eBay Q3 2026: GMV up 15% to $23.2B beat guidance; GAAP EPS fell 13% only on a tax comparison

eBay's Q3 2026 revenue rose 14% to $3,206 million and gross merchandise volume (GMV, the total value of everything bought and sold on eBay, including shipping and taxes) rose 15% to $23.2 billion. Both came in well above the ranges eBay gave in August. GAAP diluted EPS from continuing operations still fell 13%, from $1.27 to $1.11. That drop comes from tax: a year ago eBay booked a $25 million tax benefit (an effective tax rate of −4.3%), and this quarter it paid a normal 17.1%. Pretax income rose 6.5% and operating income rose 7.9%. On eBay's adjusted (non-GAAP) basis EPS rose 12% to $1.51.

This report is written from the earnings release (Exhibit 99.1 to the 8-K filed October 28, 2026). The full 10-Q is not filed yet, so the management commentary that usually explains each cost line, along with category and segment detail, is not available. Where this report says why something moved, the reason comes from the release's own figures. It does not draw on the 10-Q's narrative.

Key figures

Prior-year figures are the restated ones eBay now reports. It adopted a new software-cost accounting rule (ASU 2025-06) on January 1, 2026 and restated earlier periods.

Takeaway: eBay's marketplace grew faster than eBay itself expected. Revenue of $3.21B beat the top of its $3.07–3.12B guide and US GMV accelerated to +27%. The 13% fall in GAAP EPS is a tax comparison, not a weaker business. What the quarter does show is that growth is getting more expensive: sales and marketing rose 23% against 14% revenue growth, take rate slipped, and the operating margin fell on both GAAP and adjusted measures. Guidance for Q4 implies revenue growth halving to 7–9%.

Where the growth came from

eBay doesn't hold its own inventory. It earns fees on other people's sales, so revenue is basically GMV times the take rate, the share of each dollar traded that eBay keeps from selling fees, ads, shipping and payments.

The US now makes up 54% of GMV. US growth has run +13%, +19%, +27%, +24% and now +27% over the last five quarters, so it held up even though Q3 2025 was the first quarter of the acceleration. International slowed from +6% in Q2 to +4%. Measured in constant currency, total GMV grew 16% and revenue 13%. Currency moves therefore held back reported GMV slightly while giving revenue a small lift.

Depop makes the growth figures hard to read. eBay completed the purchase on July 30, so roughly two months of Depop are inside this quarter and none are in the year-ago one. The release does not split out Depop's GMV or revenue. The clearest view of its size is the buyer count: 147 million active buyers in total, against 136 million excluding Depop and Tise (a Norwegian resale app bought in October 2025). That puts Depop at about 11 million buyers. Excluding the acquisitions, buyers grew 1%, the same as in every recent quarter. eBay's growth is still coming from existing buyers spending more, not from new users arriving. eBay Live, its live-video shopping format, grew GMV "well into the triple digits" and now runs at a "multibillion-dollar annualized run rate", but the release gives no exact dollar figure.

Take rate fell 0.19 points to 13.84% (13.99% in Q2). The release does not say why. A larger share of C2C (individual-to-individual) volume, where eBay has been cutting selling fees (this quarter it rolled out free C2C selling in France and Italy), would be one plausible cause, but the 10-Q will have to confirm it.

Advertising: first-party ads on eBay's own site (mostly sellers paying to promote listings) brought in $575 million, up 16%. That is a clear slowdown from +25% in Q2. Total advertising, including ads shown off eBay, was $607 million.

Where the extra revenue went

Revenue rose $386 million. Total costs (cost of revenue plus operating expenses) rose $341 million, so only $45 million reached operating income.

Sales and marketing is the line that grew much faster than revenue. Without the 10-Q, we can't say how much of the extra $141 million was marketing programs and how much was Depop's own cost base being added. Depreciation and amortization in the cash-flow statement jumped from $77 million to $116 million. The release's reconciliation also shows $28 million of transaction costs (mostly the Depop deal) and $25 million of acquired-intangible amortization, versus $12 million a year ago. Operating margin, the share of revenue left after running the business before interest and tax, fell to 19.2% from 20.3% on GAAP. It fell to 26.3% from 27.0% on eBay's adjusted measure, which removes stock-based pay, amortization, restructuring and deal costs.

Below operating income, interest income and other fell from $69 million to $47 million. eBay spent $1.32 billion of cash (net of cash acquired) on Depop in the quarter, and cash plus non-equity investments fell to $3.3 billion from $4.9 billion at the end of June.

What the headline numbers hide

• Tax, not operations, explains the GAAP EPS decline. Pretax income from continuing operations was $605 million against $568 million (+6.5%). The difference is the tax line: a $104 million charge this year against a $25 million benefit a year ago. eBay's own reconciliation shows a $149 million non-GAAP tax adjustment in Q3 2025, against $42 million now, confirming the year-ago quarter was unusually light on tax. Taxing last year's pretax income at this year's 17.1% gives about $471 million, or $1.01 a share, so the $1.11 reported is roughly a 10% improvement.
• This year also carries one-off deal costs. The $28 million of Depop transaction costs and the step-up in acquired-intangible amortization are in GAAP operating income. Both pull this quarter's GAAP figures down further.
• Buybacks did about a quarter of the adjusted EPS growth. Diluted shares fell 3.0%, from 467 million to 453 million. Non-GAAP net income rose 8%, but non-GAAP EPS rose 12%. The lower share count explains most of the gap.
• Adjusted figures exclude a recurring cost. The $177 million of stock-based pay and related payroll tax that eBay strips out of non-GAAP income is a real, recurring expense, about 5.5% of revenue. That's why the GAAP and adjusted margins are 7 points apart every quarter.
• Cash conversion is fine. Operating cash flow from continuing operations was $875 million, about 1.7× net income. Free cash flow (operating cash minus capital spending) was $749 million, down from $803 million as capital spending rose to $126 million. Year to date, free cash flow is $1,973 million against $1,006 million, but the Q2 report noted that 2025's first half was hit by large tax payments, so that comparison flatters 2026.
• Transaction losses are back in line. Buyer-protection refunds, chargebacks and fraud rose 15%, in step with GMV, after jumping 54% in Q2. As a share of GMV they were 0.53%, unchanged.
• The beat was flagged in advance. On October 20 eBay told investors that Q3 would come in above its guidance ranges, in the same 8-K that announced the restructuring below. So the beat itself was not news on results day; the size of it was.

On balance the quarter is understated: GAAP EPS fell 13% only because the year-ago quarter had a −4.3% tax rate, while pretax income rose 6.5% and on a like-for-like tax rate EPS would be up about 10%.

Restructuring: 9% of staff, charged in Q4

The October 20 8-K (Item 2.05) announced a plan to cut about 9% of eBay's global workforce. It expects $130–150 million of pre-tax charges, almost all severance, most of it booked in Q4 2026, and the cuts substantially done by the end of Q1 2027. eBay says the savings will be put back into its "strategic and operating initiatives" rather than promised to margins. None of the charge is in Q3: the restructuring line in the reconciliation was a $3 million credit. It is why Q4 GAAP EPS is guided at only $0.82–0.87, against $1.48–1.53 adjusted. The guidance footnote excludes $130–150 million of restructuring from the adjusted figure.

Did last time's read hold up?

Our Q2 report listed three things to watch:

• Would US GMV hold double digits against a harder comparison? Yes, comfortably: +27%, faster than Q2's +24%, though now with two months of Depop in the mix.
• Would transaction losses keep growing several times faster than volume? No. They grew 15%, the same pace as GMV.
• How much of the ad growth survives once the attribution change is lapped? First-party ad growth slowed from +25% to +16%. That's still faster than GMV, but the gap has narrowed a lot.

The Q2 report also read the Q3 guide as "a clear slowdown, from 14% FX-neutral revenue growth to 8–10%." That slowdown did not happen in Q3: FX-neutral revenue grew 13%. It is now guided for Q4 instead.

Outlook

Our read: the Q4 guide implies revenue roughly flat with Q3's $3.21 billion in the holiday quarter, even with a full three months of Depop. GMV is still guided to grow 12–14%, but revenue only 7–9%. That points to a further fall in take rate, or to the year-ago Q4 revenue base ($2,965 million, +15%) being hard to beat. eBay beat the midpoint of its Q3 revenue guide by about $110 million, so this guide may also be cautious. eBay declared a $0.31 per-share dividend, payable December 18, 2026, and has about $1.3 billion of buyback authorization left after $689 million of repurchases in Q3 (about 6 million shares). The cash-flow statement shows $664 million paid out for buybacks in the quarter, because of timing differences on settlement.

What to watch in Q4 and the 10-Q: how much of Q3's GMV and revenue growth Depop supplied, which the 10-Q should quantify; why take rate fell; and whether sales and marketing keeps growing faster than revenue once the restructuring savings start.