Friday, April 30, 2004

Google Files $2.7B IPO, Exposes Applied Semantics Financials

Google's long awaited IPO was filed yesterday, headed by an unusual "Owner's Manual" from the founders of the company and a condemnation of speculation on IPOs. The unusual filing also showed the numbers behind the search engine giant, which had earnings of $105M on an astounding $961M in 2003, and $389M in revenues for the most recent quarter--from a company that had only $220K in revenue in 1999. The filing also exposed the financials of Google's Santa Monica-based research arm, Applied Semantics (formerly Oingo.com), making public for the first time the acquisition price of Applied. The filing shows that Applied Semantics was acquired for 1.2M shares of Google common stock and $41.5M in cash, and had a net capital deficiency of over $2M at the time of acquisition in April of 2003 and only $6M in revenues in 2002. The IPO is being underwritten by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston.

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