FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Patricia Mansfield/LODESTAR
(978) 532-4555, Ext. 48

LODESTAR Corporation Announces PricingExpert - 03/05/01

Provides On-the-Spot PricingProposals for Energy Retailers' Sales ForcePEABODY, Mass.-- March 5, 2001 -- LODESTAR Corporation, the world's leading provider of e-Business software to enable customer choice in the new economy, today announced a new product --PricingExpert™-- that provides on-the-spot pricing analysis and proposals for energy retailers.

The new LODESTAR offering is a realtime, competitive pricing-analysis tool. With it, energy sales representatives and pricing-desk analysts who are sitting down with prospective customers can instantly produce competitive pricing opportunities that meet the customers' business needs, manage their risk and maximize profitability.

PricingExpert's flexibility allows site consumption to be modeled for a wide range of customers, from the simple, single-site to the complex, multi-jurisdictional, multi-site, multi-meter. Its interactive tool edits raw customer-usage data and creates ready-to-price usage data by eliminating curtailments, normalizing weather and including parameters.

To meet the customer's dynamic business needs, PricingExpert takes a holistic approach to competitive market-pricing models, including fixed, indexed, multi-tier, cap-collar and variable pricing components. It supports all market cost structures, including bundled or unbundled transmission and distribution charges, congestion and UFE charges, ancillary services, imbalance charges, supply acquisition costs and other fee structures.

"Deregulation creates intense competition for retailers. Subsequently, retailer proposals to potential customers rely heavily on the rates and prices a retailer can offer," said Chris Hamilos, LODESTAR's chairman and CEO. "PricingExpert provides virtually unlimited pricing analysis as a result of its boundless ability to manipulate data, allowing retailers to offer the lowest possible prices."

PricingExpert incorporates data from various groups, including risk management, forecasting and the regional Independent System Operator, as well as current energy desk trading figures. Because it is powered by LODESTAR's BillingExpert solution, PricingExpert also is able to track, price and bill energy consumption by a range of small time intervals for analysis.

A preconfigured, point-and-click solution, PricingExpert provides intuitive screens and works with Siebel System's best-of-breed SFA solutions.

About LODESTAR Corporation

LODESTAR provides leading e-Business software solutions to enable customer choice in the new energy economy. With more than 100 clients in North America and 20 years in operation, LODESTAR is a well-known and reliable provider of world-class software solutions. Energy providers use LODESTAR software for billing, load profiling and settlement, financial management and transaction management. The LODESTAR® Customer Choice Suite (CCS™) provides the world's most complete, flexible, scalable and reliable Web-enabled software to competitive retail companies, regulated distribution companies, independent system operators, and transmission and generation companies.

LODESTAR's Customer Choice Suite includes: LodeStar, a cost-effective and flexible load research system; RateExpert™ for competitive pricing and rate analysis with an optional revenue forecasting module; BillingExpert™, a powerful and easy-to-use billing and financial management engine; LodeMap.com, a Web-based tool for viewing customer energy usage and calculating costs; the LODESTAR Profile & Settlement System for cost-effective load estimation, reconciliation and settlement; LODESTAR Enterprise Data Repository, a central repository for both interval data and customer demographic information; PricingExpert™, a pricing module to produce proposals for any pricing program; the LODESTAR Transaction Management Hub (LTMH™), which allows users to quickly interface with trading partners and legacy applications; and the Financial Management Extension (FME), a billing and customer-care system that provides financial organizations with data and reports.

LODESTAR Corporation's headquarters is at Two Corporation Way in Peabody, MA 01960. For more information, visit www.lodestarcorp.com or call (888) 225-1293.

Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The success of the agreements and products described above and the future operating results of LODESTAR Corporation may differ from the results discussed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements due to factors that include, but are not limited to, risks associated with the eBusiness software applications market, dependence on the Internet, risks associated with new versions and new products and risks associated with rapid technological change.

LODESTAR, Customer Choice Suite, Rules Language, RateExpert, PricingExpert and BillingExpert are all trademarks of LODESTAR Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.