A Fundamental Analysis of Amazon and eBay

Emerging in the 1990s, both Amazon.com (AMZN) and eBay Inc (EBAY) facilitated the expansion of the global electronic commerce sector. Although Amazon and eBay are both multinational e-commerce corporations, eBay is solely a marketplace to conduct business, whereas Amazon is both a marketplace and a retailer.

Formerly just an online bookstore, Amazon expanded into a superstore selling digital media as well as physical products. On the other hand, eBay transformed online marketplace auctioning from what was just collectibles to a significantly larger array of products. Additionally, through its acquisition of PayPal, eBay revolutionized the profile of digital payments, spinning off the business in 2015, further supporting the growth of e-commerce payment platforms. In this article, we compare Amazon and eBay using various sales, profitability, and valuation indicators.

Key Performance Indicators

The success of either Amazon or eBay is evaluated by looking at both companies’ key performance indicators (KPIs), which can be broken down into four categories:

• Sales and Revenue: Which company has a higher increase rate?
• Profitability: Which company has a higher margin?
• Valuation Metrics: Which company is worth more?
• Active User Base: Which company has many new versus existing customers?

Sales and Revenue

For fiscal year 2021, Amazon had a trailing 12 months (TTM) revenue of $470 billion—an increase of 22% from 2020. In contrast, eBay’s revenue totaled just $10.3 billion, roughly the same as 2020 and 2019. Over the past three years, Amazon has significantly outpaced eBay in revenue growth with average annual revenue growth of 29.1% versus 3.6% for eBay.

Profitability

In 2021, Amazon had a net income of $33.36billion for the trailing 12 months versus $5.7 billion for eBay. Both companies have seen increases in net income in 2021. Through June 2020, Amazon reported a five-year gross margin average of 42% compared to 66% for eBay.

Meanwhile, five-year average operating margin levels are 7% and 70%, respectively for Amazon and eBay, a difference of 10x. eBay also outpaced Amazon in net income growth. In 2021, eBay had a trailing 12-month net income growth rate of 336% versus 24% for Amazon.

Valuation Metrics

Valuation metrics such as the price-to-sales (P/S) ratio and price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio essentially show which company’s stock has earned a greater value for investors. For 2021, Amazon’s P/S ratio stood at 3.56, with eBay’s similarly at 3.25. Amazon’s forward P/E ratio is much higher than eBay’s at 54.5x versus 12.7x for eBay.

Among the FAANG stocks (Meta (formerly Facebook), Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google), Amazon’s forward P/E tops the list.

Active User Base

Amazon was the most popular e-commerce marketplace as of mid-2021 with over 2.45 billion unique monthly visits. eBay however, was Amazon’s second-closest rival with approximately 885 million unique monthly visits. Other high-traffic competitor sites include Craigslist, Etsy, Walmart, and Overstock.

The Bottom Line

Amazon by far is the bigger corporation, dwarfing eBay in sales and income. Amazon has a significantly higher forward P/E showing greater room for growth. As of early 2022, Amazon traded at $3,180 versus $59 for eBay.

Amazon has been making investments to become the world’s top e-commerce marketplace and retailer. Its potential is substantially outpacing other specialty e-commerce marketplaces such as Etsy and Overstock. Amazon is also a top investment in comparison to the FAANG stocks, which adds greater credibility to Amazon’s investment opportunity given the valuation metrics of the FAANG group as well.