Mr. Leung: Basically I cover e-commerce in general. I cover GSI Commerce in e-commerce outsourcing, Expedia in online travel as well as Blue Nile in the consumer e-commerce space. I also co-cover three other segments with Jeetil Patel, including all the major e-commerce names, like Amazon and eBay, as well as Internet media names, like Google and Yahoo, and the video games, including Electronic Arts and Activision.
TWST: What would you say are the top emerging trends that will have the biggest impact in the industry in 2010?
Mr. Leung: For GSI, one of the emerging industry trends is the private market sale space, and it plays into the opaque e-commerce channel pretty well. What I mean by opaque channels is, for GSI for example, they just recently bought a company called Rue La La, which is in the private market space. That business is growing north of 40% this year and offers manufacturers, retailers, brands an outlet to move inventory, translating inventory into dollars without cannibalizing their traditional retail channels, whether it's offline or through a specific retailer. So its value proposition on Rue La La for consumers are brand-name products, such as apparel, clothing, travel, wine, at 40% or 60% off of retail prices. They actually move a lot of volume with 90% sellout rates for most sales. This is very similar to the online travel space where Priceline uses, like the "Name Your Own Price" platform and Expedia's Hotwire. So think of this as e-commerce's answer for the sample sale market.
Tickers included in this excerpt: AMZN, ATVI, EBAY, ERTS, EXPE, goog, GSIC, NILE, PCLN, YHOO
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.