David Politis

I recently read Paul Allen’s post about his challenges on being able to blog from the road, and his excitement about being able to blog from his BlackBerry thanks to WordPress v2.0.3.

Well, as fast as Paul Types on a BlackBerry (and apparently he’s really fast, like 50+ words per minute), I suspect he’s probably faster still on a regular keyboard.

If so, another alternative may be looking into Verizon’s Broadband Access, a service now offered locally through our client PC Laptops.

Essentially, the service requires a small wireless PC card that slides into one’s laptop and then (depending upon wher you are in the U.S.) you get access speeds of 400kbps to 700kbps and burstable access up to 2Mbps. Monthly cost? $59.99 on a two-year agreement.

Might be worth checking out for you road-bloggers.

News broke late Thursday that 2008 will be the last time we see Bill Gates III involved in the day-to-day operations of Microsoft.

Isn’t it interesting that the richest man in the world is actually a college dropout? Okay, so he dropped out from Harvard, which means he obviously wasn’t a mental midget or anything.

I also think it’s amazing that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is now the largest foundation in the world with $30 billion (yes, that’s a “B”) in its coffers. And that’s on top of his $50 billion in personal wealth.

Scary.

So I’m digging through Omniture’s S-1 the other day and what do I see? Shawn Lindquist’s name listed as Omniture’s Chief Legal Officer, Senior Vice President and Secretary.

I’ve known Lindquist for close to seven years and he’s a sharp securities attorney, so I was not totally surprised to find that he had landed at Omniture. As it is, the company’s had a sharp executive team already.

[DISCLOSURE: Omniture was a client years ago back when the company was known as MyComputer.com. Additionally, I have been offered the ability to purchase “friends & family” shares as part of the IPO, an offer that I have not yet decided if I will act upon or not. If so, I will disclose this too. dlp.]

So the real question is: How much money will Omniture raise once it completes its Initial Public Offering?

Well, as I tell shareholders and financial professionals alike when discussing some of our agency’s publicly traded clients and the prospects for the financial future, “If I could predict the future, I’d probably be sitting on a beach in the Bahamas instead of . . . .”

Nevertheless, even if deciphering SEC forms (such as Omniture’s S-1) can be difficult at times, the info’s still there if you dig a bit.

The basics are this: Omniture (as a company) plans to sell 8.7 million shares to the public at a price range the underwriters anticipate will fall between $7.50 and $9.00 per share at the “opening price.” At this amount and this range, we’re talking about a “gross” total of between $65.25 million and $78.3 million.

Additionally, the underwriters also have the ability (if they so choose) to sell an additional 1.6 million shares as part of an “overallotment.”

Typically, overallotment shares are not sold if the stock prices at or near the bottom of the anticipated pricing range. But for argument’s sake, let’s assume that the demand is high and the entire overallotment is sold too, which would give us an additional range of $12 million to $14.4 million in additional gross proceeds.

Add up all the numbers and you end up with a potential range of gross proceeds to Omniture of $65.25 million on the low end to $92.7 million on the high end in IPO gross proceeds to Omniture. And that’s based upon a LOT of assumptions (too many to detail here).

I personally expect the IPO to go well for Omniture and I expect the shares to “price” and begin trading before the end of July. If not, then we’re realistically talking post-Labor Day for the completion of the IPO, and no one wants that to happen. Not Omniture, not the underwriters, not the brokers and dealers.

So pick a date? Okay, how ’bout a wild guess of Wed., July 12 at an opening price of $8.60 per share? I guess we’ll see.

[DISCLOSURE: Omniture was a client years ago back when the company was known as MyComputer.com. Additionally, I have been offered the ability to purchase “friends & family” shares as part of the IPO, an offer that I have not yet decided if I will act upon or not. If so, I will disclose this too. dlp.]

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.