Adobe Systems Inc. said Tuesday it will buy the Web analytic software company Omniture Inc. for about $1.8 billion, giving the maker of content-creation software a way to let marketers measure the effectiveness of such content.
San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe, which makes Flash, Acrobat and Photoshop software, said it will buy Omniture for $21.50 per share in cash, a premium of 24 percent over Omniture's closing stock price Tuesday. Omniture shares jumped nearly 26 percent in extended trading.
The announcement came as Adobe said it earned $136 million, or 26 cents per share, in the fiscal third quarter that ended in August, down 29 percent from the same time a year earlier.
Excluding one-time items, Adobe earned 35 cents per share, a penny above what analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting.
Adobe said revenue fell 21 percent to $697.5 million, inching past analyst expectations of $686.2 million.
Omniture, based in Orem, Utah, offers a variety of Web traffic analysis and other products for companies to improve their marketing over the Internet. The acquisition would marry Omniture's services for figuring how to best deliver messages with Flash and other Adobe tools for creating Web sites and ads. Omniture services could then be used to monitor how effective the messages are.
Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, said the planned acquisition would allow Adobe to create new streams of revenue even as its existing businesses decline.
Though he called the deal "very timely," Chowdhry believes he thinks Adobe is overpaying for Omniture. He said $12 to $13 per share — rather than $21.50 — would have been a fair value for the company.
Adobe's shares took a hit in after-hours trading, falling $1.50, or 4.2 percent, to $34.12. The stock had closed at $35.62 in regular trading earlier Tuesday.
Omniture's shares, meanwhile, soared $4.47, or 25.8 percent, to $21.79 after-hours. The stock closed at $17.32, up 32 cents.