Commerce One gains on strong earnings, analyst talk

Analysts gave Commerce One (Nasdaq: CMRC) a round of upgrades Friday, bolstering its momentum after a strong third quarter report. Shares rose 6 percent.

Shares in the business to business company were up 3.17 to 67.594 Friday morning. Ariba (Nasdaq: ARBA) became the first B2B company to break even Wednesday.

Commerce One lost less than analysts predicted in the third quarter and said it expects to break into the black two quarters earlier than expected.

Commerce One was reiterated "strong buy" by analyst Jon M Ekoniak at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray.

Analyst Charles J Wittmann at First Union Securities Inc. upgraded the stock to "strong buy" from "buy."

Shares were reiterated as a "buy" by analyst Robert M Johnson at ABN Amro.

Mark Verbeck, an analyst with Epoch Partners, said in a research note that Commerce One's results are yet another validation of the company's strategy and the B2B market as a whole.

"Commerce One's execution of its "control the center" strategy was exceptional. The company added 35 marketsites in the quarter bringing its total to 107, of which 47 are up and running," Verbeck noted in the report.

"While Commerce One is clearly winning the marketsite game -- and this is a good business -- we believe real upside in the stock lies in the transaction fee endgame, which is not a foregone conclusion in our opinion," he added.