If West Side Story fans can belt out "There's a place for us," then WebSideStory (NASDAQ:WSSI) fans can nod their heads and point to the stock market. The website statistical analysis specialist is finally going public today after pricing its shares at $8.50 last night.
Before you begin wondering how much musical wordplay fun the folks at General Electric's (NYSE:GE) CNBC will have with this offering when Maria Bartiromo is around, let's dig into how this offering almost never happened.
Back in August, when Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) went from an initial pricing range that was as high as $135 a share to a relatively modest $85, it sent other web-based IPOs reeling. If the mighty Google had to be scaled back in scope, what would that mean for the smaller fish in the dot-com pond?
WebSideStory had filed to go public between $10 and $12 a share at the time. It reacted to Google by lowering its range -- to between $8 and $9 a share -- and went from offering 5 million shares to just 4.4 million.
Last night's move was a victory for Internet upstarts everywhere in a few ways. Unlike Google's stock, which was ultimately priced at the bottom of its $85 to $95 range, WebSideStory came to market in the middle of its reduced range. It also managed to sell its original lot of 5 million shares.
Never heard of WebSideStory? While just a little more than 500 companies use its data munching services, those enterprises happen to be major players like Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Best Buy (NYSE:BBY).
Information is everything these days as companies look to learn more about their website visitors. Yet WebSideStory posted a small loss on just $16.4 million in revenues last year. While it is now profitable and growing at a healthy clip, with $10.3 million in revenues over the first six months of the year, those small sums may keep the freshly minted shares in check.
Yes, I know. It would be great if the stock took off -- allowing one final West Side Story Broadway joke about the stock being a Jet -- but completing the IPO will be worthy of its own applause. The company will have to grow into commanding that larger audience.
How important is information to a Web-enabled company? What are the different statistical services available? Can a self-employed Web master cull enough visitor information from analyzing daily logs? All this and more -- in the Webmaster's Corner discussion board. Only on Fool.com.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Aristotle Munarriz did see an off-Broadway version of West Side Story once. It featured soap star Jack Wagner, so that may explain why he never saw the show again. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story.
