Visual Sciences: What's in a name?

What’s in a name? For web analytics company Visual Sciences Inc., it seems to count for a lot.

For the last year, the company known as WebSideStory, trading under the symbol WSSI, has been bouncing between $11 and $14 a share. In recent months, it’s been largely at the low side of the bounce, in part because earnings have been depressed by the cost of assimilating Visual Sciences LLC., a competitor it acquired in February 2006.

Then on May 10, WebSideStory disappeared. Along with its first-quarter earnings report, the company announced that the acquirer was taking on the name of the acquired. Now called Visual Sciences Inc. and trading under the symbol VSCN, it slightly beat analyst forecasts and announced upgrades of its two main products.

Investors embraced the changes—including the shift its new name implies—by bidding the stock back from $11 to just over $14 per share on unusually high volume in one day. Its market cap is about $290 million.

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