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WebSideStory Merges With Visual Sciences
US digital marketing specialist WebSideStory has acquired Visual Sciences, a web analytics company that provides streaming data analysis and visualisation software. The company also announced a 79% growth in revenues in the fourth quarter of 2005.
Visual Sciences will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of WebSideStory. Co-founders Jim MacIntyre and David Scherer will serve as CEO and CTO of the business unit. The total value of the acquisition is $57.3m, comprised of $22m in cash, unsecured senior notes of $20m, 568,512 shares of common stock to be held in escrow until March 2007, and 189,511 shares of restricted common stock.
Jeff Lunsford, Chairman and CEO of WebSideStory, says: 'Visual Sciences has vaulted onto the scene and won the respect of everyone in our industry with the dynamic segmentation, multi-channel and real-time data visualisation capabilities of its flagship web analytics solution, Visual Site.' He states that the acquisition 'creates significant cross-sell opportunities' for his company.
Lunsford adds that Visual Sciences' other analytics products, Visual Call, Visual Mail and Visual Document, together with the company's relationships within the government sector, 'position WebSideStory well to benefit from our nation's Homeland Defense initiative'.
Jim MacIntyre, co-founder and CEO of Visual Sciences, says: 'We look forward to integrating our technology with all the modules of the WebSideStory Active Marketing Suite, and creating solutions that no other company in digital marketing can match.'
The company's financial results for the three months ending 31 December 2005 are as follows (comparisons with the same quarter of 2004 in brackets).- Revenue $11.7m (up 79%)
- Earnings per share $0.25 (loss of $0.04)
- Non-GAAP earnings $0.15 ($0.06).
The company states that non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors as they 'more accurately describe the operating performance of the company on a period-to-period basis, and help investors gauge the company's ability to generate cash flow, excluding specific costs and expenses that we believe are not indicative of our core operating results'.
The company also reported 47% growth in web analytics bookings, and stated that it signed 129 new contracts for its WebSideStory Active Marketing Suite, up from 110 in the previous quarter. The average contract for new customers was worth approximately $30,000 a year.
Lunsford says the results 'demonstrate that the WebSideStory team is executing well by listening to our customers and capitalising on the great growth opportunities afforded us by the growth in online ad spending, e-commerce and on-demand software.'
The company is online at www.WebSideStory.com
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