Chapter 304 Google’s IPO
After the wedding, Bonnie and the others returned to London on the Gulfstream G450, while Barron stayed in the United States temporarily.
At this time, Google has already started the IPO process.
According to their current prospectus, Google will sell 25.7 million shares to the public, of which the company’s original shareholders (pre-IPO shareholders) will sell 11.6 million shares; Google will issue 14.1 million new shares for Financing.
Google currently sets the stock issuance price within the range of $108 to $135.
If calculated based on the highest issuance price of US$135, Google's financing scale this time will be close to US$3.5 billion, and its market value will be as high as US$36.5 billion, exceeding General Motors' market value of US$23.7 billion.
In fact, this time Google's IPO process was very "anti-traditional"...
It can even be said that it broke the centuries-old rules of the game on Wall Street.
In the traditional IPO process, the investment banks responsible for issuance and underwriting are well-deserved protagonists because they have the most systematic professional knowledge and the most extensive connections.
The Morgan Consortium was the largest investment bank at this time. Among the top 100 large companies in the United States in the 20th century, 96 were clients of the Morgan Consortium, and two of the other four were deemed not qualified to serve by the old Morgan.
Therefore, century-old investment banks like this are of high standard, and ordinary companies have to visit investment banks one by one if they want to find them.
But not Google…
At the very beginning of its preparations for listing, it completely went against tradition and chose investment banks in a manner like "the emperor chooses his concubine."
Initially, Google summoned more than a dozen investment banks at once, requiring them to sign confidentiality agreements and fill out a detailed questionnaire.
In this questionnaire, Google, like an examiner, asked about the underwriting history of these investment banks, for example, how the stocks they underwrote performed, how they underwrote the stocks, and what their opinions were on the timing and pricing of Google's IPO. wait……
In this entire process, investment banks have been completely reduced to supporting roles, and even many arrogant Wall Street people think that such a questionnaire is simply humiliating.
But in the end they tolerated this behavior...
the reason is simple--
First, Google paid a high fee for this underwriting—a high financing service fee of US$100 million.
Second, and more importantly, no one wanted to miss out on a company like Google.
Therefore, although the investment bankers were full of complaints, they still filled out the questionnaire obediently, hoping to win the favor of Google.
In the end, Google selected a series of major investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, etc. for interviews.
Google's chief financial officer and general counsel grilled them carefully before selecting Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley as its lead underwriters.
When it came to the road show, Google was very different.
Usually when a company is listed, the company's executives and investment banks will spend a lot of time, usually two weeks, traveling from one city to another to promote the stock to institutional investors, which is very difficult. Answer investor inquiries carefully, conscientiously and diligently.
However, the founders of Google are very different. During road shows, they just kept telling jokes and often refused to answer investors' questions.
More importantly, in traditional issuance and underwriting, investment banks are generally responsible for inquiring and then pricing the IPO.
Google, on the other hand, is just the opposite. It firmly holds the pricing power in its own hands!
For example, in its listing application, Google claimed that it hoped to raise US$2,718,281,828...
Many people will think this number is funny when they hear it, but in fact it is the top ten irrational numbers e, and this "cute" technological momentum has been very obvious throughout Google's listing process.
In this regard, Google insisted on refusing to modify it. Although it was very complicated, I was willful and I wanted to raise so much money.
Then, in early July, Google revised the expected price range for its IPO stock issuance to US$108 to US$135.
This caused an uproar!
why?
Because this means that Google’s issue price is seven times the price of other benchmark companies on the market at this time!
Next, such a high price and such a strong attitude immediately aroused huge resentment on Wall Street and the mainstream media.
The most extreme one is Merrill Lynch, one of the pillars of the investment banking industry. They publicly announced their withdrawal from Google's IPO project and advised their clients to be cautious about the stock.
Other investment banks also began to smear Google at this time, and then warned their clients to stay away from Google because it was a big mess.
Later, the New York Times would join the fray, criticizing Google's listing plan as a return to the false prosperity of the 1990s, which contained too many Internet company bubbles, etc...
Rich23 Capital will definitely participate in Google’s IPO this time...
After all, Barron knows that although Google's current pricing of its own shares has been criticized by many media and investment banks, it is considered too outrageous and much higher than other "benchmark companies" - after all, this is only a company that was founded only six years ago. company's market value will exceed that of General Motors...
But even based on their current issuance price range of US$108 to US$135, compared with the future market value of Google, it can be said to be extremely cheap.
And he knew that in just three months after Google went public, their stock price once rose to $201.
What's more, in the original time and space, due to the raging public opinion against it, Google also moderately lowered the range of the issuance price.
…
Another thing worth mentioning is that until now, Barron has not seen the emergence of Facebook in the United States, especially Harvard University.
In the original time and space, Facebook was launched in February this year.
Therefore, as early as February, Barron had already sent people to pay attention to this matter, and even found Xiao Zha himself at Harvard University to monitor his every move.
Mainly in the past life, Facebook's development process was too impressive, especially after the movie "The Social Network" described it. I'm afraid most people have some understanding of this process.
And it is also the winner of the global SNS type social networking site.
So although the Woaw website currently occupies the top spot among this type of websites, competitors including MySpace continue to emerge and have a certain user scale, but they are still far from shaking Woaw's leading position...
But Barron still needs to pay attention to the situation of Zuckerberg and Facebook.
At present, I don’t know if it is because there is already Woaw Technology in this field, a “behemoth” with more than 20 million users worldwide, and there are already many similar websites including MySpace in the North American market. Zha gave up the idea of starting a business in this field...
Anyway, judging from the results of the investigation of Xiao Zha, he does not currently have a business and looks like he is just an ordinary college student.
As for Woaw Technology's biggest competitor in North America at this time, MySpace, which is invested by Ivanta's IC Capital, has nearly 3 million users as of early July and is expected to reach 5 million by the end of the year. …
This is still far behind Woaw Technology, which has more than 10 million users in the North American market.
But this is already the second largest social network in the North American market.
After receiving investment from IC Capital, MySpace conducted a series of publicity and marketing campaigns.
This includes using the marketing promotion method that its parent company eUniverse is best at - spam bombing...
I have to say that although this method is disgusting, it does work.
Just like the "rogue software" and similar plug-ins from companies like China 3721 at this time...
A considerable number of MySpace users are brought about by this.
Another part of MySpace users come from music lovers. Starting from the beginning of this year, musicians in MySpace are allowed to create their own profile pages and upload their mp3 songs to build a larger fan base.
This attracted many independent musicians, and some bands even allowed their songs to be downloaded, and the concept attracted their fanbases.
In terms of differentiation from Woaw, including allowing users to transform their homepages into more "fancy" and including interest groups for music, MySpace has gained personalized users.
However, Woaw's simple and convenient interface is relatively more popular with mainstream users.
