It's not a hoax, and it's still in the news
Front page of CNBC this morning...
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CNBCTV/Articles/Dispatches/P90314.asp
CNBC Market Dispatches 7/26/2004 11:27:30 AM
Google sets a price; stocks fall
The online search engine releases some key details of its coming initial public offering. Will U2's new CD come out on iTunes first?
Google, whose pending IPO may be the only thing that can excite investors these days, said this morning that it'll sell 24.6 million class A shares in its offering at $108 to $135 each. The price per share values the offering at $2.66 billion to $3.33 billion, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
This marks the first time the online search engine has released these key details about its much-anticipated offering. Its Nasdaq symbol will be GOOG.
Google is going public in a break from Wall Street tradition. It'll hold an auction that allows everyday investors a chance to bid for its stock. The auction process also could mean more money for the company. Check out your options.
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In a traditional initial public offering investment banks set the price. For hot offerings, this often means that IPO shares rise sharply when they begin trading, but the company only gets money from the initial price. In theory, the auction will allow the price to climb before the shares begin trading, sending that money to the company and others who sell in the IPO. So instead of a price of say, $10 a share as the offering price, Google is talking about a price above $100.
The offering includes 10.5 million shares to be sold by "selling shareholders," or people such as company executives who already own stock. Google won't get money from those shares. CNBC's Cory Johnson says certain regulations mean the company must complete its offering this week or start the process over.
Charting the market
Stocks, meanwhile, are falling, despite an encouraging report about the housing market, a few promising earnings statements and one deal.
The National Association of Realtors said existing home sales rose 2.1% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.95 million units in June from an upwardly revised 6.81 million unit pace in May, Reuters reported. Analysts expected the figure to fall to a 6.67 million unit rate, the news service said.
BellSouth (BLS, news, msgs) earned $996 million, or 54 cents a share, in the second quarter, up from $951 million, or 51 cents a share, in the year-earlier period, The Wall Street Journal reported. Analysts were expecting 50 cents a share in the most-recent quarter, the Associated Press reported.
Hospital operator HCA (HCA, news, msgs) earned $352 million, or 72 cents a share, in the second quarter, up from $240 million, or 47 cents a share, a year earlier, Reuters reported. The results included a gain of $59 million, or 7 cents per diluted share, from a reduction in estimated professional liability insurance reserves, Reuters said. Excluding the item, the company's results were in line with company's July 14 forecast, the news service said.
And Mylan Laboratories (MYL, news, msgs) said it'll buy King Pharmaceuticals (KG, news, msgs) for $4 billion in stock.
It's an iPod world
Even in a week when it's not on a magazine cover, Apple's (APPL, news, msgs) iPod remains in the news.
RealNetworks (RNWK, news, msgs) is expected Tuesday to unveil a system that allows customers of its site to download music onto their iPods, The Wall Street Journal and CNET's News.com reported. Until now, people could download music onto their iPods only from Apple's (AAPL, news, msgs) iTunes store.
RealNetworks originally asked Apple for permission to devise a service that would work with the iPod, but Apple said no, the Journal reported. RealNetworks then went ahead on its own.
Meantime, U2 says it'll release its new CD on iTunes first if an apparently stolen copy turns up online, Briefing.com reported. "If it is on the Internet this week, we will release it immediately as a legal download on iTunes, and get hard copies into the shops by the end of the month," Bono told London's Daily Telegraph, Briefing said.
