David Politis

Not only is it hard to imagine that 2006 has come and gone, but it’s also mind-bending to realize that CES starts this coming Monday.

With the death of COMDEX (the COMputer Dealer EXposition) a few years back, the annual Consumer Electronics Show has now become the largest technology tradeshow in the United States, if not the world.

Slated this year for January 8-11 in Las Vegas, CES will attract a truly worldwide audience of manufacturers, distributors, engineers, marketers, retailers, gawkers and more to the annual geek fest in glitter gulch. Oh yes, and journalists galore — probably 5,000+ this year coming from places as widespread and diverse as Salt Lake City and Singapore.

Based upon last year’s attendance figures, I will not be surprised to see total attendance surpass 200,000 unique visitors to CES this year.

As for me, I’m headed down to slot-machine city on Sunday with several members of the Politis Communications crew and major media events slated for both Sunday and Monday nights.

Look for more on CES between now and mid-January.

I love spicy foods — unfortunately, my stomach does not.

Thankfully, I found Pepcid AC chewable, mint-flavored tablets a couple of years ago and they worked. So spicy Mexican, Italian or Thai food didn’t phase me anymore.

However, now I can’t find those chewable little pink tablets anywhere. To its credit, Johnson & Johnson does carry Original Pepcid AC and Maximum Strength Pepcid AC, both of which are not supposed to be chewed, rather swallowed with water. But (for some reason — perhaps more psychological than physical) I feel better faster after chewing up a Pepcid AC tablet than I do when I swallow one.

And as far as the new Pepcid AC Complete chewable pills are concerned, they’re nasty-tasting and leave a dry, chalky residue in my mouth for several minutes after chewing. (Heck, if I wanted a dry, chalky residue in my mouth I would have tried TUMS instead, or eaten chalk. Either would have had the same result!)

So . . . after calling the Johnson & Johnson - MERCK Consumer Pharmaceuticals Co. consumer hotline today (800-755-4008), I learned that the company has killed off the line of Pepcid AC chewable pills. AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!

I asked why and was told by “Mary Ellen” that the decision had to do with a lack of shelf space inside the stores. She also admitted that the Pepcid AC Web site was out of date and needed to be fixed to reflect the recent change in the product line.

She took down my info, so hopefully I’ll hear back from some PR person, but I’m not that hopeful.

Too bad. I LOVE Pepcid AC chewable tablets (major THUMBS UP!), while I HATE the chewable Pepcid AC Complete tablets (major THUMBS DOWN!).

Guess I’ll be looking for a new brand. Any suggestions?

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.

As amazing as Bill Gates’ announcement was last week that he would be stepping down from Microsoft in 2008 to focus on giving away his vast fortune, it takes on even greater significance given today’s announcement that Warren Buffet is going to give away 85 percent of his vast wealth. (See the exclusive first report from Fortune magazine.)

As the second-richest man in the world, with his wealth tacked today at roughly $44 billion, Buffet’s plans charitable plans have him donating $37 billion (at today’s valuation of Bershire Hathaway) to five foundations — the bulk of it going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (Here’s a link to the copy of Buffet’s letter to the Gates’ explaining his plans.)

The initial BMGF donation from Buffet is pegged at $1.5 billion (yes, billion). It (and the planned future donations to BMGF) do come with a catch — actually three catches to be exact.

1. Either Bill or Melinda Gates must be alive and actively involved in running BMGF.

2. BMGF must be operating so as to ensure that the Buffet donation qualifies as a non-taxable charitable gift.

3. Any Buffet gift to BMGF must be spent in the year it was received (with some exceptions) and BMGF must also spend what it has already been spending in charitable giving on top of the Buffet donation(s).

The Gates’ foundation will be given two years to scale up operationally to handle the additional charitable work, but starting in 2009, BMGF is gonna have to really heat-up to meet the minimal requirements of close to $3 billion in donations in that year alone.

Wow! So what kind of good could be done in Utah with even one-half of one percent of that anticipated $3B charitable windfall in 2009? That’s $15 million.

How many inner city schools could that outfit with full computer networks in SLC or Ogden?

How many underpriveleged or at risk Utah children, youth or adults could be trained in high-tech skills with $15MM?

How would you spend $15 million? Makes you start to think, huh?

Perhaps only one person has had a greater imprint on Novell than Ray Noorda.

That person? Jack Messman.

Nevertheless, Novell announced yesterday (6/22/06) that current Novell President, Ron Hovsepian, has been given the additional title of chief executive officer, with board member Thomas Plaskett elected as non-executive chairman of the board. According to the release, Messman has relinquished his roles as CEO and chairman of the board, but he will remain on the board until Halloween Day (10/31) 2006.

NOTE: CFO Joseph Tibbets also stepped down at the same time. In fact, a closer read of the release (specifically, the fact that the release was distributed at 7 a.m. on 6/22 and that it said [speaking of Messman and Tibbets], “will leave Novell’s employment, effective June 21″) suggests to me that they were given the boot in a board meeting the prior evening . . . but that’s pure speculation on my part.

Anyway . . . a Novell director since 1985, Messman became the company’s president and CEO in July 2001 when Novell acquired Cambridge Technology Partners, an acquisition valued at $266 million when it was first disclosed in March 2001. Messman was then named Novell’s chairman of the board in November 2001.

On the day that the Cambridge acquisition was completed and Messman became president and CEO (July 10, 2001), Novell’s stock closed at $4.87 per share. Today’s closing price? $6.55 per share, up $0.55 on today’s news.

Along the way, Novell’s shares have closed as low as $3.11 per share on 6/30/03 and as high as $14.06 on 2/3/04.

It was under Messman’s leadership that the company moved its headquarters to Boston. Messman was also at the helm when the company decided to move strongly into the open source and Linux marketplace, including its move to acquire SuSe. And these moves appeared to be working.

However, Wall Street was surprised earlier this year on 3/2/06 when the company annouced Q1 2006 results that were not as expected. The result, a nearly 37 million shares traded hands the next day with the stock dropping $1.63 per share (approximately 17 percent) to close at $7.90, down from $9.53.

With approximately 339 million shares outstanding, it amounted to a $550 million drop in Novell’s market capitalization in one day.

The 5/31/06 announcement of the Q2 2006 results (ended 4/30/06) saw a similar drop-off, with Novell’s closing share price dropping $1.13 per share to $6.60 from $7.73, a 14.6 percent one-day selloff or an additional loss of $383 million in market cap.

Except the price kept heading downward. During the following two weeks the per share price continued to erode, closing at $5.84 on both June 15 and 20, or a two-week loss of $1.89 per share or a total market valuation loss of $640 million.

And . . . if you take the delta between the 3/2/06 closing share price of $9.53 and the 6/15/06 and 6/20/06 closing prices of $5.84, now we’re talking about a drop of more than 38 percent in less than four months. A market cap erosion of $1.25 billion.

My guess is that at that point, the board said, “It’s time for a change.”

I’m sure that there was a lot more that was going on behind this decision. I’m also not suggesting that the recent market surprises were the only reasons for Messman’s departure.

But with more than 21 years as a Novell board member under his belt, Messman has had probably more influence on Novell’s direction, success and failures than any other person, save perhaps Ray Noorda.

And soon Messman will be permanently out of the Novell spotlight too.

So what’s next for Novell minus Messman? That remains to be seen.