David Politis

So my first official notice that Omniture had indeed gone public was when I received a phone call from Grace Leong, business editor for the Daily Herald (Provo, Utah) asking for help in tracking down an executive from client vSpring Capital for comments on the Omniture IPO.

That wasn’t quite as easy as it might normally have been, given that I was in Ephraim, Utah at the time attending girl’scamp as a chaperone with my two youngest daughters, while the vSpring principals were out of state, but we did work things out as shown in this Leong-written story.

Wednesday morning (6/28/06) saw shares in Omniture price on the Nasdaq Stock Market at $6.50 per share (NASDAQ: OMTR), definitely below the originally targeted low-end of the anticipated opening trading range of $7.50 to $9.50 per share. (See my earlier post for thoughts on Omniture’s pending IPO.)

What was probably even more scary for Omniture’s initial shareholders was to see the first Omniture trades open significantly below $6.50, with some trades going through below $6.00 per share. However, stock finally closed the day at $6.53.

Now after three days of trading, Omniture’s shares closed on Friday, 6/30/06, at $7.29 per share on 854,000 shares traded for a 12 percent bump in a 72-hour period. Not bad.

So . . . can we expect a 12 percent rise in OMTR every three days? Ha! Probably not. Then again, I’m not surprised that Omniture’s share price has shown a nice upward trend in the first three days of training either.

I feel that any speculation on Wall Street that Omniture would be hurt by Google Analytics was speculation by individuals unclear on the differentiation between the features/benefits of Omniture’s flagship product, SiteCatalyst, and the customers it targets (mostly LARGE companies with very LARGE Web sites) versus the companies Google is targeting with Google Analytics (mostly small companies with smaller Web sites).

Sure, Google has tens of billions of dollars in the bank and it appears to be targeting just about any market segment that it can. And Google Analytics is also free, something that must have given some investors pause.

But really now, just because something is free doesn’t mean it is better than something that you have to pay money for. Remember what your auntie used to say, “You get what you pay for?” I think that cliche applies here.

Do I know what the future is going to hold for Omniture? Nah. But I do expect that Josh, John, Brett and the rest of the team will keep on doing what they’ve been doing for the past several years — providing the best Web analystics solution on the planet — and signing up new customers because of it.

[DISCLOSURE/UPDATE: Omniture was a client years ago back when the company was known as MyComputer.com. Additionally, although I was offered the ability to purchase friends & family shares as part of the IPO, I decided to pass on the offer. Thanks anyway, guys. dlp.]

Other stories on Omniture’s IPO you might find interesting include those posted on the ‘Net: One a positive story written on TheStreet.com and the other a negative story published on BusinessWeek Online.

You decide which you like best.

Unless you’ve been hibernating in a cave in Bryce Canyon, chances are you know that Orem, Utah-based Omniture is in the process of becoming a public company and has filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering.

As a strategic communications professional who’s been actively involved with public and pre-public companies since 1986, I’m always curious to see which local reporters and media outlets actually do a good job in reporting financial news — particularly if it’s financially technical, which IPOs tend to be.

In that regard, my hat’s off to Grace Leong at the Daily Herald in Provo, Utah for her Tuesday, 6/13/06 article entitled “Omniture sets IPO” because she got it right.

Leong lays out the basics of the deal, how many shares the company plans to sell, how many shares insiders plan to sell, the possibility of 1.6 million shares being sold as part of an overallotment, and the expectedprice range of the offering once it prices. She even provides readers with an expected net proceeds target assuming that the shares price at $8.25 per share.

All in all, a well-written story.