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Technology Stocks : CheckFree (CKFR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Fowler who wrote (1998)	2/26/1998 2:14:00 AM
From: TLindt	Respond to of 8545

>>>Why Integrion won't keep Microsoft out of the banking business. I posted that one up a few weeks back....good article.....should have been titled 'Why Integrion came running to CheckFree' IMO. Everybody owns MicroSoft(me too).....but they don't own Everybody...YET, Thank God! Besides 10% to 15% of this market won't mean diddly to MSFT....but will be enough to make this very profitable for CheckFree. I think the online banking community is at 2.8m, CheckFree has 2.2m, and I don't think MSFT has 1 yet. There is no sizable reward for accumulating MS for this play...I like the Monopoly OS reason better for reward. 'Lead.........and........Speed' will win this one because the trend is in motion. It will take MSFT a good year or two, if not three to catch CheckFrees Lead....if they get them at all. They haven't caught Intuit in that time frame.....and they too are light years ahead of MicroSoft when it comes to what each can do on the Web FINANCIALLY. I'm looking at a narrow time frame here 24 to 36 months.......In that frame of time MSFT won't dominate diddly.......My 2 cents. BTW I believe price is going to break hard at this level....TA points to bear to mixed.....my money is bullish.

To: Mark Fowler who wrote (1998)	2/26/1998 7:37:00 AM
From: Benny Baga	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8545

>>> I've compared the performances of both stocks and MSFT beats the S&P 500 Hands down. ...I think I can speak for most on this thread when I say, 'We are not buying CheckFree based on it's past performance, we are buying because of it's potential growth'. Sorry I couldn't phrase this as well as Pat, but I only got a 'C' in English. Benny

To: Mark Fowler who wrote (1998)	2/26/1998 8:00:00 AM
From: Roger Bass	Respond to of 8545

Thanks for the post, Mark, but these issues have already been thought about quite a lot on this thread. The article you reference is broadly correct, though it contains some errors. MSFT can't have their cake and eat it: either they're just in the software business, offering software and web front-ends to end users (as is Intuit doing), which some banks find threatening enough. Or (qv MSFDC) they're getting into transaction processing, which (some)banks feel is their core business, even if they do use outsourcers such as CheckFree and Integrion. It's certainly true that Integrion has been slow, but the OFX v Gold debate is very overblown. The deal is basically done - Integrion/Gold banks will be able to talk to Quicken (Money is more a question mark). It doesn't really matter whether this is done via a server converter, or by integration of Gold with the OFX spec. The former is already announced and in the works, the latter is planned, but doesn't matter a whole lot anyway. I work for Intuit, and respect Microsoft a lot as a competitor. Still, I'm not all that bullish about the company's future. They're currently selling for about 11 times sales, must be 50-60 p/e. For a company that big, they can't maintain the growth that this discounts without getting into some big new businesses. In financial services they're in a bind: they'd love to get that transaction revenue, but the more they go after it, the more they compete with their ($1bn+ of software) financial services customers. Enterprise computing, larger systems, is the big opportunity they're best positioned to attack without getting into customer conflicts. Television looks to me the most likely area for big new wins, and avoids the bind they have in financial services, but the competition is fierce, and doesn't look like it's shaping up to be a Microsoft fiefdom so far. I won't recap the arguments why I and others believe in CF, they've been covered extensively in other posts. Regards, Roger.