Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric Wells who wrote (109808)	10/7/2000 7:40:59 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Glenn - you don't think ARBA is a momentum stock? It has no PE (it has huge losses - yes, the losses are from recent acquisitions - but even if you strip out the amortization of goodwill from the acquisitions you still get an operating loss), it has a price to sales ratio of 124 and it's operating in a very hyped yet unproven market. Eric, ARBA is far different than Amazon. First off, operating losses for Q2 2000 excluding amortization of Goodwill was $16 million. That is not huge. Secondly, ARBA is cash flow positive and has about $500 million in debt. ARBA is growing into a large company and is drawing a diverse customer base with expanding technology. ARBA is integrating the entire process from procurement all the way to logistics which provides a large variety of high margin revenue streams. The gross margins are 83%. There are less than 15% of the major companies now using on-line procurement and my opinion is they all will be doing that within a few short years. The valuation of ARBA is high but I believe it deserves to go much higher. This is far from AMZN. AMZN had terrible gross margins in the past and still do. Amazon was never cash flow positive as far as I can recall. If they were, it was brief and a very small amount. AMZN had to deal with distribution and my opinion is B2C on-line sales will never be as large as B2B. The short of this is Amazon is a retailer. Ariba is not. Glenn

To: Eric Wells who wrote (109808)	10/7/2000 7:50:06 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

operating in a very hyped yet unproven market. No matter how many times I bring up ERP and SCM, and how b2b is an internet manifestation of that, which is PROVEN and worth a ton, has been worth a ton with a precedent of the last 30 years or so starting with the IBM 360 and MRP schedules, you still try to convice yourself and others that this is "unproven". Can you back up your allegations that b2b-supply chain management is unproven as sellable software, or whatever metric you choose to use? Are you saying no one will be willing to shell out 2 million for software of this type - even though most every fortune 100 company has been doing that for the past 10 years?