Jamie Iannone, eBay CEO, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the company's 30th anniversary, biggest changes to the company over the years, impact of AI, state of the resale market, end of the de minimis exemption, and more.

eBay CEO Jamie Iannone marked the company's 30th anniversary by emphasizing the platform's evolution through technology, particularly the integration of generative AI to streamline product listings and enhance the user experience. Iannone noted that eBay now serves 134 million active buyers and has authenticated over 15 million products, with a focus on categories such as fashion, handbags, and collectibles.

Despite recent regulatory changes affecting tariffs on cross-border shipments, Iannone stated that eBay's business remains resilient, with strong performance in key categories and a growing share of used and refurbished goods, which now account for about 40% of sales. He also highlighted eBay's robust authentication process, the company's adaptability to economic downturns, and its commitment to providing economic opportunities for both small businesses and casual sellers.

eBay CEO: Underlying strength of the business is strong

eBay is ringing the Nasdaq opening bell later this morning to celebrate the company's 30th anniversary. And joining us right now is Jamie Iannone. He is eBay's CEO. Jamie, we've got our own 30-year anniversary. I know. Congratulations. Next week, huh? We'll be celebrating next week. But I have been using eBay for forever. It feels like maybe 20, 25 years. All right. You're one of our longtime buyers. Yeah. What has changed over 30 years? I know you have a lot more buyers, 134 million active buyers that you're using right now. You're using AI. But if you had to say, what's the biggest difference in eBay 30 years later? You know, I think it's the use of technology to take all the friction out of the experience. Especially now, it's exciting because we're using generative AI to really make it easy to list products on the platform. Think about holding your camera up to an item, and we figure out here's exactly what it is. We write the description for you. We put it on a beautiful background. So let's say your son wants to sell one of those trading cards. Before you would have had to type all the information in, take a beautiful picture. All of that is handled seamlessly now with technology. The other big thing is we're leaning into enthusiasts, right? Enthusiasts, buyers, and sellers across fashion, handbags. We're now authenticating products. We've just authenticated our 15 millionth product. That was not something we obviously started doing 30 years ago. But these are all innovations that we've been handling on the platform. It's been performing well. Last quarter, we've been driving focus categories up 10%. These are categories that we've really focused on. How do we grow customer satisfaction and really drive GMB on the platform? The AI aspect of it, I think, is particularly interesting. It's for people who are selling a lot of items so that they can do these things faster. They can manage conversations more easily. Has that led, in turn, to the mega sellers selling even more? How many of your sellers are people who are selling and making an entire living on this? How many are people who are just kind of doing it in their spare time after their jobs? Yeah, well, we have hundreds of thousands of small businesses on eBay. And a lot of them, actually, I call accidental entrepreneurs. They didn't mean to become a business on eBay. They just started selling, and then they started selling more. And all of a sudden, they're running a business on the platform. And it's exciting to see how the company's brought, you know, we call it economic opportunity for all. But those new AI features are also relevant for everyday consumers, you know, people just looking to get rid of the stuff that they have in their house. The average household has $3,000 to $4,000 of items that could be sold on eBay. How much? $3,000 to $4,000. If I just go digging through my closet? In your closets, in your garages. And if you don't think you have it, everybody says, my spouse has all this stuff that they can sell on the platform. Right, it's his junk, not mine. It's unlocking all of that inventory using technology, which is really exciting. All right, I want to take a look at a one-year stock chart, maybe a year-to-date stock chart, because you've done very well year-to-date. I think you've outpaced the S&P pretty handily, a year-to-date up 46%. But if you're looking, it was down 6% last week. And that was over some concerns about the exemptions that you used to get from tariffs. $800 and less for packages that were being shipped weren't getting taxed. But that's changed under the Trump administration's new rules. How big of an issue is that? What do you do about it? Yeah, we're not immune to that, but we have a more resilient because of the marketplace platform. You know, when you think about it, sellers have choices. We saw sellers open up new quarters, for example. We built seller tools like Speedpack and eBay International Shipping to make it easier. You know, we've been dealing with cross-border trade for 30 years now as a business, and we feel well-equipped. Our guidance that we put out there for third quarter actually contemplated even the most recent changes that have been announced. For the de minimis rules for $800 and less. So you beat expectations with your most recent quarter results. You raised for the full year. And you stand by that right now, even with these changes? Yes. And when you look at it, you know, the underlying strength of the business is strong. I talked about, you know, our focus categories. These are handbags, watches, sneakers, all performing really well across the board. Motors, parts and accessories is a huge category on eBay, well north of $10 billion. All of them performed really well in the quarter and strength kind of throughout the start of Q3 as we talked about at earnings. How do you do when there's a downturn in the economy or if there's uncertainty for consumers? Because we've heard yesterday from the McDonald CEO, we've heard from others that the lower end of the spectrum is getting squeezed. Those consumers, middle class and lower, are having a little bit of a tougher time. You guys are a re-commerce, so it's, you know, maybe buying things that have already been lightly used. How do you do? Do you get a trade-down effect when the economy gets pinched like that on the lower end? Yeah, it's actually one of the great strengths of eBay is that when consumers' wallets are stretched, they actually look to potentially buy used or refurbished product instead of brand new product. And that really helps eBay. Used and refurbished are actually growing faster on our platform than new products. They now represent about 40% of sales on the platform. And if you take a category like refurbished, you now get, you know, 40% off new products. You get a two-year warranty. You get a 30-day eBay money-back guarantee. So we've backed it up with a lot of trust, a lot of brands sell exclusively those items refurbished on eBay. And so the consumers really gravitate towards eBay during those times. When it comes to sneakers, I guess you're competing with the likes of a StockX, where they are authenticating to. How do you do that? How do you make sure it's actually authentic property? You know, we have an amazing team of authenticators. This quarter was our first quarter. We authenticated a million items in a single quarter. And we do it now across watches, jewelry, handbags, training cards, sneakers, etc. We have eight authentication centers throughout the world. We just opened up our newest one in Japan. And to my knowledge, we've never had a counterfeit get through one of our authentication centers. So buyers love the experience. It actually helps protect sellers as well. And it's brought a whole new level of trust to the platform on eBay.

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