eBay Inc (EBAY)’s Q4 2014 Earnings Call Transcript

And you saw the iPad app that we launched right before Christmas. That is the freshest, I think, most innovative mobile experience that eBay has built in years. And it’s geared importantly to infrequent users or new users. If you check it out, it’s fresh. If you’ve never used eBay before, you can come in and it’s engaging and intuitive. And so throughout all the challenges the Market Place has right now and all the operational execution they’re focused on, Market Place is still focused on innovations like its mobile experience, like live auctions and other things. So there is no lack of attention for innovation across other business.

Bob Swan
The only thing I would add more process-wise is we kind of highlighted 2 priorities: execute on business plans and separate to create 2 special companies. And the best we can, we’re trying to divide and conquer where Dan and Devin and Craig are focused on their customers and execution and innovation. And then, John and I and hordes of wonderful advisers are trying to focus and carry the water for the separation process. It’s obviously not as clean as that, but these are 2 work streams. And we’re trying to minimize distractions in their respective business units so they can continue to focus on the innovation that’s going to help them drive their growth.

Operator
Our next question comes from Scott Devit of Stiefel.

Scott Devit – Stiefel
I was wondering if you can just talk about how quickly Brain tree is growing now and how big it is TPV or revenue-wise. And then separately, the $0.10 related to the buy-back, does that include full execution of the $3 billion that you have remaining before the spin? And then third, I noticed that you’re able to hedge out FX with PayPal but not eBay, and I wasn’t familiar with that. I was wondering if you can talk about that a little bit as well.

Bob Swan
Thanks, Scott. First, on Brain tree, I would just say the growth has been relatively explosive for the most part. The core business has grown tremendously during the course of the year. And Braintree added roughly 6 points of growth to the overall TPV growth for the business. And as you know, we added it late in the fourth quarter last year. So on a year-over-year basis in the fourth quarter, there wasn’t a whole lot of Brain tree volume. And the $0.10 buyback…

John Donahoe
I’ll just add one thing before you get to the second question, Bob. Just one of the things, Scott, on Brain tree that I referenced earlier is increasingly, the Brain tree foundational technology, the line is blurring between Brain tree and PayPal. So the V. Zero platform is increasingly becoming the core of the merchant platform for PayPal. You’ll begin to see PayPal’s peer-to-peer and Venmo peer-to-peer converge toward where we’re leveraging a common back end. And so that Mobile SDK and One Touch are increasingly converging. So it has both absolute value of getting us into the fastest-growing segment of the market, the sharing economy apps. But it’s also, I think, increasingly innovation and the freshness of PayPal’s core products. And that line will blur, and I think it’s part of the reason you’re seeing accelerating growth in the PayPal part of the equation in addition to Brain tree’s. Sorry, go ahead to the second question.