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Technology Stocks : Siebel Systems (SEBL) - strong buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Beltropolis Boy who wrote (3043)	9/29/1999 3:31:00 PM
From: Trader Dave	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

I haven't studied up on Calico in a while, lots of transitions there. I'm not so sure stand alone configuration makes enormous sense. Right now our friends at SEBL get some of their configuration technology from our friends at Oracle, not a situation I'd see lasting a long time. OT diatribe on hot IPOs Generally I don't pay much attention to IPO's these days since they are often priced so preposterously relative to their prospects, they would have to be cut by 90% for me to have an interest. I consider this IPO mania ridiculous and dangerous for management, shareholders and employees of these "priced for perfection" transactions. The stocks have more than a 95% chance of heading down, opening the exit doors for employees, ticking off shareholders, and leaving management with a worthless currency from an acquisition standpoint. At one point this year a WILDLY mediocre company called ONYX had a larger market cap than Clarify. Check out the ONXS message board, it's now a hostile environment. Tough for management too, most of the folks in the founders' parents home town mortgaged their houses to buy the stock as it ran from $25 to $50. Now it's overvalued at $15. Who are these hot deals good for? Two sets of people: The investment bankers and their trading heavy institutions that get big allocations of the IPO stock and get an artificial boost to their results. I know of some funds that have more than 10 percentage points added to their returns this year simply because of IPO allocations. Back on topic Don't get me started on AMR. Those clowns are mindless idiots trying to boost their ERP centric view of the world. The hot offerings which also include names like KANA speak to the importance of the space. I just consider the powerful and leading full product line vendors such as Siebel and Clarify by far the safest way to play the importance of CRM as a key enabling platform for e-commerce. Nothing beats critical mass, customer references, feet on the street and solidly crossing the $100 million in annual revenues (in the target market -- not $100 million in revenues in network computers) threshold as a predictor of success. TD