投资者疯狂抢购，Google新股价值达42亿美元

Google公司增发的股票昨晚价值已达41.8亿美元，是一年前初始发行的3倍，这次发行了1420万股，目前每股价格为295美元，发行过程中，Google在不到一个月时间的时间之内就卖掉了1415.9万股。

与初始发行不一样的是，此次发行显得很喧嚣。当宣布发行之时，公司便采用公开拍卖的方式，这让很多潜在投资者望而却步。这次发行并没有像原来的那些传统发行时的大范围的电话预定，其招股说明书也没有虚张声势，而只有些典型的通告条款。资本市场的分析家认为，这是一种新的方式，改变了信息检索的规则，但是却很难改变华尔街的规则。

Google的股票从初始发行之后，已经出现了疯涨，很大程度上在于公司比其它公司成长得更快，获利能力比其它公司更强，远远超过投资者的预期。295美元的发行价格，比公司股票在星期三的收盘价铬303美元略微低点。

转自：The New York Times, September 15,2005

Investors Rush to Buy Another $4.2 Billion in Google Stock

By SAUL HANSELL

Published: September 15, 2005

Google raised $4.18 billion in a secondary offering last night, as investors tried to add to their holdings of a stock that has more than tripled since the company's initial offering a year ago.

Google's follow-on offering, in which it sold 14.2 million shares at $295 each, was completed less than one month after Google filed to sell 14.159 million shares (a number that matches the digits of the mathematical term pi with the initial 3 removed).

Google held an abbreviated roadshow, meeting with investors in a few cities, culminating with a lunch at the St. Regis Hotel in New York yesterday.

The secondary offering appeared to be as smooth as Google's initial offering was tumultuous. When it went public, the company chose an unusual computerized auction process that confused many potential investors.

Its prospectus was filled with unusual phrases, like the company's credo "don't be evil."

Its roadshow had so little information that some investors were offended. Ultimately, the offering was completed at $85 a share, raising $2 billion, much less than the company had initially hoped for.

The secondary offering, by contrast, was a traditional one in which sales representatives from brokerage firms took orders from investors largely by telephone. And its prospectus had less bravado and only the typical warnings and disclosures.

"It's refreshing," said Jordan Rohan, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, talking about Google's newfound conventional approach to raising capital. "They have changed the rules for information retrieval, but it's hard to change the rules on Wall Street."

Google's shares have skyrocketed since its initial offering, largely because the company has grown faster and become much more profitable than investors had expected.

The follow-on offering price of $295 was slightly less than the $303 that Google's shares closed at Wednesday.

Such a discount is traditional when a company is trying to sell a large block of stock at one time. Indeed, this was the largest follow-on stock offering in at least a decade.

Google's shares had risen sharply from $280 on the day the offering was announced to $311.68 Tuesday, leading some to speculate that Google's meetings with investors, which were closed to the public, offered new optimistic hints of Google's prospects.

William Harnish, the chief executive of Peconic Partners, a New York hedge fund that owns Google shares, said he attended Google's presentation at the St. Regis and saw nothing new. "It was typical Google name, rank and serial number," Mr. Harnish said. "In terms of information that is new or different, there was none."

He said that about 300 people attended the meeting, hardly filling the 20th-floor ballroom. Google did agree to have one-on-one meetings with some large investors, something it has refused to do over the last year.

Despite the lack of new information, Mr. Harnish said he hoped to buy shares in the offering to add to Peconic's holdings.

"We think it is still early days of migrating advertising to the Web," he said.

He said that Google was largely coy about what it planned to do with the money it raised.

"The only thing they said is they have no plan for what to do with the cash at this time."

In the prospectus, the company said it would use the money for "general corporate purposes" and possibly acquisitions.

Google did show a slide that compared the $7 billion in cash it will have after the offering with the cash balances of its major rivals. Yahoo currently has about $4 billion in cash, and Microsoft has $49 billion.