$100 million to start: In one of the biggest such deals in years, a Japanese company has agreed to pay CoMentis up to $760 million for a stake in an Alzheimer's disease treatment the South San Francisco company is developing.

Under the agreement announced today, Astellas Pharma of Tokyo will pay CoMentis $100 million in cash, $20 million of which will be used to give Astellas part ownership of CoMentis.

Astellas also has agreed to pay CoMentis up to $660 million more if CoMentis' drug achieves various development goals, which the companies declined to specify.

In addition, the companies said CoMentis could receive additional payments if government regulators approve the drug. CoMentis and Astellas plan to share profits from sales of the drug, although they didn't disclose how much each would receive.

Europeans OK Gilead drug: A drug Gilead Sciences sells to treat people infected with the AIDS virus won approval as a treatment for chronic hepatitis B in Europe, the Foster City company announced today.

Viread was cleared for sale in Europe for use against hepatitis B, a liver disease. Gilead also is seeking

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approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to have the drug approved in this country to treat hepatitis. A decision on that is expected in mid-August.

Gilead's drug will compete with Bristol-Myers Squibb's Baraclude for patients with hepatitis B, which kills an estimated 20,000 Europeans each year.

First the good news: Ariba, the Sunnyvale maker of software that helps businesses manage costs, saw its shares rise more than 20 percent at the close of trading today after its second-quarter profit beat analysts' estimates.

Ariba gained $1.87 to $11.03 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Profit excluding some items was 9 cents a share, the company said in a statement yesterday after the close of regular U.S. trading. The average estimate of eight analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had been 8 cents.

Revenue from subscription software surged 97 percent in the quarter from a year earlier, the company said. Total sales rose 9.7 percent to $80.5 million. The average of eight analyst estimates was $80.8 million

Now the bad: Shares of Netgear, the Santa Clara maker of networking equipment for homes and small businesses, dropped nearly 17 percent at the close of trading after its first-quarter sales and profit missed analysts' projections. The stock plunged $3.37 to $16.76.

Excluding stock-based compensation, the company's profit was 39 cents a share, trailing the 42-cent average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales amounted to $198.2 million, which also fell short of predictions.

Netgear also missed its own forecast, released in February, for first-quarter revenue of at least $201 million.

Silicon Valley tech stocks:

Up: Juniper Networks, LSI, Netflix, Trimble Navigation and VMware

Down: Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, McAfee, Sun Microsystems and Yahoo

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index: Down 5.99 points, or .25 percent, closing at 2,422.93.

The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average: Up 42.91 points, or .33 percent, closing at 12,891.86.

And the Standard & Poor's 500 index: Up 9.02 points, or .65 percent, closing at 1,397.84.