DoubleClick's sale may bring aQuantive bids

Shares of aQuantive rose the most in eight months after Google's $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick sparked speculation that the Seattle company might be the next to be bought.

The stock climbed $3.49, or 12.2 percent, to $32.01 Monday.

AQuantive, which owns the largest Internet advertising agency and is DoubleClick's biggest competitor, may fetch $39 a share in a takeover, J.P. Morgan Securities analyst Imran Khan wrote in a report Monday.

The DoubleClick acquisition will extend Google's lead over Microsoft and Yahoo! and may drive them to make a counter move, said Benjamin Schachter, an analyst at UBS in New York.

"It clearly raises the valuation" of aQuantive, said Schachter, who raised his rating on the company to "buy" from "neutral" after the DoubleClick news. "There was a competitive bidding process, and we think Microsoft and Yahoo! were both in the hunt, and now that they've lost they could be looking for other assets to acquire," Schachter said.

At least four brokerage firms raised their ratings Monday on aQuantive.

Google agreed Friday to pay cash for DoubleClick, almost three times the amount paid by Hellman & Friedman, the private equity firm that bought the company in 2005.

A Google-owned rival may be less attractive to advertisers and owners of Web sites concerned about sharing their data, said Karl Siebrecht, president of aQuantive's Atlas unit, which sells ad-targeting and measurement services similar to DoubleClick's.

That will be true even if Google lets DoubleClick cut prices for ad-related services by subsidizing them, Siebrecht said.

"If this means Atlas is the only truly independent ad-management system, that could be an interesting opportunity," Siebrecht said.

He declined to say whether aQuantive had been contacted by suitors since the DoubleClick deal.

"I won't comment on that specifically, but we are building our business for the long term," Siebrecht said.

Google's transaction could also hurt aQuantive, said Richard Fetyko, an analyst at Merriman Curhan Ford.

Google may slash prices for DoubleClick's services, Fetyko wrote.

It could bundle the price of ad-targeting and measurement services into the price of ads themselves, pressuring aQuantive's margins, he said.

Information from Bloomberg News reporter Jeff Kearns in New York is included in this report.