Google IPO im April! - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[Colonel_Kurtz]

@Startrader

Google strebt Börsengang im April an

Von Reinhard Hönighaus, Frankfurt und Patrick Goltzsch, Hamburg

Google will offenbar schon im April an die Börse. Statt der ursprünglich geplanten Versteigerung ihrer Aktien über das Internet bereitet die Suchmaschine allerdings einen eher traditionellen Börsengang vor.

Morgan Stanley und Goldman Sachs haben ein Mandat bekommen, berichtet die Nachrichtenagentur Bloomberg unter Berufung auf Bankenkreise. Die Investmenthäuser sollen vermutlich ein Fünftel der Anteile für bis zu vier Mrd. $ platzieren - das wäre der größte Börsengang (IPO) seit Ende des Internetbooms. Google und die beteiligten Banken lehnten am Dienstag eine Stellungnahme ab.

"Der Google-Börsengang wird für Privatanleger sicher attraktiv. Es ist einer der überzeugendsten Internet-Werte überhaupt", sagte Achim Schäcker, Frankfurter IPO-Chef bei Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.

Zu den Konsortialbanken zählt nach Medienberichten auch das Investmenthaus WR Hambrecht & Co, das auf Aktien-Platzierungen über das Internet spezialisiert ist. "Möglicherweise nutzt Google die Auktion nur als PR-Maßnahme", meint Scott Kessler, Analyst bei Standard & Poor`s Equity Research. Er erwartet, dass Google beim Börsengang nur eine geringe Zahl der Anteile über eine Auktion ausgeben wird.

Yahoo verzichtet auf Google

Bei einem traditionellen Börsengang suchen die Investmentbanken interessierte Anleger und legen fest, zu welchem Preis die Anteile an wen verkauft werden. Dafür streichen sie Gebühren von vier bis sieben Prozent des Emissionswertes ein. Bei der Online-Auktion dagegen übermitteln private und institutionelle Anleger über das Internet, wie viele Aktien sie zu welchem Preis zeichnen wollen. Hambrecht errechnet dann den höchstmöglichen Kurs, zu dem alle Aktien platziert werden können.

Googles bevorstehender Börsengang könnte auch Yahoo bewegen, die Zusammenarbeit mit dem künftigen Konkurrenten einzustellen. Die Benutzer von Yahoo erhalten seit Oktober 2002 Antworten auf ihre Suchanfragen von Google. Werbefirmen seien informiert worden, dass noch im ersten Quartal Yahoos eigene Suchtechnik zum Zuge kommen soll, berichtete das Wall Street Journal.


Quelle: Financial Times Deutschland

[Groupier]

Aus meiner täglichen E-Spam-Ladung ich lass es daher unkommentiert.



Short-term `wow,` Long-term `let`s see`--
Google May Raise $4 Billion In IPO Led By Goldman & Morgan Stanley

By Steve Harmon
_______________



It was 1995 and Netscape was the stock du jour, the IPO love child
screaming its way onto Wall Street and launching the web era. The day
Netscape filed to go public in Fall, 1995 I stayed up all night writing
a research report -- I knew a new era had dawned, of point and click
information flow. And with an IPO I suspected Netscape would make
people sit up and notice.
Now we`re in Google days.

Netscape`s platform gave birth to Yahoo, eBay, Amazon.com, to name a
few. And while the great mother of all web IPOs may be a backwater at
AOL these days, it also gave rise to what will likely be the equivalent
of Rocky II: Google`s IPO.

Or we could call it Netscape II.

But that wouldn`t be fair either to Netscape or Google. That`s because
Google reportedly is profitable thanks to its insanely popular AdWord
program. And Google is not (yet) a platform as Netscape was. Netscape`s
key mistake was thinking of itself as software while Yahoo, eBay and
others thought of themselves as "services."

For flashback sake some of you may recall that Yahoo got its humble
start as a search link on Netscape for which it paid $5 million a year.
That was when Netscape had 99% browser market share and Microsoft was
still focused on CD-ROMS like a Radio Shack employee toying with radio
crystals while digital circuits were being born. (Of course, Microsoft
won once it discovered the web as mainstream phenomenon circa 1996).

I don`t think Google will make the same mistakes Netscape did largely
because Netscape built the platform, the underlying software for the
web. We can credit many others also but Netscape made the web a
business platform. Even the ancient Greeks built on top of other cities
-- but somebody had to lay the first stone.

Google`s role is not building the platform but leveraging it. My hat is
off to them for reinventing search long after the experts thought search
engines were mature, that Yahoo won. Remember that half a dozen search
engines all went public in the mid 1990s and venture capitalists thought
the sector was tapped out.

Guess not.

Months ago I speculated on what Google could be valued at and what its
run rate revenue and earnings could be. I think Google could see a
Yahoo-like value pretty quickly (like on day one of being publicly
traded) if my estimate Google`s income looks anything like Yahoo`s. I
believe Google may even be more profitable than Yahoo since it exploits
web content on site and in the Google Syndication (the AdSense ad
program that inserts text ads on content sites based on keywords).

I estimate Google could command a valuation of about $30 billion once
public--that`s right there with Yahoo (YHOO). Flashback: I wrote about
Yahoo`s IPO in April, 1996 and its value then was $125 million. How
times have changed. My estimate of Google`s valuation assumes its
revenue is in the $1 billion range and earnings around $250 million. It
also factors in the global brand awareness and growth.

However, this is not 1996 and the web isn`t sleepy hollow with only the
geeks and seers like me using it. This time around the web is a
teenager, has zits, and makes lots of demands to use the car. It`s a
raging hormone beast.

Which is to say that Google is now going to go in front of the class in
its underwear (which is another way of saying `go public`) in the era of
the more mature web. Webiquity is my term for it. Webiquity helped
Google become a household name and now Google delivers 250 million
searches a day.

But it`s not wise to go gaga over Google. 1999-2000 taught us that gaga
can lead to gasping for breath.

Fact is I think mostly the venture investors and others who bought into
Google long before the IPO will make the real money here. The average
investor will likely pay a massive premium and may not see the kind of
huge return many may hope for.

Google holds risks for average investors such as a probably huge demand
for shares that could boost the price to crazy levels once it starts
trading. That could mean open orders getting filled at insane prices.
It could mean to a lot of disappointed "regular" people -- ironically
Google`s customers -- getting burned at the IPO. Same old Wall Street
BS.

Look, Google isn`t perfect, it`s just the best search available. It`s
not the best search possible. What I mean is that Google only searches
3 billion web pages. To us ants that`s a lot. But to the info-magma
universe of content that`s flea poop.

And 3 billion pages of what? Drop a needle in a haystack and wouldn`t
you rather find the needle without having to sift through 3 billion
pieces of hay? What search engines don`t tell you is that they don`t
know the half of it, of anything. They only know what they can spider,
and that`s not the deep waters.

Most of the real web is in what uber-geeks call "the dark web." It
isn`t a reference to Darth Vader but refers to content available for a
fee or offline or in intranets. The public web is valuable (Google
thanks everyone all the way to the bank) but the dark web is where the
real gems are for the most part. Any paid content is the dark web. By
its nature it isn`t crawlable by spiders and robots from search engines.
Dark web requires passwords.

Let there be light. The clincher, though, is if Google raises $4 billion
by selling a third of its company to the public, it could have enough
cash to afford to press on to other goals, to make mistakes, or keep
making them, and acquire pieces to fill out its offerings. But remember
that no matter how many pages any search engine boasts that that`s a
fraction of a fraction -- and who knows if the pages are the most
relevant? Compared to what, other web pages? By its very nature search
cannot keep up with content and the more content produced in many
platforms and forms the more search is losing ground. Google is the
winner now simply because the other search are so bad and there isn`t an
alternative. No choice.

I love using Google, no question. But to me it`s like going to a
convenience store and asking for a cola and getting root beer, because
that`s what they have found: soda, brown liquid, sugary. Must be what
you want.

In the big picture investors should remember Alta Vista. Alta Vista was
the orphaned search service from Digital who was a techie`s dream: fast
and comprehensive. Alta Vista ruled search from 1995-1998. No service
was better in the eyes of many based on the technology.

And here we are today. Netscape`s a forgotten hero of another war,
withering under AOL. Alta Vista (irony) was acquired by Overture which
itself was acquired by Yahoo. But Yahoo has its own search agenda now
that Google has won the latest battle in search. Lycos is part of
TerraLycos, which doesn`t seem to be making major headway into search
these days.

A glut of smaller search services are no names, despite being public.
Ask.com is one. It runs a search service I`ve found useful but ask a
dozen teenagers to spell it or if they`ve heard of it and see how many
actually know of it: Teoma. Te who?

Yes, I believe Google could rocket. But the real war is not one battle,
it`s a war. It`s more than one champagne toast while the bankers revel
in their 4% to 7% cut of the IPO. The real war is the long term where
your kid`s kid`s kids use the service. Look at how many generations
have watched NBC, CBS or ABC. These networks are 75 years old.

In 2079 lets see if there`s a Google to be found -- and most important
-- if people actually use Google search to find it. Real value isn`t a
billion dollar IPO, it`s in creating sustainable businesses that weather
time.


<<this report may be passed along, forward to those interested by email,
as long as it`s 100% intact>>