George Mannes

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Google IPO Moves Forward

George Mannes

The Google IPO is about to take another step forward.

The Internet search engine said Monday that it asked regulators to declare its registration statement effective at the close of trading tomorrow. The comment indicates the company's initial public offering could be priced as soon as Tuesday night. That could unleash Google shares on the Nasdaq market by Wednesday.

Google's comments came in a statement emailed to prospective bidders on its $3 billion initial public offering. The email suggests that pricing of the offering could follow soon after the Securities and Exchange Commission declares the deal effective.

"Bids may be accepted by the underwriters in as little as ONE HOUR after the notice of effectiveness of the registration statement is sent to you," the company said.

The news comes as Wall Street has been eagerly anticipating the company's arrival. Google filed for its IPO in late April, then began accepting bids last week. The company has said it expected pricing to take place this week.

Google's statement could serve to reduce Wall Street's anxiety about the offering. Google is preparing to join the public market at a time when investors have grown cautious about the prospects for pricey tech stocks. Meanwhile, the IPO market has soured as well, hurt in part by a sharp fall in stocks over recent weeks amid growing worries about the persistently high price of oil.

Some observers felt the company set itself up for a difficult offering by estimating its shares would fetch $108 to $135 apiece when its auction takes place. But Monday's email, by suggesting that the company is committed to completing the offering sooner rather than later, could be a bullish sign in what has become a very bearish market for tech stocks.

To participate in Google's Dutch auction of its shares, investors will need a bidder ID, obtained in the registration process that closed last Thursday. They'll also need an account at one of the brokerages that is underwriting the IPO, and will have to meet that firm's particular qualifications for bidding on Google shares.

By permitting investors to submit bids for as few as five shares in its offering, Google has lowered a usual investment hurdle; on the other hand, the company has raised that hurdle with a share count that puts the expected per-share price more than five times the usual figure for an IPO.

For its part, Google has shown remarkable growth in recent years based on the success of its pay-per-click search-engine advertising business. But investors have increasingly grumbled over the last month about Google's stinginess in public discussions of its business prospects, a capital structure giving its co-founders unassailable voting control, and the richness of the proposed price range for the company's stock.

Whether this commentary will lead to an offering price below the proposed $108 to $135 price range, or whether it is simply trash talk that will be obliterated by big-spending bidders, remains to be seen. Injecting uncertainty into the whole affair is the expected bigger-than-usual participation, as far as IPOs are concerned, of retail investors in Google's auction.