FEATURED POSTRichard Brewer-Hay / Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
eBay reported first quarter 2008 earnings results a few minutes ago. Read the full press release here: eBay Inc. Reports First Quarter 2008 Results
To listen to the Q1 2008 Earnings call at 2pm PT this afternoon, please click here.
Check back later this afternoon to read the transcript from my conversation with CFO, Bob Swan as we dig into the details of this quarter’s highlights.
I’m not experienced in reading the numbers mumbo-gumbo. Would like to know how auctions (overall and US alone) made out this quarter as opposed to the same time last year.
Hi Richard,
I see that the blog is beginning to fade. Icheck in to see if there is discernable progress of any sort.
The quarterly report is accessable through financial segments of Yahoo, AOL, etc. I don’t feel that it was necessary to post about it here. Since the January announcements there has been aa over abundance of people being willing to write or vent about Ebay.
I believe most ebayers were hoping that you would be functioning in a liason capacity between the community and upper management tiers. I have no way of knowing your job discription or of knowing how you were instructed to tackle this blog assignment.
I do see a marked slowdown in commentary and notice the areas that are not deemed important by people who are posting here. I hope that you are not the designated sacrificial lamb that is being thrown to the mob to allow others time to escape.
As I have stated in other posts, I am not doing much of anything other than watching all of this unfold. I believe that there are educational opportunites being presented to me. So I continue my reading, never knowing, when an AHA moment will take place.
It would be useful for more of the executives to be active contributors to the blog, if for no other reason than to boost morale. Regardless of the power of the internet, people are still people and need to be treated as such. Typed words can only do so much.
Where is the give and take spoken of in the intro article by Fortune? It won’t take long for disillusion to retake root. It may have already begun.
Best take away from the Earnings call was summarized in a comment by Dan Wilson on TameBay “We want the buyers we have to buy more, more frequently.”
That in essence is what all the changes this year have been about – looking after buyers better than ever before which should be great news for sellers and investors. :-)
Hmmm….still ignoring the fact that sellers are also buyers…
@ Chris
“That in essence is what all the changes this year have been about – looking after buyers better than ever before which should be great news for sellers and investors. :-)”
As a seller I’m more concerned with the quality of my buyers, as opposed to numbers.
If a buyer files a charge back after receiving their item, how does that help me as a seller? If a buyer leaves me a Neg because I will not mark a customs form as “gift” or I will not lower my shipping costs after the listing has ended, how does that benefit me as a seller? If a buyer buys an item, uses it once, then changes their mind and wishes to return it, and eBay/PayPal forces the refund, how is that good news for a seller?
eBay already has a poor reputation because of the loopholes in their buyer policies and procedures which help facilitate scams and frauds, and now these new “protections” will undoubtedly lead to more.
I would rather prefer that eBay initiate some changes which would protect sellers, and eliminate these existing loopholes, before opening the flood gates for more. In fact, the recent changes in fees and feedback has been my primary reasons for not listing anything on eBay since the end of February. I am waiting to see what the fall out will be, based on other seller’s experiences during this time, to see if my fears are justified. Some of what I’ve read already on the eBay forums, buyers leaving unjustified negs believing sellers could not, seems to lend credence to my concerns.
Hey Patricia1, many sellers are also buyers but the fact remains many more buyers are not sellers.
Quite frankly if the only people that bought on eBay were sellers no one would make any money. As a seller I need to sell more than I buy to make mone, and so does every other seller. So the most important type of buyer is the buyer that doesn’t, hasn’t or will only rarely sell.
The non-selling buyer is the person who pours the money into the pot for everyone else. These are the guys eBay need to look after.
“Best take away from the Earnings call was summarized in a comment by Dan Wilson on TameBay “We want the buyers we have to buy more, more frequently.”
I really think you are correct Patricia, I stopped selling my artwork on ebay about one year ago, party because of a contract with art.com, but I also found other sites that simply worked better and easier (and cheaper and geez, phone support for EVERYBODY – and the support are live people in the US who speak English fluently)- and that for whatever reason my artwork always sells for 2 to 4 times more than it ever did on ebay.
I continued to sell my secondary items until Feb 2008. I closed up my store and stopped listing in part because of the continual fee increases, feedback changes, etc but primarily I did not appreciate the way I and other customers were being treated – I especially resented the remarks about “noise”. I found that extremely disrespectful, and one has to wonder exactly what business school did the person who spewed that statement out go to???
Since most of my items sold from my ebay store, I had been giving ebay 10% (plus all the other, but you guys know that, only Richard might not realize exactly how much of the seller’s money ebay ultimately gets) of the price every single item sold for, now they want 12.75% and have executives being disrespectful??? I don’t think so.
He was in essence devaluing every single ebay user, and letting the world know he felt superior to the every people who help make his salary, bonuses, and stock options possible.
BUT the part management really does not seem to get I am a buyer – I quit buying on ebay. I spent more than I sold, I am fortunate enough I have disposable income, but I am not disposing of any of it on ebay.
On the note of the financial information, any business person would know ebay has no clue (or does anyone else for that matter) what impact the boycott and the user unrest will cause.
It will take months to know, ebay can claim their numbers were not down – maybe they weren’t (but who knows when you have test auctions, shopping.com listings) – add NO TRANSPARENCY as it relates to listing numbers and sale through rates and final selling prices. I would love to know if number of bids is down and are items selling for less.
As long as ebay keeps those numbers close to their chests, it’s anyone’s guess.
But the bigger story (at least I think so) is the growth of numbers of all those other places out there are experiencing – those are listings ebay did lose.
The real story is how ebay finally managed to turn on light bulbs in so many sellers’ heads that maybe keeping all your eggs in one basket wasn’t the best thing to do. Ebay gave sellers who never would have before the push they needed to look elsewhere. I personally think they have pushed so long and never suffered, they thought this time would be different.
And as you said, sellers are buyers – and all those sellers have regular buyers who go with them too. Ebay wasn’t built in 2 weeks after all.
The other point I would like to hear how much of their 7% growth came from all the advertising they have added to ebay?
I find all the ads for non-ebay sellers humorous and ironic. Do we will remember ebay live and Google throwing a party? Meg stomped her feet, pulled her ebay ads because she did not like it.
So what is the difference between what Google did than ebay throwing non-ebay and other seller’s ads all over the listing some poor seller paid ebay for?
I think that is worse myself.
As I suspect it is the non-us that is also allowing ebay to not look like it is on the decline, they still have the lawsuits in Europe to contend with – and if the French win, ebay is really going to want us US sellers back – unless there still is that fantasy China is the key:-).
“That in essence is what all the changes this year have been about – looking after buyers better than ever before which should be great news for sellers and investors”
eBay has made a lot of changes,unfortunately eBay hasn’t changed their business model.It’s the same song….different verse,pile policy upon policy and place the burden of making them work upon the customers.
Placing additional stress on a structure that’s already under code is not necessarily that brilliant.
Just a quick analyst of the Q1 report gives no indication the changes supplied any positive effect on the eBay.com.
Considering the hows and whys of the report….it remains to be seen what reaction sellers and investors will have a few months from now.
My guess would be any jubilates will be short lived.
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