Google keys in stock market flotation plans

Google today keyed in its intentions to float on the United States stock market – although its debut could still be months away.

The leading Internet search engine did not specify a price per share, but said in San Francisco it hoped to raise $2.7bn (€2.2bn) with its initial public offering (IPO).

Google’s plans have created the biggest high-tech buzz since the dot-com bubble burst four years ago.

As expected, it said the price of its IPO will be determined through an auction designed to give the general public a better chance to buy its stock before the shares begin trading, most likely in late summer or early autumn.

IPO shares in the US traditionally have been restricted to an elite group picked by the investment bankers handling the deal.

Google picked two long-established investment bankers – Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston – to manage its unconventional IPO approach.

Although Google’s stock won’t be sold for several more months, the filing represents a significant milestone in the five-year-old company’s evolution from a fun-loving start-up to a corporate adolescent that will be held more accountable for how it manages its money.

Documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission gave the public its first peek at the privately held company’s finances.

The company earned $105.6m (€88m), or 41 cents per share, on revenue of $962m (€803m) last year.

It got off to a fast start this year, with a first-quarter profit of $64m (€53m), or 24 cents per share – more than doubling its earnings of $25.8m (€21.5m), or 10 cents per share, at the same time last year.

By going public, Google will be under greater pressure to produce steady earnings growth – an expectation that some executives say leads to short-sighted management decisions.

But Google vowed to be different, staying true to the iconoclastic values that it has fostered since former Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company in 1998.

In one of its first rebellious steps, Google will refuse to project its earnings from quarter to quarter, according to an open letter that Page and Brin attached to the IPO filing.

“A management team distracted by a series of short-term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour,” they wrote.

Following in the footsteps of stock market sage Warren Buffet, Page and Brin intend to take turns writing annual shareholder letters to provide their view of the world.

The letter also emphasised that both Page, 31, and Brin, 30, intend to remain Google’s hands-on leaders, making all key decisions with chief executive Eric Schmidt, a former top executive at Sun Microsystems Inc and Novell Inc who joined the company in 2001.

“We run Google as a triumvirate,” Page wrote. “The structure is unconventional, but we have worked successfully in this way.”