eBay Same-Store Sales Slide Slightly

While eBay continues to expand its offerings, its sales have experienced a bit of a dropoff — or, at least, they did last month.

Earlier this week, ChannelAdvisor reported that the online marketplace’s same-store sales (SSS) fell by 0.2 percent in March, marking a decrease from the 9.5 percent in SSS that it experienced in February. Compared to the growth rate of 15 percent in eCommerce overall, the report notes that eBay’s recent dip in SSS is, more or less, negligible in the context of year over year.

Breaking down the data into categories, ChannelAdvisor found that SSS of eBay’s auctions in March were -20.8 percent year over year, which marks a decrease from the -15.7 for SSS of auctions in February.

SSS of eBay’s fixed-price offerings last month, according to the report, came in at -5.8 percent year over year; that’s a decrease from the previous month’s 4.1 percent.

Some good news for the online marketplace, meanwhile, is coming out of its eBay Motors division, whose parts and accessories (P+A) sales were up 11.3 percent in March. While that’s a decline from the segment’s 22.1 percent in February, the ChannelAdvisor report nonetheless described P+A as “the bright spot in the eBay SSS results, growing fastest of all the eBay components.”

Seeking Alpha shares that eBay shares slipped 1.7 percent in pre-market trading yesterday (April 7) following the release of ChannelAdvisor’s report.