Groupon IPO
Groupon is an E-Commerce marketplace connecting buyers and sellers by offering discounted products. It operates in two segmens: North America and International. The company features daily deals to its subscribers
Groupon enable consumers to purchase vouchers for goods and services directly from its website, social networks and its mobile application for android, iphone, windows and blackberry phones.
In December 2010, the Company partnered with Redbox to offer a daily deal to their user base and it acquired over 200,000 new customers through that offer and in March 2011, it partnered with eBay to offer a daily deal to their user base and it acquired over 290,000 new customers through that offer.
Groupon competes with Google, Microsoft,
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Fills S-1 form with SEC.
July 27: Filing comes under scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange commission for unusual accounting metrics called "Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income.
The method calculates revenue without first debiting expenses like marketing and advertising.
September 6: Groupon announces IPO amid volatile stock market and growing scrutiny from the SEC.
September 25: Groupon's chief operating officer bruptly left Groupon, becoming the second COO to leave the company in just six months.
October 7: Groupon revises its S-1. It clarified its new accounting metric, called "gross billings," which is essentially the total revenue the company collects from consumers before remunerating vendors.
Ipo
Groupon priced its IPO at $20 a share on November 4, 2011.
It values Groupon at $13 billion, and nets the company around $700 million of much-needed working capital. It listed itself on the Nasdaq, under the ticker GRPN.
Groupon's underwriters hiked its offering price from $16 to $18 and added another 5 million shares, up from the previous offering estimate of 30 million
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Under pressure from regulators, it re filed in August to instead use only standard accounting procedures. As a result, the operating profits that Groupon cited in its first filing became operating losses.
In late September, the compay revised its reported revenue to "correct for an error" effectively reducing its sales to half of what it claimed previously. The unprofitable company owed almost twice as much to merchants at the end of September as it held in cash, and its marketing costs rose 37 percent in the latest quarter.
Investment Banks
Morgan Stanley worked with Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse Group AG to fetch a valuation of about $12.7 billion, 11 % higher than targeted.
Low Float
Groupon surged as much as 56 % in its trading debut. The company raised $700 million, compared with the $540 million they filed to raise Oct. 21. The shares rose $6.11, or 31 percent, to close at $26.11.
The company offered a smaller percentage of shares than typical in an IPO. It had planned to offer 4.7 % of its stock, less than in any U.S. Internet-company IPO of more $200 million since at least 2000.
This model of the low float creating its own demand has