On August 18, Google lowered the price range of its stock offering to between $85 and $95, and also reduced the number of shares to be issued from 25.7 million to 19.6 million.
Initially, Google's IPO plan was to set the issue price at US$108-135 and issue 25.7 million shares.
However, after lowering the stock issue price, the issuance of public shares was also reduced - Google's original shareholders (shareholders before the IPO) will sell 5.5 million shares, more than half less than the originally planned 11.6 million shares, and will sell 14.1 million new shares, the same as the original plan.
In fact, Google's listing this time also became the first company to be listed on Nasdaq with a dual-class stock structure.
Everyone is very familiar with the dual-class stock structure. Many subsequent technology companies that went public used this equity structure.
However, before Google, no company had been listed on the American stock market in this way.
Before Google, the general practice in the American stock market was equal pay and equal rights for equal shares - each share had one vote.
However, Google adopts a two-type model, A and B. Type A shares are sold to the public, and Type B shares are held by "insiders". The voting rights of Type B shares are 10 times that of Type A shares.
This structure allows Google's founders, who own nearly 33% of the Class B shares, to firmly control the company's destiny.
In an interview, founder Larry admitted:
"The influence of new investors on the company's strategic decisions will be much smaller than they have in other listed companies."
The subtext of this sentence is - buy my stocks and don't worry about anything else.
"Giving super-voting power to a small group of investors
is fundamentally unfair…"
Ann Yager, an executive at the American Council of Institutional Investors, publicly told the media:
"That is almost un-American!"
Ultimately, Google's series of performance and actions during the IPO process angered institutional investors.
Even most of the media sided with criticizing Google.
A series of articles with eye-catching titles such as "Think Twice Before Buying Google Stock", "Google IPO? No Thanks", "Google IPO: Not Feeling Lucky", and "Google Stock: Investors Need to Be Careful" were published in various newspapers and magazines in the United States and spread across the country.
Ultimately, in order to boost people's confidence in Google's stock listing, at the suggestion of Moritz, CEO of Sequoia Capital, Google lowered the IPO pricing range to $85-95 per share, which can be seen as a certain degree of compromise with Wall Street capital forces.
That way, people might see a big jump in the stock price on the first day of trading, and investors would be happy with Google.
At the same time, Moritz also said that Sequoia Capital will continue to hold the Google shares they originally planned to sell, which also boosted people's confidence - the part of Google's reduced number of shares issued in the end is the part of the shares that Sequoia Capital was originally going to sell.
The subscription form of Google's stock issuance is also very special. It uses the Dutch auction method, that is, the price is auctioned from high to low.
The general approach is that institutions participating in stock subscriptions first open a special subscription account with their underwriters.
When the auction opens, all institutions will submit secret bids using their own accounts - including the price they want to buy the stock and the number of shares they want to buy.
This bid range is naturally the stock offering price range of US$85-95 set by Google.
Finally, statistics will be made, and the highest bid will be traded first; the remaining stocks will be traded with the second highest bid...
This continues until all the shares issued have been subscribed.
In the original time and space, this Dutch auction of Google stock was not a success.
Because although they finally completed the stock subscription, all transactions were sold at the lowest price of $85.
However, what is different this time is that Rich23 Capital subscribed for 10 million of the total 19.6 million Google public shares issued at a price of US$85.5 and successfully completed the subscription.
Therefore, although the issue price of Google stock remained at US$85, Rich23 Capital relied on this bidding strategy to buy 10 million Class A common shares of Google for a total of US$855 million.
In this way, together with the 20 million shares of Google previously held by DS Capital, Baron owns a total of 30 million shares, accounting for 11% of Google's total share capital at that time!
On August 19, Google stock officially went public.
After the call auction was completed, Google's stock price immediately opened $15 higher at $100.01 after it was listed.
Within a few minutes of opening, the stock price fell to $97.48, but soon began to rebound and has remained above $100...
It finally closed at $100.3, $15.3 higher than the issue price of $85, an increase of 18.04%.
At this price, Google's market value is as high as US$27.253 billion, exceeding General Motors.
The value of DS Holdings' 20 million shares of Google also exceeds $2 billion.
According to the historical trend of Baron's previous life, from now until September, Google's stock price will fluctuate above $100, but in November, it will begin to approach $200, doubling directly.
Of course, whether it is DS Holdings or Rich23 Capital, their investment in Google will not be a short-term investment, but a long-term holding.
The advantage of this is that you can not only hold Google stock and enjoy the dividends of its long-term growth, but also obtain funds by mortgaging these stocks when you need to use funds - because of its long-term excellent growth potential, you can even continue to increase the loan amount.
…
"Baby, you look so beautiful today."
Barron, who was sitting at the dining table, saw Bonnie, who was wearing a professional suit and high heels, walking downstairs and praising his girlfriend.
"Just today?"
"Oh, I'm so charming every day, but today I'm particularly radiant. I think it's because of what I did last night..."
Hearing Barron's words, Bonnie gave him a coquettish look.
After dinner, Bonnie was the first to leave the villa and go to work.
Barron gave Alia a gesture and went into his study.
"Your Highness the Duke..."
"Alia, do you have something to say to me?"
"I..."
Seeing Alia's hesitant expression, Barron sat down on the sofa and patted his side, motioning for her to sit down.
After the girl sat down beside him, Barron looked at her delicate profile and said lightly:
"Are you worried about Mikhail?"
Alia glanced at Barron and asked softly:
"Your Highness, will you really cooperate with him to deal with Lafayette?"
"This matter?"
Barron reached out and touched Aaliyah's long brown hair, pulling her closer to him, and said:
"You are wondering why I didn't agree to deal with Lafayette before, but agreed to help Mikhail now...right?"
Seeing the girl nodded slightly, Barron chuckled:
"Everything needs the right time. Just because it was inconvenient to do it then doesn't mean it can't be done now. Besides, isn't it also your idea to make Lafayette disappear forever? Perhaps you should understand that the reason I agreed to Mikhail this time was not entirely because of his conditions, but also largely because of you..."