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Groupon Files to Raise $750 Million in IPO After Sales Surge

Groupon Inc., the top online-coupon provider, filed to raise $750 million in an initial public offering, riding a wave of Web-company share sales and giving investors a chance to bet on the surging daily-deal market.

The IPO will be handled by Morgan Stanley (MS), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN), according to the filing. Chicago-based Groupon, founded in 2008, will trade under the ticker GRPN.

Groupon has drawn increasing interest from Wall Street since December, when it opted to weigh an IPO instead of accepting a $6 billion takeover bid from Google Inc. As early as March, Groupon was in talks with bankers about an IPO that would value the company at as much as $25 billion, people familiar with the matter said at the time. Groupon is benefiting from demand for daily coupons, which provide discounts at local businesses like restaurants and nail salons.

“You need to have a war chest,” said Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with Caris & Co. in San Francisco. “You need to have that access to capital to maintain that level of growth.”

Groupon Chief Executive Officer Andrew Mason said in a memo to employees that going public would make it "easier to make big acquisitions" and that all full-time employees will get equity in the share sale. The market for daily deals is set to generate $3.9 billion in sales in 2015, from $873 million in 2010, according to researcher BIA/Kelsey in Chantilly, Virginia.

Bargain Junkies Are Beating Retailers at Their Own Game

In the economic wasteland of the past three years, the biggest success story has been a website that gets us to buy stuff we never knew we wanted: helicopter-flying lessons, hot stone massages, professional photo portraiture, obscure ethnic food, hot air balloon rides. More precisely, what we buy at Groupon—the two-year-old startup that, with projected revenue of more than $500 million this year, was called the “fastest growing company ever” in a recent Forbes cover story—is the right to buy all that stuff at a huge discount, so long as we all act fast. In other words, what Groupon sells (as its clever name indicates) is coupons, but with a social twist. It’s been such a huge moneymaker that scores of copycats have emerged, including other startups like LivingSocial and 8coupons. Established online presences like Yelp and OpenTable have also jumped in; the biggest and most recent entrant is AOL, which in October announced its own Groupon clone, Wow.com.
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