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Strategies & Market Trends : The New Economy and its Winners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (3217)	11/19/2000 3:01:34 PM
From: Wizard	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57684

>>There is no market-maker support, so anything is possible on any rumor. This is so true. 98% of Wall Street cannot seperate fundamentals from stock activity and in a bear market, even bucket shop analyst downgrades seem to be cherished as 'independent thinking,' removed from investment banking conflicts of interest. Give me a break. Few understand that bucket shop brokerage analysts are equally misguided by the commission revenue generated from stock volatility from their trading desks. Remember Doug Crook from Pru's downgrade of the B2B sector on 3/31/00 citing Oracle getting more aggressive in the space.... since then Doug's firm has done nothing but DRAMATICALLY raise estimates on every company in the sector in each of the 3 subsequent reporting periods. Yet market makers have no idea that Ariba is any different than Priceline. Their focus is on the hour, not the next year or three years or five years. They are going to set prices on incremental news and rumors but at the end of the day, the noise in the marketplace fades and true growth is no longer subject to rumor, it becomes fact. The Ariba/i2 issue really needs to be put in perspective. Ariba sells software functionality that every business can use, even service-only companies have suppliers. Yet Ariba, THE name in B2B procurement, has only 450 customers. SAP has 25,000 major accounts and Oracle has over 11,000. i2 is a great company but both Ariba and i2 are going to have billions in revenues whether they stay together or not. I don't know why co-opetition is so hard to understand - it is part of the new economy and it actually enables faster growth, in my opinion. Ariba has a powerful business model based on an intuitive platform that is easy to implement, easy to use and easy to understand. Ariba then gets revenues as the platform is used and services are added. i2 fits in as significant functionality layered on top of the Ariba platform. i2 will build out its platform and Ariba will build out its functionality and at the end of the day, both will generate billions in revenues and hudreds of millions in profits. LEAPS on CMRC here starting to look attractive.