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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dmf who wrote (106413)	7/31/2000 12:44:35 PM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 186894

Monday July 31, 11:22 am Eastern Time SAP/Intel e-commerce venture bites the dust (UPDATE: Updates share price, adds analyst comment) By Marius Bosch FRANKFURT, July 31 (Reuters) - A three-year-old e-commerce joint venture between chipmaker Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) and German business software group SAP AG has joined the growing line of failed online retailers. SAP said on Monday that it and Intel would close down their Pandesic LLC e-commerce joint venture, set up in 1997 to try and cash in on Internet commerce market. ``We saw that the Pandesic business model could not be profitable in the necessary period of time. Pandesic will be shut down,'' an SAP spokesman said. Pandesic's failure is the most recent blow to Internet retailing after the high-profile collapse of online clothing retailer Boo.com and ongoing concern over e-commerce giant Amazon Inc (NasdaqNM:AMZN - news). The U.S.-based Pandesic said in a statement that the decision to wind down its operations came because it did not see ``a timely road to profitability'' due to slower than anticipated market acceptance of business-to-consumer e-commerce solutions. Pandesic, which employs 400 staff and has offices in the U.S., Britain and Japan. The aim of the joint venture was to develop a full-featured, low-cost electronic commerce solution for small businesses. PANDESIC'S PROFITABILITY QUESTIONED Analysts said Pandesic's profitability was still a long way away. "It is costing money and if they are closing down then they (SAP) have one problem less," said Thomas Koebel, analyst at BfG Bank in Frankfurt. He added that the creation of SAP's mySAP.com Internet system might also have done away with the need for Pandesic. ``With mySAP.com perhaps they don't need Pandesic anymore,'' Koebel said. SAP has struggled to overcome perceptions that U.S. rivals like Oracle (NasdaqNM:ORCL - news) and Ariba (NasdaqNM:ARBA - news) have the edge in the fast-growing business-to-business (B2B) market where companies are linked via the Internet to their suppliers and customers. SAP shares gained 5.27 percent to a high of 243.75 euros on Monday as the market welcomed the closure of Pandesic. By 1430 GMT, the stock had slipped back a little and was 4.09 percent up at 241.00 euros -- around the level it started the year but below the year-high of 364.14 euros reached in early March. ``The share rise is probably due to the decision to close the joint venture with Intel. It was a good decision to do that and SAP is still a stock where we see a buying opportunity,'' one trader said. SAP was outperforming the benchmark bluechip DAX index which was trading flat to higher with the index 0.73 percent higher. Dealers said the share was also outperforming the European tech stocks sector. The Dow Jones STOXX technology index was 1.18 percent higher.