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

To: Turs who wrote (3072)	10/19/1999 5:12:00 PM
From: Cesare J Marini	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 19, 1999--Siebel Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SEBL - news) today announced results for the quarter ended September 30, 1999. Net revenues for the third quarter were $195.3 million, compared with $104.2 million for the same period last year, an increase of 87 percent. Net income was $30.1 million or $0.27 per share, compared with net income of $14.1 million or $0.14 per share for the third quarter of 1998, increases of 114 and 93 percent, respectively.

To: Turs who wrote (3072)	10/19/1999 5:44:00 PM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

>What's the board's take on this spate of deals by hardware vendors to buy call center/customer interaction software firms? CSCO-WebLine, Alcatel-Genesys, Nortel-Clarify. I bet Vantive is kicking itself ... well, Tom's take is that "Clarify will disappear from the market!" (tune into the Q&A of the replay.) license-fee revenue surged 63% (if you didn't already notice). ----- October 19, 1999 5:17pm Siebel 3rd-Qtr Results Top Forecasts; Sets Stock Split Reuters PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 19 (Reuters) - Siebel Systems Inc., the largest maker of customer relationship management software, Tuesday reported third-quarter results that more than doubled, topping analyst forecasts, and set a 2-for-1 stock split. Siebel, whose stock has quadrupled in the past year, said Tuesday that for the period ended Sept. 30, net income surged to $30.1 million, or 27 cents a share, from $14.1 million, or 14 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue soared 87 percent to $195.3 million from $104.2 million. The results topped by two pennies analyst estimates of 25 cents a share, according to First Call/Thomson Financial. Siebel, one of the most high-flying stocks in the volatile technology industry, also said its 2-for-1 stock split would take effect Nov. 12 for stockholders of record Nov. 1. Siebel shares tacked on 1 5/16 to close at 84 3/4 on the Nasdaq, close to its year high of a bit more than 91. Siebel said new customers in the quarter include networking company 3Com Corp., Alcoa Inc., merchant banking firm Thomas Weisel Partners, U.S. Bancorp Services Inc. and First USA Bank, as well as Northpoint Communications Inc. Sales of new software, a key measure used by analysts to gauge future revenue growth, rose 63 percent to $125.9 million from $77.2 million a year ago, while services, maintenance and other revenues jumped more than two-fold to $69.4 million from $27.0 million.

To: Turs who wrote (3072)	10/19/1999 10:01:00 PM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Respond to of 6974

>What's the board's take on this spate of deals by hardware vendors to buy call center/customer interaction software firms? CSCO-WebLine, Alcatel-Genesys, Nortel-Clarify. I bet Vantive is kicking itself - I'm sure Lucent would have paid a bigger premium than Peoplesoft and they wouldn't have gone down a sinkhole either.< i think you bring up an interesting trend and an area where we will likely see more M&A activity between networkers and app developers and particularly, as you indicate, in the customer services market. regarding Lucent, while on a smaller scale, they previously acquired Mosaix and much earlier this year, Kenan Systems. Kenan gave Lucent entree into the billing, order processing and customer analysis market (including a number of European telecoms), which one could consider a significant link to offer up their own customers an integrated telecom solution. (upon a re-read, this isn't a plug as i am not a LU shareholder; a former co-worker left my turdy firm for Kenan not too long ago.) and didn't Nortel just acquire Periphonics for about a half-billion in stock (give or take a few million here or there)? personally, i can't keep up with all of Chambers' purchases. -chris.

To: Turs who wrote (3072)	10/20/1999 6:51:00 PM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

oh shit, boys & girls, Conway's in the lunchroom and he's got senior cuts. i think we're having pizza -- someone pass him the crushed red pepper. yuk yuk. ----- October 18, 1999, Issue: 757 Section: Top Of The Week: Customer-Relationship Management PeopleSoft CEO: "We Cut Ahead In Line" Alorie Gilbert techweb.com PeopleSoft Inc. CEO Craig Conway, who led the move to purchase customer-relationship management vendor Vantive Corp. for $433 million last week, is confident the deal will propel PeopleSoft ahead of its competitors in the fierce enterprise applications market. "We cut ahead in line," he says. Analysts note that PeopleSoft is late to the CRM game, but the vendor began evaluating its front-office strategy last fall. The process ended three weeks ago at the Stanford Hotel restaurant in Palo Alto, Calif., where Conway met with Tom Thomas, president and CEO of Vantive, to discuss merging the two companies. The deal's appeal? Vantive offers a strong, mature front-office product, while PeopleSoft can shore up sales, support, and marketing. But while PeopleSoft had partnered with Vantive for years, Conway says Vantive was by no means the obvious choice -- "because we knew them best, we thought there was a better company out there." Vantive, meanwhile, was entertaining a number of other suitors (Thomas declines to name names). But Vantive's asking price surely heightened the appeal for Conway: Siebel Systems Inc.'s market capitalization is larger than PeopleSoft's, and the $1.2 billion market cap of Clarify Corp., the next CRM heavy-hitter in line, was beyond PeopleSoft's means. And though he's a personal friend of Siebel CEO Tom Siebel, Conway's discussions with the head of the largest CRM vendor didn't strike a match. "We're in a sweet spot; we're not interested in the back office," says Pat House, Siebel executive VP and co-founder. When Conway finally approached Vantive to make a deal, neither party dragged its feet -- it took just two weeks to sign an agreement. "Time was of the essence," says Thomas, who'll become general manager of the PeopleSoft CRM product line when the deal closes at the start of next year. "We were anxious to get moving, to go to market while we still have a chance to take a lead." Still, Conway realizes he's got his work cut out for him. PeopleSoft's acquisition of supply-chain vendor Red Pepper in 1996 is a good example, he says, of how not to do an acquisition. "We squandered Red Pepper," he says. To avoid making that mistake again, he'll keep much of the Vantive organization intact. "If anything, we'll staff up," Conway says. Given the crunch to rush a product to market, Conway admits the deal would have been better done a year ago. "But that doesn't mean the opportunity is gone today," he says. AMR Research projects the market will grow from $3.7 billion this year to $16.8 billion in 2003. And like his cohorts in the ERP market, Conway wants a chunk of those front-office funds.

To: Turs who wrote (3072)	10/24/1999 11:50:00 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

Turs, I'm responding late having been on vacation, so I'll apologize in advance if your thoughts have already been covered. I'm sure Lucent would have paid a bigger premium than Peoplesoft and they wouldn't have gone down a sinkhole either. Lucent bought Mosaic a few months ago and more recently became a reseller of Siebel's product. My guess is that Lucent would want to buy Siebel long before buying any other front office company. And they've got the resources to do it though I pray it never happens. Anyway, does this impact Siebel's ability to spread into other customer-centric software areas? Or is the SFA space large enough to support growth for a long time? Two issues there. The first is that Lucent's agreement to resell Siebel product is just one example of Siebel's ability to expand into new markets. The second issue is that, though Siebel's strength is still SFA, they are much, much more than an SFA company. From what I can tell (and I'm open to disagreement) Siebel is as close to being a total front office software company as there is. If they can pull off complete migration to the Net they will be even more "total." --Mike Buckley

To: Turs who wrote (3072)	10/28/1999 1:16:00 PM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Respond to of 6974

>What's the board's take on this spate of deals by hardware vendors to buy call center/customer interaction software firms? this short piece from Information Week may interest you. ----- Information Week October 25, 1999, Issue: 758 Section: Top Of The Week: Customer-Relationship Management Networking Vendors Continue Invasion Of CRM Market -- Nortel Acquires Clarify, With Vision Of Linking Front-Office Apps To Call-Center Technology Jeff Sweat techweb.com Nortel Networks Corp.'s $2.1 billion acquisition of Clarify Inc. last week is the latest twist in the customer-relationship management market. What does a networking company want with a front-office vendor? Plenty. Nortel claims 34% of the call-center market and owns much of the infrastructure that supports customer interactions: While everyone else is worrying about tying the front office to the back office, Nortel envisions a front office tied to call centers, unified messaging systems, and the Internet. "Combining with ERP vendors to tie the front office to the back office is not strategic," says Clarify CEO Tony Zingale. "The opportunity here is to combine the high-performance Internet with a full suite of applications that deal with the customer interaction. That's the new game." That may come as a surprise to customers and other vendors in the field: PeopleSoft Inc.'s $433 million acquisition of Vantive Corp. on Oct. 11 seemed to signal the need to integrate enterprise resource planning and CRM (Oct. 18, p. 22; informationweek.com. But some companies agree with Zingale. "Customers want us to see them with one view," says Scott Lien, director of service systems at Best Buy Co. in Minneapolis, which is deploying Clarify to manage its customer service. To do that, he says, "You've got to tie together the hardware, software, phone system, and networking." Nortel's background could help Clarify users anticipate the myriad ways customers want to reach them. Nortel said it will pump resources into Clarify, but it won't interfere with the company's day-to-day operations. Zingale and his management team will remain in place, and the company's technology won't be altered. "I'm relieved that they weren't bought by someone else," Lien says. "This means their software won't be diluted by some other software provider's plans." Nortel isn't the first networking company to enter the CRM market. Archrival Cisco Systems bought call-center vendor GeoTel Communications Corp. and E-mail and Web-service vendor WebLine Communications Corp. last month; Lucent Technologies Inc. recently rolled out the first CRM products from its acquisition of Mosaix Inc. The networking vendors say they bring infrastructure improvements to the CRM world, but they also view CRM as a high-growth business. The acquisitions have changed the CRM landscape: Only one of the top-five front-office vendors is solely a vendor of front-office software. That may or may not be an advantage for the lone holdout, market leader Siebel Systems Inc. Zingale says Siebel's lack of integration will be a liability. "The standalone CRM vendor will have a tough time growing and expanding its market share," he says. Others say Siebel is staying true to its core competency. Says Allen Bonde, an analyst with the Extraprise Group, "It makes them even more the leader of that space."