Ebay Sells $1.7 Billion of Jewelry & Watches in 2004

Online marketplace eBay reported record fourth quarter and annual sales, recording net revenues of $935.8 million for the quarter, up 44 percent year over year, beating expectations by nearly $21 million.

With the jewelry and watches category comfortably positioned in the list of top ten performers - those with more than $1 billion in sales - the online platform proved again that online sales of jewelry have come of age. Jewelry and watches posted sales of $1.7 billion annualized Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) by merchants on the auction site.

Consolidated net income in the quarter was $205.4 million, or $0.30 per diluted share.

Full year consolidated net revenues stood at $3.27 billion, a 51 percent increase over the $2.17 billion reported in 2003, while consolidated net income increased 76 percent year over year to $778.2 million.

GMV, the total value of all successfully closed listings on eBay’s trading platforms, was a record $34.2 billion, representing a 44 percent increase from the $23.8 billion reported in the full year 2003.

Total Payment Volume, the dollar volume of payments initiated through the PayPal system, was $18.9 billion, representing a 55 percent year-over-year increase from the $12.2 billion reported in the full year 2003.

Top categories were eBay Motors at $11.1 billion; Consumer Electronics at $3.5 billion; Computers at $3.0 billion; Clothing & Accessories at $2.9 billion; Books/Movies/Music at $2.4 billion; Collectibles at $2.2 billion; Home & Garden at $2.0 billion; Toys and Sports which were both at $1.8 billion;; and Jewelry & Watches at $1.7 billion.

But for sales volume to increase, the site needed to increase the number of active users and listings too, and it indeed did that. The number of active users, those who bid, bought, or listed an item, increased to 56.1 million during the year, a 36 percent increase, while the number of new listings rose 39 percent over the fourth quarter of 2003 to a record 404.6 million.