Google stock?
01-25-2004, 11:50 PM
#3
Moderator Alumnus
The biggest IPO of the year is heading toward the US market and, unlike many others, this one looks like retail investors might have a shot at climbing on board during a pre-IPO auction.
Google, the search engine that has become so commonly used that its name has become a verb, has hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as brokers for its $US4 billion stock market float -- but it has also retained the services of what Motley Fool calls "the pioneer of IPO auctions," WR Hambrecht & Co.
Back in May 2001, Instinet's IPO was 17.5 per cent managed by Hambrecht, which it auctioned through its OpenIPO system, Motley Fool points out. The bulk of the 32 million shares were brokered by the more traditional CS First Boston, which used the auction as a price finding device.
"As it turns out, WR Hambrecht & Co. elicited significant demand for the offering, with bids for over 74 million shares. In fact, while CS First Boston's initial price range was $11.50 to $13.50, the IPO was priced at $14.50, suggesting that WR Hambrecht & Co.'s Open IPO system was a critical factor in the price discovery, Motley Fool says.
The Fool suggests that Google might allocate 15-20 per cent of its IPO to an online auction, which means retail investors would have a good shot at obtaining pre-IPO shares: "assuming the company raises $4 billion at $25 per share, and there is an auction for 20% of the amount, this would leave 32 million shares up for bid," the Fool reports.
But don't call your broker without some serious thought.
As Fool points out, Google is under attack from several "mega-competitors" including Yahoo!, MSN and even Amazon, all of which are ramping up search in a major way.
Whether it can retain its hold over all the top search turf is the main question -- but unlike many other companies dulled by the view from the top, Google isn't sitting on its laurels. In fact, Google is hiring and expanding its operations on many fronts.
But with the likes of Microsoft in hot pursuit, any play that depends on Google retaining sole ownership of the search crown is a matter for serious thought.
The company is expected to sell a stake of about one-third in the IPO, giving it a market value of about $US12 billion, according to The Australian, citing bankers close to the deal.
The company would probably register the shares for sale with the Securities and Exchange Commission this month and sell them by April, they said.
In addition to the three principals, other underwriters include Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, JP Morgan Chase and Thomas Weisel Partners.
Merrill Lynch, The Australian says, which has the biggest brokerage force in the world, lost its bid to help arrange the sale.
http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/col_articl...Business+Today
Google, the search engine that has become so commonly used that its name has become a verb, has hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as brokers for its $US4 billion stock market float -- but it has also retained the services of what Motley Fool calls "the pioneer of IPO auctions," WR Hambrecht & Co.
Back in May 2001, Instinet's IPO was 17.5 per cent managed by Hambrecht, which it auctioned through its OpenIPO system, Motley Fool points out. The bulk of the 32 million shares were brokered by the more traditional CS First Boston, which used the auction as a price finding device.
"As it turns out, WR Hambrecht & Co. elicited significant demand for the offering, with bids for over 74 million shares. In fact, while CS First Boston's initial price range was $11.50 to $13.50, the IPO was priced at $14.50, suggesting that WR Hambrecht & Co.'s Open IPO system was a critical factor in the price discovery, Motley Fool says.
The Fool suggests that Google might allocate 15-20 per cent of its IPO to an online auction, which means retail investors would have a good shot at obtaining pre-IPO shares: "assuming the company raises $4 billion at $25 per share, and there is an auction for 20% of the amount, this would leave 32 million shares up for bid," the Fool reports.
But don't call your broker without some serious thought.
As Fool points out, Google is under attack from several "mega-competitors" including Yahoo!, MSN and even Amazon, all of which are ramping up search in a major way.
Whether it can retain its hold over all the top search turf is the main question -- but unlike many other companies dulled by the view from the top, Google isn't sitting on its laurels. In fact, Google is hiring and expanding its operations on many fronts.
But with the likes of Microsoft in hot pursuit, any play that depends on Google retaining sole ownership of the search crown is a matter for serious thought.
The company is expected to sell a stake of about one-third in the IPO, giving it a market value of about $US12 billion, according to The Australian, citing bankers close to the deal.
The company would probably register the shares for sale with the Securities and Exchange Commission this month and sell them by April, they said.
In addition to the three principals, other underwriters include Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, JP Morgan Chase and Thomas Weisel Partners.
Merrill Lynch, The Australian says, which has the biggest brokerage force in the world, lost its bid to help arrange the sale.
http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/col_articl...Business+Today
01-27-2004, 03:03 AM
#5
Moderator Alumnus
Google has cleared one of the last remaining hurdles in its closely watched effort to sell shares to the public, people close to the company said Monday, receiving a clean bill of health in a company-paid audit certifying its compliance with the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley law approved by Congress in 2002 in response to the wave of corporate scandals.
The report is a crucial step in Google's carefully staged path toward an initial public offering that is expected to take place this spring. Google's board has been awaiting the report before giving the final go-ahead for the company to file a formal stock registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to several executives involved with the process.
Google has repeatedly declined to comment publicly about any aspect of its planned offering.
If the registration is given the green light at a Google board meeting that could take place as early as this week, the public offering would most likely take place during the last week in April.
The privately held Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., has turned its highly popular Internet search engine into a powerful moneymaker by selling space for relatively unobtrusive ads tied to the results of specific searches.
Although the audit is not required to become a public company, Google commissioned it as part of an concentrated effort aimed at ensuring that it does not make any missteps related to allowing its shares to be offered to ordinary investors and traded in the stock market.
Google's decision to file for a public offering has generated intense interest both in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. The widely anticipated prospect of a Google offering has inevitably raised comparisons with Netscape, the once highflying Web browser creator that went public with a value of $2.6 billion in August 1995, and served as a spark for the dot-com boom of the late 1990's.
Several analysts have estimated that Google's initial public offering could establish a market value for the company as high as $20 billion, creating wealth for its founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and turning many employees into multimillionaires.
While some experts expect the event to set off another round of stock market speculation in technology companies and produce a cascade of investment dollars, most argue that Google is such a special case that it is not likely to bring a flurry of me-too offerings with it.
"The hope is that we don't move into a frenzied public offering marketplace," said Jim Breyer, managing partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, Calif. "Google is a very big deal in a lot of ways, but there's no company that is private today that is building the same kind of ecosystem.''
The company has not yet picked a lead underwriter for its stock market offering, Google executives say, but several people involved in the process say that J. P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the only real candidates to manage the deal. Google is still weighing whether it should offer some shares through a public auction, in part to deflect potential criticism over whether the many investors eager to own a piece of the business will be treated in an equitable fashion.
The Netscape public offering was a crucial milestone in the Internet stock market boom of the late 1990's, which ended with Netscape being acquired by AOL Time Warner and a series of lawsuits and criminal indictments. To help avoid a similar fate, Google executives are proceeding far more carefully than did most of the companies that rode that wave.
"Google will have to be the role model for how to do it under the new rules," said a technology fund manager who is watching the Google preparations closely.
While the consequences of Google's entry into the stock market are still unclear, the company's undisputed financial success has brought increasingly determined competitors trying to slice away at Google's position as the most popular search engine.
Google has not publicly disclosed its finances, but people involved with the company said Google was closing in on $1 billion in annual revenue.
Yahoo has said that it will stop relying on Google as its main search engine and begin deploying its own search technology. Microsoft has also begun a major effort to compete in the search business. On Monday Microsoft introduced an MSN search bar for use with the Internet Explorer Web browser, closely modeled after a similar software application available from both Google and Yahoo.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, said that Google currently was "way better" than Microsoft in search and praised the "high level of I.Q." of Google's researchers. He argued that Microsoft would catch up once it focused its full effort on the task.
At the Comdex computer industry trade show last year, Mr. Gates gave a demonstration of Microsoft search technology, which it is expected to introduce some time this year. Analysts remain divided, though, over whether Microsoft will wait to deploy its more advanced search software, blending local and remote searching, until it introduces its Longhorn version of the Windows system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/27/te...partner=GOOGLE
The report is a crucial step in Google's carefully staged path toward an initial public offering that is expected to take place this spring. Google's board has been awaiting the report before giving the final go-ahead for the company to file a formal stock registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to several executives involved with the process.
Google has repeatedly declined to comment publicly about any aspect of its planned offering.
If the registration is given the green light at a Google board meeting that could take place as early as this week, the public offering would most likely take place during the last week in April.
The privately held Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., has turned its highly popular Internet search engine into a powerful moneymaker by selling space for relatively unobtrusive ads tied to the results of specific searches.
Although the audit is not required to become a public company, Google commissioned it as part of an concentrated effort aimed at ensuring that it does not make any missteps related to allowing its shares to be offered to ordinary investors and traded in the stock market.
Google's decision to file for a public offering has generated intense interest both in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. The widely anticipated prospect of a Google offering has inevitably raised comparisons with Netscape, the once highflying Web browser creator that went public with a value of $2.6 billion in August 1995, and served as a spark for the dot-com boom of the late 1990's.
Several analysts have estimated that Google's initial public offering could establish a market value for the company as high as $20 billion, creating wealth for its founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and turning many employees into multimillionaires.
While some experts expect the event to set off another round of stock market speculation in technology companies and produce a cascade of investment dollars, most argue that Google is such a special case that it is not likely to bring a flurry of me-too offerings with it.
"The hope is that we don't move into a frenzied public offering marketplace," said Jim Breyer, managing partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, Calif. "Google is a very big deal in a lot of ways, but there's no company that is private today that is building the same kind of ecosystem.''
The company has not yet picked a lead underwriter for its stock market offering, Google executives say, but several people involved in the process say that J. P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the only real candidates to manage the deal. Google is still weighing whether it should offer some shares through a public auction, in part to deflect potential criticism over whether the many investors eager to own a piece of the business will be treated in an equitable fashion.
The Netscape public offering was a crucial milestone in the Internet stock market boom of the late 1990's, which ended with Netscape being acquired by AOL Time Warner and a series of lawsuits and criminal indictments. To help avoid a similar fate, Google executives are proceeding far more carefully than did most of the companies that rode that wave.
"Google will have to be the role model for how to do it under the new rules," said a technology fund manager who is watching the Google preparations closely.
While the consequences of Google's entry into the stock market are still unclear, the company's undisputed financial success has brought increasingly determined competitors trying to slice away at Google's position as the most popular search engine.
Google has not publicly disclosed its finances, but people involved with the company said Google was closing in on $1 billion in annual revenue.
Yahoo has said that it will stop relying on Google as its main search engine and begin deploying its own search technology. Microsoft has also begun a major effort to compete in the search business. On Monday Microsoft introduced an MSN search bar for use with the Internet Explorer Web browser, closely modeled after a similar software application available from both Google and Yahoo.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, said that Google currently was "way better" than Microsoft in search and praised the "high level of I.Q." of Google's researchers. He argued that Microsoft would catch up once it focused its full effort on the task.
At the Comdex computer industry trade show last year, Mr. Gates gave a demonstration of Microsoft search technology, which it is expected to introduce some time this year. Analysts remain divided, though, over whether Microsoft will wait to deploy its more advanced search software, blending local and remote searching, until it introduces its Longhorn version of the Windows system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/27/te...partner=GOOGLE
01-27-2004, 12:49 PM
#6
I LOVE MY CAR
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Chicago, IL (South Burbs)
Age: 45
Posts: 3,266
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Might bounce intially on the IPO, but will most likely start off over-valued.... just based on all the hype.
The price will be artificially bid up by the simple supply and demand laws.
The price will be artificially bid up by the simple supply and demand laws.
Trending Topics
04-29-2004, 01:53 PM
#9
Moderator Alumnus
Internet search engine leader Google Inc. filed its long-awaited IPO plans Thursday, setting the stage for the company to make its stock market debut — a move that could still be months away.
Without specifying a price per share, Google said it hopes to raise $2.7 billion with an initial public offering that’s created the biggest high-tech buzz since the dot-com bubble burst four years ago.
As expected, Google said the price of its IPO will be determined through an auction designed to give the general public a better chance to buy its stock before the shares begin trading, most likely in late summer or early autumn. IPO shares traditionally have been restricted to an elite group picked by the investment bankers handling the deal.
Google picked two long-established investment bankers — Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston — to manage its unconventional IPO approach.
Although Google’s stock won’t be sold for several more months, the filing represents a significant milestone in the 5½-year-old company’s evolution from a fun-loving startup to a corporate adolescent that will be held more accountable for how it manages its money.
The documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission gave the public its first peek at the privately held company’s finances.
The Mountain View-based company earned $105.6 million, or 41 cents per share, on revenue of $962 million last year. Google got off to a fast start this year, with a first-quarter profit of $64 million, or 24 cents per share — more than doubling its earnings of $25.8 million, or 10 cents per share, at the same time last year.
By going public, Google will be under greater pressure to produce steady earnings growth — an expectation that some executives say leads to short-sighted management decisions.
But Google vowed to be different, staying true to the iconoclastic values that it has fostered since former Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company in 1998. In one of its first rebellious steps, Google will refuse to project its earnings from quarter to quarter, according to an open letter that Page and Brin attached to the IPO filing.
“A management team distracted by a series of short-term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour,” they wrote.
Following in the footsteps of stock market sage Warren Buffet, Page and Brin intend to take turns writing annual shareholder letters to provide their view of the world.
The letter also emphasized that both Page, 31, and Brin, 30, intend to remain Google’s hands-on leaders, making all key decisions with CEO Eric Schmidt, a former top executive at Sun Microsystems Inc. and Novell Inc. who joined the company in 2001.
“We run Google as a triumvirate,” Page wrote. “The structure is unconventional, but we have worked successfully in this way.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4864177/
Without specifying a price per share, Google said it hopes to raise $2.7 billion with an initial public offering that’s created the biggest high-tech buzz since the dot-com bubble burst four years ago.
As expected, Google said the price of its IPO will be determined through an auction designed to give the general public a better chance to buy its stock before the shares begin trading, most likely in late summer or early autumn. IPO shares traditionally have been restricted to an elite group picked by the investment bankers handling the deal.
Google picked two long-established investment bankers — Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston — to manage its unconventional IPO approach.
Although Google’s stock won’t be sold for several more months, the filing represents a significant milestone in the 5½-year-old company’s evolution from a fun-loving startup to a corporate adolescent that will be held more accountable for how it manages its money.
The documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission gave the public its first peek at the privately held company’s finances.
The Mountain View-based company earned $105.6 million, or 41 cents per share, on revenue of $962 million last year. Google got off to a fast start this year, with a first-quarter profit of $64 million, or 24 cents per share — more than doubling its earnings of $25.8 million, or 10 cents per share, at the same time last year.
By going public, Google will be under greater pressure to produce steady earnings growth — an expectation that some executives say leads to short-sighted management decisions.
But Google vowed to be different, staying true to the iconoclastic values that it has fostered since former Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company in 1998. In one of its first rebellious steps, Google will refuse to project its earnings from quarter to quarter, according to an open letter that Page and Brin attached to the IPO filing.
“A management team distracted by a series of short-term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour,” they wrote.
Following in the footsteps of stock market sage Warren Buffet, Page and Brin intend to take turns writing annual shareholder letters to provide their view of the world.
The letter also emphasized that both Page, 31, and Brin, 30, intend to remain Google’s hands-on leaders, making all key decisions with CEO Eric Schmidt, a former top executive at Sun Microsystems Inc. and Novell Inc. who joined the company in 2001.
“We run Google as a triumvirate,” Page wrote. “The structure is unconventional, but we have worked successfully in this way.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4864177/
06-22-2004, 04:28 PM
#12
roomate has a CL too
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Los Angeles, CA Albany, NY
Age: 41
Posts: 3,862
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
this still has not gone public trading yet right? I heard us regular people would not be able to get shares at the beginning based on demand and all that other stuff people that are right there or whatever. Any new news?
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
DerrickW
3G TL Performance Parts & Modifications
9
11-15-2015 05:52 PM