Online ad slump Fastclick's IPO may have been ill-timed as investors have dumped many search-related companies. Company  Price change (Past 3 months)*  FindWhat.com  -43.5%  Shopping.com  -37.0%  ValueClick  -20.4%  Infospace  -14.1%  Yahoo!  -10%  Google   -6.4%  DoubleClick  -1.0%   * data through 3/30/05  Source:  Thomson/Baseline

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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Investors may be again tiring of Internet stocks.

Fastclick, a developer of technology that places online ads through pop-ups and banners, went public on the Nasdaq Friday morning. And despite a fair amount of buzz, shares priced at $12, the low-end of their range. After opening at $14.99, the stock quickly sold off and as of late morning, shares were trading at about $12.65, only a 5 percent premium to their offering price.

Fastclick (Research) was expected to have a more favorable debut since the company is profitable and rapidly growing. Sales more than doubled in 2004, to $58 million. Pro forma net income increased 31 percent to $4.8 million.

"[The weakness] is surprising for a deal that's supposed to be in good shape," said Ben Holmes, managing partner of Protege Funds, a hedge fund that has a stake in Fastclick.

But the IPO comes as investors grow increasingly skeptical of the valuations of online advertising companies. Even though search has been a booming business for the past few years, Wall Street has started to worry that increased competition may lead to a slowdown in growth.

As such, shares of search engine companies like Yahoo! and Google as well as smaller online ad firms like DoubleClick (Research) and ValueClick (Research) have tumbled lately. Faced with that backdrop, some analysts said the tame response to Fastclick's IPO was not that shocking.

"A lot of people are stymied over the fact that Google has not been able to make substantive moves to the upside lately. If Google can't head higher and they're supposed to be a pristine, cash-producing company, then that makes it tough for others to do well," said David Menlow, president of IPOfinancial.com, an independent research firm focusing on new stock offerings.

Investors may also have been turned off because Fastclick, despite its solid fundamentals, faces tough competition. Rivals include ValueClick and Advertising.com, which like CNN/Money, is owned by Time Warner (Research), as well as Yahoo! (Research) and Google (Research).

"Fastclick has tremendous growth so you can't help but be impressed. But this is not a bullet-proof slam dunk story," said Eric Martinuzzi, an analyst who covers ValueClick for Craig-Hallum Capital, a Minneapolis-based research firm focusing on small cap stocks.

In addition, investors may be scared off because Fastclick generates a large percentage of sales from a small group of customers. The company said in its IPO filing that its top 10 advertisers represented 44 percent of the company's total revenues last year.

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