Friday, March 10, 2006
Google faces Wall Street revolt after blunders hit share price
An analyst for RBC Capital Markets yesterday was the first to call for Google to step into line with the majority of US listed companies and begin publishing earnings guidance. “We believe it is time for Google to issue guidance, which would reduce volatility in the shares,” Jordan Rohan wrote.
“Issuing guidance is not ‘evil’, we believe,” he added, referring to the company’s “Don’t be evil” motto.
Google decided before listing on Nasdaq that it would not provide earnings guidance to Wall Street, and that investors would simply have to trust the company’s strategy.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google’s founders and biggest shareholders, made plain in their listing prospectus that the company would reject many of the orthodox methods of doing business with Wall Street and instead adopt a mantra to encourage its employees to do good and not “evil”.
Other Wall Street analysts last night were also preparing reports that agreed with RBC, The Times has learnt. “The time has come for Google to step into line,” one analyst said. “It is in the interest of all shareholders, including the company’s employees and officers, that the share price achieves some stability.”
Confidence in Google’s once- unstoppable business model has slipped this year since the company missed the earnings target set by Wall Street for the fourth quarter. Doubt about Google’s future performance was compounded last week when George Reyes, chief financial officer, told investors at a conference that he expected revenue growth to slow markedly in future and that the company’s method of generating revenue by selling online advertising was running out of steam.
On both occasions, billions of dollars were wiped off the market value of Google, of which Eric Schmidt is chief executive. However, last night’s call for profit guidance comes after an admission by Google that its finance department mistakenly revealed secret internal revenue targets in a presentation for analysts — an event that cut hundreds of millions of dollars more from its value.
In a filing on Tuesday night with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Google said that the figures revealed in the report were about a year old and should be treated as unreliable. Nevertheless, the market seized on the gaffe as another excuse to sell Google shares, which last night closed down by 3 per cent at $353.88.
The mistakenly published report suggested that Google would have revenue of $9.5 billion (£5.5 billion) this year.
Since the report was written, Mr Rohan said, the company has increased revenue by about $450 million in a deal with AOL, meaning that revenue for this year should be about $10 billion.
source:http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8209-2076799,00.html
