“And while we are pleased with the progress we have made, we see more opportunity to drive improved cost efficiencies going forward.”

In context

“f sellers and the unit sold per seller. We're making steady progress on improving our worldwide stores profitability. Since North America segment operating margins bottomed out in Q1 of 2022, we have seen 5 consecutive quarters of improvement, with second quarter operating margin of 3.9%. This is an improvement of 620 basis points over these past 5 quarters. One of the largest drivers of this operating income improvement in the stores business has been reducing our cost to serve, with shipping costs and fulfillment costs continuing to grow at a slower pace than our unit growth. Most recently, regionalization is an important contributor. Faster delivery speed from better network connectivity and better inventory placement means less miles traveled and fewer touches, resulting in less cost. And while we are pleased with the progress we have made, we see more opportunity to drive improved cost efficiencies going forward. Moving to the international segment. Since our operating margin loss bottomed out in Q3 of last year, we have seen 3 consecutive quarters of improvement, with a second quarter margin loss of negative 3%. This is an improvement of 590 basis points over the last 3 quarters. This segment also includes our emerging countries. It is important to remember how early we are in some of these marketplaces. We've launched more than 10 countries in the past 6 years and are always evaluating our customer experience as well as our path to profitability, and we like the path we're on. As a reminder, it took us 9 years to reach profitability in the United States. In addition, across our North America and international results, inflation headwinds also continue to ease, most notably in fuel prices, lineha”