Wall Street's biggest investment banks have begun jostling for the mandate to take Google public, the most eagerly anticipated flotation since the technology market crashed.
The internet search engine, which has become one of the best known online brands with astonishing speed, is expected to be valued at between US$15 billion and US$25 billion.
Google is understood to have held an initial open call for about 35 banks to pitch for the business. That was narrowed to a dozen and has been cut in half again. Although there have been some signs of life in the market for initial public offerings (IPOs), levels are still way off the boom years and banks will eye the business enviously.
The valuation compares with the current market capitalization of US$26 billion for Yahoo and US$22 billion for Amazon.com.
Google is expected to float early next year. Analysts said the timing was perfect as interest in the internet sector has driven share prices of key players like Amazon, eBay and Yahoo sharply higher in the past 12 months.
The company is just five years old but has become so ubiquitous among internet users that "to Google" someone or something is now commonly used as a verb. It handles around 150 million searches a day. A pair of computer science students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both 30, developed the business on the campus of the University of Stanford. Google makes money by selling sponsored links on its pages that appear alongside the regular search results as well as licensing its technology to the likes of America Online and Yahoo.
The Silicon Valley-based company is expected to produce around US$800 million in revenues this year and up to US$200 million in profits. The motivation for taking the company public appears to be providing a market for existing investors, including venture capital firms and the more than 1,000 staff who hold shares.
Analysts said the IPO would not signal a second internet boom in which companies with little more than a business plan could raise millions of dollars on the markets.
"This is not going to be a return to selling dog food online," said Ben Tompkins, managing director of investment bank Broadview International. "But there are a whole host of internet-based businesses which have set themselves up with really good revenue growth and good margins."
According to the Financial Times, the company is considering holding an online auction of shares. The method could help to avoid the scandals that have since arisen over the IPOs of the internet hot stocks during the late 1990s.
It has emerged that banks routinely either took kickbacks from clients for share allocations or encouraged them to buy in the after market to keep the price high and allow sellers quick profits.
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