The performance of the company in the last two quarters has dented the sentiments significantly. It is important to remember that the company has performed extremely well over the last few years. Also, the stock has done great despite the huge correction over the last few months. The stock is still around 40% up on 52 week basis, though it has corrected by more than 30% from the 52 week high made in May. The stock has recovered a bit from the recent sell off and seems to be stable. However, the recovery over the past few days has not been backed by volumes. The Q2'13 earnings miss led to downgrades and cut in price-targets by many analysts. However, some analysts consider the sharp decline as a buying opportunity for the long term. An article on seekingalpha expressed hope of better performance by the company in the long term. The author mentioned that the acquisitions by the company over the last few years have helped it adapt to the changes in the business environment. Especially for online advertising, he mentioned acquisitions by the company in emerging segments of online advertising like Dotomi (behavioral targeting) and Greystripe (mobile advertising). As per the author, the valuations are better compared to the ad-tech peers like Facebook (FB), Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO). Valueclick is likely to face more competition from existing and emerging players. There are some segments, specially in online advertising which are expected to grow faster. Social media sponsorship & native ads is a fast growing segment with big and small players like IZEA (IZEA) expected to do well. For Valueclick, the guidance for the third quarter is for revenue between $164-$168 million, adjusted EBITDA of $53-$55 million and GAAP net income per diluted common share in the range of $0.30-$0.31. It desperately needs to beat the guidance a couple of times to change the sentiments.
