Filed under: Google (GOOG), Recession
As Doug noted a few days ago, shares in Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) have dropped to 52-week lows and then some. It’s no surprise — Google has joined just about every public company in the stock market freefall this year. But now, the company’s shares have gone below the $300 mark for the first time since 2005. Is the company doomed?
Of course not. Google has very tiny debt and billions in cash to do whatever it wants. It, of course, won’t be immune from the online advertising slowdown that’s in progress and will get worse. Still, if analyst pundits think businesses can just stop advertising and anticipate the same business activity, that’s a big fallacy. Google will still remain one of the ideal advertising destinations, even as businesses squeeze their marketing budgets as much as they have the ability to.
Google’s shares are off more then 50% this year, but this doesn’t change the fact that Google’s financial fundamentals are totally sound. But, of course, doom and gloom predictors are coming out of the woodwork with the guesswork on what Google’s 2009 profit outcomes could be (flip a coin, anyone?). Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal told Yahoo! that “we believe that the high CPC (costs-per-click) inflation Google has been experiencing for the past six quarters is not sustainable and will pressure core search growth”. Of course it won’t be sustainable. But Google isn’t going to injured unless it stays this way for 24 months or more.
Google shares below $300 for first time since 2005 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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