The board of directors at the floundering Fremont, California-based firm said that it has authorized discussions with certain undisclosed parties regarding various strategic alternatives for the company. In related announcements, Accrue also announced the departure of its interim CEO, Jonathon Becher. Accrue’s COO, Paul Karnik, will assume the role in the meantime.
Accrue has endured a torrid time over the past year, which has seen its sales slump and its net loss widen. This culminated in an embarrassing Nasdaq delisting in September, which subsequently led to the company removing its financial releases from its Website. But despite its financial woes, the company has stuck to its roots and has continued to focus on building-out its flagship G2 Internet analytics platform that integrates data from multiple sources and provides comprehensive analysis of Web visitor and site behavior. The maturity of G2, coupled with a loyal customer base (which includes the likes of Citicorp, Knight Ridder and Wells Fargo), would make for an attractive buy.
Chances are that if a sale does go ahead, it will be one of the larger business intelligence (BI) vendors that will step in – especially those vendors that want to broaden their customer analysis offerings by bringing complementary online analytics into the mix. Other smaller pure play Web analytics providers have followed a similar fate. For example, NetGenesis Corp, one of Accrue’s early competitors, was bought by analytics software vendor SPSS Inc in October 2001 for $44.6m. Meanwhile WebTrends Corp, another pioneer in Internet analytics was snapped by NetIQ Corp in January 2001 for a massive $1bn.
Source: Computerwire
