Google Shares Slide As Finance Chief Says Growth Slows
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Shares of Google slid 7.1% after the company’s finance chief, George Reyes, said growth is slowing at the world’s most-used Internet search engine.
“We’re getting to the point where the law of large numbers starts to take root,” Mr. Reyes said yesterday at a Merrill Lynch & Company investor conference in New York. “Growth will slow. Will it be precipitous? I doubt it.”
Google is studying new ways to grow after revenue more than doubled since the company first sold stock to the public in August 2004. The Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine propelled sales with advertising linked to search results and needs to pull sales out of other businesses, Mr. Reyes said yesterday.
The company, set to host a more in-depth meeting later this week with analysts, may generate revenue from new products such as Google Mobile for cell phones and Google Local for information on local businesses. Google also branched out in video, photos, and email to increase the users on its sites and lure more ad dollars.
Google shares sank $27.76 to $362.62 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading.
“The headlines always seem to spook the weaker hands in this stock,” a fund manager at Turner Investment Partners in Berwyn, Penn., Jason Schrotberger, said. The firm owns Google shares. “At every stated opportunity they’ve said that revenue will continue to slow because of the law of large numbers.”
