Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. approached $100 billion in market value and analysts rushed to raise their price estimates after the company's results soared past the most optimistic of expectations.

Analysts at three firms including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. said the stock may climb to $450 from today's record close of $339.90. At that price, Google would have a value more than double that of Yahoo! Inc. and vault into the top 20 largest U.S. companies, worth more than Coca-Cola Co. and Wells Fargo & Co.

Google, whose shares have jumped fourfold in the 14 months since going public, will probably reach the $100 billion mark faster than any U.S. company, eclipsing Yahoo, which took more than three years to reach the milestone. Mountain View, California-based Google's announcement yesterday of a sevenfold rise in third-quarter profit underscored the power of its search engine, the most-used in the world, to draw advertisers.

``There's almost no stopping Google,'' said Jason Schrotberger, an analyst with Turner Investment Partners in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, which has $15 billion in holdings including Google shares. ``It's just an unbelievable performance.''

Google surpassed analysts' predictions for a fifth straight quarter, as the company extracted more revenue from each ad and improved its ad technology. Google's command of more than half the search market and its visitor base of more than 400 million users are prompting advertisers to shift more of their budgets to the company.

Shares of Google, which went public at $85, reached a record intraday high today of $346.43. The stock closed up $36.70, or 12 percent, in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading, the biggest one-day gain in a year. Of 34 Google analysts tracked by Bloomberg, 25 rate Google ``buy,'' eight say ``hold'', and one, Philip Remek of Guzman & Co., says ``sell.''

Billionaires

Google's surge has made billionaires of its founders and made fortunes for employees and shareholders.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both 32, formed the company in a Stanford University dorm room in 1998 and are now each worth about $12 billion. They have sold more than $1 billion each in Google stock in the past year alone, according to the Washington Service. Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt owns stock worth about $4.5 billion.

Google's biggest investors, Fidelity Investments and Legg Mason Inc., boosted their holdings in the year. Google, too, has reaped the benefits of the gains, raising $4.18 billion in a stock sale in September.

Gaining Ground

While Google has almost doubled its workforce in the past year, the company is worth more per employee than many of its rivals. Google has about $20 million in market capitalization for each worker, compared with $4.4 million for Microsoft Corp, the world's largest software maker, and $1.5 million at Intel Corp., the No. 1 maker of semiconductors.

At $100 billion, Google would be the fifth-largest technology company, ranking behind Microsoft, at more than $260 billion, Intel, International Business Machines Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc., which until Yahoo was the fastest to reach $100 billion, taking eight years. At $450 a share, Google's market capitalization would soar to $131.8 billion, surpassing Cisco's $106 billion today and rivaling IBM's $133 billion.

Google yesterday said profit in the period ended Sept. 30, excluding stock-based compensation costs and other one-time items, was $1.55 a share on net sales of $1.05 billion. The results topped analysts' average estimate of $1.36 and surpassed the highest of $1.46.

`Relatively Inexpensive'

The shares will soar to at least $400 in the next 12 months, according to at least nine analysts who raised their price estimates after the profit announcement.

``These guys have a lot of headroom,'' said First Albany Corp. analyst Jason Avilio, in San Francisco. Avilio today raised his price estimate on Google to $450 from $363, joining Lehman's Douglas Anmuth and RBC Capital Markets' Jordan Rohan for the highest estimate among 20 analysts who provided targets to Bloomberg.

Rohan, who earlier this year cut his price estimate on concern about slow growth, today raised it from $340.

``While some may view Google's nearly $100 billion market capitalization as rich, we believe otherwise,'' Rohan wrote in a note to clients. ``Our view is that Google is still a relatively inexpensive stock, and that shares are headed higher.''

Citigroup Investment Research and Piper Jaffray & Co. were among firms raising their predictions. Prudential Equity Group's Mark Rowen kept his forecast at $400, which was the highest before today's changes.

The challenge analysts face is that they don't have access to enough data to predict Google's future growth, said Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney.

``We had expected a beat and raise quarter, but not one of this magnitude,'' Mahaney wrote in a report. He raised his price estimate by 19 percent to $430 and maintained a ``buy'' rating. ``It appears that nobody had.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Thaw in San Francisco at jthaw@bloomberg.net; Ari Levy in New York at alevy5@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 21, 2005 17:08 EDT