$data = <<EOF;
<html>
<Head><title>intranet mycompany</title></head>
<body>
<div>blah</div>
<p>
the text i need to extract <br>
<ul>
<li>stuff i don't want.</li>
<li>more stuff i don't want.</li>
</ul>
More text i need to exctract.
</p>
</html>
</body>
EOF
$data =~ s/<ul>.*<\/ul>//sg;
print $data;