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发帖数: 1984 | 1 eBay to Provide Fulfillment Service
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/eBay-to-Provide-Fulfillment-zacks
zacks
Sejuti Banerjea, On Thursday June 23, 2011, 2:50 pm EDT
Not unsurprisingly, eBay Inc (NasdaqGS: EBAY - News) has stated that it
would soon be offering a fulfillment service to sellers, similar to the
service already being offered by Amazon.com (NasdaqGS: AMZN - News), as well
as fulfillment companies employed by other online retailers.
In fact, the company’s recent acquisition of GSI Commerce was partially on
account of the latter’s over 2.6 million square feet of warehouse
fulfillment space across the United States, Canada and the U.K. eBay will
retain seven of the nine fulfillment centers it acquires from GSI.
The fulfillment service is intended to help woo large sellers that provide a
much bigger opportunity, according to eBay. The company estimates that the
large seller segment opportunity is currently $160 billion compared to the
small seller opportunity of just around $12 billion and the small and medium
business (SMB) segment of around $36 billion.
This opportunity at large sellers has prompted eBay to rethink its growth
strategy, consistently coming out with new policies that could attract big
sellers. Of course, it does not clearly mention the impact of its policies
on active seller accounts, which have been “over two million” for a while
now.
However, the company’s fixed price format, introduction of badges to
attract buyers, insistence on free shipping for consumers, reduction of fees
, investment in technology and now, fulfillment centers makes the eBay sites
much more conducive for big sellers than small ones. eBay has an additional
advantage over Amazon, since the company has its own payment platform (
Paypal), which has been doing extremely well in recent times.
eBay and Paypal are currently engaged in legal battle with Google Inc (
NasdaqGS: GOOG - News), claiming that Google misappropriated information
related to the future development of the Paypal platform and also picked up
key personnel engaged with it. We expect this to generate some cash for eBay
, although the impact on the future of Paypal and its adoption appears
unclear right now.
As far as the fulfillment service is concerned, (which by the way will not
commence until later in the year), we expect initial hiccups. Amazon has
been providing fulfillment centers for long and sellers are accustomed to it
. Amazon added 13 centers in 2010 and expects to add another nine this year.
Despite its service being several years old, these investments have had a
considerable impact on its earnings. Since eBay has acquired a few centers
from GSI, its investments may have a lesser impact on results. However,
there is necessarily a learning curve attached to every process, so some
moderate impact on profits is possible.
The fact that fulfillment centers don’t just remove the hassles of packing
and delivery of products for the seller, but is also advantageous for the
buyer, who would be relatively more certain of its availability, is also a
matter to consider.
We are therefore of the opinion that the initiative is commendable and we
believe that eBay is on the right track to tap the tremendous growth
opportunity in the market.
The Zacks Rank on eBay shares is #3 (short-term Hold recommendation), while
it is #4 for both Amazon and Google. We are Neutral on all three companies
in the long term (3-6 months).
EBAY INC (EBAY): Read the Full Research Report | y***r
发帖数: 16594 | 2 smart move。
不过abuse的估计更多了。 |
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