Google’s Stock to Join Tech Giants on Nasdaq
What’s good enough for Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Intel Corp. will do for Google Inc. as well.
The popular Internet search engine said Monday that it planned to list its hotly anticipated initial public stock offering on the Nasdaq Stock Market, joining the ranks of other leading technology heavyweights.
The decision is a victory for Nasdaq over its archrival, the New York Stock Exchange, which had wooed Google to list its shares on the Big Board, home to such long-established tech giants as IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google made the announcement in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company didn’t indicate why it chose Nasdaq.
Many analysts had expected Nasdaq to win the contest. Over the last 20 years the electronic marketplace has become best known as the trading venue of up-and-coming tech firms. As the home of most Internet-related stocks in the late 1990s, Nasdaq also became the symbol of the dot-com bubble of that era -- and its subsequent collapse.
On Nasdaq, stocks are traded through a nationwide network of brokerages linked by computers; there is no central trading floor. On the NYSE, by contrast, all trades in listed stocks are either handled or overseen by a designated trader on the floor of the exchange in lower Manhattan.
Nasdaq typically has garnered most new stock offerings, partly because many young companies don’t meet the NYSE’s listing standards. Nasdaq said it had listed 77 IPOs this year. The NYSE has listed 31.
Both markets courted Google because of its size. The company earned $106 million last year on revenue of nearly $962 million.
Google has said it plans to raise as much as $2.7 billion in its IPO, expected in the next few months. The stock will be sold through an auction process that Google hopes will give investors an equal shot at the shares.
Google didn’t say what it would use as a four-letter Nasdaq ticker symbol.
If Google raises the full amount it is seeking, it would rank as Nasdaq’s second-biggest IPO ever, after the $3.7-billion deal by cable TV firm Charter Communications Inc. in 1999, according to research firm Thomson Financial.
Nasdaq will earn more than bragging rights with Google: Companies pay fees to have their shares listed on a stock market.
A spokeswoman for Nasdaq in New York declined to comment, saying the market doesn’t discuss pending IPOs.
The NYSE, in a statement, called Google “an outstanding company with a great management team,” and said “we wish the company well with its initial public offering.”
In other IPO news Monday, pizza delivery giant Domino’s Pizza Inc. said it priced its IPO at $14 a share, which fell short of the $15-to-$17 range the company had hoped for.
Domino’s, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., sold 9.4 million shares, raising $132 million. Certain shareholders, including founder Thomas Monaghan, sold 14.7 million shares.
The stock will begin trading on the NYSE today under the symbol DPZ.
