Kintera in Financial Straits?

06:00 PM Aug 09, 2005

Besides DemocracyInAction, there are three other big-name providers of Internet activism tool kits -- Convio, GetActive and Kintera. And the most controversial and commercially aggressive of these is Kintera.

Though we're none of us market hounds and pretend to no expertise at reading the tea leaves of opaque financial press releases and one-day market behavior, Kintera -- the only publicly traded company in the sector -- dropped 5.5% today after announcing after market close yesterday that it would be postponing its second-quarter financial release and restating its first quarter finances to show a larger loss.

Kintera's share value since its $40 million IPO in December 2003

If this does reflect ill news, it would not quite be out of keeping with the long-term trend. Kintera stock soared above $17 early last year, borne aloft by the springtime breeze of the Dean campaign's online fundraising revolution. But the last 16 months have seen a steady drift back towards terra firma, and the software company has never been profitable -- a business model that would seem to be about five years out of date.

Just so we're clear: we have no idea what to infer from this news, and the last things we wish to impute to financiers are rationality and omniscience. Still, this is sure to sharpen the questions already swirling around Kintera and its place in the Internet advocacy space.

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