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Technology Stocks : Siebel Systems (SEBL) - strong buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ed Schultz who wrote (1327)	3/31/1998 10:09:00 AM
From: Melissa McAuliffe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

Ed, I guess it depends on how you define an ugly quarter. I assume it means missing expectations which hopefully the company will help to set in the first place. But regardless, I think everyone needs to keep one big thing in mind as they look at this situation with scop. Scop was not doing well on their own. Not at all.. and this was reflected in their stock price. In fact, last quarter, had it not been for the services revenue they would have had an absolutely terrible quarter. I don't have access to the scop numbers nor do I want to take the time to go and find them but I cannot believe that the numbers will not go up from where they were. It is common knowledge that scop had no focus on marketing, they were having a difficult time hiring and retaining good sales reps and overall do not appear to have been focused on competing effectively in the marketplace. From everything I have heard they had great products and an excellent technology. They just weren't able to sell it effectively and competitively.. With all this said, and having been a prior scop shareholder, how much worse could it get. I don't think the scop acquisition should have that much impact on the sebl sfa deals anyway. So I guess the way I view it is that I think it will actually be better in that it should boost the sales of the scop products. Ok...I know everyone is going to jump down my throat here for saying that....but just keep in mind you are putting these products into the hands of people who know what they're doing. That is a very important distinction. Purportedly the rumor is that both sebl and scop are having a good Q1. If this quarter is pulled off successfully, it will only serve to reinforce my opinion since this should be the most difficult quarter since the most uncertainties exist right now. Anyway, we will have to wait a few weeks and see. The whole purpose of this is to share my opinion on whether there will be an ugly quarter. Nothing to do with intergration issues, merger of cultures, etc. Simply the possibility of a bad quarter. Can sebl have a bad quarter. Sure.. anyone can have one sooner or later. Do I think so....no. Again, this is all just MHO but I'm always keeping my eyes and ears open. Melissa