Hot air??? This stock has ALWAYS been VERY strong, but they don't make that much money, and their business model, while it does actually work (unlike Amazon), doesn't seem to have any room to expand...half.com is nice, but I just don't see it becoming a place where people spend alot of money. It's the kind of place you go when you don't have $$$ to buy new books and discs. Personally, I think EBAY sucks, and I've always attributed the stock's strength to the fact that they are probably the only big online company that made ANY money at all. My experience with ebay has been that it is too much of a pain to buy and sell, unless you are a merchant and are trying to unload non-distributed merchandise (i.e. aftermarket second-hand stuff, like if you went to the enron auction, got a bunch of stuff real cheap, and then unloaded it on ebay so you wouldn't have to pay income tax on it; or if you found some stuff in the attic that was worth more than you could get at a garage sale, but not enough to sell back to a real store). So what do we all think about EBAY??? Will the company collapse, and someone will dig up this thread a year later (like with WCOM) and be like "wow, bung, that was some prediction!" OR, will it always be slightly stronger than the market like it's always done?? PS - I don't have any positions in the stock or its derivatives, nor have I traded it at all in several months.
Bung. I wrote my ideas on EBAY on the last journal by Seagate. Ebay has taken business from Antique dealers and junk dealers. If one really looks into it many people buying there are "getting the wool pulled over their eyes" But as Seagate said we can't fight it , it just keeps going up. I also learnt recently that ebay is now the leading seller of used cars in the nation. Up to end of october 70,000 units sold at average price $8000. I have a friend that has sold Ferrari's there for big bucks.
bung - there's LOTS of funky numbers on ebay that aren't positive. and not even the known-analyst ones; the actual rate of growth has slowed significantly, and many people i know have given up selling on ebay because of increased competition, and ebay's increases / constant hassles. however, the stock is an institutional favorite (see meg on GS board), and has a large short interest. i think there are many other easier fish to fry.
Ebay basically makes completely illiquid assets liquid. All of the useless crap sitting around my apartment has a certain value in theory, but in reality cashing in that value would be extremely difficult...until the advent of Ebay. I could liquidate all the junk I have on Ebay. Ebay is also genius in that it truly takes advantage of the internet medium. The business couldn't be run any other way, effectively at least. The reason it provides liquidty for otherwise illiquid (read useless crap) assets is that it reaches out to so many people all over the world. In other words, there's always someone out there who wants your old GI Joe action figures. I suppose you could think of it in terms of spreads. Ebay is reducing the spread on trading your old crap. If you had to go out and find a buyer, all of that time and expense would add to the spread. Ebay facilitates the trading process and reduces expenses, therefore reducing the spread. It also cuts out the middle man of a pawn shop or reseller. I think Ebay is great IMHO. As to whether it will stay the top dog, who knows.
There is a whole new era of auctionable goods awaiting eBay.... in the B2B space. Most B2B marketplaces have failed but eBay is going to take its shot in a different format that what the marketplace players tried to do, and if they are even mildly successful the revenues will leave everything they've done so far in the dust. A few basis points from a single sale of manufacturing or construction equipment is a lot more money than tens of thousands of baseball cards and bobble heads! Just wait and see..... P.S. Most average investors do not know about these new ebay initiatives, hence their valuation models are flawed. And I don't necesarilly mean this inititiave is bullish for eBay. It could be a big disaster and suck a lot of resources. Just saying that information is everything when you do fundamental analysis...
Bung, This is one of the sections of the market were I have to ask myself what the hell are people thinking. After an 80% drop in the nasdaq and similar falls in real business that people would not be happy to just take money off the table and put it in their pockets is a mystery. I think the fact that institutions are able to prop it up by squeezing the shorts and keeping it a cult favorite could keep it up for a while, but not for ever. KKD has held up very well, despite that fact that on a fundamental level buyers are paying about $10,000,000 for each donut store. Silly. There was an article yesterday that someone was using a fake EBAY site to steal credit card information. And I think this is the sort of thing that will push people from EBAY. How many times does someone not get what they ordered before they say enough? Amazon does not have similar problems since orders go to and are processed by them. Considering that the insiders are making themselves rich by selling options, as an owner I would be pissed as hell. This puppy trades north of 100pe, 100 years to break even. Unless you're Meg Whitman. Think about this there were over 100 million dollars in inside sales of stock in the past six months. Income available to common is 100 million. Where do I sign???
As Larry Harris has pointed out, Ebay is the Worlds Most Prolific Market Organizer.....Nobody has ever created or organized more markets than eBay. 50 million registered users going into Christmas this year.....That is an astounding number for a company that has been around only about 7 years. Anyway....a 20 billion dollar cap seems pretty nuts but they may have the worlds greatest business model....no inventory and the do VOLUME like nobody else. Would not want to be short this bubble stock than has never really deflated for good reason.
Corso, I agree with you. I love EBAY, both as a user and as a stock. People don't appreciate the first mover advantage. EBAY has such a dominant position, no one can seriously challenge them. They are the category killer. I don't waste my time on second rate sites. EBAY is not some big yard sale. It is a virtual marketplace. In some ways, it is the real embodiment of the B-to-B craze that swept the bubble market, except that EBAY makes money. Many merchants have their place of business on EBAY. They get a hundred times the traffic they would get in a strip mall somewhere. Sure, a lot fo them sell discontinueds and over-runs or distressed merchandise, but so does T.J. Max. The bargains are staggering if you know what you are shopping for. EBAY is similar to Amazon in that there are no obvious limits to its product line. If it can be the largest used car seller, it can sell almost anything. It can displace the newspaper classifieds. I don't know how to value it, but I am a trader and I don't really care about valuation. If you want to invest in any internet company, I don't see how you can ignore this one.
avalanche - that's one of ebay's twisted numbers, the 50 million registered users. it's 50 million registered IDs; many, MANY people have more than 2 IDs. in fact, for a while, when ebay was terminating auctions because they didn't like politely worded content in their message boards, people would have up to 10 distinct IDs. again, i'm NOT saying it's a good short (i don't think it is). there are lots of flaws in ebay's public face, and what will happen is they'll ALL wind up showing up at once. and ebay, the company, will survive and continue to be a leader (if not the leader).
EBAY was highlighted in Wednesday's (11 Dec 02) Investor's Business Daily (William O'Neils newspaper) as a stock with top growth fundamentals. Ebay's been highlighted a lot before also by their paper. Basically the newspaper uses their own fundamental screen (something along the lines of CANSLIM I presume) and highlights stocks that pass their screen. There are usually between only 10 and 30 stocks at a time that pass their screen. I know their screen doesn't take into account p/e (O'Neil doesn't believe in their validity) and has a heavy emphasis on earnings growth. It also looks at revenue growth, ROE and profit margin.