Google shares surge again – restructuring takes month’s price gain to 23%

Google shareholders – including the Biznews Global Share portfolio – are enjoying the best of times with the share price jumping 6% in after-hours trading after last night’s announcement the company is to restructure. Coming on top of quarterly financial results which Mr Market loved, the shares have now gained a sparkling 23% since early July, adding $100bn to its market cap. Google is now comfortably ahead of Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft and Exxon Mobil, the other three contenders for the title of the world’s second most valuable listed company. But even with its market cap approaching $450bn, Google is still $200bn behind Apple Inc. – Alec Hogg    

Google shares jump

By Brian Womack

(Bloomberg) — Google Inc. is adopting a new structure that makes it more of a holding company, giving the main Web businesses more independence while providing more transparency into executives’ ambitious investments and spending on research.

Alphabet Inc. will be the name of what will effectively be a new holding company. Google Inc. will be part of that and include YouTube, Android mobile software and other Web-based products. Alphabet will also include Calico, Google Ventures, Google Capital, Google X and other subsidiaries, the Web company said in a blog post Monday.

The new structure will give greater clarity into how Google invests in various ventures, including driverless cars, high- speed Internet service and health-related technologies. That helped to boost shares by as much as 5.8 percent in extended trading.

“There’s been a lot of speculation about how much money they put into these other ventures,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial. “That will come to an end. This also gives them the structure to add in another business line if they were to acquire something. The mechanism is in place.”

Larry Page, co-founder and current chief executive officer, will hold that title at Alphabet, while co-founder Sergey Brin will be president. Ruth Porat will remain chief financial officer of the holding company. Sundar Pichai, Page’s deputy, will be promoted to become CEO of Google Inc., which generates the bulk of the company’s $60 billion in annual revenue. The goal isn’t to make Alphabet a consumer brand, Page said.

“We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes,” Page wrote in the post. “Our company is operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable.”

New Structure

Shares of Google rose to $701.74 in extended trading. The stock is up 25 percent this year, with much of the gains coming after the company reported quarterly results last month.

The new structure will be introduced in phases in the coming months. Alphabet will report its results under this new structure starting with the fourth-quarter earnings report, which is usually released in January. With this move, investors will get more details on how the businesses are operating, a longstanding request from Wall Street.

Shareholders won’t see huge changes to their stock holdings. Alphabet will replace Google as the publicly traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with the same rights. The two classes of shares will continue to trade on Nasdaq.

Word Play

The move, which gives Wall Street more insight into Google’s operations, comes months after Porat joined Google in May after a five-year stint as Morgan Stanley’s CFO. She has said Google can maintain growth even as it manages the pace of expenses, a key concern for investors in recent years.

In a regulatory filing, the company said upon completion of the Alphabet structure, Omid Kordestani will transition from his role as chief business officer to become an adviser to Alphabet and Google.

“We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity’s most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search!” Page said. “We also like that it means alpha- bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for!”

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