Adobe to buy Omniture for $1.8 billion
Adobe said on Tuesday that it has reached a deal to acquire Web analytics firm Omniture for $1.8 billion, or $21.50 per share.
That represents a 45 percent premium to Omniture's average closing price for the last 30 days, Adobe noted in its press release. Omniture, which was started in 1996, has about 1,200 employees and took in just under $300 million in the 12 months ending Dec. 31.
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen called the move a "game changer" for the company.
"Adobe customers are looking to us for solutions to deliver engaging experiences and more effectively monetize their content and applications online," Narayen said in the press release announcing the deal.
The two companies said the deal is expected to close during Adobe's fourth quarter and is subject to government approvals. Omniture will become a new unit within Adobe, with Omniture CEO Josh James continuing to lead the business as an Adobe senior vice president. Adobe said the deal should add to earnings in fiscal 2010.
Update 1:45 p.m. PT: In an interview, Adobe senior vice president Paul Weiskopf said the deal will allow Adobe to merge the "art" of developing and delivering content with the "science" of measuring the impact of that content.
"Today that's a real pain point for customers," Weiskopf said. "We have the opportunity to integrate what is today a pretty disparate and not tightly integrated set of workflows."
The deal is the company's largest since its $3-billion-plus acquisition of Macromedia, announced in April 2005.
Weiskopf declined to discuss how long the deal had been in the works or whether there will be any job cuts once the deal goes through, although the company has a conference call slated to start at 2 p.m. PT and will also file additional details with the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of its tender offer to acquire Omniture's shares.
Update 2:15 p.m. PT: Adobe's executives are now on a conference call talking about the deal, as well as the company's most recent quarterly results.
However, there has been nothing too earth-shattering thus far.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
Wow, I sense doom for Omniture sales...
Some of you are really clueless about Analytics and should give up on it if you think Google Analytics really competes with Omniture. Omniture offers a VERY robust product, google analytics is nice for joe-blogger/little peoples web site, but Disney and a host of other HUGE companies use Omniture.
Bottom line is, companies LOVE to pay for things, I promise you that, especially big companies. WHY? Because they want support, they want to execute at the very top level, and quite frankly, Google Analytics just doesn't deliver the goods at a top level. It is a nice free product, good for Google. Google is the worlds biggest traffic based website and they have all the traffic hence free things from Google. But not even Google can compete with EVERYBODY in EVERY niche at the highest levels.
Maybe Adobe wants to put a free version of Omniture out there, they've done it with Photoshop & Acrobat as Flash based RIA's, why not Omniture?
As a matter of fact, I GUARANTEE there will be a FREE version of Omniture that ties into Flash & PDFs, it'll probably be implemented as a library in ActionScript at some point.
It's all part of the bigger picture, making Flash UNIQUELY powerful for business customers. Flash owns online marketing and games, now Adobe wants to at least compete in shopping carts and catalogs.
Again, VERY good move, if you want to see Flex adopted more by business customers, this is a move you want to see.
If anyone here has failed to notice, Adobe has the best slew of graphics and multimedia programs, that EVERY marketing company I've ever been in uses. It MAKES SENSE for Adobe to buy an analytics company to add to its arsenal of programs, so as to better gear it's suite towards it's faithful marketing audience. Think about it. Not to mention that there are plenty of other great reasons for other people to use this, and for Adobe to want this.
- by AnthonyNYC September 18, 2009 10:40 PM PDT
- If Omniture grossed 300 million in sales last year why pay 1.8 billion for it?
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(10 Comments)According to the ABC Sharks, you should never pay more than 3x gross for a company.
So it was a great deal for Omniture! For sure....