Google's Wednesday initial public offering, despite its failure to price as high or sell as many shares as the company had hoped, still made a host of existing stockholders instant millionaires and billionaires.
About a dozen insiders as well as friends, family and some folks just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time sold portions of their Google holdings for a total of more than $464 million.
The biggest individual winners are the top three executives, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric E. Schmidt. Co-founders Page and Brin each sold about $41 million of their Google stock in the IPO. Yet that was just a tiny fraction of their total Google holdings, which at yesterday's closing price were worth about $3.8 billion each. Schmidt, whom Brin and Page hired as their chief executive in 2001, sold $31 million of his stock but still holds shares worth more than $1.4 billion.
Among the early Google investors who hit the paper jackpot in the IPO were Andreas Bechtolsheim, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc., who invested $100,000 in 1998 before the company was even formally organized. His stake is worth $326 million. He sold about $31 million of his stock in the offering. Computer science professor David Cheriton, Page's and Brin's mentor at Stanford University, is worth $307 million. He sold about $29 million worth of his stock in the offering.
A pair of companies, chief competitor Yahoo Inc. and Dulles-based America Online Inc., are also big shareholders as a result of early business dealings with Google. Yahoo sold $137 million in the offering and kept stock worth $661 million. America Online sold $78.9 million worth of stock in the IPO and kept $653.1 million worth.
Among the smaller individual investors listed in the IPO prospectus is Roger Ebert, the Chicago film critic, who sold $171,615 of his Google stock in the deal and held on to shares worth $1.8 million.
These and other early investors in Google have already made money, having bought stock for under $10 a share. A large portion of the shares sold by existing shareholders in the IPO were originally bought for less than $1 a share in the form of convertible preferred stock or stock options.
There are initial restrictions on insider sales following Wednesday's offering, but all told, existing shareholders and employees will have permission to sell more than 260 million Google shares once all the restrictions lapse over the next six months.
The ultimate value realized for their holdings will depend on their decisions about when and how much stock to sell. Just as the stock shot up yesterday, it could go down in the future. Flooding the market with shares would drive down the price of the stock and by extension the value of the fortunes of stockholders such as Brin and Page or Google employees.
Decisions about sales are particularly significant for the pair of Silicon Valley venture firms that were the primary financial backers of Google in the few years following its 1998 founding. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital own 21 million and 23.9 million shares, respectively, stakes now valued on paper at more than $2 billion each.
When Google first filed for the IPO, both firms planned to sell about 10 percent of their stakes. But when investors balked at the initial pricing range, both decided not to sell any shares now. The test will be how judiciously they can sell their stakes in the coming months and years to both maximize their profit and not depress Google's stock price unduly.
"Venture capital firms by definition are private equity firms, so they don't hold on to public company stocks," said Don Rainey, a partner in North Carolina's Intersouth Partners, a technology venture fund.
But it can take time to successfully cash in. One of the most successful single venture investments of recent years was Carlyle Group's December 2001 public offering of United Defense Industries Inc. Carlyle netted more than $1 billion for its investors in that deal. Carlyle sold its last block of United Defense stock this spring.
In venture capital terms, Google's IPO is a "liquidity event," and to a venture investor there is nothing sweeter. "Any big liquidity event is usually a very satisfying event that comes after a long period of hard work," Rainey said. "Most [venture investors] that have been through it think they earned it."
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Alyce gasped in horror as she looked in the mirror. Where she expected to see a simple sore in her mouth, she saw a white-crusted lesion, surrounded by black scabs.
For days she had been feeling pain in the roof of her mouth, but attributed it to a mouth sore and just avoided putting pressure in that area. As the pain worsened, she started chewing only on the other side of the mouth. But when Alyce saw what it looked like, she realized this was no common mouth sore.
With a sickening feeling, Alyce called her family physician. He examined the lesion, believed it to be cancerous and referred her to a surgeon.
After doing a biopsy and reviewing the pathology results, the surgeon reported to Alyce, "The tumor in your mouth is cancerous, and we'll have to remove it,” This meant removing half of the roof of her mouth. Alyce would need reconstructive surgery, and would have a speech impediment the rest of her life. Yet she knew she had no choice, so she consented, and the doctor scheduled surgery for two weeks later.
At home, Alyce decided to tune into a program called Success-N-Life that she had watched off and on in the past. The powerful testimonies of healing "built up my faith,” she says. “I said to myself,
'If God can do that for those people, He can do it for me'" (Acts 10:34).
Alyce called the 24-Hour Miracle Prayer Center and prayed in agreement for her healing (Mt. 18:19). When she received an anointed prayer cloth from Robert Tilton Ministries, she touched the lesion in her mouth with it, praying and releasing her faith for a miracle from God.
The next day, Alyce woke up and realized that her mouth was not sore. When her tongue couldn't find the lesion, she jumped out of bed and ran to the mirror. There she discovered that the roof of her mouth was a beautiful shade of pink...the lesion had disappeared.
Alyce went back to the surgeon a week later. Amazed to find no tumor, the doctor sent Alyce to another cancer specialist for verification. After he examined Alyce, he commented, "I don't know why she [the doctor] is sending you to me. Your mouth is healed." All tests came back with the same verdict: no cancer.
With surgery cancelled. Alyce rejoices, "I believe in miracles. I know they happen because I had one, and I tell everybody that will listen.”
Only in his mid-thirties. Bill pleaded with God to let him die. During the past five years, his doctors had hospitalized him 45 times because of his severe heart problems.
But poor health wasn't his only concern; he had a wife and son to support, yet his severe physical problems made it hard to continue working.
A trip to Word of Faith Family Church brought a glimmer of hope to this problem-plagued family. "I had always just accepted everything and endured my circumstances,” Bill admits.
"But after learning about walking in faith. I decided to take a stand and believe God wanted to heal me and set my family free from the spirit of lack" (III Jn. 2).
And God did. Bill received his complete healing at a Word of Faith service when Robert Tilton laid hands on him and prayed.
Bill and his wife. Pat made a vow of thanksgiving to God and paid regularly on it as God provided. One day when Bill was seeking the Lord about starting his own delivery business, the phone rang. It was a prayer minister from Robert Tilton Ministries. This divine coincidence gave Bill the confidence he needed to get started.
After one year his delivery business tripled in earnings. "Vowing is a tool to prove God's Word;' Bill declares.
When Jimmy lost 95 percent of his hearing in the right ear, he was not surprised. He had expected it. Years of working around loud machinery in his father's logging business contributed to his deafness.
"My condition bothered me but I had learned to live with it,” he says.
Coming across Success-N-Life, Jimmy learned that God wanted to heal him (Ex. 15:26). To exercise his faith, he made and began paying a $1,000 vow for his healing. One day, Robert Tilton gave a word of knowledge that God was healing deaf ears. Obediently, Jimmy placed one hand on the television screen and one on his ear, and prayed with Robert Tilton. Instantly, God restored his hearing.
He rejoices that his 10-year ordeal with deafness is finally over.
After Theda lost her job her husband's salary wasn't enough to support them, so they started looking for other career options. Intrigued when a friend told them about her paper shredding business, Ricky started investigating this occupation and became very excited. The only hitch was their terrible credit rating.
About this time, Theda called Robert Tilton Ministries and made a $2,500 vow for finances. When a friend called the next day offering to finance their business with $150,000, Ricky and Theda knew that God was about to pour out His abundant blessings.
Secured Data Destruction opened for business and is flourishing beyond all expectations (Eph. 3:20). They expect a phenomenal $250,000 profit by the end of the year.
"When we made a vow to God,” Theda admits, "our mountain of debt didn't crumble, it exploded!"
He could say only five words, and he had never said, "Mommy.” As a nurse and mother, Lisa knew something was wrong with her two-year-old son, Kenneth. A normal two-year-old’s vocabulary includes up to 200 words.
After examining Kenneth thoroughly, several doctors concluded that he was one year behind in his speech development. A battery of tests offered no explanation for this problem; and after three months of therapy, he had made no visible progress.
Early one morning. Lisa came across Success-N-Life, and Robert Tilton was speaking about a young child with a speech problem who would be miraculously healed (Mk. 7:34-35). Lisa reached out in faith and prayed with Pastor Tilton. Later, she called the Miracle Prayer Center and thanked the Lord with a $500 vow of faith for her son's healing.
In less than a week. Kenneth was talking! Overwhelmed by this miracle, Lisa turned her life over to Jesus Christ.
In one month, Kenneth's vocabulary grew to more than 100 words, but the one Lisa loves to hear him say most is, "Mommy.”
"Elva, you have malignant melanoma,” he told her after initial surgery. Although well schooled in patient relations, her doctor had found no easy way to present the cold facts. Elva left the hospital crying. How could this have happened to her, a vibrant woman of 35?
Just days ago, she was happily caring for her husband and son: now she faced a second surgery and possibly even death.
Constantly scared, Elva began watching Christian television. That's how she found Success-N-Life. "I was looking for someone to agree with me for a miracle healing,”Elva remembers.
One day Robert Tilton said that God wanted to heal a woman who had cancer and who was watching the program. Elva believed she was the woman and quickly placed her hand on the TV screen and prayed. Later, she called the prayer center and made a $100 vow to thank the Lord for her healing.
Her tests came back normal but convinced that the cancer was in her lymph glands, her doctors proceeded with the surgery. Much to their surprise, they found no trace of the cancer (1 Pet. 2:24). "The Lord healed me,” Elva declares, "and now I have true peace."
When her doctor couldn't identify the cause of Ginger's headache, nausea, and vomiting, her husband decided to take her to the Mayo Clinic for diagnosis. There a team of specialists discovered that her kidneys were operating at a capacity of only 50 percent.
"In essence, they told me to go home and wait until 1 didn't have any kidneys left, then they would begin searching for a donor,” she recalls.
Ginger believed that by suffering through her illness, she would encourage others. It wasn't until she watched Robert Tilton on television that she learned sickness does not glorify God. "The Lord has already taken care of these things,” she heard Pastor Tilton say (Mt. 8:17).
After making a $1,000 vow for her healing, Ginger continued to watch Success-N-Life. One day she heard Robert Tilton say that someone needed her kidneys healed. Claiming this prophecy, Ginger put her hands on the TV and asked God for a miracle. “I haven't been the same since," she announces.
Ginger's doctor has no problem with the healing either. "It's a miracle!" he exclaims.
When someone stole her daughter's car and drove away with her 18-month-old granddaughter in the back seat. Cheryl immediately called the Success-N-Life Miracle Prayer Center.
She asked a prayer minister to agree with her that the police would find Amber quickly and unharmed.
Cheryl knew prayer and vowing worked (Ps. 50:14-15). They had pulled her out of several low points in her life: depression from two failed marriages, a mountain of debt, and the struggles of opening a new business. But now Cheryl's faith was on the line and severely tested.
Police responded vigorously to the emergency, sending several officers to search for the car that held the missing little girl. Acting on a hunch, one officer headed for a drug-infested apartment complex where thieves often abandoned stolen cars. Amid gunfire in this drug war zone, miraculously, he found the car and the baby, asleep with a lollipop in her hand.
Cheryl knew God had intervened, especially when the police officer told her that this was only the second kidnapping to be successfully solved this year in her city.
As she rushed her husband Charles to the emergency room because he was bleeding intestinally, Myrtle prayed harder than she ever had. Once her husband was at the hospital, his doctors discovered that the lower intestinal tract was flooded with blood. They ordered a series of tests, but were unable to locate the source of the bleeding.
For three days Myrtle remained in constant prayer for her husband's healing. "But I felt like nothing was happening,” she admits. “I needed someone to pray with me.” An avid viewer of Success-N-Life, she decided to call the prayer center and ask someone to pray in agreement with her (Mt. 18:19).
"As soon as the phone minister prayed with me for Charles' healing, peace flooded my heart and mind,” she says.
'Two hours after Myrtle's call, Charles' bleeding stopped. X-rays revealed a mysterious clotting in his lower intestinal tract. Charles and Myrtle praise God for this miracle.
"I was practically an invalid,” Brenda says of the severe effects of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). "I couldn't sit or walk without pain.” She consulted five physicians before the disease was diagnosed.
As Brenda lay on the sofa watching television one morning, she came across Success-N-Life. When Robert Tilton prayed for the sick, she put her hand on the TV screen and felt an intense heat go through her body.
"Everything miraculously changed,” she exclaims. Then Brenda called the prayer line and made a $100 vow of thanksgiving.
Five days later, she felt so good that she went back to work for the first time in months. Brenda knows God completely healed her (Ps. 103:3-4). She no longer has aches and pains and is able to be in the sun without repercussions. Not only were her doctors amazed, but when her husband saw her healing, he accepted the Lord as his Savior.
"I knew miracles were possible. I just didn't know how to ask for them,” Brenda says. "But through this ministry I have learned how to use my faith.”