indicative of the constrained working capital access that I’ve discussed previously. Gross profit for the quarter as adjusted was approximately 3.1 million from ongoing sales, or 7.7 percent of sales, versus about $5 million, or 8.6 percent, of sales in the same period in 2004. On a pro forma basis the net loss for the fourth quarter was approximately $1.8 million excluding one-time items that I’ll discuss momentarily and merger-related costs. For the year ended December 31, 2005, cCOST’s net sales were approximately 174.6 million versus net sales of 178.5 million in 2004. Gross profit in 2005 was 12.4 million compared to 16.3 million in the year earlier period.

Some quantitative numbers for you here. Total number of orders shipped during the fourth quarter was about 115,000 with an average order value of $374. That compares to $302 in the same quarter last year. So the average order size is up significantly. Computers along with electronics and digital imaging continue to be the best product categories in terms of acquiring new customers which are then leveraged — the new customers are then leveraged across other product categories as they bring them further into the Web site. As of December 31, 2005, eCOST had 1.4 million total customers compared to one million total customers as of December 31, 2004. Active customers in the last 12 months as of December 31, 2005, were 468,000 compared to 462,000 as of the same of time in 2004. New customers for the fourth quarter of 2005 totaled 71,000 versus 139,000 new customers during the same period of 2004. The cost to acquire a new customer, calculated as total advertising dollars spent in the period divided new customers added in the period, was $19.39 in the 2005 fourth quarter, up from $14.93 in the same period a year ago. However, compared to the most recent third quarter, the cost dropped from 23.06 — $23.06 in the third quarter, which we believe indicates some improvements in trend in the effectiveness of our advertising activities at eCOST. Total advertising expenses for the fourth quarter was 1.4 million compared to two million for the fourth quarter of 2004.

As I discussed at length in my earlier comments, we continue to execute our integration plan with eCOST and look forward to capitalizing what we believe is significant growth potential as we move forward with our merger and maximize the leverage in our technology and corporate infrastructure. We’ve succeed in the first phase of our plan. That was completing the merger in a timely fashion. We’re now actively involved in the second phase of the merger as we work diligently to complete the integration of our operations and technology. And as I mentioned, we hope to have that in place by the end of summer this year.

The final key piece of our plan for 2006 is preparing eCOST for what we hope will be a robust holiday shopping season in November and December of 2006. We believe with the integration activities that we’re doing we’ll put the company on a much firmer operational platform. With the improvement we’re making on the working capital side, on the customer service side, all these things should begin to come together where — As we get to the end of 2006 we hope to begin then to see some fruits of our activity in terms of a return for growth and a successful holiday season for 2006.

Our goal for 2006 on an overall basis is to build a revenue base of approximately 500 million for the combined companies and obviously to complete the integration of our operations. However, PFSweb — while PFSweb’s service business and the supplies and distributor segment continues to perform well, as both Tom and I have discussed, I’ve got to remind you again that eCOST is