Google shares zoom to record San Francisco Chronicle
Google Inc.'s blockbuster third-quarter earnings catapulted its shares to an all-time high Friday and briefly lifted the company's market capitalization above $100 billion for the first time. The Mountain View search engine's shares rose $36.70 to $339.90, or 12.1 percent, in regular trading after turning in financial results a day earlier that bowled over Wall Street. Analysts were almost uniformly impressed by the sevenfold increase in Google's quarterly profit to $381.2 million and a doubling of its revenue to $1.58 billion. What little doubt there was about the company's near-future was largely laid to rest. Many analysts raised their price targets for Google's shares even higher into the stratosphere. Now analysts expect the shares to reach as high as $445 within the next 12 months. Google, which makes virtually all of its money from online advertising, is blossoming thanks to its legions of users and expanding slate of features. In September, the company's Web site had 81.2 million unique visitors in the United States, up from 62.9 million a year earlier. "We believe Google's momentum will continue for the foreseeable future as the company appears to understand the science of targeting (advertising) and monetizing better than any other Internet advertising company," Safa Rashtchy, an analyst for Piper Jaffray & Co, said in a research note Friday. On Friday, Google's shares jumped as high as $346.43 before retreating modestly. For a short time, Google joined an elite group of firms with market capitalizations above $100 billion. At the end of the day, Google's market capitalization dipped back down to $98 billion.Of Bay Area-based companies, only chipmaker Intel, telecom-equipment-maker Cisco and oil giant Chevron have market capitalizations above $100 billion. At its current level, Google is bigger than such business pillars as the media giant Time Warner Inc. and computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard.
E-mail Verne Kopytoff at vkopytoff@sfchronicle.com.
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