We remain enthusiastic about eBay's business model and market leadership position. |
We still believe that, over the intermediate term, these factors will likely outweigh controversy surrounding Windows XP, so we maintain our 'accumulate' rating. |
We think the Internet is tremendously profound. It will continue to have an effect on the global economy over the next five-to-10 years. But there's no way that it is a large enough opportunity to support the 400 companies that have gone public. And I think if you look back in history at different emerging industries, we've often had this feeling that the PCs for example are going to change the world. All you have to do is buy a PC company and you're safe. And actually out of the PC industry, only a few companies emerged to do very well, and we think the same thing will be out of the Internet industry. |
We would therefore remain cautious about adding new money to online advertising-driven stocks until the first or second quarter, when we should have better visibility. We continue to believe that the first quarter will be the toughest quarter, with only 10 percent year-over-year growth. |
While the combined entity will have a large global footprint, we think cultural and managerial integration of the two companies could pose a challenge longer term. |
While we still believe the model is compelling long term, the business continues to be heavily dependent on airline ticket sales. As a result, it appears management has limited visibility to accurately forecast the business. |
With paid search, advertisers bid against each other for rank positioning on commercial search terms, paying each time a user 'clicks' on their result. |