IWOV note:
Interwoven (IWOV) 24 3/16 -2 13/16: Overall tech weakness seems to be responsible for IWOV's 10% drop today, but a note out of Dain Rauscher Wessels suggests the market is overlooking a very positive development at Interwoven. Before market open on Friday, Interwoven announced an agreement with IBM (IBM) whereby Big Blue will OEM a custom version of Interwoven’s content management software to include with IBM’s WebSphere Application Server and Content Manager. The news didn't do much for IWOV initially as the shares opened on a down gap, but by the end of the session, IWOV was up three to close at 27 while the Nasdaq finished 127.5 points lower. Today's selling has the shares right back below Thursday's close. It's hard to make too much of the IBM deal, as Big Blue does thousands of deals with hundreds of companies, but Dain Rauscher Wessels Analyst, Stephen Sigmond sees enough upside to the deal to justify an upgrade to the firm's highest rating. The premise is that the deal will allow IWOV access to thousands of incremental customers who will be more inclined to upgrade to the full version of the bundled software as opposed to going to a competing vendor. We're not so sure that this specific deal will be a huge catalyst, but the agreement does show IWOV is continuing to progress in their strategy of pushing sales through channel partners, and certainly IBM is as attractive as channel partners get. IWOV has relationships in place with BEA Systems, Microsoft and Art Technology Group, to name a few of the biggies. The eCRM space has been in the dumps for some time time now, and no near-term catalysts are apparent, but when the dust clears, keep an eye on IWOV, they're expanding their Fortune 500 customer base and growing revenues at a breakneck pace. - Matt Gould, Briefing.com |
