Unlike the end-of-year blockbuster news focused on the media entertainment version, Yahoo's IPO is a news event at the whole society.

While the Nasdaq Index broke through 2,500 points this week, the market value of major technology companies in the market also hit a new high.

According to the closing data of Eric when he arrived in New York on Wednesday, Microsoft, the market value of the Nasdaq market, has reached an astonishing $335.9 billion. In addition, among other celebrity technology stocks, Intel's market value is US$157.2 billion, Cisco's market value is US$133.5 billion, US Online's market value is US$66.7 billion, and SUN's market value is US$38.6 billion...

Among them, even Microsoft, which has the best profitability, has a price-to-earnings ratio of more than a hundred times that of the bubble level. Therefore, the Nasdaq market can only be described in the word "crazy".

Although Yahoo has achieved revenue of US$1.296 billion in just the first three quarters, more than double the US$636 million for the whole year last year, it is expected that the company's annual revenue growth rate will still be close to 200%. However, even based on the single-share issue price of US$33.7 billion, combined with Yahoo's profit expectations, will still bring about a price-to-earnings ratio of about 200 times.

Generally speaking, unless you are extremely optimistic about the development potential of a company, if the price-to-earnings ratio exceeds 30 times, it will be difficult for the company to attract investors again.

It can be imagined that in the current Nasdaq market, there are basically no more rational investors. With huge short-term arbitrage trading profits, everyone is placing bets wildly, and then secretly praying that they will not become the last buyer before the Nasdaq collapse.

Yahoo went public in such a state of almost panic, and the timing was extremely sensitive. Although it successfully achieved stock subscriptions of more than 15% of the issuance volume in the early stage of the issuance process, no matter who, even Eric himself, was not sure whether the official listing of Yahoo stocks would become the last straw that broke the camel's back.

Therefore, everyone is always in the mood to do their best to make the worst. As the last day of its listing approaches, the entire Firefly system is still working hard to make final preparations for Yahoo's listing.

After a busy day, Eric originally planned to invite senior executives of the Firefly System Company who came to attend the Yahoo bell ringing ceremony to have dinner together. After receiving a call temporarily, he had to rush to the Nasdaq Exchange in the Midtown area.

Although there are more than 12 hours left before listing tomorrow, the Nasdaq Exchange located on 42nd Street in Zhongcheng District is already crowded with reporters from all sides.

Eric's car stopped outside the exchange building, and the sharp-eyed reporter immediately surrounded him frantically. Countless hands holding cameras and recorders crossed over the bodyguards guarding Eric's side and reached towards him. A reporter with a loud voice tried his best to stretch the recorder forward in his hand, suppressing all the noisy sounds around and shouted: "Mr. Williams, we just got the news that the Yahoo team in the exchange seemed to have a conflict with the senior management of the Nasdaq Group. Are you here to solve this problem?"

When hearing the reporter's sudden question, other media people around were stunned for a moment, and then gave up the question just now, and at the same time, they hoped that Eric could answer the question just now.

After struggling to enter the building by the reporters' group, Eric pulled down the suit that was being pulled aside, looked around him, turned his head with some concern and asked his bodyguard captain Carter Moen, "Where is Mary?"

Carter said: "Miss Mayer is still in the car, and the crowd is too messy. I just suggested that she come over after you come in."

Eric nodded, waved his hand at Steve Mitnik's assistant who was approaching him, and then accelerated his pace and walked straight towards the Nasdaq Exchange hall.

Unlike traditional stock exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange, Nasdaq is actually the abbreviation of the "National Securities Dealers Association Automatic Quotation System". It is the world's first electronic stock and securities trading platform. Users basically trade stocks through phones and computers.

Therefore, the Nasdaq Exchange, located in the building on 42nd Street, is more like a symbol. The exchange does not have the complete software and hardware securities trading facilities like the New York Stock Exchange. It has multiple sets of photography equipment and live broadcast facilities that instantly spread exchange news to all over the world, which looks more like a TV studio.

Unlike the New York Stock Exchange, which is a non-profit social public service organization, although it has long been able to compete with the New York Stock Exchange in terms of the size and trading volume of listed companies, in fact, Nasdaq is owned by the Nasdaq Group and is a profitable private company.

Seeing Eric appear, the two men who were originally confronting each other immediately walked over together.

Frank Sabo, CEO of Nasdaq Group, looked very excited and waved his arm and said first: "Eric, it's hard for me to understand your idea. Why do we need to temporarily perform technical maintenance and stress testing on the Nasdaq trading system? This is simply unreasonable. I know you attach great importance to Yahoo's listing and trading, but the Nasdaq platform has been established for 27 years. We have never delayed the listing of any company due to technical reasons. Your requirements are completely unnecessary. Moreover, if you want to do this, it should be done by our company's own technical team. We cannot open the server to outsiders for testing."

Eric listened to Frank Sabo's complaint, raised his wrist and looked at the watch, interrupting the other party, "How long will it take for your technical team to perform maintenance and tests?"

Frank Sabo paused his arm-waving movement before saying, "Eric, this is absolutely unnecessary."

"I insist," Eric's voice became cold, his eyes fixed on Frank Sabo: "Or, you keep refusing, and then I cancel tomorrow's listing, there is a large group of reporters outside, and now you can hold a press conference to announce the news. So, how long will it take for your technical team to overhaul and test it?"

Eric insisted on asking the Nasdaq Exchange to inspect and test the system equipment, which was naturally not unreasonable or worrying about it.

In history, Facebook encountered a sudden failure of the Nasdaq system equipment on the day of its listing, which ultimately caused the orders for Facebook stock trading that cost billions of dollars to be successfully completed, and even largely led to the "tragedy" of Facebook's stock price falling below the issue price on the day of its listing. Because of the unfavorable start, Facebook's stock price continued to be sluggish in the following year. At the lowest point, the company's market value was only more than 30 billion US dollars, less than one-third of the market value on the day of listing.

Therefore, if Frank Sabo really insists not to compromise on this matter, Eric doesn't mind holding a temporary press conference to urgently cancel Yahoo's listing operation tomorrow.

The sudden pressure from Eric caused Frank Sabo's momentum to soften. If Yahoo's listing operation is indeed temporarily cancelled, although Firefly may face unpredictable losses, he, the CEO of Nasdaq Group, will definitely be swept out by the board of directors.

Subconsciously swallowing, Frank Sabo did not dare to say another tough word in the end.

However, as the top leader of the group, he really doesn't know how long it will take for Nasdaq's trading system platform to be repaired and tested. After he hesitating for a moment, he reported an indefinite time: "It will take about five or six hours."

"You have been delayed for an hour and a half since the market closed at 4:00 p.m.." Eric raised his hand and knocked his watch, saying, "So, call your technical team immediately. Steve and others must also assist and carry out the necessary supervision. Whether it is six hours or twelve hours, in short, I will get this done before tomorrow's transaction, is there any problem?"

Frank Sabo shook his head in a somewhat harsh tone: "No, no problem."

"Then it, start," Eric said, looking around, walked to a chair next to the camera next to sit down, and raised his arms to look at the people in the venue.

Frank Sabo didn't dare to call anything careless, so he took out his cell phone and started dialing on the spot.

Steve Mitnik waved his hand to let everyone go, walked to Eric, pulled a chair and sat down, and smiled bitterly: "I quarreled with the original person in charge here for an hour, Frank Sabo rushed over, and for another half an hour, I could only call you over."

Eric shook his head and said it was okay, and said, "I will have dinner with Ian, John and the others later, you probably can only stay here."

"It's nothing," Steve Mitnik laughed. "I can't believe it all of a sudden I'm going to be a billionaire. My parents have always disliked me for studying computers, thought it was not a good job, and they even often worried that I would be on the streets in the future."

After the last share split and the last equity incentive plan before the IPO, the two most important Yahoo veterans, Ian Gernier and Steve Mitnik, both held 16 million shares. However, based on the issue price of $33, their net worth had exceeded $500 million at this time. In addition, Tina Brown held 6 million shares, and the value of this stock was also close to $200 million.

In other words, before it goes public, Yahoo has created three billionaires. In addition to the three core executives, there are another 48.5 million shares distributed in the hands of Yahoo's management and elite employees at all levels. Once listed, Yahoo will create more than a dozen millionaires and hundreds of millionaires at one time. This situation is very rare in the entire world's corporate development history, and is also called one of the symbols of the technology stock bubble by some media.

Looking at Steve Mitnik with a feeling of emotion, Eric smiled and said, "Then, you can tell your parents about this and surprise them."

"My mother was already shocked," Steve said with a little more joke in his smile, "She thinks that your boss must be mentally ill-behaved, so he would give so much money to his employees."

"Yes, I feel very distressed," Eric pretended to cover his chest and joked.

Although this is the case, Eric has never been reluctant to give up on such a large-scale equity incentive plan, and high equity incentives will naturally bind strict compliance restrictions.

In this era when Internet companies sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, if the elites within the Yahoo Group who have been struggling in the Internet industry since Eric established three companies, they can easily attract venture capital and quickly accumulate enough wealth through IPO listing, and may even become Yahoo competitors.

But in fact, this situation has not happened. Yahoo has maintained an absolute dominant position in mainstream Internet businesses such as portals, emails, instant messaging, browser software and even recently search engines. In addition to Jeff Locke and others who left when the equity incentive program was launched three years ago, in recent years, there have been few core senior executives within the Yahoo Group. The main reason is the company's generosity in equity incentives and strict compliance regulations.

Although the book value of the equity incentive plan with a total of 96.5 million shares so far exceeds US$3 billion, Eric has gained US$30 billion. I think a little visionary corporate investors can understand how to choose the pros and cons of this.

He chatted with Steve and stared at the exchange for a while. It was not until Mayer came over with his cell phone and received a call from Ian Gernier and others from the Plaza Hotel that Eric left for tonight's banquet.

Early the next morning, Eric woke up in the penthouse on Sixth Avenue, and it was already seven o'clock.

When he arrived at the restaurant downstairs, Mayer had already prepared breakfast. When he saw Eric sitting at the dining table, the female assistant handed over a stack of arranged newspapers.

"I won't watch it today," Eric shook his head and said, "We'll be on the 42nd Street before eight o'clock."

Mayer put away the newspaper, served the breakfast for the two, sat down opposite him, and said, "Mr. Mitnik sent a message at 4 a.m. that they have completed the maintenance and testing of the Nasdaq trading system, and the technical teams of Yahoo and Nasdaq are still there to ensure that there will be no accidents in the entire transaction today. In addition, Mr. Katzenberg arrived in New York at 9 o'clock last night, and you were still having dinner with everyone. Katzenberg said that he would go directly to the Nasdaq exchange today."

Eric added some milk to the cereal porridge and nodded, "Well, is there any?"

Mayer continued: "Mission Impossible 3's midnight box office was about $9.2 million, lower than the summer season "Charlie Angel 3" and "The Matrix 2."

"It's already good."

Eric didn't feel any disappointment. North America has just experienced a large-scale cooling in recent days. It has snowed in many places on the East Coast. Many people are reluctant to go out during the day, let alone go to watch midnight movies in the early morning. In this case, the midnight box office of "Mission Impossible 3" can still remain above $9 million, and it has even performed a little extraordinary.

After hearing Mayer report a few more things, Eric looked at the girl opposite and said, "Speaking of this, it's Thanksgiving soon. After finishing your work, I'll give you a holiday today. Go back to celebrate Thanksgiving with your family. Next week, well, I'll be fine if I come back next week."

Caroline was still recovering from her injuries. Mayer subconsciously wanted to ask Eric what to do if he left him. Suddenly he remembered something, closed his mouth again, and just nodded slightly.

After breakfast, Eric took Mayer to the Nasdaq Exchange on 42nd Street. Compared to yesterday afternoon, although it was less than eight o'clock, today's Nasdaq Exchange was even more lively inside and out. Many guests who came to stand up for Yahoo's listing even appeared in the exchange hall earlier than Eric.

He greeted everyone warmly, Eric then unexpectedly found two beautiful figures in the crowd, and said in surprise: "Why are you two here?"

Cindy picked up her badge and shook her towards Eric, saying, "I am a celebrity user of Yahoo blog. Ms. Brown personally called me to invite me to stand up for Yahoo."

Eric smiled and looked at Linda next to Cindy: "Where is your brand?"

Linda reached out to grab Cindy's badge, but was opened, and raised her chin with some depression. The bachelor said, "No, you can drive me out."

Cindy walked over and gently grabbed Eric's arm, leaned into his ear and smiled and whispered: "She has subscribed 1.5 million shares, and all the savings she has accumulated over the past few years have been poured in."

"Big customer," Eric reached out to bring Linda to the moody, and said, "Okay, let's accompany me on stage and ring the bell later. But let's make an agreement first, I don't care if I'm trapped."
Chapter completed!