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

To: Patsy Collins who wrote (617)	12/14/1999 10:49:00 AM
From: William F. Wager, Jr.	Respond to of 2110

AND Vilar has said he got no IPO allocation. All bot in the open market. --Bill

To: Patsy Collins who wrote (617)	12/15/1999 8:02:00 AM
From: Sonki	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2110

Ariba Is Holding Talks to Buy Tradex In Deal Involving Web-Commerce Firms By GEORGE ANDERS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Ariba Inc. is negotiating to buy Tradex Technologies Inc. for about $1.65 billion, in a transaction that would combine two companies with big ambitions in business-to-business Internet commerce. Ariba helps giant companies coordinate their purchasing of computers, office supplies and other goods over the Internet. The Mountain View, Calif., company went public last summer and has been a stock-market highflier, currently commanding a market capitalization of more than $10 billion. For fiscal 1999, ended Sept. 30, Ariba had a $29.3 million loss on revenue of $45.4 million. Tradex, based in Atlanta, is closely held and doesn't disclose its finances. It operates "net markets," which are Internet sites that bring together large numbers of potential buyers and sellers. Among its major customers are American Express Co., Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. and Raytheon Co. The Ariba-Tradex talks come amid intense investor excitement about business-to-business electronic commerce. Last Friday, FreeMarkets Inc., which runs online auctions for business users, went public at $48 a share. The Pittsburgh company's shares soared to $280 each in their first day of trading. While the shares have retreated nearly 20% since then, FreeMarkets' market capitalization still exceeds $8 billion. Ironically, FreeMarkets' runaway success may be complicating Ariba's efforts to wrap up the Tradex talks. Several days ago, according to people familiar with the negotiations, Ariba was prepared to value Tradex at about $1 billion. Since then, the indicated value for Tradex has increased. As of late yesterday, lawyers and top executives for both companies were continuing to hammer out final terms. Ariba's chief executive officer, Keith Krach, indicated recently that he regards net markets as an important part of Ariba's expansion strategy. Tradex is one of a handful of companies that provide the underlying software for such online marketplaces. Tradex then gets paid both for setting up such markets and for ongoing work in keeping them running. While Tradex is based in the U.S., its roots are Swiss. The company was formed in 1996 as an offshoot of Dynabit AG of Huenenberg, Switzerland, a distributor of office-automation products. Since then, Tradex has raised three rounds of venture funding in the U.S. Tradex's chairman and chief executive officer, Daniel Aegarter, was educated in Switzerland. Currently, there doesn't appear to be much overlap between Tradex's and Ariba's customer lists. But the two companies appear to be betting that they will have an inside track in wooing each other's corporate customers, and thus will be able to grow faster together than apart. Ariba, on its Web site, lists Federal Express Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., General Motors Corp. and Merck & Co. among its clients. By targeting net markets, Ariba is moving into an area especially alluring to Wall Street analysts these days. In a recent research report, Goldman Sachs & Co. analyst Rakesh Sood argued that corporate Internet users are increasingly likely to develop business-to-business electronic markets, and to favor Internet auctions. Mr. Sood predicted that the overall business-to-business e-commerce market would grow to $1.5 trillion by 2004, up from $114 billion this year. Write to George Anders at george.anders@wsj.com