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Google Goes Public at $85/share
adpowers writes "It is official. Google will have its IPO debut at $85 per share. To quote the article, 'At that price, the low end of its recently revised range, Google raised $1.67 billion, with $1.2 billion to go to the No. 1 Internet search engine and $473 million to Google executives and investors selling their shares.' Trading begins Thursday, August 19th." Got Google?
I am exchanging every single share of SCO I own for Google. In your face, Darl!
I for one, welcome our new non-income-generating, but VC-attracting overlords. Where do I get my Aero chair?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
How long before these hit ebay?
... how many google employees have become instant millionaires?
-- Bryan
So anticlimactic. I am actually disinfranchised by the whole ordeal. At least the price came down a bit from the overinflated suggested ipo.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Google is valued at around $23B. Even though it is lower than recent estimates, it is still much higher than people were originally speculating: $10-15B.
Does that mean the search results will start to suck beacause the engine gets fat and lazy, sitting around all day smoking pot. I know I would if I had 1.2 billion dollars. Maybe they should put the engine on an allowance to keep it honest.
I, for one, would be lost without it. However, I will be interested to see how it develops now it's under external influences.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Anyone else see the irony of linking to the Google index from finance.yahoo.com ?
No? Just me.
Sometimes the media overanalyzes. If you read last night's article in the New York Times, barely anyone mentions that the simple reason the expected share price dropped is that: people did not understand/were confused by the auction process.
I think that's about it. Nothing very complicated at all...
Are we sure these aren't beta shares like gmail? Anyone have a stock invite to share?
Recipes for geeks -- no meatloaf, we promise.
Although to some pundits the lower price signals a weaker offering, some of this could be to GOOGs benefit.
The lower per share value was followed by a lowering of shares available. This could generate more interest in the shares, which will drive prices up (or keep them constant longer).
It does, however, mean the cap has gone down by over 25% (36B to 26B). Still bigger than my bank account, though.
The Economist has a good article giving analysis of the IPO.
I fear that for Google, going fully profit and opening to investors might in the long run have a negative impact... Will big Google shareholders be able to influence what appears in the Search Engine? Maybe right now this will be impossible, but who knows what might happen in the future... And what will be the consequences of it for the users?
Maybe the problem is the following: there is a way in which Google is perceived now that is fundamentally wrong. It is treated as a "service" for Internet Users, the One and Only Search Engine, while it is just Yet Another Company.
Monopolies (especially privately-owned and profit-making ones) are never good. Will Google become as Bad(TM) as Microsoft?
With an already profitable business, and lots of extra money in its pocket, can we expect Google to start a buyout spree? Some targets might include Vivisimo with their clustering technology, Girafa for visualizing search, or even some of the better Web APIs applications like Google Alert or the GoogleBrowser, as this Wired story suggests.
After all, the company offers only one basic product (albeit in a couple of incarnations).
Microsoft are starting to consider Google as competition. And competing with Microsoft has historically been a bad move - I can see Longhorn's search facilities integrating with MSN search such that the boundary between the Internet and the PC on your desk becoming blurred. Google are pretty much at the top, and it'll be almost impossible to maintain that long-term.
So you probably wouldn't buy this share for growth. How about income? Has Google publicised what it plans on offering in dividends? Even if it did, with no past record to go on, how can you have any idea what level of income to expect?
Even if you don't buy the share for growth, it's still an expensive share. It wouldn't take much for its value (and thus the value of the investment) to plummet.
Ultimately, I think this share is a bet that the rich might be prepared (and financially able) to take, but most would be well advised to steer clear of. The dot-com bubble burst a long time ago.
Why not use the google stock tool to google's Stock...
If the only reason the price went down was confusion, then today when the stock is listed and can be bought by "normal" means, then it will shoot right up to $135, right?
someone gets +3 informative for telling us what day it is.
First, pick up and read a copy of The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (commentary by Jason Zweig).
1) By all fundamental measures, this stock is dramatically overpriced. (Ask yourself how a search engine -- which could likely be replaced by next years' "next new thing" -- could be worth, on a per cap market basis, as much as McDonalds.)
2) IPOs usually only make one group of people rich: the boardroom execs. Don't be suckered by the initial rise in price -- IPOs are almost always followed by a dramatic downturn.
I remember Cisco used to be about 85$....
I love it when people consider the cost per stock as an indicator of whether a company is overvalued. It is people like you who create arbitrage in the market for the rest of us to exploit...
Different companies have different number of stocks you know. $85 gives Google a total value of $23 Billion (market capitalization), while Cisco is still worth around $150 billion...
Where do I get my Aero chair?
This was the stock auction. The bankruptcy auction isn't for another few months, at least.
Weren't you alive five years ago? =)
While I think hyping ones own company is important (and required in this day and age) I believe that Google was elevated to a high status (both by themselves and the community) to such a point as to make them seem "saintly" (for lack of better words). :)
The initial estimates of their price created such hype and talk -finally it deflated, by a good amount (IIRC the initial estimates were up to 120 per share?).
I remember reading the articles last year, prior to Google going IPO - saying how important this would be to our economy - how Google would save the stock market with all the trading fee revenue, etc... And then came the articles that Google doesn't want to IPO - they want to remain "pure" and "uncompromised" by not having a board of directors and shareholders who would force them to become "evil." In the end, it was a great marketing strategy - playing "hard to get."
If anything, the whole ordeal tired me out and now that the time came, I feel more blah then what I should. Hmm maybe it is because its a "blah" morning for me - but I expected something more cool when I hit Google website - anything - throw the comman person (who won't spend 85/share) a bone
Those are my feelings - I do not expect many people to agree with me - but then, that is why these are feelings (opinions).
Thanks for listening
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
NASDAQ is reporting that Google shares will begin trading sometime between 10 AM and 12 PM EDT. IMO look for an opening between 10 and 10:30 AM EDT.
mod me down, goggle fanboys, but I'm not buying into the hype. I haven't heard anything about how they're going to turn a big bundle of cash into an even bigger bundle for a return on my investment, other than piss it away one advertising experiments. It's basically Internet data-mining of public information anyway.
Give me a good solid energy or pharmaceutical company or something with a steep demand curve, naturally limited supply and customers who gotta have it (like sickly suv owners).
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
1) Offering up larger number of shares can have disastrous effects on the market cap of Google. If they issue too many and the prices get too low, their cap would be lowered undesirably.
2) 40 shares at a lower price, or 12 shares at a higher price, it still adds up to be the same. Only the Joe Shmuck investor thinks he got a better deal with his 40 shares vs. 12 shares. With that said, there are a LOT of Joe Shmucks out there, so it probably will have some effect.
eTrade SUCKS
God when will people stop using that term incorrectly. Google did not raise $23 Billion with this stock offering, therefore $23 Billion is the market valuation, NOT the market capitalization. Market capitalization is stock price times outstanding shares, in Googles case that is significantly less that $23 Billion (in fact $1.67 Billion according to the article).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The way that Google offered its shares, through a Dutch auction, guarantees that the price will go down. The way a traditional IPO is done is that the underwriters buy all the shares. Then they feel out the demand and sell the initial shares at a somewhat lower price to select investors. As soon as it starts trading, these lucky people flip the shares for an easy profit as the pent-up wider demand for the shares is met in the stock market. Using the auction process, they opened the bidding to the public at large and therefore anyone interested in really owning the stock would have already placed their bid. The demand is met by the IPO, not by the trading after the IPO in the aftermarket.
>I do not see how a share can be fairly priced ...
>why the SEC allows this practice?
I assume that this is the heart of the question.
The purpose of SEC is not to determine if a share of a company is fairly priced or not. Thats your job.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Bad advice. Having relatives/friends do the trades for you is not any more or less legal than doing it yourself.
It is not illegal to trade options on a company that you work for. However, you do have to follow insider trading guidelines. Generally if you hold shares for some amount of time (probably six months), or document your planned buying and selling six months in advance you are fine. The SEC is fine with you investing with the knowledge that your company is set to go up or down in value in general. What they don't like is that you found out about a merger which won't be announced for a week and going out and buying/selling the stock in the meantime.
Giving that knowledge to a friend is also illegal (Martha Stewart comes to mind). All telling a friend might accomplish is making it hard to trace.
However, if somebody seems very lucky on the stock market, the SEC does investigate and if you're caught you're toast. Especially if you aren't rich enough to get special treatment...