Improving the Buying Experience Vital for e-Commerce Businesses in the Maturing Online Auction Marketplace

67 WALL STREET, New York - March 1, 2013 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Large Cap Value Report . The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.

Topics covered: Value Investing - Long-Term Investing - Bottom-up Investing - Global Investing - High Quality Companies - Investment Strategies - Large Cap Investing

Companies include: Denny's Corp. (DENN), eBay Inc. (EBAY), Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), Google Inc. (GOOG), The Home Depot, Inc. (HD) and many more.

In the following excerpt from the Large Cap Value Report, an experienced portfolio manager discusses his investing methodology and top stock picks:

TWST: Can you give us another name?

Mr. England: A name we believe is a good example of our strategy, partially because everyone knows it, is eBay (EBAY). eBay combines a leading e-commerce Web site with PayPal, which is the leading online payment network. We invested in 2010 and continue to hold the position.

At the time of the investment, the company had experienced declining earnings per share due to underperformance in their e-commerce business. The auction market was maturing, and the company was having difficulty getting traction in fixed-price sales. At the time, the perception in the market was that there was no growth left in the auction model and that companies like Amazon (AMZN) were winning the competition in fixed-price sales, resulting in continued e-commerce market share losses for eBay. PayPal was seen as high growth, but at significant risk from competition from rival payment networks that were starting up at Google (GOOG) and Amazon as well as the banks and traditional credit card companies.

Through our research, we believed that they had a credible plan to turn around the e-commerce business. Essentially, eBay fundamentally changed the way they managed the marketplace business. Before, they simply provided the technology platform and opened it to a collection of sellers; the company did little to enhance the user experience. There were also problems with customer service.

New management came in and implemented a strategy to use technology to identify what seller behavior is most appealing to buyers and to use this information to improve the buying experience. They also improved customer service by more aggressively eliminating poor sellers and investing in better service such as more live agents and a buyer protection plan...

For more of this interview and many others visit the Wall Street Transcript - a unique service for investors and industry researchers - providing fresh commentary and insight through verbatim interviews with CEOs, portfolio managers and research analysts. This special issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.