Etsy, Inc. (ETSY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I wanted to start with a brief acknowledgment. The Annual Shareholders' Meeting is an important routine part of being a public company, but today is anything but a routine day for so many people. And so I just wanted to start by acknowledging the anguish and pain being felt by the black community in the United States. Our hearts go out to everyone who has been impacted. And with that, we'll begin the prepared remarks. Hello, everyone. Good morning, and welcome to Etsy's Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Josh Silverman, CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. I'm thrilled to be speaking with you today.

And hi, everyone. I'm Fred Wilson, Chairman of the Board. I'd also like to extend a warm welcome to our stockholders and acknowledge the other members of our Board of Directors who are joining us today. We have Gary Briggs. We have Michele Burns. We have Edith Cooper. Jonathan Klein and Melissa Reiff and Peggy Smyth are all here with us today.

We also have members of Etsy's management team with us today: Rachel Glaser, Etsy's Chief Financial Officer; Jill Simeone, our General Counsel; and Deb Wasser, Vice President of Investor Relations. In addition, Nikki Gowan from PricewaterhouseCoopers is with us today. PwC is Etsy's independent auditor. During the Q&A period, she'll be available to answer questions. Tracy Oats from Broadridge is participating. She's acting as our inspector of elections for today's meeting. And I'll turn the meeting now over to Jill, who is acting as Secretary and will cover some of the formalities.

Thanks, Josh, and good morning, everyone. We will begin today's meeting with a brief management presentation followed by a discussion of proposals described in our proxy statement and conclude with Q&A. As a reminder, our remarks in the management presentation and responses to questions today may include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which are described in our SEC filings, including our first quarter Form 10-Q, and our actual results may differ materially. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on our beliefs and assumptions today, and we don't have any obligation to update them. Also, information presented today includes adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure. A reconciliation of this non-GAAP measure to net income or loss, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is included in the slide presentation available on the annual meeting portal. I've received affirmation that notice of this meeting was properly given to stockholders of record as of April 7, 2020. I've also been informed by Broadridge that a quorum is present and that this meeting is duly convened and can proceed. As a reminder, the polls are now open, and you can vote online through the Annual Meeting portal any time until I announce that the polls are closed. The agenda and rules of conduct for the meeting are posted on the Annual Meeting portal. We ask that you follow these rules to help the meeting run smoothly. We will address appropriate questions during the Q&A portion of the meeting. If you have a question, please submit it by entering it into the text box on the Annual Meeting portal. Per the rules of conduct, please include your name and affiliation, if any. Only stockholders of record and their proxy holders may submit questions or comments. Be respectful of your fellow stockholders and meeting participants. Please limit remarks to one brief question or comment that is relevant to the Annual Meeting and/or Etsy's business. And we may group questions by topic, with a representative question read aloud and answered. And with that, I'll turn it back to Josh.

Thanks very much, Jill. And now we'll do a brief management presentation. We believe that Etsy is a particularly compelling investment opportunity based on both the growth characteristics, the profitability and the resiliency of the business. And we think that we have a uniquely compelling combination of those 3, which resulted in a really strong 2019. And you can see here our financial results with GMS growing almost 27% year-over-year, revenue growing almost 36% year-over-year and with substantial net income and EBITDA. And this is really the result of strong execution from the team across many different operating metrics, which resulted in over 46 million active buyers and around 2.7 million active sellers. And you'll see here that the GMS per active buyer actually hit its highest point in the fourth quarter of 2019, and we've continued to see strength in GMS per active buyer. The exciting thing about a 2-sided marketplace when it gets to scale is that buyers come because they have a lot of sellers, and sellers come because there's a lot of buyers. And you'll see here this positive flywheel that Etsy has, with over 46 million active buyers and over 2.7 million active sellers, is creating a virtuous cycle with more great things to buy, which makes it more of the place that sellers want to come and sell. And we think we've made meaningful progress on that over the past few years, which is making Etsy's growth potential even greater and our resiliency even stronger. And that's really an outgrowth of our long-term growth strategy, where we've focused our energy and resources on our core marketplace across 6 core markets, and really across 3 levers that we think together collectively create our right to win. And that's a best-in-class search experience, a human connection between the buyer and seller, a trusted brand, all underpinned by our sellers' collection of unique inventory. We believe we are addressing a very substantial total addressable market. If you look in just the top 6 markets and you looked at only the online portions in those markets, you'd have about $250 billion of sales. And we think, in fact, that there are many more markets than just our top 6. We think that we compete not just against online but against offline, and so we believe the market is actually even bigger than the $250 billion TAM that we've laid out. In order to unlock that TAM, our real opportunity is to help people understand even more all of the different occasions that Etsy can serve them, the occasions for special. Many people who come to Etsy have us in mind for a particular holiday, let's say, Valentine's Day, or a particular occasion like a wedding. But in fact, we serve so many different calendar holidays and so many different life cycle events that there's really opportunities to come and shop on Etsy all the time. And that's really -- our goal is to unpack that and make consumers more aware of that. In order to do that, we're evolving our marketing investments to become more full funnel. So for the past number of years, Etsy has been investing in lower funnel performance marketing, for example, Google PLAs, and more recently, Facebook marketing. But over the past couple of years, and increasingly now, we are investing in higher funnel activities like TV advertising to make sure that Etsy is really front of mind for people and that they're aware of all of the great purchase occasions for which Etsy can be relevant. The result of that was not just a strong 2019, as we laid out before, but also it has been a dynamic first 4 months of the year. We started out the year very strong in January and February with 41% year-over-year growth. March was difficult as so many people's lives changed in such major ways all around the world. But in April, where there were fewer alternatives, people turned more and more often to Etsy and discover that Etsy can meet their needs so often for so many different purchase occasions. And so we certainly were the beneficiary of that in April, and we're working hard to make sure that we see ongoing benefit from that in time as we reinforce the idea that Etsy can be available for them a lot more often than they might have previously considered. One big driver of the strong growth in April was fabric face masks, where Etsy was one of the first places that many people were turning to buy a fabric face mask that was maybe personalized or customized or at least made by another real person, and made them feel good to buy it and not just to wear it. And that drove substantial growth in April, but April's growth wasn't limited just to fabric face masks. In fact, nonmask GMS on Etsy grew 79% in the month of April across a very wide range of categories. So again, we're seeing, in this particular moment, more and more people turning to Etsy and discovering the breadth and depth of offerings that we have. So in order to really rise to this occasion, we pivoted our marketing strategy, our product investments and our product initiatives to make sure that we are really reinforcing the relevancy of the Etsy brand, relevancy of particular category occasions right now as well as making sure that our product experience is really optimized for this particular moment. Last but certainly not least, we're very pleased with how Reverb is going. It's a 2-sided marketplace for musical instruments that we acquired about a year ago, and it's off to a great start with -- as part of the Etsy brand. And so we're delighted to have them in our community. Just to wrap up, our mission is keeping commerce human. We think that there's never been a time when that's been more important than today. At a time when we're often distant from each other, we yearn for human connection. And that's really what Etsy is all about. At a time when so many businesses are hard hit, Etsy has the opportunity to provide economic empowerment to millions of sellers. At a time when buyers maybe want to buy fewer things but want those things to have more meaning, that's the time when Etsy can really step in. So we think that our mission to keep commerce human is more relevant now than ever. We're really excited about the future. And with that, I'll turn it back to Jill.

Thanks, Josh. We'll now move to the proposals. The polls have been opened for voting since the start of the meeting at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. The first item of business today is the election of directors. The Board of Directors recommends that stockholders elect the following nominees as Class II Directors: Michele Burns, Josh Silverman and Fred Wilson. The second item of business is the ratification of the appointment of PwC as Etsy's independent registered public accounting firm for 2020. The Board recommends that the stockholders approve the ratification. And the third item of business is the approval, on an advisory basis, of executive compensation. The Board recommends that the stockholders approve the compensation of our named executive officers. If you have already voted, there is no need to vote now unless you would like to change your vote. If you have not voted and you'd like to, please click the Vote Now button at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. You will need the control number that you used to join the meeting. We'll pause for a moment to give anyone who hasn't yet voted a chance to vote. [Voting]

The polls are now closed. Our preliminary results indicate that Michele Burns, Josh Silverman and Fred Wilson have been elected to the Board, each to serve until our 2023 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. And the ratification of the appointment of PwC as our independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020, has been approved. And the compensation of our named executive officers has been approved on an advisory basis. We'll report the final vote results that are certified by inspector of elections in a filing with the SEC within 4 business days. Thank you.

We'll now turn to the Q&A portion of the meeting. I'll turn this over to Deb.

If you have not already submitted a question and wish to do so, please enter your question now into the text box on the Annual Meeting portal. Josh, it appears we have no more questions. There are no questions. I'll turn it back to you.

Thanks, Deb. That concludes our Annual Meeting. Thank you all for your interest and attention with Etsy, and we'll talk to you again soon. Thanks everyone.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.