Dive Brief:
EBay on Wednesday announced that Chief Financial Officer Steve Priest is exiting the company. Former PayPal executive Peggy Alford will assume the role on May 12.
Additionally, the company is restructuring its leadership and bringing together its product and market teams. It is also consolidating its engineering team.
As a result of the changes, Chief Product Officer Eddie Garcia is leaving eBay. Chief Commercial Officer Jordan Sweetnam will lead the newly combined global markets and product organization in an expanded role. Chief Technology Officer Mazen Rawashdeh will lead the unified engineering organization, also in an expanded role.
Dive Insight:
The company announced leadership and team changes on the same day it released Q1 earnings. For the quarter, revenue was up 1% to $2.6 billion, while net income was also up 1.4% compared to the year-ago quarter to $657 million.
The company provided a “wider-than-usual” guidance range for Q2 due to tariff changes creating “significant uncertainty for our sellers and buyers,” Priest said on an earnings call to investors. EBay is expecting a modest pull forward in demand from consumers worried about an increase in costs, with Q2 revenue forecast to be between a range of down 1% to an increase of 2%.
“Our leadership evolution is about moving with greater speed, deepening collaboration across teams, and continuing to build the capabilities we need for the future. We believe these changes will drive long-term growth and deliver greater impact for our buyers and sellers,” CEO Jamie Iannone said in a statement.
Current CFO Priest will leave the company on May 11, but will stay on as an adviser until July 31 to ensure a smooth transition.
Incoming CFO Alford joins the company as a strategic adviser on Monday before officially transitioning into her new role. Alford held a number of leadership roles at PayPal, most recently as its executive vice president of global sales. Alford also previously worked at eBay, including as its marketplace controller and at Rent.com, a former eBay company, as its president and general manager, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Despite the uncertainty, eBay has confidence in its positioning.
“It’s an opportunity for us to acquire new sellers onto the marketplace because … people are looking for value,” Iannone said on an earnings call. “They may need money to sell things and eBay is a great environment for that.”
Also, as during the pandemic, Iannone says that because it has a vast seller base they tend to be “more nimble and adapt to changes a little bit more quickly because there’s no kind of their ability, they’re smaller, they can be a bit more agile, and that’s what we’ve seen in the past.”
The company emphasized AI as part of its strategy. The company has recently been investing in the technology to streamline experiences for both buyers and sellers.
