Anthony Noto Quotations

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.

I honestly think I'm the kind of person that is driven by fear of failure rather than striving for success. I tend to go to bed scared and wake up terrified.

The only way people can really be excellent is with truth, so you have to have a CFO who will have the intellectual capacity and conviction to tell you you're wrong and try to support that with data.

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.

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.

We believe the lower top-line growth in Q4' 00 versus expectations and uncertainty over Amazon's top-line growth going forward will overshadow the operational achievements that we felt were necessary to achieve operating profitability by Q4 ' 01 and subsequently could have driven stock price appreciation.

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

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.

The important fact is they're a first mover in a high-margin business that will have increased adoption rates as we move forward.