Tag Archives: EBay

by | October 22, 2019 · 7:00 pm

Fast delivery is very important to some e-commerce Giants

Amazon is expected to report earnings on Thursday 24 after market close, and the consensus EPS forecast for the quarter is $4,46, and that is below the reported earnings for the same quarter last year that came in at $5,75.

I have been watching Amazon for two decades and it`s a big surprice to see that the company is still interesting. The company has been growing since the late 90`s and have now become a huge conglomerate with many businesses on top of its core business.

Amazon increased the shipping cost but what happens when its drones are taking over?

Cloud computing is one of the biggest winners at the conglomerate at the moment, and that`s also one of the biggest reasons why investors are holding their shares. It`s not their e-commerce business I`m looking at right now. It`s simply AWS (Amazon Web Services).

AWS made up about two-thirds of Amazon`s operating income last quarter. 13% of Amazon`s revenue comes from AWS. This is one of the most interesting part of the conglomerate with its great business model.

AWS grew 49% in the same quarter last year, and last quarter AWS reported a 37% growth and that is still a very great number. But it costs. Last quarter, Amazon reported that they had invested heavily in AWS.

Amazon added more personnel to the marketing team as well as the AWS`s technical team. Money makes money, and these investments should pay off in the long run.

Amazon have big competitors out there and one of the biggest are Rakuten in Japan and Alibaba in China. I receive many packages from them all and free and fast delivery is critical important to them all.

Jeff Bezos knows it and that`s why they now are in direct competition with FedEx and UPS to name a few. Amazon have recently started to ship third-party goods through its own logistics system, and that`s probably why FedEx made a decision to cut ties with them. This is probably why FedEx also reported negative results in its recent earnings.

According to Rakuten, Amazon has gone from shipping 15% of its own packages in 2017 to 50% today. Will they continue to ship its own packages through its own logistics system, and what is the percentage?

The shipping cost accelerated and can increase. On top of that Amazon still have its one-day shipping strategy which is a strategy not all of the e-commerce giants can follow up. I receive many packages from Ebay and sometimes it can take weeks and months to see the item arrive. But they have a different strategy.

Investors should look at it in the long run and keep in mind that the shipping cost can drop when the drones are coming to play the game. But it remain to see when that is happening.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Shiny bull. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Shiny bull nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Shiny bull and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

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by | March 26, 2014 · 1:45 pm

Alibaba IPO

 

I wrote about the company last year and now it is time to do it again. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is a big fish which is preparing to launch perhaps the largest U.S stock listing ever of a Chinese company.

alibaba logo

Personally, I have been dealing with Alibaba for many years now, but most of the people don`t have a clue of what it is. Alibaba is a mix of Amazon, Ebay, Paypal and Google. The difference between Amazon and Alibaba is that Alibaba is connecting buyers and sellers, while Amazon buy from suppliers and sell the products to the customers.

Alibaba is more like Ebay Inc. Their role is more like a middleman role and does not operate like an auction. Taobao is Alibaba`s biggest website. It is a gigantic Chinese bazar with about 760 million product listings from 7 million sellers.

Merchants pay Alibaba for advertising and other services from Alibaba. They do not pay them to sell their own products. The no-fee model is part of Taobao`s appeal in China. Just like Google, the ads from merchants appear with Taobao`s product-search results.

Taobao is designed for small businesses, but Alibaba`s Tmall is another shopping site that is designed for bigger brands like Nike and Apple. Tmall has about 70.000 merchants. They charges each seller a deposit and an annual fee, as well as a commission on each transaction.

Taobao and Tmall accounts for more than half of all parcel deliveries in China. In 2012, the combined transaction volume of Taobao and Tmall topped $163 billion. That is more than Amazon and eBay combined!

Alibaba`s revenue is 1/10 of Amazon`s. The Chinese company doesn`t sell products like Amazon on its site. Alibaba`s revenue rose 51% (third quarter) to $1,78 billion, while Amazon posted revenue of $17,09 billion and a loss of $41 million in the same quarter.

Alibaba`s profit margin is 44,6% and net profit was $792 million. They could raise about $15 billion from their U.S IPO. This can move another stock; Yahoo, which own a stake of 24% in Alibaba.

It can move Yahoo before and after the IPO. Like the Facebook IPO, they may «suck the air» of the markets. Yahoo has a market cap of $36 billion. It`s early in the process, but it is estimated that the IPO range is about $160 billion.

Alibaba remains by far the biggest player in China`s fast growing e-commerce market. Their biggest competitor Tenchent Holdings Ltd is a powerful competitor because of their popular WeChat mobile-messaging application.

Going public will keep Alibaba in the race in the global market. Yahoo is down -2,0% today and -11,2% YTD. This can change because Yahoo is a takeover candidate. This is one of the pioneers of the web.

Yahoo is a great success story of the Net. The stock has returned 21% annually since early trading in 1996. The company have survived two bear markets to date, and was one of the tech companies in the tech bubble in the late 1990`s.

Report today:

08:30 AM ET Core Durable Goods Orders m/m
08:30 AM ET Durable Goods Orders m/m
09:45 AM ET Flash Services PMI
10:30 AM ET Crude Oil Inventories

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Shiny bull. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Shiny bull nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Shiny bull and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

 

 

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by | December 3, 2013 · 2:01 pm

Cyber Monday Sales

More sales to Amazone and Ebay. Not only Thanksgiving and Black Friday is increasing their revenue. Cyber Monday Sales is coming on top of that. What`s next? Consumer Confidence is falling, but online shopping is taking off!

Web sales is projecting to climb 15% this holiday season, while retail sales is growing only 3,9%. This is three times faster than the retail sales. Cyber Monday has historically been the single biggest shopping day of the year so far for U.S retailers, but this is not the reality anymore as the web shops continue to gain share.

Shopping on tablets and smartphones increased twice as fast in the third quarter as desktop online spending, according to ComScore. Thanksgiving have shown that tablets are more popular for purchases, while mobile phones are preferred for browsing.

This is good news for FedEx, Ups, DHL and U.S Postal Services. As the online shopping increase, the amount of packages, revenue and work for the shipping companies will also increase. Amazone and Ebay are big, but there is someone out there that is much much bigger and they are not on the stock exchange yet. I will write about them later.

Investors and money makers are now waiting for December 18.

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by | December 2, 2013 · 2:18 pm

Online shopping increasing – foot traffic declines

Online shopping is taking off. Amazon was the most visited online retailer followed by EBay and Wal-Mart`s site. It is reported that the online orders is twice as many on black friday this year than last year.

The trend is that the shoppers is planning to buy before they shop, and it is a lot of mission shopping going on. That is bad news for retailers because they lose their impulse purchase which is about 20% of their holiday sales.

The report Institute of Supply Management`s November manufactoring survey will be on the radar today. This is the most closely followed report, and gives a great snapshot on the economy for the recent month. It is expected to fall back to 55 in November (56,4 in October).

ADP data on private-sector employment, the trade balance, new home sales, ISM non-manufacturing index and FED`s Beige Book later this week are interesting news. Later on we have jobless claims, and a revision to third-quarter gross domestic product and factory orders.

News sometimes moves the markets. Money makers has lost faith in Gold and the gold price is dropping down, trading at $ 1235,90. Gold is set for the first annual drop in 13 years. News today: FED chairman Ben Bernanke speaks at 8:30am, ISM Manufactoring PMI at 10:00am.

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