Tom:
You have given me some cause for concern based on bringing up some good points. I do believe that if traffic growth has been at 12 percent, that that would have a negative impact on my projections.
That said, knowing that a sizeable portion (somewhere around half) of eBay's revenues are from listing fees themselves, that alone would cause growth to be 30 percent.
On top of that, even if fewer bids are being placed on each auction, eBay still gets a commission as long as the item sells. Plus, my guess is that eBay has sold more banner ads during this quarter than the previous quarter. Plus, higher featured auction fees, etc, etc.
If I am allowed to modify my estimate, I would put it more in line with 50 percent revenue growth over the Christmas quarter, bringing revenues for the quarter to about $29M. (If I'm not allowed, I still believe my earlier forecast of 60 percent growth will be a lot closer than your forecast of 12 to 15 percent sequential growth.)
And, I do think there is an outside chance they could hit the 60 percent growth I predicted earlier.
I will concede this: if revenue growth is less than 50 percent, I will be quite disappointed. And, long-term, if eBay reports traffic growth of only 12 percent, they will have to pick up that number significantly if they expect to grow revenues quickly in the future.
Regards,
Doug
P.S. Good call on eFax.
|
