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Groupon Puts IPO On Hold
With his first accepted submission, quantr tips news that Groupon's IPO plans, which triggered skepticism about its high valuation and furthered claims of a new dot-com bubble, have been put on hold amid regulatory concerns and worries about "market volatility." According to the WSJ, "When the company filed to go public in early June, it attracted criticism for its high marketing costs and unprofitable business. The company was also asked by the Securities and Exchange Commission to remove an unusual accounting metric, dubbed Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income, which painted a more robust picture of its performance. Last week, the SEC also contacted a Groupon attorney over a different matter, said a person familiar with the situation: a leaked internal memo from Groupon Chief Executive Andrew Mason to his staff, in which he touted the company and blasted its critics. Making public statements about the financial status of a company during an IPO process is prohibited by SEC rules."
Who gives a shit? Stop wasting time/attention with that crap.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I don't know what Google was thinking offering them $6B for the company a while back, but I especially don't know what Groupon's owners were thinking for not taking it. Yes, most of it would be in Google stock, that's just fine (even though it would decline a bit after everybody figured out that Groupon was a dumb idea at that price.) Yes, they'd lose a lot of their autonomy, but you don't build a coupon-advertising company to change the world, you build one to make money, and that was real money.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks