Goldman Sachs Conference: pcorder.com Plans IPO

After Tuesday's big drop in technology stocks, are Internet initial public offerings on shaky ground? Amid yesterday's carnage, Goldman Sachs rolled out the red carpet for its latest IPO candidate, pcorder.com, placing the company in the largest ballroom at the Goldman Sachs technology symposium and shoving the $3.5 billion-market-cap Veritas Software (VRTS) into the anteroom.

The reason: pcorder.com has a .com in it.

"It's going to be a big one," groused an analyst from another Wall Street brokerage firm in attendance.

Ross Cooley, former head of Compaq's (CPQ) North American division, is the CEO of pcorder.com, an e-commerce clearinghouse for hardware companies to buy and sell PC products. Speaking in industry buzzwords, Cooley said: "You know how Inktomi (INKT) is the provider of an [original equipment manufacturer] solution to America Online (AOL) and Yahoo! (YHOO). We want to be an OEM provider to IBM (IBM) and Hewlett-Packard (HWP).

Translation: We'll make lots of money.

The IPO roadshow began Tuesday, just days after the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cooley said the stock will be priced after the roadshow ends Feb. 25. Goldman, naturally, will be the lead underwriter of the 2.2 million-share offering, along with Credit Suisse First Boston and SG Cowen. The current price range for the offering is $11 to $13. Expect that to rise.

Compuware Sees No Y2K Slowdown

Compuware (CPWR) CEO Joseph Nathan again this week tried to allay investors' fears that the systems-management-software firm will feel a sharp slowdown after companies finish year 2000 testing.

Instead, Nathan expects business to remain healthy and for margins to even pick up once Y2K testing is over.

"We're trying to get rid of the Y2K business as fast as we can because it's a lower-margin business," he told investors at the Goldman Sachs symposium Tuesday, fresh from last week's NationsBanc Montgomery Securities technology conference in San Francisco. "We want to get to the higher-margin AMC deals."

AMC is a management system that Compuware has started to roll out. Some heavyweights like Ford (F), which started using Compuware for Y2K, have recently converted into bigger, longer-term customers, he said. The company hopes to grow revenue to $4 billion to $5 billion within three years, Nathan said.

"It sounds like a good company," said one Boston-based buy-side analyst. "There was concern over the Y2K business, but it sounds like they have already been managing that down."

Rerun City

Given a chance to strut their stuff to money managers and big investors, Computer Associates (CA) executives decided to play an old message.

Computer Associates, which one fund manager described as "the company everyone hates right now," probably won few new fans when it presented late Tuesday. Not only did the systems-management-software company fail to send its CEO or financial chief to address investors, it gave the same presentation it made last week at the NationsBanc Montgomery technology conference in San Francisco -- down to the slides and even the same jokes.

In bragging that the winner of the Formula One car races used Computer Associates technology to monitor car systems, Yogesha Gupta, senior vice president of product strategy, quipped, "Of course, we take all the credit for that" -- the same line he used last week on the West Coast. Maybe it was the fact that Computer Associates was in the last time slot for the day and fund managers were tired and hungry, but Gupta got a heartier laugh from last week's audience with that line.

The audience lost interest quickly, despite recent news that it had acquired Computer Management Sciences (CMSX). So tired and restless was the crowd that when the company rolled out a Computer Associates videotape/commercial at the end, one fund manager seated in the back of the room loudly reminded the company that the presentation time was up.

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