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Groupon Could Challenge Google's Record IPO
jbrodkin writes "Months after spurning Google's $6 billion takeover bid, Groupon may topple Google's IPO record with an initial public offering worth $25 billion. Google went public in 2004 with a $24.6 billion valuation and Groupon seems to be on the verge of an IPO worth even more, Dow Jones VentureSource says. Even if Groupon doesn't break Google's record, it seems likely to become only the fifth venture-backed company to achieve a $10 billion valuation at the time of its IPO."
Groupon has a great business idea, AND it's mainly targeted to girls and women who also spend a lot for beauty things. They make shitloads of money as well as does the partner companies and their users. Win-win-win.
Wall St. can't keep itself from trying to blow up investment bubbles.
There's a sucker born every minute (and then the taxpayers bail the investment banks out).
I wouldn't write Groupon off as a bubble stock. They actually make money, which means they can be legitimately valued. The hysteria in 1999 was in companies that had no proven revenue stream whatsoever.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Groupon makes a lot of money. Groupon also has a massive amount of debt. They secured about a billion dollars in funding during a recent 'investment round'.
We are talking about a billion dollars in funding to run a website that requires no novel technology, has no valuable intellectual property, and doesn't have much of a competitive advantage. There isn't anything stopping other companies and people from creating more Groupon clones (as is obviously evidenced by competitors like LivingSocial and Google's upcoming daily deals site).
The VCs must be really desperate for a success story, considering all the 'most innovative companies' coming out of silicon valley have no business model. They want to make money off of one of the pseudo-profitable organizations while they can. Welcome to doctom bubble 2.0.
This is what we value in this country. Companies that spam coupons for the masses to buy more shit they don't need. So Wall St. intends on pumping 25 billion into a company that doesn't actually even manufacturer anything. A company whose only value is that it offers discounts to other companies! So in ten years, is their going to be a gang-groupon.com, that groupon pays to send out links to its own coupon links? The service based slave wage economy of the future is going to be quite sad indeed.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
... according to one inflation calculator, the $24.6 billion of Google's IPO in 2004 is worth $28.82 billion in 2011 dollars.
The pricing is bubble, though. They're getting valued at 20X gross. That's a factor of 5 off normal.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking