Omniture stock growth hits some bumps

NEW YORK — The stock of Orem-based Omniture Inc., a maker of Web-traffic analysis software, has been moving at broadband speed, more than doubling since it debuted on the Nasdaq Stock Market in June.

But the run-up has hit a few glitches over the past month.

In early February, the company said it planned to sacrifice some near-term profits to invest in growth, setting off a sharp share-price drop. The stock has rebounded since, but gains have been choppy amid broader-market acrobatics and selling by some early investors whose shares came out of lockup at the end of December.

The hiccups could offer an opportunity for long-term investors to build positions at a more reasonable price in a high-growth company at the forefront of a fledgling industry that is benefiting from a multitude of hot Internet trends, including booming online-advertising, e-commerce and entertainment content.

Continued sales by insiders and early investors are likely to pressure the stock for a time.

Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, which owned 19 percent of Omniture after it went public on June 28, has barely begun to unwind its stake. It has parted with only about 48,000 of its 8.5 million shares so far, according to recent filings. John Hummer declined to comment on the firm's plans or his own 140,000-share investment made soon after Omniture's IPO.

Scale Venture Partners, which had about a 10 percent stake, has sold just over 10 percent of its stock. Scale didn't respond to a request for comment.

Omniture's technology helps companies as diverse as Time Warner Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Ford Motor Co., Deutsche Bank AG and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. make more money through the Internet. Its subscription-based software gathers and analyzes data about how people are using Web sites — including what articles they are reading and whether they are buying products or not — and helps identify and test improvements that might engage these consumers better. Omniture estimates the market for its Web-analytics product at $10 billion.

It competes with the likes of WebSideStory Inc., WebTrends Inc. and Coremetrics Inc.

Omniture is expanding into the emerging business of helping clients analyze and improve the results of their online marketing efforts. In August, the company rolled out a product that lets its customers see and compare returns on their search-marketing campaigns with Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and other providers. And in December, it launched a product that analyzes online-marketing tools such as search, banner ads and e-mail campaigns, and lets its customers see what is working so they can adjust their online-marketing spending accordingly.