Not Bullish on eBay

I said earlier upon Meg Whitman’s departure that eBay has a bounce back opportunity ahead. As their new CEO, John Donahoe, announced Q1 results today, they exceeded market expectations on all counts. Q1 revenues of $2.19 billion and EPS of $0.42 were higher than analysts’ views of $2.08 billion revenue with $0.39 EPS.

Trend Radar 2008: Emerging Markets

This morning, as I was doing the HP piece, it struck me how big an impact Emerging Markets are having on companies right now! “HP has done well globally, a strong reason for it to be unfazed by the slowing US economy. In 2007, 67% of its total revenue was from outside the US. In

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Mercado Libre: Epilogue

I spent a lot of time locked up in a room with the Mercado Libre team recently, and came away with the following observations: * It is a very strong brand. Random “normal” people I asked about the company were familiar not only with the brand, but also knew what they did. * The competitive

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eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 8)

SM: How does the entrepreneur network in Latin America work? Are there many entrepreneurs in Latin America now? MG: Yes, there is a foundation called Endeavor Foundation. They select entrepreneurs in their region and then supports them. This foundation was founded by Linda Rosenburg and Peter Kelner, two Harvard graduates. They got the big private

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eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 7)

SM: Does PayPal operate in South America? MG: You can withdraw money but you cannot fund a PayPal account. They do not have a Spanish speaking site either. SM: What is your dynamic with eBay today? Competitive or collaborative?

eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 6)

SM: So you grew well through 2006, and in 2007 you went public. How was the IPO received in the investor community? MG: Very well. The stock went up quite a bit. We were quite unlucky in that we did our road show in the middle of the sub prime crisis. The day we priced,

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eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 5)

SM: What was Internet adoption like in 2003? MG: I do not remember year by year. I think the evolution was somewhere around 10% per year. SM: What type of revenues were you seeing in 2003? MG: I believe we had $4M in 2003. I would have to check that number, but 2006 was $52M,

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eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 4)

SM: What was your platform in those early days – an auction platform or a fixed price platform? MG: It was completely an auction platform, and today it is 90% a fixed priced platform. Another thing we did different is that we did not like the Buy It Now feature on eBay. We used it

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