Bol.com, the leading e-commerce site of the Netherlands, was finally sold. It started life as part of Bertelsmann Online and is now becoming part of the Cyrte investments portfolio.Two years ago, I argued that it was a great fit for Amazon.com. Bol.com, much like Amazon, is venturing beyond books into electronics and it too has fierce local competition from an eBay affiliate: Marktplaats.nl (classifieds).
Financial details of Bol.com are not disclosed, but let's see how they compare:
- Sales 2008: Amazon $19.166bn (+29%), Bol EUR 224m (+31%). This makes Amazon 65x larger (at current USD and EUR rates). Growth rates have pretty much converged.
- Employees (at present): Amazon 20,600, Bol 230. On this metric, Amazon is 90x larger.
Amazon's market capitalisation is $36.3bn and it has $0.4bn in long-term debt, a total of EUR 27.7bn. One can only hope that Cyrte paid less than Amazon's 2x sales multiple valuation, which would translate into a maximum of EUR 400m.
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2 comments:
I never really understood the strategy of Amazon on a global scale. It seems to be content with where it is and doesn't seem to expand alot.
Amazon is making a lot of money nowadays with the fees they collect on sales by third parties via their website.
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