Gone Googley

It’s official. The IPO of the millenium is done. The strange thing is that no one quite seems to agree on the results. At least one publication thinks that the IPO was a failure, yet in the same article, they mention that the company made around $1.67 billion in the auction. I don’t know about you, but most companies seem to reap far less than that when they go public. Many earn only amounts in the hundreds of millions. Still a lot by my measure, but they leave a whole lot more on the table.

Meanwhile, while Google didn’t hit the peak that the stock found on opening day, they pulled in a whole lot more than if they had gone through an investment bank and priced it at $15 each. A sale at that price would have instead found the company with only $300 million. I think they did pretty well. Did it revolutionize trading? Probably not. But they did figure out how they could get the rewards of the initial sale. I don’t see how anyone can see that as a failure.

Update: There are some people who agree that the process was a success. The only thing I question in this commentary is the final conclusion. I agree that the price of Google is probably unsustainable, but the current price (just shy of $110 at this writing) is what people will pay. Aside from a few morons who apparently bid the price up near $140 on opening day, that price has been remarkably stable. You can’t fault Google for trying to collect as much of that money that they can. I think that they did a remarkable job of it.


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