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To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (124668)	5/6/2001 5:07:13 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

I am curious about something. When William was berating GST that he (GST) didn't know anything about Ariba. The stock was in the 120's or higher. I had the impression you had looked into Ariba and concluded it had a reasonable plan and financials. When you sold your shares, was it from simple disgust ? Or for short term trading reasons (raise cash for brcd)? Or because you concluded their plan wouldn't work ? Or was the stock overvalued even at $7/sh ? Sarmad, I could start by saying I was cutting my losses. That is true although after a 90+% loss it is typically late. My conclusion to exit was Ariba's plan had problems. The rumor about the IPO chares with agreements to buy at a higher price, now in litigation, indicates to me that the price was way artificially inflated more than many others. I lost confidence in any trust of management and the loss of the Agile acquisition was a mjor blow in my opinion. I believed I would geter a better return on the equity that was remaining in Ariba via BRCD and a few others rather than stay in Ariba. My exit price from Ariba was 9 and change so it has not really recovered. You asked if the stock was overvalued at $7 give or take. Valuation in the market is something I am clearly not too good at. I really am a fundamental investor and if I lose confidence in a firm's fundamentals, I just exit. Mangement made a big deal during the Bank of America high tech conference about how the slowing economy will make Ariba's products more in demand. The store was it would save money for their clients and was a necessity to compete in a bad business environment. When Ariba badly missed their numbers, the excuse was the economic climate. That is having your cake and eat it too unless you have two cakes. That was my answer to my parents when I was young and told I could not have my cake and eat it too. By the way, even though I've been buying into the shares, I still can't figure out what they do. I believe I know what they do. They provide procurement software to large firms that ties into the same software sold to their other clients. This gives Ariba's customers a closed but large market place for firms to obtain raw material, parts, etc. I was under the impression Ariba had a lot of clients. I was also under the impression the new term license made sense since one would see re-occurring revenue. I never gave the re-ocurring revenue issue a chance. I am too verbose<G> Simply, I believe Ariba dropped the ball and their network was not of as of much value to enterprise firms as I thought it would be. Glenn