It’s been a long tumble from the height of the hype cycle for Groupon. Stock performance has been lackluster, and there’s an ever-louder chorus of doubts about the business model. So yesterday probably wasn’t the best time for CEO Andrew Mason to get caught by The Wall Street Journal admitting to a roomful of employees that he’d maybe had a little too much to drink. Whoops!
The Journal does not sound amused: Read More
Groupon’s IPO is going to be priced sometime today! It goes on sale tomorrow. THE MOST IMPORTANT IPO IN DAILY DEALS HISTORY IS FINALLY HERE, HAROLD CAMPING! So, we’re having a contest. Here’s how it works:
1. Betabeat will make guesses on the IPO, both the IPO price and the price at day’s end.
2. If any of your guesses are closer to the actual IPO than Betabeat’s, we will give you a cookie. A real cookie.
3. No cheating, no going to the future and finding out what it is, no insider trading, no guesses from Andrew Masons, Groupon Cats, or Pets.com dogs. Read More
Well, it’s finally here: Groupon’s sets the price for its IPO tomorrow, and goes public on Friday. Everything everyone has said about the wildly hyped billion-dollar valuations, the competition they face, the backlash to the backlash, and the inner-workings of the company will be put to the test of that mythical, Read More
Groupon, Groupon, Groupon: Everyone’s talking about the original daily deals company in the leadup to their public debut on the markets. Everyone has a theory about what their company is and isn’t; what their future can be and can’t. And Business Insider—ever so often derided for their cut-and-paste journalism—did something late last night with Groupon that they sometimes tend to do: published a sprawling, sensational, and sourced piece of reporting that covers entire swaths of narratives both primary and otherwise on a hot subject. Meet “INSIDE GROUPON: The Truth About The World’s Most Controversial Company.“
It doesn’t contain any groundbreaking revelations on the company. It’s not going to open them up to further points of scrutiny or single-handedly change the fate of Groupon’s IPO.
But it does offer some great insight from the inside and it is, admittedly, an excellent read. Here are our favorite parts: Read More
In case anyone was wondering why Groupon, the tech press’s favorite new punching bag, would restart its delayed road show and try to go public right now (during the biggest IPO backlog since 2000), there are a couple easy answers.
Bloomberg reports that Groupon (1) both needs cash to grow and (2) is close to the 500-shareholder threshold, at which point its required to report detailed financial information every quarter. Usually that’s the point where startups figure: Eh, might as well IPO.
Groupon, which is seeking to raise as much as $540 million, but only selling five percent equity, claims that it doesn’t need the money for at least a year and isn’t desperate for the cash. But as Bloomberg reports: Read More
Hey, look! Groupon’s stock prospectus is out! There are plenty of numbers and mind-numbing details in it that we won’t bore you with. Instead we’ll just focus on the crazypants guru talk Andrew Mason threw in there, which distinguishes Groupon from the average I.P.O. stock prospectus out there.
Take, for example, the following quote from Mr. Mason’s letter to potential stockholders: Read More
Groupon filed an amended S-1 document today for its delayed IPO, which has been under scrutiny from investors and the SEC. The startup has been critiqued for the fact that is has had to boost spending to add users to its email list. The filing says the company plans to “significantly” reduce online marketing spending “over time as such investments yield insufficient returns,” reports Bloomberg.
According to the filing, those marketing costs stopped paying off because of “changes in subscriber economics, achievement of subscriber saturation levels in various markets or a determination that subscriber growth objectives can be satisfied though alternative means.”
The company insists that cutting back won’t negatively impact businesses with existing subscribers, although trends have shown users tend to be less engaged and profitable over time. Read More
Employees of the daily deal giant have filed a class action lawsuit claiming Groupon failed to pay them millions of dollars in overtime pay. It’s another blow to an already shaky company, whose accounting is being questioned by the SEC. Groupon cancelled its IPO roadshow earlier this week.
The story broke in PaidContent, which mentioned that several posts on Glass Door, a site where employees can anonymously rate their company and bosses, made mention of long hours under difficult conditions. Betabeat wandered over to check out some of these reviews. What we found was a little shocking. Some choice reviews: Read More
While you were distracted with the “nuclear situation” over at TechCrunch, Groupon, apparently, took the opportunity to make things even more toxic for itself in the press by once again flouting the SEC-mandated quiet period between filing for an IPO and actually going public.
Just before the long weekend, Michael Buckley from Brunswick Group, a PR firm employed by Groupon, not only called peHUB reporter Connie Loizos to complain about a story, but to get her facts straight, Mr. Buckley suggested taking a look at a leaked memo from Groupon CEO Andrew Mason that somehow found its way into Kara Swisher’s hands at AllThingsD. Yup, the very same leaked memo that Henry Blodget alleged violated securities law. Ms. Swisher’s role in that aside, as Ms. Loizos points out, the quiet period does not permit “calling journalists and urging them to read leaked CEO letters.”
As Fortune.com‘s Dan Primack sees it, however, the fault lies with the SEC, not Groupon. In the latest issue of the magazine, he makes his position clear with the headline, “It’s time to kill the IPO quiet period.” Read More
