eBay Stock Nosedives, Amazon Down Too

As earnings season gets underway in earnest, tech stocks took a pummeling Thursday (Oct. 8), as channel checks from research firms showed a slowdown in eCommerce sales in stark contrast to overall eCommerce trends that were up double-digit percentages in August.

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As reported by Seeking Alpha on Thursday, stocks of Internet retailers, such as eBay and Amazon, were off a bit on the day. EBay shares slid a bit more than 6 percent, as ChannelAdvisor reported that clients selling wares on eBay reported same-store sales up 1.1 percent in September, when measured on a year-over-year basis.

That represents a dip from 3.4 percent in August and a far cry from the 15 percent in overall eCommerce sales growth seen as an industry that same month in the United States. Seeking Alpha noted that this was the slowest pace of growth seen in the last 12 months. In fact, were it not for a double-digit increase in a single category, motors – which as a group was up 12 percent, yet also slowed from 20 percent in August of this year — same-store sales would have actually declined for the company as a whole. Auctions dropped 31 percent, while fixed price sales were barely positive.

Better results over the same period for Amazon likely helped the company see only a slight dip in its shares, relatively calm compared to eBay, and down 1.9 percent. The company saw same-store sales gain 19.2 percent, yet that healthy headline clip represented deceleration from 24.7 percent in August and also reached a 12-month nadir. Roughly a third of the company’s gross merchandise value came from the company’s fulfilment services, which leapt 29.9 percent from last year, while sellers that had used that fulfillment platform had seen 30.1 percent in same-store growth.

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