Google Inc's highly anticipated IPO took a major step toward reaching the stock market late on Friday when the online search engine leader opened the Web site where prospective investors must register to bid for the company's shares.
The site (www.ipo.google.com) is meant to be the first stop for anyone interested in getting a piece of an initial public offering (IPO) expected to rank among the largest in the stock market's history.
Last week, Google estimated that its stock would sell for between US$108 and US$135 per share -- a price that would value the six-year-old company at US$29 billion to US$36 billion.
But Google's target price isn't set in stone. The company wants to determine the final IPO price through an auction open to everyone who takes the necessary steps to participate. The egalitarian nature of the IPO is extremely unusual -- a factor that might heighten the already high for the 24.6 million shares that are being auctioned.
Most IPOs are exclusive events aimed at elite investors and the friends and family of the insiders at the company selling the stock.
After Google's auction is completed, the shares will begin trading on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the ticker symbol "GOOG."
Google's Web site didn't disclose a timetable for completing the auction. Investment bankers have indicated they expect the auction to be wrapped up within two weeks.
The intense interest in Google's IPO reflects the vast popularity of the company's search engine, as well as the meteoric success of the business. Through the first half of this year, Google earned US$143 million on revenue of US$1.35 billion, more than doubling its earnings and sales of a year ago.
Before doing anything else, prospective investors must register at the Web site that opened on Friday.
After a prospective investor clicks through a series of consent forms, the site gathers a name, address, phone number, an e-mail address and a Social Security number. Once the information is submitted, the site promised to send e-mail a link to a site that provide the ID number. The e-mailed link must be clicked upon within 24 hours for the ID number to be valid.
The ID number is required to place a bid for Google's IPO shares through one of the 28 investment banks participating in the deal.
A list of the participating banks is available at the site, along with all of Google's IPO documents.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
RSS