eBay talk at Merrill Lynch Wall St. get together...
I was invited to speak on a panel at the annual Merrill Lynch Internet Software and Services show today and eBay's Bob Swan was the lunch keynote.
eBay has posted the presentation here. I've seen 15-20 of these eBay investor presentations over the years and this was by far the best one I've ever seen. Instead of covering the basics of "what is eBay?!" and items like that, this presentation went straight towards what everyone wants to know: "How is eBay going to grow faster / keep up with ecommerce growth?"
Bob did a great job of explaining eBay as a portfolio of Internet co's (must be that GE background at work) and how they fit into the Inet ecosystem (slide 4). It's interesting to me in this slide that Yahoo! is focused on Search/Find and Entertainment with eBay filling in the middle spots of buy/communicate/pay- this continues to solidify my Ybay/eHoo theory.
Slides 7 and 8 are really interesting. Bob set it up to say that they are listening to their customers and buyers (Sellers take note - at ebay customers=buyers, not sellers - hmmm) are telling them that the top 5 issues buyers have with eBay are:
1. Shipping
2. Feedback
3. Ease of use
4. Safety
5. Conflict resolution
Bob then went through in great detail (slides 10+) eBay's initiatives in each of these areas which have been detailed on this blog over the last 6 months.
The slides really tell the story he covered. However it doesn't cover the Q+A session so I did my best to take some notes on that for eBay Strategies readers:
Q: Can your initiatives accelerate the GMV part of biz or other?
A: Our goal is over long-term grow biz at or over ecomm. We plan on that to come from a little bit of both GMV and non-GMV bizes.
Q: In q4, rate of GMV growth stabilized - why?
A: dramatic shift in q4 driven by
1. rebalance of mplace -improvements in CRs
2. asps improved - mix shift to CE/seasonal
3. price increase in store inventory
4. progress on non-GMV bizes (shopping+classifieds)
Q: You came from eds last march -what's diff and interesting at ebay?
A:
Common characteristics: ability to grow at EDS was founded on intense focus on
customer. Ebay intense focus on
community, so similiar.
Ebay still has a high growth, execution oriented culture
Q: skype - monetization behind, what are challenges?
A; in 06 had skype at 200m, achieved short of that. Good news is biz grew 3x. Base grew faster
than anticipated.
Conscious decision in 06 to 'go free' in North America because under represented in
USA
. So the
user base grew, but we lost revenue opportunities.
A; not dramatic on 18-22% growth rate no goog until
2H07. Yhoo in the us, approaching in 3
ways: Null, graphics, non-null
Lots of testing on all 3 to check cannibalism. Google just started last week
Q:
A; expanding paypal in yhoo properties
Testing was longer, collective(yhoo+ebay) intention is to get paypal ubiquity
Q: Can you get Craig@craigslist to focus on revenues?!
A;we own 23% of craigslist. We like the learnings, replicate them into kijiji, etc.
A: the planned acceleration of ecomm was from 3 areas
1. Transacting on ebay for compex/large ticket items
2 service oriented
3 paypercall
Q: let's talk about search (goog/yhoo) - opportunity or threat
A: continue to be destination site is our focus - remains our
majority
Triton - uses transaction db to identify what words are going to have highest ROI.
In your presentation you mentioned selling limits on items favored by counterfeiters. How is it you are able to differentiate counterfeit goods from the authentic? I have also done a bit of research myself and found that this policy was implemented around Nov-Dec and at the same time eBay's stock declined ~$34 in late Nov to $29 in mid Dec. Did this policy have any affect on eBay's total revenue? How will this policy affect eBay, shareholders and eBay sellers in the long run?
Posted by: David | February 26, 2007 at 12:45 PM