Amazon.com January Comps Leave eBay Eating Dust

Amazon.com, Inc.'s AMZN same-store sales growth continued to leave eBay Inc EBAY in the dust, according to a research report released Tuesday. Amazon's comps grew 27 percent in January from a year earlier, while eBay registered a growth rate of just 6.8 percent, according to the e-commerce software and research concern ChannelAdvisor. ChannelAdvisor says the "baseline" same-store growth rate for e-commerce in general is running at 15 percent. Both Amazon and eBay's growth rate picked up modestly from December's pace of 21.8 percent and 5.8 percent respectively. Yet Amazon's same-store sales growth is still far below its blistering 45 percent pace set back in August. It's December growth pace was the slowest of the past 12 months. EBay same-store sales growth pace rate hit a low of 4.9 percent in October, and has since trended slightly up. Yet its January performance is off considerably from a high of 17.8 percent growth recorded in March 2014. EBay auctions on a same-store comparison basis declined 16.2 percent in January, while fixed-price same-store sales grew 7.3 percent. EBay reported last month that eBay Marketplaces gross merchandise volume grew 2 percent in the fourth quarter. The company expects to spin off its PayPal unit as a separately traded company in the second half of 2015. Amazon last month posted total fourth-quarter sales growth of 15 percent.