Google's First Stock Split Is Now Ready To Go, Brings Single Share Price Down To Approximately $560

Today, Google announced their earnings for Q4 of 2013 with an impressive $16.88 Billion in revenue. Of course, news came out concerning Motorola as well, with the company once again posting a loss of $384 Million. In comparison to the amount of money Google bought in, that’s a hit the search giant can take, but with Motorola now having been sold off to Lenovo, Google will one less thing to worry about shortly. As it was Google’s earnings call, a fair amount of news concerning the business side of things emerged from Mountain View today. Not a lot of it all that interesting to the likes of us, but if you like money, this sort of thing is always going to be interesting.

Google’s share price has been on the rise steadily since last year and has since climbed above the $1,000 mark, with it currently trading at $1,135.39 (at the time of writing). This has caused Google to give the greenlight to an upcoming stock split. If you’re unfamiliar with a stock split, it’s essentially what it sounds like. Stock is split by the company into less valuable shares. The stock split from Google is going to be a 2-for-1 stock split, which will see the value of each share fall by half, bringing stock prices down to around $560 or so. The split has been a long time coming, but it’s been held up by red tape and other things. The new stock will start public trading on April 3rd later this year.

Google’s stock split will produce Class C stock, which will float on the market with the original naming of GOOG, meanwhile Class A stock will trade on the market with GOOGL as its moniker. Class C stock will carry no vote, meaning no say in the direction of the company. While this sort of thing is fairly common, it’s the first time that Google will be offering a stock split and could mean big things for the search giant. The company’s valuation sees no effect, so don’t expect Google to suddenly fall overnight as a result. If you have stock in Google, or might be considering buying some of the new Class C stock, reach out in the comments below!

Source: VentureBeat