It’s official. The IPO of the millenium is done. The strange thing is that no one quite seems to agree on the results. At least one publication thinks that the IPO was a failure, yet in the same article, they mention that the company made around $1.67 billion in the auction. I don’t know about you, but most companies seem to reap far less than that when they go public. Many earn only amounts in the hundreds of millions. Still a lot by my measure, but they leave a whole lot more on the table.
Meanwhile, while Google didn’t hit the peak that the stock found on opening day, they pulled in a whole lot more than if they had gone through an investment bank and priced it at $15 each. A sale at that price would have instead found the company with only $300 million. I think they did pretty well. Did it revolutionize trading? Probably not. But they did figure out how they could get the rewards of the initial sale. I don’t see how anyone can see that as a failure.
Update: There are some people who agree that the process was a success. The only thing I question in this commentary is the final conclusion. I agree that the price of Google is probably unsustainable, but the current price (just shy of $110 at this writing) is what people will pay. Aside from a few morons who apparently bid the price up near $140 on opening day, that price has been remarkably stable. You can’t fault Google for trying to collect as much of that money that they can. I think that they did a remarkable job of it.