BEA Systems and Ariba Expand Alliance -- 12:00 PM EDT
by Keith C. Applegate
eBusiness infrastructure-software provider BEA Systems [BEAS: Nasdaq] Tuesday announced it plans to expand its global strategic alliance with Business-to-business (B2B) software company Ariba [ARBA: Nasdaq]. Under the agreement, BEA Systems will embed its BEA WebLogic Server into Ariba Buyer, Ariba's leading eProcurement software program. BEA Systems is positioned to extend its agreement with Ariba, because it will give BEA Systems an increased presence in the eProcurement market. In addition, BEA announced that it has become a Gold Level Partner in the Ariba Partner Marketing Program.
The BEA WebLogic Server, is a leading Java application server, which offers complete implementation of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) standard. Ariba gains from the ability to easily and quickly develop and deploy transaction-based eCommerce applications for buying, selling, and managing marketplace processes on this Java standard.
Separately, BEA Systems CEO Bill Coleman reaffirmed prior guidance (which the company raised after its fiscal fourth-quarter conference call) many times during the last month.
During the company's Q4 conference call, BEA Systems raised its earnings guidance to $0.40-$0.41 per share for fiscal 2002, above the prior earnings guidance of $0.37 per share. BEA Systems sees 46%-48% revenue growth for the year, which would vault the company well above the $1.0bn mark for revenues, this year. Last year, BEA Systems generated revenue of $820m. Using management's current guidance, BEA Systems should reach $1.2bn in revenues.
Finally, we are convinced shares of BEA Systems are out of the woods. Many of its peers, with quarters ending in March, announced they would not meet expectations and/or issue any forward-looking guidance. We view this as a positive for BEA Systems as the company had the confidence to raise its guidance in the face of a slowing economy. As such, we are upping our rating on shares of BEA Systems to Buy. |
