Consumers continue to shop later in the online holiday season as their trust in on-time delivery grows. While 2005 holiday sales appear to be at the high end of expectations, continued heightened competition could hurt profitability.

Today, I think a CFO needs to be more of an operating CFO: someone who's using the financial data and the data of the company to help drive strategy, the allocation of capital, and the management of risks.

It is important to keep in mind that typically eBay's initial next year's guidance is extremely conservative. In fact, over the past 4 years, eBay has outperformed its original next year's revenue and earnings-per-share guidance by 13% and 23%, respectively.

We believe eBay continues to represent the best business model within the internet sector, as it remains relatively insulated from the heightened competition within e-commerce.

Our survey results reinforce our outlook for a continued slowdown in e-commerce sales. At this early juncture of the holiday season, consumers are not shifting a significant share of spending online from offline.

Trends are not as bad you think! We recommend buying the stock trading at 18.5 times 2006 EBIDTA.