Seasoned eBayer Responses to Stock Blog
Firemeg, who, if the name is any indication, is not a supporter of eBay CEO Meg Whitman, provided this well-thought out response to a blog I wrote on eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY). Firemeg made some interesting points.
Firemeg said:
In its current state, I would never buy ebay stock to hold onto. The numbers you have given are straight from eBay’s mouth. 220 million users? I have about 30 eBay ID’s, how many unique users are there and how many new unique members were there in 2006, and how many of them were active on the site? – Those numbers mean a lot more than the number of users.171 mil Skype users? Same here, how many signed up as paying customers? Since subscriptions were $15 or $30 for the year, and only $65 million was generated in the Q4, it’s obvious that most users did not subscribe (especially when you figure that part of that revenue was generated in per minute calling).Shopping.com is a very low traffic site without very good user reviews.Right now eBay is deriving much of its growth from fee increases and listing sales. Add the Skype subscriptions to the listings sales and fee increases and subtract them from the revenue and I’d bet you would see a loss.
Firemeg on February 25th, 2007 5:14 am
I should point out that my post to that blog is representative of how many professional eBay sellers feel. Those of us who seek positive change from eBay Inc. start cringing towards the end of each fiscal quarter in sick anticipation of what steps management will take to boost revenue and continue the company’s growth. As long as eBay is viewed as a golden child on Wall Street – even though the title, is in my opinion ill-gotten – there will never be any positive changes to the climate surrounding the site for users. This is evident in the recent Vladuz hacker incidents, Prostperpoint.com security breach and massive fraudulent listing scams that have swept the site in the past week. Instead of owning up to the problems and protecting the buyers and sellers, eBay management has chosen to try to sweep those issues under the rug through censorship of it “community” forums and through intimidation of hosting providers that dare have customers with an unfavorable opinion of eBay on their servers.
http://firemeg.blogspot.com
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