William, I'll take your analysis one step further. Your analysis makes no sense. The following is what you SHOULD have done, which shows the strength of ONSL's concept.
1. There were 232,000 orders in 4th quarter, of which 169,360 were to repeat customers. So 62,640 of the orders were to new customers
2. There were 418,000 registered bidders at end of 4th quarter, up 30% from prior quarter. So there were 321,538 bidders at end of 3rd quarter and therefore 96,462 new customers were added in 4th quarter.
3. These 96,262 new customers made 62,640 orders in the 4th quarter, which is .65 orders for each new customer (62,640/96,262 = .65).
4. Let's assume that the "repeat" orders all came from the customers who already existed before 4th quarter. (I think this is the correct way to think of it. If anyone else has another idea, please share it.) The repeat customers made 169,360 orders in the 4th quarter, which is .53 orders for each pre-existing customer (169,360/321,538 = .53).
5. I would expect orders per customer to be higher for newly registered bidders (this is the .65 number) than for pre-existing bidders, since the reason someone probably registers in the first place is to place an order. However, the orders per customer for pre-existing customers is also very high, .53, which shows the loyalty of ONSL's customer base and the health of their business.
Paul |
