Two very different companies trading at two very different valuation multiples. But which is a better financial investment?

eBay (EBAY) closed the day Monday at $38.58 per share giving it a $52.4B market cap. For this price you get 2007E and 2008E earnings of $1.6B and $2.0B. This yields a 2007E and 2008E P/E of 32.7x and 26.2x respectively. In addition, EBAY has a pristine balance sheet with net cash of about $4B which, in essence, means their "clean" P/E ratios are actually lower still.
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Now is the time to sell Amazon and buy Ebay. my 2 cents.

I think it depends on your investing time table, long verses short. To me Amazon is the place for the long haul, ebay for a quick buck.

DDT

I agree with cohibastore.com. It depends on your investment strategy. With 'what we know here' and 'what we experience here' - both as buyers and sellers, I tend to agree that ebaY is definitely a short-term investment.

The ebaY chart tho is definitely interesting. I am not convinced we'll see any tremendous growth - short term (year end) or a bit longer (thru Q2 of 0 simply because I believe they've capped out - with their existing model. In other words, they will need to do something extremely spectacular for their price to do any upward dancing.

Amazon, on the other hand - going up. Now where else for them to go. Each week/two - they've added new 'suppliers' or etailers for their inventory. They represent a vast product offering, and their site is fast, functional with a good search engine. Shipping is extremely fast - even on free shipping items.

Their fulfillment works very well, and I see 'it' as a well-run company. Just my opinion.

I've heard a lot of good things about Amazon, so I looked it over today. I'm going to open a Pro-Merchant account there. One bad thing I noticed, however, is that there seems to be a lot of negative feedback from buyers about merchants and a fair amount of buyers knocking Amazon itself. Does anybody have a comment about this?

Ken

Even top amazon sellers rarely have feedback over 95% positive. Likely it's because there's no ebay style "tit for tat" feedback game so folks feel more confident leaving a negative.

They may also be expecting amazon style service and information from independent sellers who view it as just another venue and treat it liek ebay, where expectations are much lower.

I give my amazon orders much more attention.

I also make certain if I am selling an item under a pre-existing listing that the information is correct and does not contains anything that would trip me up based on another sellers details. Otherwise I create my own listing.

DDT

I love, love, love Amazon.com (as a buyer). I purchase quite a bit of items there - as they offer free shipping on so many things. I can say that out of 100+ purchases, I've not had any significant issues. One time, a merchant was not USA, which was not shared. Needless to say - the shipment was very, very slow!!!!!

Every other item I've ever ordered from there has been here in 2-3 days. Quick, as described, etc. --- so --- as a user - it's a great place IMO!!!

Best of efforts if ya head 'there' for sales!

What a pain!!! I'm based in Canada, but all my items ship from the U.S. The Amazon.ca site does not sell watches and clocks and I need a U.S. based credit card to join the U.S. site. I don't think I can get U.S. credit card.

Thank you all for your replies.

Ken

I've been looking for an eBay alternative for some time now, and Amazon seemed to me to be the best bet based upon name recognition and my own experience with Amazon, which has been very good.

I wanted to just list a few items to see how it goes, but I found that I could only use an existing listing and not create my own unless I opened a store. I don't know if that's correct or not, but that was the impression I left with. Plus I didn't find the process very user-friendly--i.e., it was hard to find answers to questions I had.

But I may look into it again, because I still think it's probably the best alternative.

Hi everybody,

I have an Amazon aStore ready to go to my Home page. I uploaded it to Welcome to TimeJewels which is found in all content. This is the code supplied by Amazon: Sorry the site strips out the code. I put it at the bottom of the attachment.

The aStore gets stripped out when I upload.

The attachment shows how I formatted in Microsoft Front Page. Can anyone please tell me how to get this up?

Thank you

Ken

e-bay stocks are falling.

Quote: › e-bay stocks are falling.

Not really no! Each time I check the sites count, it's in the green. Where did you get that?

Amazon shipping clerks do not know how to pack a box though...that is a concern, usually the box is 5 times larger than needed for the particular item and they use those mini blow up air baggies for even the most sensitive items....the air does not stay in those baggies....it leaks out many times.....

Did anyone receive the email from Amazon.com offering a free 30 trial of their new Webstores?

It states:

"As someone who has purchased products related to supporting a business enterprise, you might be interested in an exciting new product from Amazon Services: WebStore by Amazon.

WebStore by Amazon gives you a branded e-commerce site backed by the support, selection and expertise of Amazon. You can be confident that your WebStore is going to be up when your customers come clicking. Better yet, WebStore is easy to set up and comes with a number of great marketing features so you can start selling in minutes! "

$60/month for multiple stores with 7% commission on sales.

Would be interested in people's take on this. Comments anyone??

I am not sure if this sector is a very goo investment. But if I had to choose, I would go with Amazon. They have the momentum and Ebay is still chasing away sellers left and right.