are happening there.
Your next question will come from Shweta Khajuria with Wolfe.
This is Andrew Rolf for Shweta, really want to ask about agentic commerce. And I guess start off more broadly. I guess, what are your updated thoughts on agentic commerce and eBay's role in that, particularly as relates to third-party partnerships. And then if we think about maybe the terminal state of agentic commerce, and I think it's more agent to agent base, would that be impacting the ad revenue potential?
And I guess, is eBay basically okay with making the trade-off for ad revenue for volume growth? Just your thoughts on that would be great.
Yes. Look, we see agenetic AI as a real structural tailwind for eBay, and it plays right into our core strengths. First, our innovations leveraging AI are already having a meaningful benefit for our business today. Take magical listing.
We've talked about the compelling stats I just mentioned that we're seeing and sellers have created 0.5 billion listings using our AI tools. And our agentic search beta, which I realize I didn't fully answer that question, so I'll come back to that. But what we've seen there is higher engagement and increased purchase behavior off of that early test. So we're going to continue to bring the latest agentic technologies to eBay to make it easier for sellers to list and for buyers to find the things they love.
Second, eBay offers really unmatched breadth and depth of unique and differentiated inventory. Our $2.5 billion listings are non-new in season where items are more likely to be one of a kind. And in our strategic priority areas, we've optimized the end-to-end experience to make it more seamless and enjoyable for buyers and sellers. Third and most importantly, what really differentiates eBay is the trust and enablement layer we've built over decades.
The capabilities we've built, like our global network of authentication centers, our suite of proprietary global shipping solutions regulatory compliance guaranteed fit, just to name a few, always provide a trusted experience for everything from a trading card to a designer dress through a vintage car sold across state lines. And importantly, all 3 of these areas are enhanced by our 30 years of proprietary data, which gives us powerful insights that no one else has. So overall, we see AI as a powerful force multiplier for our business and it's already supporting the accelerated GMV we're seeing today.
When I look specifically at agentic search that you asked about, it's early innings, but there's some encouraging early proof points about the quality of that traffic that's coming over. And even though it's very, very small, what we find is traffic that finds us new buyers that find us via AI. The majority of the time they actually come back directly organically to eBay. So we're going to continue to test and learn.
You see us doing the Open A high ads pilot. We've expanded our more inventory to Facebook Marketplace as the space evolves.
Your next question will come from Tom Champion with Piper Sandler.
Good afternoon. Jamie, you've made a tremendous amount of progress over the last several years around authenticity and shipping cost for sellers. I'm just -- I'm curious what you think of as the remaining frictions for sellers today. What are you looking to improve from here on out for the seller experience.
And then, Peggy, maybe for you, just could you talk a little bit about head count growth and how you're thinking about that through the year as you incorporate efficiencies from AI?
Yes. Look, it's more than just AG. It's really trust across the board that we're looking at. So that's AG, it's guaranteed fit in motors.
It's eBay money back guarantee. It's warranties against refurbished. It's secure checkout that we're building in vehicles and on and on. Having that kind of real trust layer at eBay is incredibly important to us and incredibly important to our consumers and we're going to continue to invest in that.
You just saw us roll out more authentication to 70 clothes and shoes and accessory brands in the U.S. driving that program further and further to really kind of build trust in. And it's more than just shipping. It's all of the selling services that we provide, whether that's eBay international shipping, which we just expanded into Canada last quarter, it's SpeedPAK which we've been expanding from China and Japan to now Germany and more markets. It's our forward deployment centers.
It's really kind of handling all of those kind of end-to-end pieces. That's making it really easy for sellers. We're going to continue to invest in our payments technology to make it easier. We continue to invest in areas like seller financing and other elements that help buyers grow their business with their working capital. and helping them with compliance and protections and really being able to make sure that we run an incredibly trusted marketplace there. we're seeing really nice AI efficiency, giving our teams leverage so that we can innovate more on behalf of our seller community.
I think it's why we're seeing great response to a lot of the tools that we're building and our seller CSAT is pretty strong is because of what we're able to provide. So we're going to continue to invest in that and make eBay that great destination you can only get started, but build a strong business on the platform.
Your next question...
Sorry, did you was there a second part to that? [indiscernible] Peggy, you want to take that one?
Yes. We're really focused, as Jamie mentioned earlier, about really investing in our strategic priorities in order to do that well and still do what we are very focused on, which is balance our top line growth and our op income dollar growth, we're looking to create efficiencies in the business so that we can invest in our strategic priorities. We are seeing that even as we invest significantly in our AI talent capabilities, tech staff, we're able to sort of like maintain that balance and generate more capacity to be able to invest in these areas without pressuring our bottom line. And so that's the balance that we'll continue to take and really try to drive efficiency, to create capacity to grow these very strategic initiatives that we're focused on.
Your next question will come from Michael Morton with MoffettNathanson.
Thank you for the question. I wanted to talk about the live shopping. It's something I think e-commerce platforms have tried for almost my whole career. And listening to what you're saying, sounding like it's hitting a real inflection point.
I was curious to hear why you think it's gaining so much momentum now. We were at an industry conference and people were talking about eBay's live commerce momentum, and then this is a long shot, but I would love if you could maybe quantify the impact or your expectations for the enacted GMV growth going forward?
Yes. You've seen this be strong in kind of Asian markets, and we're seeing kind of real excitement and momentum with live shopping in our Western markets. After our recent expansion now, eBay Live is available across 7 countries. And it's becoming a more meaningful contributor to growth, particularly in our collectibles and fashion categories, that's a big part of -- or that's part of why we see -- saw such strong growth in focused categories.
We've been doing pretty meaningful activation around eBay Live. This quarter, we did a 48 hours of drops in the U.S. And we did the same thing in U.K. and Germany, where we did 24 hours of drop. And so that really helped kind of drive engagement and boost sales. with each market reaching a single day milestone as a result.
And kind of that gives you a sense of the size and scale of even our newest markets, U.K. and Germany saw a 7 figure a day on that day. We continue to scale it by adding new sellers, growing content density, expanding entry points this quarter. We actually put it in the bottom of navigation for all mobile iOS users in the U.S., helping to increase discoverability. And what we're hearing is that buying inventory on eBay is different, right?
There's an engagement, there's a community, there is an excitement that comes with it. And many of our sellers are finding that streaming on live, they're able to kind of bring that community together, drive that excitement. And it not only drives new business for them in terms of live, but it's actually driving more visits and buyers to their core business as a result of them seeing them on live. So we feel like great our scale, our global buyer base and the high bar for trust that we have really differentiates us in live commerce.
And while it's still early, we believe live can be a meaningful growth factor over time, an increasingly important part of how enthusiasts shop on our platform.
Thank you for joining. This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.