eBay Q3 2026 Pre-Earnings Commentary & Highlights

Liz Morton

Published: Oct 26 2026 Updated: Oct 26 2026

eBay is set to report Q3 2026 earnings October 28th at 5:30 PM Eastern. Take a look back at highlights from Q3 and what's happening so far in Q4 with Value Added Resource!

Leadership Changes & Corporate News

After an initial settlement fell through, the eBay stalking scandal civil suit was briefly reopened before finally reaching $55.7 million resolution on July 25.

A former eBay Motors employee has taken a decade-long whistleblower case to federal court, alleging he faced retaliation after reporting conflicts of interest involving preferential treatment for an eBay seller and later raising concerns that performance metrics for a 2012 acquisition were being manipulated before being reported to the company's board.

After passing regulatory reviews in the UK and Australia, eBay closed the deal to acquire Depop from Etsy on July 30 for $1.4 billion, sparking concerns about marketing spend and increasing competition in the secondhand fashion market.

VP Buyer, Seller & C2C Blair Ethington and TCGPlayer CEO Rob Bigler both departed the company in Q3 while longtime supply chain executive Andres Gonzalez came onboard as VP & GM Global Shipping and Authentication, Germany and Central Europe head Dr. Saskia Meier-Andrae was promoted toa newly created VP & General Manager Europe role, and Renee Paradise returned as Global General Manager of Fashion.

eBay is cutting approximately 9% of its workforce in another major round of layoffs, just eight months after eliminating roughly 800 positions earlier this year.

CEO Jamie Iannone announced the latest cuts in an internal memo sent to employees October 20 saying the company is reducing headcount as part of an effort to simplify operations, sharpen priorities and redirect resources toward areas with greater growth potential.

eBay Live

eBay has introduced a public fee schedule for eBay Live as competition heats up from Whatnot, StockX and a recent Vinted Ventures investment.

Dedicated marketing campaigns and targeted discounts may help lift Live GMV, but eBay’s intentionally vague statistics and expansion into more categories and countries make the actual scale of the business and year-over-year growth difficult to measure.

On the seller side, eBay is taking steps to separate Live from standard sales for measuring certain performance metrics while opening up self-service registration and offering financial incentives to entice more sellers to start streaming.

Focus Categories & C2C Pivot

eBay continued investing in collectibles, launching trading-card authentication in the UK, watch authentication in Australia, lowering the US eligibility threshold for trading card authentication to $200 and adding Authenticity Guarantee for collectible coins in partnership with PCGS.

New job posts from August indicate eBay is quietly building electronics verification operations in the UK and Germany, raising questions about whether the marketplace could be preparing a new service for used and refurbished tech.

In Motors, eBay shut down MyFitment as a standalone service September 30, ending support for Amazon and other third-party platforms as the technology is folded into Fitment Plus Auto.

The company is also accelerating its C2C and recommerce strategy internationally, changing fees for some German business sellers, shifting non-pro transaction fees to buyers in Australia, and going fee-free for private sellers in France and Italy while expanding fashion authentication across Europe.

eBay has continued to roll out AI Magical Listing to more users, drawing growing complaints from sellers who say the AI-powered mobile experience is being forced on them, disrupting established workflows and sometimes creating more work instead of the time savings the company has been touting to investors.

eBay's 2026 Recommerce Report says secondhand shopping is becoming more closely tied to household budgets as affordability remains the largest driver of preowned purchases, highlighting the recent Depop acquisition amid Vinted's UK dominance and recent push into the US market.

The company is pulling out the stops to make a splash in the first full quarter the new subsidiary will be included in earnings, but differences in Etsy GMS compared to eBay GMV calculations and some questionable cross-promotions diverting eBay buyers to Depop may cloud actual performance.

In other fashion news, eBay has lost longtime seller and consignment partner Linda's Stuff as Poshmark acquires its dedicated operational facilities in August to revamp its consignment offering. As part of the deal, Linda's Stuff has moved its selling and live shopping operations off eBay, now exclusively doing business on Poshmark.

Ads, Payments and Shipping

eBay is finally making Promoted Stores Custom available to all eligible sellers, expanding its cost per click Store ad offering with more control over which listings are used in campaigns and where buyers are sent when they click, while also testing whether sellers will tolerate the the minimum ad rate for Promoted Listings General cost per sale ads being increased to 5%.

eBay Balance/Spendable Funds is rolling out to more users with mandatory adoption for fee-free sellers in Australia and automatic enrollment for all eligible sellers in the US.

Shipping continues to be a growing source of revenue for the company with the introduction of eBay International Shipping in the UK and Germany as well as managed shipping programs for non-pro sellers in Australia and select sellers and categories in the US.

But that growing number of shipping programs also means increasing costs for the company as transaction losses rise and more delivery risks shift onto the marketplace.

Catch up on Q2 2026 earnings commentary and stay tuned for more coverage after the call from Value Added Resource!

eBay Earnings

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Liz Morton is founder and editor of Value Added Resource. She spent 17+ years operating ecommerce businesses before launching VAR. Her reporting focuses on seller experience, marketplace strategy and corporate accountability.