Amazon, Google Holiday Sales Topped eBay's

Overall, we believe ecommerce spending for the holiday season has been mixed, with sales slowing from the strong initial sales from the Thanksgiving weekend period. We believe Amazon.com's (AMZN) sales have been strong this holiday season as noted by ChannelAdvisor (CA) (up about 25% year-over-year) as well as Amazon's press release indicating Cyber Monday sales increased 39% year-over-year as well as strong Amazon Prime member sign-ups. We believe eBay (EBAY) data have been more mixed with strong initial sales though slower growth in December, resulting in about 10% year-over-year growth for the holiday season (CA). Additionally, Google (GOOG) search growth based on CA data as well as our recent search marketing call last week appears strong driven by mobile and Product Listing Ads. According to CA, for the 2013 holiday season (ended Dec. 22), eBay (EBAY) same-store sales increased 9.6% year-over-year versus 13% year-over-year growth reported in October and 19% growth in the third quarter. For the third week in December (Dec. 16-22) eBay same-store sales increased 18.1% year-over-year versus 22.3% year-over-year in 2012. We estimate eBay North America revenue growth for U.S. GMV (gross merchandise value -- most comparable to CA data) of 13.0% year-over-year in the fourth quarter versus 14.5% year-over-year reported in the third quarter. CA also noted that eBay was weak in the third week relative to the second week of December due to the fact that many sellers do not offer expedited shipping at reasonable rates. According to CA, for the 2013 holiday season, Amazon same-store sales increased 25.2% year-over-year versus 24% year-over-year in October and 35% year-over-year in the third quarter. For the third week in December, Amazon same-store sales increased 38.9% year-over-year versus 36.1% year-over-year in 2012. For the fourth quarter, we estimate Amazon revenue growth for U.S. Electronics & Other General Merchandise (most comparable to CA data) of 33.5% year-over-year versus 33.0% year-over-year in the third quarter. According to CA, overall search same-store sales have increased 17% for the holiday season versus 1% growth in the third quarter. Additionally, CA indicated that Google Shopping/Product Listings Ads same-store sales have increased 94% year-over-year this holiday season. According to comScore, 2013 PC holiday spending to date (through Dec. 22) has increased 10% year-over-year, which is below their expectation for mid-teens growth. ComScore noted that while the season started off strong (about high-teens-percentage growth for the Thanksgiving weekend), the final shopping week was "considerably softer than anticipated." We would note that comScore data only include PC sales and our checks suggest mobile is driving solid overall growth this holiday season. Amazon issued a press release that indicated strong CyberMonday (peak) item sales. Specifically, Amazon announced more than 36.8 million items ordered worldwide on Cyber Monday (426 items per second), an increase of 39% year-over-year from the 26.5 million orders on CyberMonday 2012). Amazon did not announce peak item sales in 2011 though did announce peak item sales in 2010 and prior. The variance between peak item sales and fourth-quarter revenue growth has been relatively wide (in 2009 and 2010, peak items sold growth outpaced fourth-quarter foreign-exchange-neutral revenue growth by 14% and 7%, respectively). That said, we would note the 39% relative to our 26% foreign-exchange-neutral revenue-growth estimate for the fourth quarter gives us increased confidence in our estimates.