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TWST: Please give us an overview of your coverage.
Mr. Kothari: I cover companies in the software space as well as a couple
of companies in the services space. The companies I cover provide
application software, which is software that supports business functions
such as supply chain or manufacturing or sales and marketing or
companies that provide software that does infrastructure as well as
security-related applications. TWST: Looking at it in general terms, what has been going on in that
space from a business perspective so far this year?
Mr. Kothari: This was a space that, like many other technology spaces,
was very hot during the boom time period between 1999-2000. Since then,
between 2001 and 2003, there was a pretty significant slowdown in the
industry as enterprises started spending less on IT. At the same time,
enterprises did not have the same need to get to market as quickly.
Starting in 2003 and during the last couple of years, we've seen a
rebound from those levels. I would say that growth during the 2001 to
2003 time frame was flat to down; lately we've seen growth in the mid-
to high single digits in this space. The other thing that's been
happening is with the slowdown on the demand side, we've seen a lot of
companies take advantage of that to consolidate the industry. Some of
the most notable acquisitions have come by way of Oracle (ORCL)
acquiring companies like PeopleSoft and Siebel, but we've seen that
trickle down to even smaller companies that are doing acquisitions as
well as doing things like mergers of equals. I cover a couple of
companies that were small companies that did mergers of equals type of
agreements and have now created a bigger presence for themselves.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ALDN, IINT, MFE, NICE, ORCL, SYMC, TKLC, VRNT, WBSN, WITS
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The
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