In 2023, eBay generated $10.11 billion in revenue compared to $9.79 billion in 2022 and $10.42 billion in 2021.
How eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) makes money, FY2025: the income statement as a flow, to scale. eBay keeps 13.94% of the $79.6B its users transact. Source: eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) Form 10-K for fiscal 2025 (filed 2026-02-19). Gross profit, margins and shares calculated. Full analysis: how eBay makes money.Watch (64 seconds): eBay: where the money comes from, step by step, with captions. Figures from the filing named at the end.
The number of buyers on eBay increased from 179 million in 2018 to 185 million in 2020 before declining to 134 million in 2022.
Revenue increased from $8.6 billion in 2015 to $10.74 billion in 2018, then declined to $7.43 billion in 2019 before increasing again to $10.42 billion in 2021. Revenue declined slightly to $9.79 billion in 2022.
Net income or losses improved from a net loss of $1 billion in 2017 to a net income of $2.53 billion in 2018, then decreased to $1.78 billion in 2019 before increasing significantly to $13.6 billion in 2021. However, the net income turned to a net loss of $1.27 billion in 2022.
The trend of the number of buyers shows steady growth until 2020, but a decline in 2021 and 2022, which may be a concern for the company’s future growth.
The trend of revenue shows a consistent increase until 2018, followed by a decline in 2019, and a slow but steady recovery in 2020 and 2021, with a slight decline in 2022.
The trend of net income or losses shows significant improvement in 2018 and 2019, followed by a massive increase in 2020 and 2021, but turned into a significant net loss in 2022, indicating some volatility in the company’s profitability.
The take rate increased from 8.97% in 2018 to 13.25% in 2022.
The take rate increased steadily from 2018 to 2020, with a CAGR of approximately 2.5%.
The take rate then increased significantly from 2020 to 2021, with a year-over-year growth rate of approximately 18%.
The take rate continued to increase in 2022, indicating that eBay is earning a higher percentage of revenue from transactions on its platform.
The increasing take rate may suggest that eBay is implementing more successful monetization strategies or that the company is charging higher fees to sellers.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
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eBay Business Model →eBay Revenue →Is eBay Profitable? →eBay Revenue Breakdown →How Much Does eBay Take? →eBay Bidding System →eBay Organizational Structure →Etsy vs. Ebay →eBay vs. Amazon →
