OSTK

[lessthaniv]

Looks like Francis Chou has been increasing his position in OSTK lately:

Perhaps timely given the fall in price in front of the Christmas season.

 

http://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1130713.htm

 

 

[Eric50]

I just looked at their recent traffic data on compete.com. Overstock had 14.6m unique visitors in September 2011 vs 16.3m in September 2010. That's a decrease of 10% YOY... Compare that to amazon.com that grew 14% over the same periods.... Overstock is really cheap but it's not really a growth business...

[Parsad]

I just looked at their recent traffic data on compete.com. Overstock had 14.6m unique visitors in September 2011 vs 16.3m in September 2010. That's a decrease of 10% YOY... Compare that to amazon.com that grew 14% over the same periods.... Overstock is really cheap but it's not really a growth business...

 

There's a reason for the drop off in unique visitors.  They were hit with a Google penalty for their SEO practices in early January through early March.  Their traffic plummeted to the 14M mark.  That carried over into the early part of the 3rd quarter and it looks like they started to rebound in August and September.  Probably better pricing and inventory for the back to school season. 

 

This is the time of year that Overstock also starts ramping up their merchandise and sales for the Holiday Season, where they pretty much make all their money.  I would expect unique visitors to increase back into the 16-18M mark through October, November and December.  Cheers!

[Eric50]

I forgot about that SEO thing. Thanks Sanjeev for bringing that up. But it also means that they'll have a tougher comp til the end of the year. Unless they can improve their conversion rate.