SEC prices Google shares at $85

[rawstory]

Reported first -- 30 minutes before wires at http://rawstory.com

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc.'s GOOG.O initial public offering of 19.6 million shares priced at $85 each, the low end of their projected range, a source familiar with the auction said on Wednesday, raising $1.67 billion and making it the fourth-largest U.S. IPO this year.
The pricing came after the Web's No. 1 search engine earlier in the day cut the price and size of the deal. It lowered the expected share price range to $85 to $95 from an earlier estimated pricing range of $108 to $135.

It also cut the number of shares being offered to about 19.6 million from 25.7 million.

Reuters lifted this from the Wall Street Journal, which is reporting it on their paid site.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/afp/20040819/pl_afp/us_vote_bush_dinar

[rawstory]

1. Google confirms: company cashes in with $1.67 billion

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6013054&src=rss/topNews§ion=news

[KamaAina]

2. Did the SEC actually set the price?!

I thought the SEC's involvement was limited to giving Google the go-ahead to proceed with the IPO, given the Playboy interview and such.

I mean, really, the Bush* SEC doing something as downright socialist as setting a price?! Boggles the mind...

[papau]

3. Dutch Auction - initial bids are listed - then the listing determines the

price based on how many shares they want to sell. Say 5 million shares have bids at 85 or above, but the owners would like to sell 6 million - but they do not get offers to buy a total of 6 million until they go down the list to say a price of 50 - so all those offerring 50 or above would get shares if they want to sell 6 million.

In effect the SEC lets them "Set the price" since it lets them change the number of shares that will be sold in the initial go round.

Google will sell a smaller number of shares tomorrow than they actually said was on offer so as to keep the selling price a bit higher (the cut off price where 5 million shares are bid above that priced will be higher than the cut off price where 6 million shares are bid above that priced )

The key is the Dutch Auction "fairness" rule - The price offered by the last person to receive shares then becomes the price everyone will pay - the so-called "clearing price", which Google expected to be between $108 and $135, valuing the firm at more than $36bn - is now $85.

[rawstory]

4. that's what the WSJ headline was

So, I guess they do. But I don't terribly like Google anyways, what with their censoring of anti-Bush ads (and apparent ignorance of anti-Kerry ads that run regardless). That and the fact that they yielded to the Church of Scientology after threat of a lawsuit and took out EVERY site from their SEARCH that was critical of the church. or so they say.