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Technology Stocks : Ariba Technologies (Nasdaq-ARBA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: srilanka who wrote (567)	11/28/1999 1:17:00 PM
From: William F. Wager, Jr.	Respond to of 2110

Short interest... IBD 11/26/99 11/15/99: 1,595,635 10/15/99: 1,403,066 % chg: 14% Avg daily vol: 2,008,570 --Bill

To: srilanka who wrote (567)	11/28/1999 1:28:00 PM
From: Patsy Collins	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 2110

IBI.LN (Infobank) is perhaps one of the most overvalued companies in the world, after being up over 2600% since December. In fact, a couple of UK based hedge funds held this security for most of this year, helping them gain 500% in their portfolios. I don't believe any big boys still own this stock. Currently, the money flow is negative on this issue, driven mostly by small investors. If an acquisition does occur, it could be at a lower price. This company almost went under last September before new management took over and re-focus on their e-commerce software. The software does not appear to be ground breaking (Liz, any comments?). IBI's gross margins is under 10%, while ARBA is over 80%. Patsy

To: srilanka who wrote (567)	11/28/1999 8:07:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2110

Infobank has some product called entrade (I think) which I'm not really familiar with... an e-commerce product, but their main business is reselling. There were some articles in the financial times a while ago about merger talks and the suitors mentioned were SAP and JD Edwards. There was nothing about Commerce One or Ariba and I can't see any advantage for C1 or Arba in buying this product... Sap otoh might want entrade to play C1 catchup. Do you have a link to anything where C1 or Arba are mentioned as possible suitors for this company? EDIT - heres a repost of the article, someone put it up on yahoo. No mention of C1 or Ariba. INFOBANK: E-commerce group in 'exploratory' merger discussions By Caroline Daniel Infobank, the e-commerce group that has been one of the strongest-performing high-tech stocks of the year, has announced that it is in "exploratory discussions" which may lead to a merger. The Aim-traded shares climbed from œ10.45 to close at œ12.07« after the announcement. However, advisers to the company stressed that any potential merger was not imminent and dismissed speculation that Microsoft was interested in the group. Infobank shares have shown a tenfold rise over the past two months, during which time its market capitalisation has grown to œ400m. Although the company's core business is in reselling corporate software, it has tried to reposition itself as a software publisher with a single product, InTrade, which allows customers to conduct transactions and manage supplier relationships online and in different languages and currencies. Companies that have signed contracts to use Infobank's product include National Power, HMSO, and ICL, the information technology group. One analyst is forecasting revenues of about œ2.5m from InTrade for the year to December 2000, although about œ1m of this is expected to come from services related to the recent acquisition of Elliott Pearce. Potential suitors for Infobank include enterprise resource planning software vendors such as SAP of Germany and JD Edwards of the US. One analyst said: "Ultimately the end plan was always that Infobank was going to be taken out. The timing was only going to be dictated by customers starting to endorse the product". Infobank this month appointed Lehman Brothers and WestLB Panmure as its advisers. A dual listing is being considered, including Neuer Markt and Nasdaq. It is also expected to move to the main market next year.