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Gold/Mining/Energy : T.ITE: iTech Capital (TSE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Barracuda™ who wrote (3085)	12/11/1999 11:54:00 AM
From: keith massey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5053

Also - Medsite.com is a B2B company.... Paul Bagnell Financial Post Remember the phrase "B2B," experts say. You'll be hearing a lot about it in Y2K. B2B stands for "business to business," as in the sale of goods and services between companies.Business-to-business sales on the Internet are considered to be a huge growth field -- one that will make sales to consumers seem puny by comparison. Yesterday, just as Linux fever showed signs of easing, a company that arranges online auction sales between businesses soared 483% in its first day of trading. The company is FreeMarkets Inc., and its shares (FMKT/NASDAQ) closed at $280 yesterday, after being sold at $48 each in an initial public offering. (All figures in U.S. dollars.) "A lot of investors are waking up and realizing the business-to-business markets are enormous," said Kenan Pollack, an analyst at Hoover's Online. "One of the things that's really going to change is the way goods and services are purchased. The numbers are just startling -- it's not billions, it's trillions." When trading opened yesterday, the FreeMarkets shares were immediately bid up to $230 each, and reached a peak of $293 in the late afternoon. The Pittsburgh-based company sold an 11% stake of itself -- 3.6 million shares at $48 each for total proceeds of $173-million. FreeMarkets' customers include General Motors Corp. and United Technologies Corp. It had sales of just $7.8-million in 1998. The company's blistering debut makes it likely other companies will stress their business-to-business activities, hoping to latch on to the kind of frenzy that gripped Linux-related stocks this week. Linux is an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software, whose dominance of the operating system market has been cast in doubt by a recent U.S. court decision. Mr. Pollack said investors can expect a series of press releases in coming weeks making prominent use of the phrase "business to business." "It's shameless. There are so many companies now going public. Companies are trying so many tactics to get themselves noticed." Yesterday alone, at least six companies issued press releases touting their business-to-business capabilities. To separate the legitimate B2B players from the pretenders, Mr. Pollack said, investors should look carefully at the underwriters bringing such issues to market. The FreeMarkets IPO was underwritten by Goldman Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. "Look for the ones with the big banker names," Mr. Pollack said. "If they are self-underwritten or done by a no-name underwriter, that should be an indication the companies are perhaps not what they appear to be." Experienced management and financial backers are also important signs, he said. Early investors in FreeMarkets have included Thomas Meredith, chief financial officer of Dell Computer Corp. FreeMarkets' chief competitors are ChemDex Corp. (CMDX/NASDAQ), a California company that specializes in sales of chemicals and research equipment, and Philadelphia-based VerticalNet Inc. (VERT/NASDAQ), which runs 50 industry-specific Web sites linking sellers with buyers.