Mike--herein follows a long & fascinating post that excerps a major e-business report, wherein there is a strong buy rating on SEBL among others. I'd love to get some discussion going on whichever of these companies interest anybody. I wish Tefon was around!
The Wall Street Transcript publishes e-Business Software Report in Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown TECH 99 e-Business Conference Issue
NEW YORK, Nov. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- The Wall Street Transcript, 212-952-7433 or twst.com, has just made available a report on e-Business as part of the special 192-page edition produced for the Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown TECH 99 e-Business: Vision and Reality Conference. Featuring interviews with eleven leading analysts plus CEOs or top management from 44 companies, this special issue offers an excellent current review for analysts, investors, and companies.
1) e-Process & e-Business Solutions -- Director and Senior Research Analyst James Moore with Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown offers an insightful, extensive (3,200 words) analysis of the exploding e-Process & e-Business sector, including the outlook for the sector, compounded growth rates of more than 70%, niche sectors, Internet efficiency benefits and offers specific stock recommendations.
We see the Internet driving fundamental changes in the global corporate environment, and we believe that these changes are more than just automation, Moore states, ``By leveraging the Internet, companies are creating hyper- efficient business processes, which is the reason that we have coined the phrase 'e-Process.`` Furthermore, we use the term revolution because we're witnessing a sudden and radical change in how businesses operate that is driven largely by the ability to become more nimble, lean and efficient by using the Internet. The e-Process Revolution implies more than simply putting up a Web site and refers to all of the other things that can be accomplished with this technology.'
The most efficient companies have real-time scalable communication infrastructures that facilitate collaboration with subcomponent vendors and efficient processes for making product changes and introducing new product initiatives, Moore states, ``PairGain Technologies, which redesigned its HDSL product to obtain significant cost reductions. The company submitted the engineering change order to the materials management and manufacturing people, who responded that it was possible to implement the change but that it would take nine months. This was not acceptable because the product's life cycle was only one to two years. PairGain completely redesigned its supply chain using an Internet-centric product from Agile Software (Nasdaq: AGIL - news). PairGain reduced its inventory by millions of dollars within a year and cut cycle times by significantly more than two months.'
This Conference Issue includes an extensive interview with Agile Software CEO Bryan Stolle. A free interview excerpt featuring Agile Software CEO Bryan Stolle commenting on his outlook for the firm is available at archive.twst.com
To see a free brief interview extract featuring Mr. Moore's commentary on the outlook for Agile Software see archive.twst.com
``Our favorite small cap name is Business Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ - news),' Moore states, ``Business Objects provides solutions that enable delivery of corporate information to functional business managers who are both inside the company and outside the company in several levels of its ecosystem.'
``Mercury Interactive (Nasdaq: MERQ - news) is our top mid-cap recommendation,' Moore declares, ``More and more companies are creating outward-facing technology that serves power users inside of a corporation as well as intermittently disconnected users beyond the firewall. Mercury Interactive's products allow companies to test business applications before actually deploying them. Mercury Interactive's solution can test package applications, legacy applications and, most recently, e-Business applications.' [This issue includes a detailed 1,600-word interview with Mercury Interactive CEO Amnon Landon.]
Another strong buy is TIBCO Software (Nasdaq: TIBX - news), Moore states, ``TIBCO's technology, the TIB or The Information Bus, is now installed throughout the world in over 400 trading floors and various stock exchanges, including Nasdaq. In these financial institutions, there are $2 trillion in transactions that go across the TIB on a daily basis. The TIB consolidates all the different information flows and applications in an environment into a common interface. TIBCO's strategy now is to enter other vertical industries. 80% of the chip capacity in the world runs over the TIB. Intel uses the TIB to tie 16 fabs together with fewer than two seconds of downtime.' [This issue includes an extensive interview (2,700 words) with TIBCO CEO Vivek Ranadive.]
Philips Electronics selected Ariba (Nasdaq: ARBA - news) in March of this year and expects to save almost $200 million annually by using the Ariba system, Moore states, ``HP eventually wants to spend $7 billion per year on the Ariba system and connect with 20,000 suppliers over the Ariba network. Over time, Ariba may build a very attractive transaction-based revenue model. Therefore, we think that Ariba's revenue may potentially accelerate sharply in the next 18 to 24 months.'
To obtain this valuable 192-page issue visit twst.com This issue is part of the TWST TECHNOLOGY sector available at twst.com
2) CRM Software -- Vice President and Senior Analyst Timothy Dolan with Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown offers an insightful, extensive (2,800 words) analysis of the growing CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Software sector, including the outlook for the sector, growth rates, niche sectors and offers specific stock recommendations.
CRM are employee-centric applications that enable frontline employees to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of each customer interaction and sale's cycle, Dolan explains, ``The power of these applications is that they enable corporations to both increase revenue and improve customer relationships, positioning them among the most strategic IT investments being made today.'
The performance of the companies executing well; Siebel Systems (Nasdaq: SEBL - news), Clarify (Nasdaq: CLFY - news) and Exchange Applications (Nasdaq: EXAP - news), has been extremely strong, Dolan states, ``While other software sectors have been impacted by the Y2K issue, front office applications vendors have been able to muscle their way through this difficult macro spending environment as a result of the fact that they help to address a number-one corporate priority: improving customer loyalty. Along with e-business applications, CRM is another area where we think organizations cannot hold back on spending.'
To read a free interview excerpt on why Dolan has a strong buy rating on Siebel Systems go to archive.twst.com
Investors were mostly nervous that all enterprise software vendors would be in trouble throughout 1999 as dollars and human resources were diverted toward solving Y2K problems, Dolan declares, ``However, CRM vendors continued to close multimillion-dollar deals even with customers that instituted a lock- down or a freeze on spending because of the strategic nature of the solution. I don't believe any organization even dared to contemplate slowing down spending on Web-based initiatives, which is the reason Vignette (Nasdaq: VIGN - news) and BroadVision (Nasdaq: BVSN - news) continued to put up huge numbers in each quarter.'
3) Enterprise Software -- Managing Director and Senior Analyst Chris Mortenson with Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown offers an insightful, extensive (2,600 words) analysis of the Enterprise Software sector, including his outlook for the sector, growth rates, niche sectors and offers specific stock recommendations.
Enterprise software is packaged software products that typically are bought by large corporations or large government organizations to help them run their overall operations, Mortenson explains, ``I focus on systems management software, which is the software that companies use to actually manage their computer environments and all of those operations, and then I also follow a collection of applications companies as well.'
As we're getting to the year end, people are beginning to be more optimistic about the sector, Mortenson states, ``The problems of the ERP companies I think are pretty widely recognized as being unique to the ERP companies. And everyone at least still seems to be saying there is no major Y2K negative out there, and I think investors are starting to look beyond Y2K at which companies will do well in the year 2000 and beyond.'
Regarding his strongest buy recommendations, Mortenson states, ``The big cap name I've primarily focused on is BMC Software (BMCS). BMC is in the systems management space. They've historically been very strong in products that manage large production databases and the applications that utilize those databases originally on mainframe computers, and more recently in client- server and distributed computer environments.'
Mortenson declares, ``Number two would be a smaller cap name, a company called Documentum (Nasdaq: DCTM - news). Documentum is a client-server applications company that's been focused on document management, which means managing the creation and use of large volumes of unstructured data, so things like pictures, text, cad files, anything that's not straight columns and rows of alphanumeric information.'
Number three would be Aspect Development (Nasdaq: ASDV - news), Mortenson asserts, ``The market cap here is about $800 million. Aspect is involved in the supply chain area, which I referred to earlier. And in the supply chain area, they're in a pretty unique position to help companies with their in- bound supply chains. It amazes me how inefficiently those activities can be run in many large organizations. IBM implemented the Aspect system I believe about three years ago, and in 1998, said that the system that they implemented saved them in the neighborhood of a-half a billion dollars. So Aspect has a pretty compelling value proposition.'
The fourth company I would mention is BindView (Nasdaq: BVEW - news), Mortenson states, ``BindView is also in the systems management space. It's a smaller cap company. They're involved with network administration, particularly LAN administration. So whether you're using Novell's NetWare, or Microsoft's Windows NT, the network administrator uses BindView as a tool for checking on the status of users, adding new users, making sure that employees who have left the company get deleted and their passwords are eliminated, all the sorts of day to day management of a local area network environment. We think the product expansion is going to drive very good revenue growth for them, and we expect them to be quite successful in this area.' [This Issue contains an extensive (2,500 word) interview with BindView CEO Eric Pulaski.] To read a free brief interview excerpt see archive.twst.com
4) This issue also includes the following Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown Analyst Interviews:
Internet Media - Shaun Andrikopoulos
e-Commerce Software & Services - Cato D. Carpenter
IT & Internet Services - Mark D'Annolfo
Computer Systems - Philip Rueppel
Semiconductors - Bruce A. Walicek
Electronic Manufacturing
Services & Storage Devices - Michael Esdall Carboy
Wireless Equipment - Brian Modoff
Internet Infrastructure - James Wade
5) Q&A Interviews (each averages 2,500+ words) with CEOs or top management from 44 Technology companies, offering an in-depth view of their firm, key trends in their markets; opportunities they face and concerns, specific goals they set for their organization; and the outlook for investors:
44 Technology Sector CEO Interviews including:
Agile Software
Amdocs Ltd.
Ariba
ASM International N.V.
Atmel
ATMI, Inc.
Autobytel.com
BEA Systems
BindView Development
Bottomline Technologies
Braun Consulting
Brocade Com. Systems
C-Cube Microsystems
Cognos
Cyberian Outpost
Digital Microwave
DoubleClick
Fairchild Semiconductor
Harbinger
JDS Uniphase
Maker Communications
Mercury Interactive
Microchip Technology
MIPS Technologies
MMC Networks
Network Appliance
NOVA Corp.
Oracle
Peregrine Systems
Plexus
Powerwave Technologies
Proxicom
QRS
Sanmina
Scient
SeaChange International
Smith-Gardner & Associates
Splash Technology Holdings
SS&C Technologies
TenFold
TIBCO Software
Transaction Systems Architects
U.S. Interactive
Whittman-Hart
To obtain a copy of this issue, see twst.com or call (212) 952-7433. This special section is also included in the TECHNOLOGY Sector of TWST Online. For info, go to twst.com. The TECHNOLOGY Sector includes The Wall Street Transcript Enterprise Software Issue available at twst.com.
The Wall Street Transcript is a premier weekly investment publication interviewing market professionals for serious investors for over 35 years. Visit twst.com for free recent recommendations from top analysts and money managers. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse the views of any interviewee nor does it make stock recommendations. |
