• by Ross Fadner , September 28, 2004

As of Tuesday, the analyst "quiet period" following Google's initial public offering (IPO) is now over. Investment banks are now free to release reports on the company, and several did: all of them were positive.

Analyst quiet periods prohibit them from publishing research about companies that have gone public until 40 days after the IPO. Google filed to go public with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 30; its stock began trading under the ticker symbol "GOOG" on August 19.

Following the quiet period lift Tuesday, analysts from Credit Suisse First Boston, one of the lead underwriters of Google's IPO, said they expect Google's stock to rise as much as 23 percent from Monday's $118.26 closing price, to $145 per share over the next 12 months.

In other reports, fellow IPO lead underwriter Morgan Stanley priced the stock at between $120 and $140, and WR Hambrecht set a target of $140.

Other banks that participated in Google's IPO were Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, J. Allen & Co., J.P. Morgan Chase, UBS, and Thomas Weisel Partners.

At close Tuesday, Google's stock traded at $126.80 per share--in the range the company originally expected its initial public offering (IPO) to be priced at.

If recent trading and the Credit Suisse First Boston report are any indication, Google's future looks bright, despite a series of pre-IPO blunders that brought the company a flurry of negative press.

These included the infamous Playboy article appearing mere days before the company's scheduled IPO, in which founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were interviewed; the unregistered issuance of 28 million shares of company stock to employees and consultants; and a settlement of 2.7 million class A shares with Yahoo! over a patent and stock dispute involving Overture Services, a Yahoo! subsidiary.