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Technology Stocks : BEA Systems (BEAS) - Undiscovered Growth Stock -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Spytrdr who wrote (1712)	4/2/2001 8:08:00 AM
From: Bruce Brown	Respond to of 2477

Yeah, I figured the resistance was now the old support level as it has been in each case as the stock was etched down in the bear - as you so aptly pointed out many $$$ ago. So, here I sit watching for some bottom to the pit and some sort of a basing period that will lead to a breakout some day. Why? Because I think the product/technology has legs for quite a boom. now i'm asking you, do you really think this co., or CHKP, have any sustainable competitive advantage? what stops a determined big cap competitor from wiping these companies from the face of the earth? An enabling software category such as BEA Systems has does indeed have sustainable competitive advantage. Much more than an application software vendor. Especially as the value chain grows and the switching costs increase as that value chain grows. In an application software game, the leader doesn't have to win the entire space and a sufficient market share of 20% or higher qualifies - based on solid valuation metrics - or could be considered as a worthy investment. Whether one is surveying the ERP, CRM, SCM, VPN, collaboration, etc... space - they don't all come down to a 'winner take all' game. More than one player can win enough market share and revenues/earnings to sustain a good investment provided management executes and the market opportunities in the space remain compelling. BEAS is more 'attractive' to me because of the enabling software platform and the value chain that develops around such a platform. I don't think the mass market opportunity is as compelling as an OS for consumers such as Microsoft or another OS in terms of the sheer number of units sold, but the same 'type' of compelling reasons for the businesses that do standardize around a platform for eBusiness has a 'mass market' appeal within that environment as well as staying power. what stops a determined big cap competitor from wiping these companies from the face of the earth? History of such a dominating platform points in favor of a 'new' company emerging to dominate rather than some 'big cap competitor'. A good look at the history of Wang, IBM, Polaroid, Xerox, DEC, etc... lends credence to that. It might well be that both the BEAS and the IBM platform can achieve enough success to both succeed. Time will tell and I will be watching and following the game going forward just as I have been in the past. So yes, Checkpoint, BEA Systems, Siebel, i2, Juniper, Ciena, Qualcomm, etc... all have compelling things behind them as compared to the 'big caps' like Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, etc... . BB