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Technology Stocks : Vignette Corporation (VIGN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Czechsinthemail who wrote (389)	5/24/2000 5:56:00 PM
From: Wizard	Respond to of 628

The acquisition gives the VIGN salesforce a compelling reason to get back into their accounts and sell plumbing for B2B services and commerce. OnDisplay is sitting in front of a nice revenue ramp and wall street estimates are significantly conservative. With VIGN's salesforce behind ONDS product, ONDS could have a huge revenue year in '01 and make the purchase price much more reasonable. By the time this deal closes, VIGN will have well north of 750 customers and a good portion of those are moving from their B2C infrastructure to automate their various processes. The market is fertile for such product as nobody wants to write code that can be prepackaged and sold more efficiently. The interesting thing about the acquisition is that VIGN has given added to its B2B expertise without picking a fight with a B2B monster like Ariba or Oracle. The VIGN platform is very complementary to an Ariba in a B2B setting. Moreover, it shows VIGN is adding to its platform to provide the deepest, broadest platform for marketplaces and trading networks. Similar to what happened originally with B2C (many sites were built with custom code b/c no scalable packaged app existed), B2B networks are being built from the ground up instead of saving yourself the time of writing all that redundant code... By the way, the share counts are such that VIGN gave up ~14% of the company. The acquisition is a bet and given VIGN's execution thus far, I tend to believe that they are being aggressive at the right time of the market; right as a very large market is moving to hypergrowth.

To: Czechsinthemail who wrote (389)	5/25/2000 5:52:00 AM
From: swisstrader	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 628

Hey, someone who actually did his homework on fundies and valuations...nice to see for a change and actually Wizard did a terrific job of responding...just a bit more from Briefing.Com as of a couple days ago...me, I bought a decent lot at 25 yesterday...best of luck: ****** Vignette (VIGN) 29 15/16 -4 15/16: Alright it was a $1.7 bln price tag, but a 40% drop? In Vignette? From Friday's close to today's most recent trade, VIGN has slipped 47%, or $2.5 bln in market cap after announcing it will acquire OnDisplay (ONDS). This is not 1999, and this sell-off is a sign that this market is not going to overlook a dilutive deal with stars in its eyes, dreaming of the future possibilities of the newlyweds. Frankly, it's good to see in a sensible kind of way; plus it allows long-term Vignette investors to add positions and others to get on board at a reasonable level. The $1.7 bln price will cause near-term dilution to VIGN's earnings as the company will mint 40 mln new shares to get the deal closed. Analysts expect bottom line dilution for three quarters (through Q100 in March 2001). This market may have a longer memory than last year's, and to be sure, this is an expensive acquisition, but strategically, we like the deal for Vignette. OnDisplay will add XML expertise and funcionality to Vignette's suite, and OnDisplay's client list attests to their products' effectiveness. The CenterStage suite has the ability to aggregate and transform data into a variety of accessible formats to make B2B transactions smooth and even link to your internal ERP system. The interoperability allows for speedy and efficient transactions to a widespread client/customer base. Honestly, the product suite will complement Vignette's product line beautifully. Whether or not they paid too much is a tough call. Certainly 102x OnDisplay's trailing 12 months sales, ($1.7 bln for $16.6 mln) is lofty, but remember Cisco's (CSCO) deal for Cerent? Cisco paid $7 bln for ttm sales of $10 mln (700x), and Cerent is already on track to contribute $1 bln annually in orders to Cisco's top-line. Of course we're talking different industries and Vignette certainly does not have the integration experience of a Cisco (who does?), but they're not newcomers to the M&A game either, they've already embarked upon two major stock acquisitions this year. It's tough to gauge when Vignette shares will stop reeling in this market, or how much of the selling can be attributed to general weakness in tech over the past two trading sessions, but we continue to favor Vignette in the eCRM space. - Matt Gould, Briefing.com