eBay Watch: Poor 2008 Start for Internet Stocks, Overstock's Good Points 3 comments
-
Font Size:
-
Print
- TweetThis
Internet Stocks Suffer in 2008
click to enlarge
eBay (EBAY) is off to rough start in 2008, currently down approximately 10% for the year, the worst performance among Internet heavyweights. This compares to a loss of about 3% for Yahoo! (YHOO), currently the best performer. With earnings season coming up fast, the graph above will no doubt encounter even more turbulence and volatility.
Does Overstock Make Sense for eBay?
Having lost over 70% of its market value in just over 2 months, Overstock (OSTK) has to be one of the worst performing e-commerce companies of recent times. All sorts of doomsday theories are rumored and CEO Patrick Byrne's unorthodox ways certainly raise eyebrows.
But if we can look beyond the market and management turmoil at the underlying business, there are actually a few bright spots. Overstock's Fulfillment Partner business, which accounted for over 75% of Overstock's revenue in Q3, has been on a roll. Anecdotal evidence also suggests Q4 was strong for this segment. And while the dismal performance of Overstock's Direct business (sales fulfilled directly by Overstock) has been a major concern in the past, the size of this business is now small enough that further erosion is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
So with Overstock's future centered around its third-party business, does the company's business model become an attractive complement for eBay? I'm not entirely sure, but it is certainly worth a think.
Related Articles
|
-
The Seeking Alpha 100
See allThe top 100 stock
market authors
selected for publication
Seeking Alpha 100 » -
Fastest Climbers
Authors with the largestSee all
increase in followers
in the last 7 days
Fastest Climbers » -
Top Commenters
Top commenters,See all
as ranked by their peers
Top Commenters » -
Top Instabloggers
The 100 most active
Instabloggers.-
1
TraderMark
-
2
Don Dion
-
3
Cliff Wachtel
-
4
Mike Havrilla
-
5
James Quinn
Top Instabloggers » -
1
-
Top StockTalkers
TopSee all
StockTalkers.
Top StockTalkers »
This article has 3 comments:
Buyers - Did he really think millions of buyers wouldn't notice the bad cookies he downloaded into their computers that opted them into his insane guinea pig tests? Most had no idea why their searches wouldn't work until they discovered an obscure opt out link at bottom of a page, if there was one there at all.
Sellers - Donahoe has devasted sellers with many innovations that are part of his mission to improve "buyer experience" but none work. The sell your item form (syi) has ceased to function despite 3-4 renditions in the last year, markdown manager still doesn't work, shipping calculator can't work due to a design flaw, predetermined item specifics don't make sense, and i could go on and on.
Conversion rates - When this seller asked the pink, Marniesue (ebay moderator of the Finding 2.0 thread on the Search Discussion Board) specifics about how conversation rates were calculated she was suddenly "called away" from the board.
Newbies - New members to ebay aka newbies are dupped into adding features to listings that don't make sense such as shipping overseas which is cost prohibitive to buyers or adding other features to make their listing standout.
Best Match - Buyers used to be able to find IT within a few minutes but that was before Donahoe replaced KEYWORD SEARCHES with best match. Now buyers are expected to DRILL DOWN and go through multiple levels to find IT & when they can't they are forced to start their search over & over again.
While Meg is out trolliping around the country with Mitt, ebay is slowly dying due to Donahoe. He is aware of all the issues above as evidenced by millions of complaints by both buyers & sellers and yet he continues his plan of destruction. I strongly urge all buyers & sellers to either buy 1 share of voting stock & vote both of the above out or seek another venue.
Amazon will welcome you with open arms.