“eBay is a company that understands network effects better than any other, ... Its core business, as well as (online payment system) Pay Pal, have been created and have succeeded by this network effect ? as more users come in, the marketplace grows in value.”
“The search engines have been working on book-copying strategies themselves. This is Amazon showing people it too has a pretty compelling database of book text.”
“Ebay put out good numbers. Wall Street had already priced in a possible miss or even lower guidance going forward but that did not happen. Ebay in fact moderately raised expectations. So that's a good thing.”
“Ebay is really fighting for China but there are two entrenched players there already. So eBay had to invest more in China to compete more aggressively for market share.”
“The international business is really the growth story for eBay, especially as the U.S. market matures. However, there was a significant material decline in revenues overseas in the fourth quarter.”
“These businesses are not meant to be managed on a quarterly basis but people take quarterly results and extrapolate them to come up with a long-term value for the stocks. You have to look at them with time horizons of two or three years, not two or three months.”
“Their growth rate internationally is still above 50 percent. If [eBay is] at 37 times forward earnings and maintaining 30 percent margins, that's a good investment at current valuations.”
